Eight months ago Dan and I were dogless.  Catless.  No fish, guinea pigs, worm farms, turtles, monkeys, chickens, or llamas.  We were empty nesters of the highest order.  Then we found Wilson at Chatsworth Labradoodles — an irresistible ball of wagging tail and puppy breath.  We were in stupid love!

But coincidentally, two weeks before Wilson was to travel from Roswell, New Mexico to his new home with us in Arizona, our daughter called.  We want to do an experiment, she said.  Allergies, she said.  BAD, she said.  Of course, we said.  Two weeks, no big deal, we said.  Standing on our heads, we said.

Whoo boy!  Next thing we knew Scarlett was ours forever.  Next thing she knew was that we loved her so much we gave her a needle-toothed puppy to hang from the skin of her neck.

She took Wilson on with such a tender heart, I am daily shamed by the lessons I learn from this package of red fur and affection.   Wilson still hangs from her neck.  Scarlett still lets him.  Wilson is convinced we’ve hidden a secret cache of bacon just beneath the carpet and directly behind every baseboard and door casing.  Scarlett wouldn’t lay a tooth on a baseboard if it was slathered in gravy and lit up with a giant neon EAT ME sign.  Wilson’s like a dirty-faced little kid in overalls with a broken strap and grass-stained knees.  Scarlett is the girl with white socks and Mary Jane shoes.

Wilson’s just beginning.  Scarlett’s slowing down.

And the thing about Scarlett?  The real thing?  While Wilson endlessly and expensively eats holes into the infrastructure of our house … and yesterday’s market crash swiftly and surely disappeared a portion of our retirement fund … and Dan and I are probably going to end up in our eighties standing with our walkers, mumbling through our naked gums, Welcome to WalMart — Scarlett simply places her head on my lap and sends comfort into the depth of my bones.

The thing about Scarlett is this — she is now where our red fern grows.

When I was young and my kids were young and I had two good legs and one great heart, I used to make things.  Much to the horror of my children, I sewed all their clothes.  Then I made them WEAR what I made.  Poor babies!

I made large things and small things.  I sewed.  I croched.  I knitted.  My hands stayed busy with the knowledge of others before me as I followed patterns, tongue stuck, just so, to the side of my lips, busying myself through the night while the kids slept.  In the morning, I’d present them with the newest, sometimes most whine-producing creation made by their overly zealous and crafty mother.

That’s why when I recently found Etsy.com I found a website filled with nothing but amazing homemade, artful items.  I want to buy every single thing on every single web page.  There are the most darling items of clothing for the little ones among us.  There are purses and brooches and things to grace your walls.  There are homemade chairs and tables and any number of what-nots.  Launched in 2005, it’s amazing I’ve only just found this grand website.

If you haven’t found it yet, may I introduce it to you.  Etsy, Readers.  Readers, Etsy.

Have fun!

P.S.  Thanks FotoSearch.com for the really nice picture.  It looks just like my old sewing basket!

I’m shaking in my boots (or should I say, my leg cast) today.  Hurricane Ike, the massive killer and daddy of all storms, is headed straight toward the Texas coast and way too close for comfort to the home of one of our kids.  (Be safe, Bob!  Be safe.)  I flip back and forth between CNN and MSNBC just because I can’t keep my eyes off the television and its images of swelling ocean and building winds.

Then there’s the world’s largest particle accelerator buried deep in the earth beneath herds of placid dairy cows grazing on the Swiss-French border.  The idea of this thing is to set two beams of protons traveling in opposite directions through a giant round tunnel, redlining at the speed of light, generating a wicked energy that will mimic the cataclysmic conditions at the beginning of time, then smashing into each other in a furious re-creation of the Big Bang — this time recorded by giant digital cameras.  Whee-doggies!

On Wednesday, they fired this sucker up.  I wonder if they played the theme music from Jaws as they sent those toothy Sarah Barracuda protons out to eat up the earth.  Ba-dum … Ba-dum.

And then there’s Wilson.  My dear sweet Wilson who has his own little toothy grin as he gleefully gnaws his way across baseboards and door casings while I’m impotently stuck on the couch.

Dan:  He’s eating the house.

Me:  He’s nine months old.  He’s teething.

Dan:  He’s EATING.  THE.  HOUSE.

Me:   I can learn carpentry. (I say brightly.)

Dan:  Swell.  A house-eating dog and a wife with a broken leg and her finger on the red button of a power saw.

Me:  Yeah, well you’ll be glad I learned how to saw things if we need to board up against that black hole they’re making.

Dan:  And you’re qualified to stop a black hole?

Me:  May I remind you that I was a PTA member, a Pop Warner football mom, Captain of a cheerleader squad — AND the mayor of a small couch.  Thus, I’m quite qualified to preemptively poke red buttons, thereby nullifying black holes. So read my lipstick, mister.  I’m a heartbeat away.  A heartbeat!

I wonder if the sound of Dan’s hand smacking his forehead is similar to the big-bang explosion they plan to make in that underground tunnel.  I guess we’ll soon know.

In the meantime, again I pray, stay safe Texas.  Stay safe.

I have seven more days glued to the couch, toes aimed toward the ceiling, before the first post-surgical evaluation of how my little fibula is doing.  Seven days to make good with life on my back.  Time in a Bottle may have been a hauntingly prescient song, but Time on a Couch pretty much sucks.  Here are a few things I can do to pass the day:

Thursday – Watch re-runs of Sex in the City until my eyes bleed.

Friday – Learn a new language.  I’m thinking Pig-Latin might be fitting for today’s distraction.  I’ll start with the common phrase, ipstick-lay on a ig-pay, and then feign my own sexist outrage over it.

Saturday – Memorize the Periodical Table, then break out that Little Genius Chemistry Set to invent the Auburn McCanta line of designer stink bombs.

Sunday – Knit a sweater … provided I learn to knit without poking myself with those sharp pointy needles.

Monday – Worry over that teensy-weensy little black hole they are expecting to make inside the Super Collider in Geneva — you know, that black hole some worry might swallow up the earth, along with this ridiculous couch on which I’m captured.  Whee-doggies!

Tuesday – Read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, concentrating on the red-necked spitting cobra with which I will SO relate about this time.

Wednesday – Do a one-legged happy dance because the galaxy still whirls and we’re one day closer to something other than life on a couch.

I’d be happy to take further suggestions for time-consuming activities.  There are still those wide-awake nights in which to occupy and amuse myself.  I promise to take it all under advisement.  Anyone?  Anything?

Two weeks ago tomorrow I fell through a crack in the earth.  Things broke.  A leg.  The strap of a purse.  A cell phone.  A heart.  The fall was swift, thorough.  Complicated.  Like Alice down the rabbit hole, there’s a sense that up is down and teacups are no longer to be trusted.  The path from active and vibrant to existence on a couch is more than winding and certainly not one I’d anticipated.  But this is no Wonderland and I’m no Alice.  I’m simply a woman who was startled by how abruptly one’s day can intersect with an unlikely event.  How one can so easily happen upon a wrinkle in the earth and fall … fall … fall.

I suppose it’s not so bad, this exaggerated drifting through days of painful surgical recovery, numerous leg casts, endless hospital trips.  Immobility.  Isolation.  Loneliness.  But there’s a cupboard full of books waiting for hands to open them.  There are two award-winning manuscripts in my drawer, completed and just needing an agent to give them wings.  A couch-bound writer has nothing but the gift of time to research agents, write query letters, anticipate that one “Yes” that can propel an unpublished story toward its rightful place on bookstore shelves.  There are more stories to write.  More ideas to dispel.

There’s also an exquisite humility that enters the heart when one is suddenly disabled, helpless, dependent on others for everything.  Modesty has no place.  Determination becomes an abstract concept.  A clock insults the true length of a day for the bedridden.  A Handicapped placard now hangs from the rearview mirror of my car — a car I can no longer drive.

So paint those roses red, boys.  Call the Queen of Hearts.  Deal the cards and pass the pills that make me small and make me tall.  Pour me another cup of tea; I’ll be here a while.  I’ll follow that time-obsessed March Hare until I figure out the logic of this place.  Like Alice, I’ll flutter the rabbit’s fan and wonder if I’m still the same person I was before.  I’ll grow and shrink and when it’s all done, I’ll either be a little crazier or a whole lot better for this unlikely adventure.   And maybe, oh just maybe, I’ll figure out the Hatter’s unanswerable riddle of “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”  Certainly, if nothing else, this Dancing Bird with a broken leg will have plenty of time for pondering answers to such nonsensical questions.

Wish me luck.

I’m off first thing in the morning to get a zipper put in my leg — a nice metal plate and a couple of screws, a few more weeks with my leg stuck in the air, three to four months in a cast, several weeks of physical therapy and oh, maybe a box or three of wine to seal the deal.

Once I can manage to hold this trusty old laptop without screaming, MEDIC, MEDIC, we’ll all sit down and have a nice chat about how to not break your leg by tripping over cracks in the sidewalk.  We can share scars and swap medical horror stories.  We can be Brothers and Sisters of The Leg.  We can tremble together as we dim the lamps and tell stories around a crackling campfire about the headless ghost in the mall who captures unsuspecting women and snaps their legs like little dry twigs.

I’ll see you soon.

In the meantime, stay safe.  Be well.  Keep the oily side down and write, write, write.

Wilson and Dan on the occasion of Beginner Puppy Class Graduation.

Of course I was incredibly sad I couldn’t attend Wilson’s big day, but missing your puppy’s graduation because your leg is broken is just a simple suck-it-up moment, not an opportunity to brag how you’re a woman of strong character in spite of the evidence of your weak bones.

After countless reiterations of how I fell because of an unexpected sidewalk crack at the mall (boorring), I’m claiming the story-teller’s right to make up a better tale.  Now when asked how I broke my leg, I’ll simply shrug and growl, “Ah, those dastardly Pirates.”

On this Labor Day, those of us who are couch-bound captives to all things television, may I join the collective concern as I watch water roll over the West side of the Industrial Canal in New Orleans.  Be safe, people.  Be well.  You live in a lump in my throat now.  You are cupped within a prayer that I’ve captured into my folded hands.  You’re in every gust of wind, every drop of water, every fallen tree.  Take care.  Please.

I’ll be quiet for a few days.  Tomorrow is pre-op day, followed by surgery Wednesday morning.  I’ve been told that a plate and screws hammered into one’s fibula is about as fun as a ruptured spleen.  It could be worse.  I could be lashed to the mast of a ship, my breasts wildly heaving like the ocean’s reckless waves, pirates dancing over my capture, a plank being readied for my final walk, and my rescuing hero still only on the 7th green and pondering the slope and speed of his next putt.  Yeah, it could be way worse.

Be safe today, everyone.  Donate something to benefit our current hurricane victims — if you can.  The Red Cross is here.  Barack Obama has information and a link here.  John McCain has local links here.

The saga of the leg goes on.  I’m told I must have surgery on my dear little broken and misplaced fibula.  SURGERY!  We’re talking metal plates and screws.  A manly scar.  Another true grit moment.  One more notch on the old belt.

So from this day forward and into the next three months, I’ll be the one on the couch with my leg stuck up in the air, making certain my toes stay eye level, keeping my ankle higher than my poor sad little heart, demurely trying not to give an accidental crotch shot now and then with this left leg waving wildly at the ceiling.  Wheee!!!

Hang with me, though.  I’ll do my best to write through my sure-to-be chronically drug-induced brain fog.  With my trusty laptop resting on the shelf of my chest, my teeth clenched in pain, my fingers not responsible for anything they might write, this Dancing Bird will continue on.

The next few days will be busy with all the pre-op nonsense they do to people — blood tests, EKG, sincere pats on the knee, kind and good wishes from family and friends who are damned glad it isn’t them.  I’m glad it’s not them too.

Oh, did I mention I’m signed up for ballet lessons when this is over?

Yes, this is MY BROKEN LEG!!!

Before we go any further, let me explain that I’m on some nifty pain meds, so I’m not responsible for my actions.  If only I’d known this in college.  I could have gotten away with soooo much stuff.

To rewind a bit, except for this one little thing, this little broken fibula thing, yesterday was a day well lived.  Dan brought home the morning paper, which was a rare occurrence.  We ordinarily only receive the paper on weekends — our way of cutting costs and saving trees.  Normally, we do what every other red-blooded American does.  We receive the news from Jon Stewart and The Internets.  Nevertheless, I LOVE coffee with a newspaper crackling in my hands.  It’s just so newsprinty.  So, I’m drinking my coffee and turning pages, when I come across a notice that there’s a writer’s group that meets every Tuesday not that far from home.  You don’t have to ask me twice.  A Writer’s Group!

When I arrived, note pad in hand, I found myself in seventh heaven.  I was surrounded by writerly types, the scent of iced lattes, chocolate brownies and thinking brain matter drifting all about.  It was the BEST.  I even won a prize for something.  THEY GAVE PRIZES.  It was wonderful–

–until I left.  On my way to the car, the side of my foot rolled into a joint in the concrete, sending me ass over teakettle and soon thereafter, drooling over three nice firemen in their tight blue T-shirts.

A trip to the hospital and a few X-Rays later, here we are.  One broken fibula, a temporary splint to be replaced by a hard cast suitable for signing, a pair of crutches more treacherous than that nasty mall sidewalk, and a very sleepless night on the couch wrapped in ice and misery.

Recovery is expected to be anywhere from six weeks to three months.  Don’t feel sorry for me, though.  I get out of doing the dishes.

We’re having a discussion.  I want Wilson to go to school to become a Therapy Dog.  An elder statesman, so to speak.  He could shake hands with the gentlemen and give slurpy kisses to all the babies.  He could smile at the ladies and schmooze with the boys down at the bowling alley.  He could roll over and … and … FETCH things.  What could be more noble?  He could give … THERAPY.  It’s almost like he’d be “my Son the Doctor, or “my Son the Senator.”

Wilson, however, wants only to work in the food industry.  Since flipping hamburgers was recently reclassified as “manufacturing,” he argues he’d be serving others, never mind the drooling quality control he’d assert over every product.  See?  He’s already bought his hairnet.  HIS HAIRNET FOR GOD’S SAKE.

Oh, where did I go wrong?