make your mark

if i follow jasub's schedule--and i am--there are 4 more days (including today) of wearing the boot. i can't quite comprehend that right now but i also know it will be so.  today i have 3 sessions of 2 hours in length sans boot. ie wearing and doing regular life in a shoe.  walking in a shoe feels quite awkward and my legs feel weird.  part of that is my left leg is a tight bulky beast used to taking the whole load and my right leg is a loose flabby shadow of its former self.  my hips feel weird.  my knees feel knock-kneed.  while i'm walking i'm telling myself little instructions.  like shift to your right hip.  pick up your foot. heel to toe.  etc.  i look forward to the day i walk without thought..and no pain. that will be the bomb dot com.

theresa came over to visit me on thursday.  we were going to go to south arm park and walk a very tiny bit but it was a rainy day and instead my tiny walk was from the car to the shawerma shop and back.  one of my shawerma friends was at the counter and he asked about the boot. theresa said i always make friends with the shawerma people.  i said "it just happens naturally."  then she proceeded to buy a coke and put it on my bill. sneaky coke drinker. before the shawerma shop i made her be my legs at shoppers and pick me up more yes! cucumber face wipes and hair elastics.  she bought me black elastics.  does she know me?

we had some good talks. theresa is coming back to work in september. she told me that she drives her mom crazy these days by her new habit of flicking her nails.  her mom is very straight laced.  i don't know why but that hit my funny bone.  it was dark when she left and i asked her to take my garbage down with her.  she was like ok.  then i was like oh! one more thing! and i handed her a juicy plump double bag of ripe pear guts.  "what's this?" asked theresa standing at the door looking like she might want to be disgusted.  without dropping a beat i lowered my voice "it's a bag of my feces."  i almost mouthed feces in deference to the delicate nature of the word.  her reaction made me laugh hard.  that was a good moment.  after she left i texted her a poop emoji + a bag. these are the types of things i do to theresa.  i was also telling her about this restaurant that heather and i were going for brunch.  it is called story cafe and she was confusing it with storey's cafe which is a coffee shop on the bottom floor of my work building.  the whole building is called storeys.  so in differentiating i kept noting it was on sexsmith  (road). every time i said sexsmith i whispered the sex part of the word quite prudishly.  

so that was thursday.  my big accomplishment on friday was doing my own laundry.  this required me to go up and down the stairs 3x.  luckily no one else was doing laundry because i used the whole day to get it done.  i cannot say how good independence feels.  i even made my bed myself which is not easy even for able people.  i did think of maybe putting it off for a night and sleeping without a sheet but i bucked up, grew a pair of ovaries and did it.  

saturday heather came over and we had an outing.  she is the one who found story cafe.  we were excited about their coconut custard french toast among other things.  heather got that with pulled pork and i got it with fried chicken.  heather's came with a poached egg.  both of ours came with some pickled onion slivers. we were both disappointed that we could detect no coconut flavour and the french toast was a bit dry not 'custardy' as we imagined.  story cafe is just off of bridgeport.  heather let me out in front and swung back around to find parking.  they were short staffed and quite busy.  luckily we had a reservation.  the hostess wore leggings that facinated me.  i couldn't tell if they had a pattern of holes or dots.  she had a cute french accent and called heather 'edder'.  heather said it made her smile and remember when she stayed with a french family in highschool in like an exchange program and the mother called her 'edder' and even gave her a card and spelled her name 'edder'.  they had chairs with low arms that dug into my ample hips so i never sat all the way back.  i grabbed one from a table near by and there was just enough room on the edge for me to lay my booted leg.  it was a very cute cafe with lots of interesting decor to look at.  not crazy kich like sophie's cosmic cafe, this was more calm, as edder said.  we had a nice time and when the time came to go i assured edder that i could walk across the road in my boot.  and i did.

since we were in the neighbourhood we went to iona for a while.  first we checked out macdonald beach, basically to quench my curiosity, but it was not more than a large gravel parking lot and a glorified boat launch with a few picnic tables.  so we went on to iona.  there was lots of parking and heather almost let me out at the start of a path to some picnic tables when we decided to to back down the road a bit "to the curve before the curve..." as edder explained it.  kind of a pull out with a view of the water.  there was a bit of silty sand and logs we could have went down to but i wasn't feeling confident about going up and down inclines so heather put her chairs out in front of the car and we used th wheelchair as my foot rest.  it was perfect for that actually and we didn't have to struggle to get it totally open.  the sky was so bright blue with high whispy streaks of clouds when we got there. and we sat looking out at the sea and the ducks.  there was a cool little breeze.  it was a gorgeous world and i was glad to be out in it.

there was a slightly beaten up chicken nugget sitting in the sand at our feet.  and that is not all. a man crossed the road with his little dog on a leash.  his dog was wandering all over and peeing on everything like dogs do.  the man lit a cigarette and kind of yawned a lazy hellooo to us and we politely said hi back.  later bobby, the dog came closer to us on his pee journey and the man told him to say hello to us but bobby was only interested in marking his territory.  the man was kind of wiewd.  he had an accent, maybe dutch, but that was not he weiwd thing.  he laughed and said he marks his territory at home to and maybe he, the man, should do that too! har har.  then told bobby to mark us.  har har.  we learned that he had been driving all night and was waiting for his load at he airport.  he was driving a semi.  he said he came from calgary.  then he said he was going to go have a nap with bobby in his truck.  he crossed to the other side of the road and a few minutes later he was blasting country music.  that's how he 'napped'.  weiwd.  meanwhile another story was unfolding before us.  an asian lady and a middle aged white man walked down to the beach in front of us.  he was helping her along and also carrying a ring light on a stand.  we enjoyed their antics.  they set up the ring light by the long grasses. she took off her jacket revealing a bandeau type top.  she would set up the shot and make him perch in the grass like a hen on her nest.  then they would trade spots and she would do all sorts of cutesy poses and then check them out.  periodically in our convo we would stop to comment on their antics.  edder was trying to determine their relationship.  i enjoyed watching her boss him around.  her poses made us cringe a little.  i want to see the final product.

as time went on it clouded over more and when we had our fill of chill and country music from calgary dutch man we took our leave.  

back at my house alvin, ella and nathan were working on moving out.  ella told me that their friend lent them a trailer.  i can't believe that in a month mom and dad will be living there!

heather emptied and washed out izzy's little box and brought my recycling box back up for me. i hope that in the next few weeks she won't have to think about doing chores when she comes here.  then i did my foot exercises and put on the shoe so we moved to the kitchen/living room and heather had a snuggle on the couch.  we both felt a bit sleepy.  when i'm wearing shoe i try to do different little walking errands.  i thank izzy for the opportunities she gives me for getting up and opening the door to let her in and out.

heather left around 2:30 and after 3 i took off the shoe and started watching pride and prejudice a&e version with colin firth.  it's been a while since i've watched that one.  i remember when chris fox used to be in love with elizabeth bennett. colin firth was such a baby face!

today i brought a little wooden stool/pedestal to church. evelyn gave it to me. i think she said they made them at trek.  anyways it worked very well to prop my leg up on and i didn't have to sit sideways on the pew so i sat near my usual spot.  after church cassie, aidrie and winnie came to talk with me.  i wanted to give them all a hard hug.  it was so nice to see them and talk to them.  they are growing up.  so fast.

i told bro hutchinson that by thursday i would have no more boot.  he said "i don't believe that."  i will have to prove him wrong. ha ha.  maybe one day i will write about more than foot related topics again.  maybe.