By Any Other Name...

Sunday Flowers

On an "almost-raining" Sunday I was hurrying through a nondescript parking lot when suddenly the sun came out for just a minute. It highlighted the flowers growing next to a wall and I took a quick shot. There is so much beauty around but sometimes we hurry past too fast to see it.

Right now I am stalled in the slow lane and I've suddenly found myself unable to do things I used to take for granted, like climbing a stepladder or going up the back steps. Even things on my "don't want to do" list, like mowing the lawn, now seem appealing.

But I have been defining myself by what I do, and now that I can't do them I feel as if I am losing part of my identity. For years I have been annoyed when people ask me if i am "the Stephanie Meyer" and I have to say "No, I'm afraid not.". I guess part of my annoyance is because after I say "no, I'm afraid not" most people don't ask anything else - as if who "not the famous" Stephanie Meyer was was not important.
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I'm Nobody! Who are you?
 by Emily Dickinson

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be - Somebody!
How public - like a Frog -
To tell one's name - the livelong June -
To an admiring Bog!
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My healthcare provider didn't help. When I went to be fitted for the Herman Munster boot I handed the receptionist my healthcare card, my photo I.D., and my debit card. When it was fifteen minutes past my scheduled appointment time I went up to the desk and was told "Well, you never checked in..." It eventually turned out that they had checked me in as someone else entirely, who wasn't scheduled to be there for another three hours and who had an entirely different kind of problem*.  If I had read all of the paperwork they handed me I would have caught it, but I didn't. I found it particularly ironic because when I had gone to have my foot x-rayed earlier they had put a patient wristband on me while I limped six feet down the corridor for an x-ray, and then put on a second band when I went to get an x-ray at a different location, as if I would forget who I was.

Then today I got a text message "Dad and Cody just left but there going back way with top down just cruising in sun probably 3 hours." Don't know who these people are, but it sounds like they are having fun....

But enough whining. I'm getting used to the Herman Munster boot.  I enjoyed Jellyjumbles post about wearing one. She brings up a good point about "getting the story" right because everyone asks you "how did it happen" and I get tired of saying "falling off a bar stool" (not far from the truth). My comic book dealer pointed out that that answer doesn't get much sympathy because "you were having fun" so maybe the next time I get asked I'll answer "I was saving kittens from a burning building..." Nah.
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Prayer to Persephone
 by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Be to her, Persephone,
All the things I might not be;
Take her head upon your knee.
She that was so proud and wild,
Flippant, arrogant and free,
She that had no need of me,
Is a little lonely child
Lost in Hell, -- Persephone,
Take her head upon your knee;
Say to her, "My dear, my dear
It is not so dreadful here."
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*The person they signed me as at Orthopedics had a higher co-pay, so I got a rebate....