This is from a blog post I did in September of 2012, which I filed under emergency room. This is from when still had long hair and was 30 pounds heavier. Yes! I’ve lost 30 pounds in 2014! But that is another story…
As I write this on Thursday May 28, for my Friday May 29 post, I think that what I did to my right knee on the Labor Day weekend of 2012 is what I think I did at the gym on the treadmill when I was closing in on Mile 3 when my iPod (with my Skull Candy headphones) blared a song that I looooooooove on the 80’s Dance Music Shuffle: Dancing By Myself by Billy Idol. I know you remember dancing on the bar to Dancing With Myself in the 1980s.
Well. I had to crank it to 4.6 miles per hour and I actually danced on the treadmill for the 3.23 minutes it takes to body slam to Dancing With Myself. And I felt exhilarated when I hit my three mile mark at 49 minutes flat.
I did not realize, until I limped to my car in the parking lot of L.A. Fitness, that I might have ruptured my quadricep tendon that wow, getting into the driver’s seat is hard when your knee is all swollen and can’t bend.
So, when you read this on Friday May 29 (or Saturday, DoG Knows When in the luscious Antipodes), I might be having surgery to make my knee do its bendy thing.
HOWEVER, my Dear and Darling readers, I have a Flash Back Thursday post that I hope you will enjoy, especially since I finished reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed two days ago.

Gratitous photo of my mother’s cute cat Samy b/c I think my Dear Readers need something visual at this point.
Yes, I want to say up front, that Wild is a wonderful book and Cheryl Strayed deserves all the accolades she that have been awarded to her. STILL..
…STILL, I must say that, reading her account of the grueling hike she made with a wounded heart in 1995 along the Pacific Creast Trail,that I have known many, too many girls like Cheryl Strayed. She’s pretty. She’s blonde. And even sweaty and filthy, she still manages to find men who will GO OUT OF THEIR WAY to help her on her journey.
Hey. I backpacked plenty in my 20s. I saw how girls like her got thru sticky situations. In fact, all my life I saw how girls like her took for granted the kindness of strangers.
Well. I wrote this back when I was 55 freaking years old, about me and girls like Cheryl Strayed.
Enjoy.
Once upon a time, last week, when it was sunny and warm and …
I was running errands in my village, and since I was going out in public I’d pulled on a brown skirt so I’d look presentable (after all, I know people in this town). OK, the skirt had an elastic waistband, and I had my worst-looking pair of sneakers on, and I thought that my sunglasses were dark enough that I wouldn’t have to put on make-up, but really: I thought I was decent enough for my public appearance.
Being out and about in my village means that I have to cross a very busy main street, which always makes me fearful.
Because I’ve learned that you should always assume that Long Island streets are full of Long Island traffic with Long Island drivers who are: (1) busy texting, reading, doing their nails, or in such a goddam hurry that they WILL mow you down (2) OR drunk.
So I practice defensive walking.
I waited at the light, and on the other side on the busy main street I noticed two teenage girls also waiting to cross. They were heartbreakingly lovely: long glossy hair, tall and tanned, wearing short shorts and teeny tops and giggling about something to each other.
The light changed and I began my “Don’t Kill Me I’m Only Trying To Cross The Street” scurry.
I have bad knees, arthritis from all that pogoing to punk bands and various bar fights back in my hey day, and when I scurry across a busy main street I do not lope gracefully. I scurry like the crippled, barnacled, terrified-of-dying pedestrian that I am.
The teenage girls on the other side of the street had not immediately noticed that the light had changed and I was half way across the street before the teenage girls deigned to set foot in the crosswalk, and I met them a few paces into their leisurely stroll across the road.
I had not planned to say anything at all to these girls, but before I knew it this came out of my mouth:
“You better hurry!” I barked at them; “Or you won’t get across the street before the light changes!”
Of course they looked at me with utter incomprehension (and a little bit of fear — who was this crazy lady barking at them in the road???) while not breaking their stride one bit, and continued their slow amble across the road. I, from the safety of the sidewalk on the other side, had to turn back to watch how serenely those girls g-l-i-d-e-d to across the road, safely, even after the light had turned red. And then I started to laugh.
How could I have forgotten?? How could I have forgotten that two heartbreakingly lovely teenage girls in short shorts and teeny tops with gleaming hair and tanned skin KNOW, in every cell of their beings, they KNOW that they never have to hurry to cross a busy street. Because traffic will always, ALWAYS stop — for them.
How could I have forgotten the power that beautiful girls wield?
These beautiful girls will grow up to be the beautiful girl in your college English class who can’t write a sentence — she connects all her phrases with dashes — like this — for pages at a time — which your besotted professor will hail as “epigrammatic” while you will be scolded for beintg “too muzzy”.
They will grow up to be the beautiful co-workers who are allowed to skip a day of work when they call in “tired” (oh yes, this is true), and they will grow up to be the beautiful wife who gets to tear out the gorgeous French Rustic kitchen in the mansion her husband bought for her so she could put in a new French Rustic kitchen because (as one such wife complained to me) “The old one was eleven years old!”
I had to laugh. The only people who have to worry about getting across a busy street in one piece in life is people like me, people who only have good personalities to offer to the world.
And whatthe jell was I was thinking, wearing that brown skirt. It’s like I was just begging to get hit by a bus.
Have a great weekend, all my beautiful outside and in Dear Readers.