While Woody and I were in Detroit, as I described a few weeks ago in my blog, having to walk several blocks from the parking garage to the venue, I twisted my ankle and came down hard on it while stepping off a curb.  I sprained my ankle and had to spend all afternoon sitting in a cold shabby small hotel room. 

Gradually it healed when we got home.  But then doing a new exercise to improve balance that involved standing on one leg for a period of time swinging the other leg, when I was standing on the left leg, the ankle gave a sharp pain and resprained, worse than the original sprain. I have been icing it and trying to stay off my feet, but all the things I have to do mean that while I don’t go dancing around or walking more than I must, the ankle is very slow to heal.  It’s better than it was last week, but it still hurts, usually in the late afternoon and early evening. It never hurts at night and little by now in morning and early afternoon.  When it hurts, it really hurts.  I cooked half the supper on 2 days, the first cooking I’ve done since I couldn’t stand for more than a minute without intense pain.

I wrap presents slowly, doing one or two each day.  That way it doesn’t become exhausting. I’ve wrapped most of them already.  There’s one gift for woody that is several feet long in its box and I haven’t figured out how to adorn it properly. I have about eight or nine still to wrap but the bulk is finished early.  I’m planning for our annual solstice party that will be on Friday the 21st in the evening.

The cats remain very involved with the tree.  Two or more ‘kills’ every night.  Xena is proud of herself. She has been trying to catch a jumping mouse for five days. They can run up the walls.  The night before last, she finally caught it and killed it, cleanly as always.  She breaks their neck.  No playing around.  The girls don’t ever play with mice.  They kill them as soon as they catch them.  Mingus is just an interested bystander.  If Schwartzie gets to the mouse, he carries it off gently in his mouth, puts it down to play with and the mouse gets away every time. 

I’ve been writing poems, 3 this week, revising recent ones, and will be sending them out after the first. Today is sunny and mild, but we’ve had lots of rain this fall and plenty of below normal cold days and nights. I’m reading “Tiger Flu: by Larissa Lai, a Canadian speculative fiction novelist,  and dipping in and out ofGarrison Keeler’s anthology of American place poems.  I’m going over recipes for dishes to make for our annual solstice party a week from today. I had made cassoulet for years. Last year, very few people ate it. Too heavy on meat for most, it seems. Since it takes two days to make and is one of the more expensive dishesI cook, I’m not doing it this year.  I’ll do lobster mac and cheese for the centerpiece of the many dishes Melenie and I make and serve on the buffet. I haven’t seen Melenie since Thanksgiving, so I’m really looking forward to having some time with her.  I plan for us to make a curried turkey salad,Swedish meatballs, a chickpea feta dish, shrimp, triple chocolate pie, gravlax, another veggie dish with Israeli couscous or potatoes.  Woody will make his noodle kugel.  People are bringing other dishes, particularly vegetarian dishes and desserts.

Manuscripts are still flooding in as submissions to my 2019juried intensive poetry workshop.  SinceI’m hobbled by my ankle, I’m not caught up yet – I read each one twice—but I’m less far behind than I was. The pile is somewhat less daunting. Woody is finally going to my dentist and getting his teeth worked on, so after she puts on a crown today, he’s going to Trader Joe’s with a list for the party and other events of the season. I wanted to go but realized that must necessarily involved much walking and I’ve been told to stay off my ankle as much as possible.  It’s a drag, believe me.    

Last Sunday threw Woody into a funk after the Patriots lost with that trick play in the last 20 seconds of the game.  They have to beat Pittsburgh or this year is lost. Woody won’t watch it, he says, but I will.