This isn't so bad after all!

I've finally figured out how to adjust this cast to where it is actually quite surprisingly comfortable and extremely easy to wear. You inflate it first then fasten the straps, not the other way around. That way, you can set the inflation for maximum support and comfort and in so doing, I can actually walk quite normally and at my regular pace. All this means that facing three long months of wearing it almost permanently (except for bathing and driving) until the end of summer won't be so bad after all. I'll be able to get around quite well, easily and comfortably. If I had to wear anything full time in the high heat of summer, this is perhaps the easiest thing to have to do it in. It sure beats a plaster cast, which I would not have been able to take off at all. The only difference is that I can take this off, but as mentioned before, only if bathing and driving. It must stay on the rest of the time, though. I was wearing a polar fleece sock under it because fleece wicks away perspiration, but it doesn't breathe, so I switched to a SmartWool sock, which I have decided is what I am going to use to wear under this for the rest of the summer since wool breathes. I'm sure some of you are thinking, wow, isn't that going to get hot? Yeah, it is, but I have heard that this is the favored thing to wear in just such a cast as this one. I've got plenty of wool socks to wear so I can change socks on a regular basis. I'm also keeping one of my right Crocs in the car as a "driving shoe" so I always have something there to switch off to when I am going to drive somewhere. At least when I travel this summer, I will not have to even think about packing any right shoes! All I will have to remember is to grab my left shoes and pack them, so it's going to work out to my advantage not to be able to wear any of my right shoes all summer. I'll just throw them under the bed and forget about them till around Labor Day or so. Just so I have my left shoes in good repair, that's all I am going to need for the rest of the summer! So that, to me, is a really good part of all of this that I actually kind of like! See, there is always a silver lining in any situation. You can always find the good parts of anything, I like to say, and the fact that my right shoes will be retired for the summer is one really good thing about this entire situation of being in a cast until sometime around or after Labor Day. So farewell to my right shoes for a few months. I'll see you again in the fall!

47 YEARS AGO TODAY

On May 29, 1961, forty seven years ago today, our dad died from injuries suffered in a car accident several weeks before. It wasn't long after my 4th birthday and quite frankly, I really don't remember much about him except for a few shadowy memories. I wish I could remember more about him, but I just don't. Most of my memories are of spending Memorial Day each year going to the cemetery to plant flowers and clean up the grave site. As for what I do remember, sometimes those are brought to the forefront by a smell or a photograph or some other thing that triggers a memory. The last memories I have of him are of a trip that we took to his parents' home in West Virginia. I don't remember how old I was at the time but I do remember bits and pieces about the trip and of being there. I don't think it was that long before Daddy died that we went on this trip but I can't say for certain when exactly we went. It's just another one of those fragmentary memories that has lingered over the decades like so many other tiny fragments. It's a bit like looking at shards of glass and trying to interpret what the item looked like before it broke. That is often how I feel when I try to reconstruct lost memories of that time in my life. It makes me sad that all I have are these few little fragments of memories to go on that I hope and pray will not disappear the older I get. I know that as time goes by, it gets harder for me to remember certain parts of my life and I worry about those fading into oblivion as I age. I suppose I ought to write down now what I remember before things do begin to fade from my memory. I'm already experiencing a maddening syndrome of memory loss that apparently is quite normal for middle age, from all the literature that I have read - you know, where did I put my keys, glasses, what the heck is that person's name (I should know them!), etc. Memories of my father, what few remain over time, are too precious to lose. So I suppose I should record them so I don't ever lose them.