So, what happened to your arm?

That's a question I've been answering a lot in the past three weeks, so I figured that it's time I told you folks what happened. In a nutshell, I broke my right elbow when I fell on my side and landed on my arm. I was on a short step-stool picking grapefruit from one of the trees in our back yard in advance of the first really freezing cold weather we were due to have. I was only about 2 feet up and leaning to my right to reach for some fruit when the stool went over sideways; I went the other sideways and couldn't quite get my arm into position to break my fall. I did, however, get it under me into perfect position to break my elbow when I landed on my right side. Luckily, it was not a bad break, so once the cast is off and I learn how to use my arm and to type again, I should be fine. I keep asking my doctor if I'll be able to play the guitar after the cast comes off, but he refuses to fall for that. Getting dressed sucks, especailly putting on a bra, so I don't ... put on a bra, that is. Also because of the angle of my arm, I cannot reach my face or my hair with my right hand so no makeup (other than Chapstick) or hair arrangement (other than washing and brushing) has been done for three weeks. I tried both of them left-handed and while I'm OK at doing some things left-handed, makeup and hair aren't on that list. Finally, the worst things are not being able to reach some places to scratch (like left armpit) and not being able to reach my mouth with any eating utensil other than a long-handled ice tea spoon. Luckily, eating is on my "OK at doing left-handed" list.

The scene of the crime. We did manage to ultimately get the remainder of the fruit you see hiding at the upper left. Oh, and did you know that grapefruit trees (most citrus trees, in fact) have big, long, nasty, ugly, sharp painful thorns? They do - believe me.


The guilty party. I was standing on the second step when this guy decided to fall down. I had no choice but to play along.


The sentence. I have to wear this cast for another week. The good news is that all I needed was a cast for a month instead of the usual broken elbow surgery to implant a small harware store in my arm. The bad news is that I'm right-handed. And my arm hurts. My kids signed the cast and then my son realized that he had been concentrating so hard on writing on the rough surface that he left a letter out of his name. We (kind of) erased that effort with acetone and he did it right the second time.


The reward. This is about two-thirds of the pile of grapefruit I managed to get before I was forced to stop. They're VERY good but they're loaded with seeds. The little oranges are our last mandarins, also from trees in our yard. There aren't very many of them because we all tend to wander out and snack off these babies right off the tree.

(... and yes, I'm wearing leopard print bikini panties with a red camisole top. Deal with it.)