The Native Iowan

1st of March, a Saturday morning here. Nice day so far, a bit blustery. Not much rain this week (20mm/less than an inch). The dogs are all content, relaxed. Bird life is prolific this time of year. I lie in bed in the mornings, dozing and dreaming to the sound of the birds. Its nice.

Sunrise has slowly come back from 4am to 530/6am. In another couple months we’ll end up still being in the gloaming until 8am. And it’ll be much cooler out. Makes morning sleep-ins easy. This 4am wake up stuff gets rough.

Ive been out of sync with myself for quite some time… the past year, 2024, has been a very hard slog… I have intentionally been less antsy these past two months. Ive perhaps relaxed my forward vision and taken my foot off the gas-peddle. Not going to stress as much as I did last year… And I’m going to take some time to fix my broken ankle…

I dont do doctors all that much. PRN “As Per Need”, is the attitude I take with doctor visits.

Here in Aus we have top, top shelf medical services available all around us. One of Austarlia’s biggest export businesses is medicine. The largest hospital complex in the Souther Hemisphere is an hour east of here. We have very, very good medical attention. And, as a card carrying Aussie, I have access to all of it.

I had both my eyes fixed late last year. Day surgery for each eye, took a number of weeks for recovery, all up, but the result is fantastic. I can see again. So I’ll now let the Docs fix my broken ankle…

Going back decades… Ive sprung my ankles more than once. In the past years, as a farmer, I have had 2 major incidents where I ended up hurt, damaged, laid up afterwards. The first one involved a day old calf… Id lost the calf, moved the mother, and had to go back and find and get hold of and move it… day-old calves are swift as deer. Normally a mother will hide the calf so she can graze. The calf, only a day old, will lie and sleep all day, waiting for mom to call for supper.

I kinda knew where this calf was, and managed to find it easily. I knew from experience you cant just talk it into following you, noooo…. I walked up to the sleeping calf and fell onto it. Covered it, held it down as it kicked and struggled. I gathered it up, held it tight, stood up, and promptly turned my ankle. And I could do nothing but hold on, struggle through it, and take the calf to its mother. It took me a while to get home and get my bruised and swollen foot out of my boot…

That was in late 2021. Since then my ankle has done nothing but deteriorate. The Dr said the X-ray showed only mild degeneration thus the problem was probably is ligaments.

As is, my right leg is not dependable. Just the other day, working in my machine shop, I turned to move and my foot didn’t move with me. I went down hard on my knee…. not guuud.

So I decided to get it fixed. Ive tried braces and sole inserts and tight high boots… And my ankle does not get better. So I’ll see what they can do for me. Go in and tighten some of the rubber bands that keeps my foot from flopping about.

This getting old bullshit aint for sissies… thats what my Mom always said…

More later