Knees And Other Things

     It's been almost four weeks since I fell, hard, on my left knee.  The scrapes have healed, the bruises have not quite faded and while the swelling persists, it's a little less every day.  (I also took damage to the heel of my right hand.  Midway through last week, that scrape had healed up enough to stop wearing a bandaid over it.)

     With that knee hurt, I was not very active.  When I did move, my already-injured right knee had to take up the slack, and that is having consequences.  With long-existing damage to the cartilage bearing surfaces and a handful of screws holding together a spiral fracture that started between the two knobs on the end of my thighbone and continues upward, it's never going to be entirely right.  All I can do is work to maintain range of motion and try to keep the network of muscles that hold the knee together in good shape.  Right now, it's pretty sore and a bit swollen.  I'm back to going up and down steps by letting my left knee do all the work, and movements that stretch the hamstring of my right leg can be painful.

     All that adds up to needing to run through simple physical therapy exercises over the coming weeks, to get that knee back into better shape.

     Yesterday was the regular online meeting of a writing-critique group that I chair, followed by a meeting of the larger writer's club.  I spent a lot of time sitting instead of exercising.  And took much of the afternoon napping because, introvert that I am, social interaction leaves me pretty drained.

     The day had one more bright spot, though: Friday, one of the smallish supermarkets I frequent had small steaks on sale!  I picked up a couple, and added vegetable kabobs from the other grocery on Saturday along with some nice little Yukon Gold potatoes.  All of it ended up over hardwood lump charcoal on the grill yesterday.  The spuds got a trip through the microwave before being wrapped in foil and stashed in the corners.  The kabobs -- mushrooms, onion, red and green bell peppers and pineapple --were drizzled with a little extra-virgin olive oil.  Steaks and kabobs were happy on little stainless-steel grill pans.  Well-perforated, they're a lot easier to clean than the grill bars themselves.  It was a meal I haven't enjoyed in quite awhile; locally, the price of steaks went stratospheric during the Covid pandemic and they've only come down a little since, much more slowly than poultry, pork and less-desirable cuts of beef.

     Today, I'm getting caught up on laundry, a good excuse to keep myself moving.