It’s been almost three weeks since I went into surgery for my broken ankle. Still visible – on the outside of the big toe of the foot that was operated on – is a black Sharpied X, smaller than the size of a quarter. A nurse drew that on there as a visual aid for the doctor. So he’d know which foot to operate on. You know, I think the inked-on X was much less of a beacon than the bloody ankle bone protruding three inches from the foot that was hanging limply to the side. But thank God for the X. Imagine if he’d operated on the good foot and left the bad one hanging. Seven-figure-settlement territory there. Instead, I’ll probably go into medium four-figure debt over the incident.
I’m still not quite able to bear weight on the broken ankle. I go back to the doctor on Monday. Meanwhile, I can tell you without a doubt, do not Crutch While Intoxicated. I had free tickets to the Funny Bone on Wednesday night, and I shattered the two-drink minimum. It was the dumbest thing I’ve done since the ankle break itself, and I owe my mom a pile of guilty apologies. Still, really quite a good time, right up until I had to negotiate the staircase into my mom’s house. She ended up keeping the baby in her room that night. Bad adult child.
Turns out I was also Facebook friends with the opening comedian. Never underestimate the power of Facebook. It can make you a billionaire at age 23 or it can get you the two tables right in front of the stage for a Wednesday night comedy show. My cast leg was propped on a chair and hanging over the stage itself. Headliner Mike Lukas spent probably ten minutes working jokes about my broken ankle into his set. My cast got more stage time than the emcee. My cast really should have charged a performance fee.
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Baby Silas is having his mid-evening nap so he can stay up until 4:30 am. Tiffany’s driving up to meet me right now. I’m looking forward to seeing my Sarah for the first time since Sunday. I love that little girl so much. I think Sarah already has a 21st century attention span. She’ll bring a book to me and beg me to read it to her, but then she wants to flip the pages rapid-fire. So we hurry up and get to the end, then she immediately wants to start over. And I’m thinking, “Sure, you want to start over. You didn’t catch any of that the first time.”
I’m eager to get back to a normal life, walking and working and having my family all together at my house. I’m starting to go crazy from too much time spent non-productively at odd hours. There’s only so much you can go hunt down on the Internet. I got bored and searched Facebook for other people with the same name as me. My wall reads “Andrew Hicks and Andrew Hicks are now friends,” like I’m finally at peace with myself.
I’ve been looking at my own blog stats a bunch too. My site is still largely a secret – it’s not that I’ve kept it a secret; it’s just that no one talks about or visits it – but it’s getting linked from what look like junk personal finance sites run by bots. Does anyone else know about this phenomenon? Does WordPress just blindly release links to their blogs for these automated websites to put up in the corner under the “Support This Site” header? I don’t have a joke for this, I genuinely want information.
The blog stats also show me what terms people have searched for to find their way to my blog. One person found their way here by searching for “leg cast stories.” Now, I was bored myself and searched for “leg cast stories,” and I was surprised to learn there’s a percentage of Internet users who are into, well, dirty leg cast stories. By dirty, I mean erotic. And according to their stats, they’ve got more readers than I do.
Someone with the screen name CastBytch even writes sensual cast-themed poetry (“My heart skips / Breath shallow / Our eyes meet / Over fiberglass”). I’ve never thought of my condition as anything but an inconvenience. It’s Fracturophile and DrGimpy’s ultimate fantasy. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. I wonder if user Wantabrokenankle would help pay my mounting medical bills if I attached a couple provocative closeups of my leg cast and hairy toes, complete with Sharpied X. Desperate times, desperate measures.
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BABY PICTURE OF THE DAY
Sarah chomps dad's hat
Dad's Daytime Diary 