My Cape Cod Vacation, Part 4

October 16, 2008

I have to go home today. I want to stay here forever, but no vacation lasts forever. I have to go back to earning money to pay for more vacations someday...

It's sunny today, at last. I hope I can do a major beach walk before checkout time, 11 a.m. I'll bring my camera, and with any luck, I won't get caught by high tide. If it was at 1 yesterday, it won't be at 9 today. I think it's around 6 1/2 hours between tides, which would make high tide later than that. I could look it up online, if I had an internet connection...

Last night I went to the Impudent Oyster in Chatham for supper. We used to go there back in the 80s and 90s. My parents and my sister liked it. Well, it's nice enough, I guess, but it's horrendously overpriced and just a touch pretentious. I had steak au poivre, which was delicious. I followed it up with a cup of coffee. The whole experience, including tip, was just over $40. YIKES. Imagine what it would have been if I'd had wine... I'm still feeling bad about it - not just guilt, but regret for what else I could have bought with the extra $25-$30 I spent on that meal. All for an experience that I could have done without. (Whacks self mentally on head.)

I had gone early to avoid the crowds and was back in my room before 7. I then spent four hours watching TV. I was kind of in a red-meat stupor - but I also got a great start on my new hat that I'm knitting. As I said, it's a very complex pattern, and I now know that I can do it. I wanted to make sure before I left the yarn-store ladies behind!

I was thinking about how, when I walk the beach alone here, I'm never really alone. I'm walking with myself as a little girl, running ahead of my mother and grandparents with my little sister, feet always dancing. And I'm walking with my own kids, the baby slung in a hip carrier while the older kids run ahead of my mother and me, just as I did. My personal heaven will look a lot like the strip of beach between Allen and Wychmere Harbors. Sun, clouds, moon, stars, whatever the lighting, it's always my beach, and it always will be. I plan to come back here and repeat this vacation next year.

Later. Allen Harbor has been achieved! Hallelujah!

It's a beautiful sunny morning. The walk seemed short; it was no time before I saw my first landmark. I took lots of pictures this time, since I actually had my camera with me! It was low tide, probably about dead low, which left a lot of beach for walking. I'm going to share a few of these pictures.



I actually took this one to show a little crowd of birds (terns? sandpipers? something else?), but it's a good shot of the expanse of beach.



This is the same part of the beach where the waves were washing up against the seawall yesterday. Look at the difference today!



That's the jetty at the entrance to Allen Harbor. I used to love to run out to the end when I was a little girl. I didn't attempt it today; my knees are still too unstable. Who knows, maybe by next summer I can run out to the end again - or at least walk sedately there!

My knee bothered me some on the way back. The beach was slanted, with the higher side being on my left, so the leg with the new knee had to pretend to be shorter than the other one. But I got back and sank down on the bed gratefully, my cold pack on my knee.

It's almost 10:30 now, and I have to be out of here by 11, so I'm shutting down now. This vacation has been everything I hoped it would be, and I can't wait to come back to the Cape!

My Cape Cod Vacation, Part 3

October 16, 2008

Another cloudy day. The sun peeked through earlier, again, but this morning it was gone by 8. I woke up during the night trying to figure out why so much light was coming through my back window. Was there an outdoor light on at the inn next door? Nope, it was the waning moon, shining brightly. It was still almost full the first night I was here. I watched it rise and waited for it to move across the sky to where it would be shining on the water. By the time it got that far, it was lost in cloud cover. My mother and grandfather had taken pictures of the full moon shining across the water when we spent the summer down the beach a ways in 1952. I scanned these slides into my computer during the past year, and I wanted to take my own picture... but it won't be happening on this trip.

Later. This afternoon I walked down to the end of the street, where I'd seen a sign for a Day Spa that said they took walk-ins. I thought that was its name - Day Spa - but it's really the Girls Just Want To Have Fun day spa. As I walked over to the spa, a couple of women came out, and one of them looked at my feet, which were in sandals, and asked if I wanted a pedicure. Since that was one of the reasons I'd come down there, I was happy to agree. I asked about having my eyebrows done, and the young woman who does eyebrows said she'd be glad to. So I had my first eyebrow waxing, something I'd been eager to try for a long time. I'm all for it. I've never been good at tweezing and shaping my eyebrows. It didn't hurt all that much, either. I'm pleased with the results.

Then I had my pedicure. There was a foot spa, kind of a hot tub just for feet, and I soaked in it first. The pedicurist (a different young woman from the one who'd done my eyebrows) clipped, filed and shaped my nails, trimmed and buffed off some of the calluses, and put on four coats of nail polish - a clear one underneath, probably one of those nail hardeners (I didn't ask), two coats of a lovely bronze polish, and another clear coat. I'm pleased with them, too. The shop was having a special - 20% off everything - so I got all this done for less than $50. This is the kind of thing I can do at the Cape that I just can't seem to make myself do in the city. I'm just so much more comfortable with myself when I'm down on the Cape.

This morning I drove up to Orleans. My original goal was to find an internet connection at a coffee shop. I saw a place called the Hot Chocolate Sparrow in the Yellow Pages and decided to go look for it. I also wanted to find a bookstore I remembered and to see if Earth House was still there. We used to go every summer. It's an old hippie shop. Anyway, I went into the Hot Chocolate Sparrow, ordered coffee (so-so) and a berry blast muffin (spongy and bland), and sat down to read a Boston Globe that had been left behind by somebody else. A little while later, two young girls with laptops came in and sat down next to me. They appeared to be reading email, so I guess there was WiFi there even though I couldn't see a sign saying so. There was a data port right in front of me, too. But by then I was almost done eating, and it seemed a little odd for me to go out to the car for my laptop then. So I let it go. It wasn't all that important anyway.

The bookstore I was remembering was no longer there. Not really a problem; I just like to hang out in bookstores.

I couldn't remember where Earth House had been, and the more I drove around looking for it, the more I was convinced it had disappeared. I found it at last on Route 6A. It didn't seem to be open, but it was definitely still there. They may just open on weekends at this time of year. There used to be a car parked in back of it that was just plastered with those New-Agey bumper stickers - "Love your Mother" with a picture of the earth, things like that. It wasn't there; in fact, the parking lot was empty. [Note: They don't indicate that they close for the non-tourist season on their website, so they might have actually been open...]

I came back here after that and took a beach walk. It was high tide. I don't know why the tide was so high; it's past the full moon. But it seemed to be in as far as the most recent tide line, and it was still coming in. There's a point down after the seawall starts that there's really no beach at all; the water comes clear up to the seawall at high tide. So that was as far as I could go. If it hadn't have been high tide, that's when I would have done my Allen Harbor walk. It was as bright out as it was likely to get today, and I thought I might get good pictures. Here's one I took of the waves washing around the staircases.



I thought I might do my Allen's Harbor walk later this afternoon, but when the time came, I didn't want to wreck my pedicure, so I decided not to. I feel guilty about it; tomorrow's my last day, and I'm meeting the boys at around noon, so unless I do it in the morning I won't do it at all. At least I got to our old beach yesterday, even if I didn't have my camera... All in all, though, I did a lot of what I'd hoped to do on this vacation. I didn't start to outline my NaNoWriMo ideas, which I'd hoped to.

Which brings me to why I originally came over here at the “Later” header above: I just finished the first section (the Eat section) in Eat, Pray, Love, and I wanted to comment on it.

Basic premise: woman in her 30s undergoing journey of self-discovery. She'd just gone through a miserable divorce, probably even more miserable than mine. (heh.) She, however, is a successful writer already, and gets her publisher to give her an advance on this book so that she can write it. Oh, well; she has books, I have kids. Sigh.

It's a very enjoyable book. She's not especially religious – hesitates to call herself Christian, even. I think she's a Unitarian-Universalist and doesn't know it.

I know there were several sentences that made me say “Yep, I've been through that,” but of course I can't locate them now. I can, however, find the Italian words I wanted to remember. Her friend Luca Spaghetti (apparently his real name) brought her to a soccer game, and she points out that the word for “fan” is “tifoso”, derived from “typhus” - “one who is mightily fevered,” she points out. And right after that, she quotes the tifoso standing behind her, who is yelling obscenities. [In the original blog, I quoted them at this point, but for the online version, I'm leaving them out!] So if I get nothing else out of the book, my knowledge of world language has grown!

Some of the “me too” moments I had while reading this came from what she writes about her depression. She tried to wean herself off her Wellbutrin while in Italy, and I guess she succeeded. But it wasn't easy at first. She relates an incident from her life where she sees herself in a mirror and thinks she's seeing somebody she knows, a friend of hers. In this period of post-Wellbutrin depression, she writes: “Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend.” I really like that.

My Cape Cod Vacation, Part 2

October 15, 2008

It was cloudy all day today. The sun peeked through early on, but by later in the morning the clouds had moved in for good. I got up after 7 and took a brief walk along the beach before breakfast. I took this picture from the deck at the inn:

I was trying to capture the pearly quality of the light. I'm pleased with this picture, and I put it up as wallpaper on my laptop.

The continental breakfast was disappointing. I was hoping for muffins, and I got Thomas' "bagels" (in quotes because whatever those bready things are, they aren't bagels). The coffee was weak. The orange juice was fine. I talked to a couple from Pennsylvania for awhile. They come up here regularly.

I found out that they do in fact have WiFi here. It costs $10/week. I looked at my wireless connection icon and determined that their signal strength was poor, so I didn't even ask for it. I still want to find a coffee shop with free WiFi.

After breakfast I walked up to what I still think of as the Snow Inn jetty, the one by the entrance to Wychmere Harbor. That was the goal I set for myself this morning, just that small section. The sun was still out at that point. Here is a long shot of the beach:

The area where we used to go when I was a kid, the same area I brought my own kids, is in the misty distance.

When I got back to my room, I elevated my feet and read until around 11. Then I packed up my laptop and camera and went to Chatham. I stopped at the Chatham Jam and Jelly Shop (one of my goals for this trip) and bought pumpkin butter - my #1 item that I wanted to procure there - and a jar of dietetic cranberry jam. It uses Splenda. They give out free samples in the store, and this one was delicious. I haven't used jams with sugar added for years; if I had wanted to, I could have gotten any number of exotic jams like rose petal (flavored with petals of the rosa rugosa) or lemon geranium (I didn't try it; the saleswoman told me it had geranium leaves floating on top). They also have beach plum jelly, strawberry rhubarb jam, and other favorites.

Once in the center of Chatham, I parked on the street and went to Soft as a Grape, which was having a huge end-of-season sale. What a major disappointment! I remember this shop as having beautiful casual clothing with flowers and birds and whatnot screened onto them. I never could fit into their clothing when we used to spend summers in the area (1988-1992). When I lost enough weight to fit into them, my mother and sister took me to the Soft as a Grape outlet in Bourne and I bought a couple of tee shirts and a couple of sweatshirts. I still wear those sweatshirts in the winter. The tee shirts are more worn, so I don't wear them as much.

Today, when I went in, the entire store was filled with Boston Red Sox or Chatham, MA lettered stuff, still tee shirts and sweatshirts, but not a flower in the place. The closest thing to a print I saw was a Red Sox logo. Sigh.

So one of my goals in Chatham came to naught. My second one was to buy at least one pair of earrings, so I wandered down Main Street. I went into the Mayflower - reminiscent of an old dime store, but with lots of interesting junk and Cape souvenirs. My sister loves this place, and I went in mostly because I'm pretty sure she'll ask me if I did. I didn't buy anything, though. I went to the Yellow Umbrella bookstore and bought a couple of books: Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, and Whose Boy Be You? A Parcel of Recollections of Cape Cod Yesterdays, by Ben Thacher, "an old Cape Codger." He was born on the Cape in 1928 and has lived here all his life. I kept leafing through the book and seeing things that caught my attention, so I blew $20 on it. Eat, Pray, Love is subtitled "One Woman's Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia." It's been around for awhile (written in 2006), on all the best-seller lists. I've been avoiding it because it has the word "Pray" in the title. (How pathetic is that?!) It's non-fiction and the author was striving to find her own identity after a divorce. I can definitely relate to that. I keep hearing good things about it.

Finally I got to the jewelry shop (which shall remain nameless for this chronicle) where I had gotten my bronze scallop-shell earrings many long years ago. I've found pretty stuff there in the past, and that's where I expected to find earrings. I was disappointed. Nothing reached out and grabbed me. I decided not to buy anything. I've still got a couple more days here, I thought, and I can always come back.

I crossed the street and walked up the other side, passing another jewelry shop, which didn't tempt me. Chatham Cookware, a shop where I've found good things in the past, is closed on Wednesdays. Maybe I'll go tomorrow. I didn't go into the candy shop where we've always gone - I'm not really in the mood for candy these days, which is a good thing. I was parked right in front of it, so I got into my car and drove down Main Street, thinking I might as well drive by the lighthouse.

That didn't happen. A little further down the street, I saw a shop called Dolli Llama. Clever name, that. I'd seen it on the way in and was curious about what they might sell there. Well, they sell jewelry. Lots and lots of earrings in a vast range of prices. I stood in front of the wall display for about half of a Sarah McLachlan live album (the music helped; I love her singing) trying to decide whether I should spend $55 on a pair of chalcedony earrings. Finally I decided to spend half as much on a pair of man-made opal earrings. They were very pretty, too, but they weren't the pair I wanted, so in mid-decision, after the saleswoman had taken them down from the wall, I asked her to show me the chalcedony earrings, too. (It's pronounced "cal-Sidney", the woman said. I'll have to check with my daughter the geologist, but that's probably right.) I ended up just getting them and putting back the opals. I'm delighted with them; they're the ideal souvenir of this vacation.

By then it was around 1 and I was finally hungry. I decided to go through with my plan to get lunch at Marion's Pie Shop. I got a pint of chicken vegetable soup and a cinnamon roll and brought them back to my room here. The soup was delicious, chock-full of real vegetables, zucchini and summer squash and green beans and peas and carrots. The roll was huge and decadent; it took me until after supper tonight to finish it, so it was two desserts! I was very pleased with my experience there.

After lunch I rested for awhile. Okay, for most of the rest of the afternoon. At maybe 4:30 I decided to go for another beach walk, since that's why I'm staying in an inn on the beach, right? Actually, the reason I chose this place is that every time I step out my front door, I am struck by how wonderful the view is.

I took this picture right after I arrived. Look over the parking lot to the dunes, sand and water and sky...and to me, the knowledge that it's the same sand and water and sky I loved when I was a little girl. Anyway, I thought I'd walk as far as the beginning of the seawall. (At some point in the past, when such a thing was still legal, a seawall was put in for probably 2/3 of the beach area.) When I got there I still had a lot of energy, so I kept going. I kept seeing things I recognized, which I won't list here even though they're in my original blog, because they won't mean anything to most of you. When I got to the beach where I used to bring my children, I turned around and went back. I want to go to Allen Harbor, but I didn't have my camera with me because the clouds were so lowering; I want to have better light for my pictures...oh, and there was somebody standing at the top of the stairs, or I would have climbed up. (The beach is accessed by a staircase down the seawall.) I got back here without any trouble. That's a lot of walking for a person with a fairly new artificial knee and a sprained "good" knee.

Supper tonight was a chicken cutlet sub from Harwichport House of Pizza (they go for the all-one-word spelling of the town's name), and the rest of the cinnamon bun. I watched the Presidential candidates' debate for awhile, but eventually turned them off because I wasn't paying attention. I called my son and confirmed when he and my other son would arrive on Friday. That's it for now.

My Cape Cod Vacation, Part 1

I was fortunate enough to have last week off. After the summer I had, I thought I deserved a real vacation, one that didn't involve lying in a narcotic stupor with my feet elevated and an ice pack strapped to my knee. I wanted to go alone, not make this a family excursion. So I made reservations in a seaside inn and drove off to Cape Cod.

I had a wonderful time. I didn't have internet access while I was down there - a mixed blessing; I've gotten used to checking the weather, looking up things in Wikipedia, etc. whenever I want. But I couldn't possibly check my work email, either!

I kept a blog, with the plan of posting it when I got back. I'm going to do it in daily installments, with some editing and the occasional picture.

October 14, 2008

My Harwich Port Blog

Or at least that's my intention as I start to write this. It's something after 11 at night, and I'm slumped on my bed (my intention was to be propped up comfortably, but that doesn't seem to be working). So I moved to the ditzy little round table, the one with the plastic lawn chairs. Other than those, though, this room seems to be well furnished.

My trip almost didn't happen. Well, I guess that's not really true; I would have gotten down here if I had to crawl. But yesterday, when I was fighting to make myself walk properly up the cellar stairs, my right knee (that's the good one) gave out on me and I fell to both knees at the top of the stairs. I had sprained it badly. It's better today, and it didn't bother me when I was driving. But I felt for awhile that the Powers of the Universe were conspiring against me.

I arrived in Harwich Port (as it says on the map; there's a mixed opinion about whether it should be one or two words. I always think of it as Harwichport) at about 12:55 p.m., roughly 2 hours and 10 minutes after I left home. I wasted most, maybe all, of that 10 minutes looking for a Dunkin Donuts in Weymouth and, after finding one, trying to find Route 3 again. I thought I knew where it was. Oh, well, this is New England; you can't travel more than a mile without passing a Dunkin. There's even one here in Harwichport, where the Christy's market used to be, in the strip mall where the A&P was when I was growing up, the one my sister and I (ages 7 and 5) were allowed to walk to, even though it meant crossing busy Lower County Road.

Check-in time for the Sandpiper Beach Inn is 3 p.m., so I had a couple of hours to kill. I went to an amazing yarn shop in the center of town, in a new building next to the municipal parking lot. I think it might have been a furniture store at one time; that's what my dim memory is telling me. Anyway, it's been broken down into a series of shops, some of which haven't been rented out yet. The yarn shop, Adventures in Knitting, was displaying a lot of knitted goods made up in variegated yarn. I loved them and knew I had to make something! I bought yarn, a circular needle, and a pattern to make myself a hat in a very complex pattern where the strips of knitting appear to be woven together. I'll take a picture of it when it's done. It's made in a Japanese yarn called Noro Kureyon (which I'm willing to bet is Japanese for "crayon"). I chose a purple, blue and green blend (no surprises there; most of my wardrobe is purple, blue, or green).

After that, I wanted to get some lunch, and that's when I discovered that most of the downtown restaurants either closed after Labor Day or closed before 1:30. I ended up going to Seafood Sam's, a favorite family restaurant which I was saving for Friday, when my sons are coming down for the day. I got the lobster bisque, which was just as good as I remembered it.

I drove up Route 28 to Chatham, turning around at the traffic light by the Unitarian-Universalist church. I'm saving the center for tomorrow, when I can give it the serious attention that it deserves! I noticed that some of the places we used to go aren't there any more, and others had closed already for the season. Marion's Pie Shop is still there, though, and was doing a great business. After I drove by, I realized that I probably should have gone there for lunch. I don't think there's actually a restaurant on the premises, but I think I could get soup and maybe a slice of pie to take out. It's worth a try, anyway; I think I'll give it a shot tomorrow.

The nursery where Mom and Dad bought a hydrangea in about 1958 is still there. It's an Agway now. Interesting, the things that stick in my mind.

It was about 2:40 by then, so I drove over to the Bank Street town beach parking lot (right outside the Sandpiper Beach Inn) and read the Boston Globe until it was late enough to check in. The manager is very young, about my kids' age (somewhere between 20 and 27). He lives on the premises with his little long-haired Dachshund, Louie, who gave my shoes a thorough sniffing. Probably smelled the cats. The office has windows on three sides; it's like being on a boat. He told me that they're going to turn it into another room and put the office where his apartment is now.

The place is really more like what we used to call a motel (it's a row of attached rooms). The part I'm in has a second story, but the part across the grassy lawn doesn't. The cars park in an adjacent lot. My room has a king-sized bed, which is overkill in my case. The room is tiny and the furniture typical motel stuff, all except for the aforementioned white plastic lawn chairs at the table. There's a mini refrigerator and a microwave in each room. There are windows at the front and back, and outside the back door there's a small enclosed terrace, exclusively for this room.

After I unpacked, I changed to shorts and sandals and went down to the beach to wade in the water. I walked along the beach towards where we used to go. I didn't go that far; I didn't want to overdo it on my first day, and my sprained knee was aching. I hope to get down to Allen Harbor before I leave. It's been windy ever since I got here. I was cold on the beach. I passed a couple walking in long pants, sneakers and jackets; they seemed to be looking at me as if I was crazy. Not crazy, just my first trip to the Cape this summer, and I'm going to wade no matter what!

[The actual blog blathered on a little longer, but I think I'll stop here for today.]

Rock Band and the Topsfield Fair

I had a busy weekend. I wanted to write at home so that I could put in a picture or two, but when I get home I put my feet up and put an ice pack on my new knee, so I can't sit at the computer desk comfortably. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Saturday my older son came over with the PlayStation3 and Rock Band. If you've missed out on this, Rock Band is a very popular video game where you can perform, sort of. We made up a group of the three of us. I got to create my character - a rocker chick singer named Summer. Older son "played" the guitar - really just striking keys in a particular rhythm and sequence. Younger son played the drums. That's a little more realistic; there's a four-headed drum set with a bass pedal. I tried it, and my ankle was soon aching from the pedal. I like my microphone a lot better.

Anyway, we wasted hours as we gained in skill and scored more points, visiting more locales, earning a tour bus, then a jet, and touring the world. Singing in this game is my favorite part, of course - I always wanted to be a rock singer. It's a very forgiving program; I could slur words and approximate pitches, and it'd still say "Awesome!" at me. We were performing on the Medium level, mostly. Next time we're going to do Hard. The game's addictive. I'm glad it's not in my house all the time, or I'd get hooked on it. I'd start a solo tour.

Sunday we played handbells in church. The choir was very short of sopranos, so they asked the handbell director and me to fill in. Finally, I was asked to sing in the choir! I've been holding out for an invitation. The soloist with the heavy voice seems to have dropped out. She was a nice person, but I didn't like to sing with her, one reason I was staying away from the choir. The director and the other sopranos encouraged me to keep coming. They rehearse on Thursdays. Maybe I will. I don't know; it's so hard to get me out of the house once I get home from work. Also, if I join the choir, I have to be in church every Sunday. I have mixed feelings about that. I miss being in a Unitarian-Universalist church, and I don't really want to commit to this UCC (Congregational) church. But I miss singing, too. I stay there because most UU churches don't have handbell choirs.

In the afternoon, the boys and I decided to go to the Topsfield Fair. I was expecting a large-scale country fair. All I ever hear about it is the competition for the largest pumpkin - some of them go over 1,000 lb. Well, we hit traffic as soon as we left Route 95, and it took us over an hour to get to the fairgrounds. Once we got there, the closely-packed and brightly lit food places took over our senses. We eventually got to the cow barn, the sheep barn, and the poultry barn (we avoided the pig barn). But I was expecting something along the lines of the 4H Fair that we used to go to in Westford. What we got was a vastly commercial carnival. We never saw the huge pumpkins; I have no idea where they were hiding them. How do you hide a 1,000-lb. pumpkin, anyway? We weren't interested in going on the rides (and there were many). There's a limit to how much anybody can eat. I did get some blueberry crisp which was especially good; that didn't disappoint me. We don't think we'll ever go back.

Monday I took the day off. I had an appointment with the surgeon who did my knee surgery. Everything seems to be healing well. I can walk almost normally. My biggest limitation now is a muscle I pulled in my good leg.

I'm going to take a vacation next week. An actual vacation! I decided to spend a few days on Cape Cod, in an inn which is right on the same strip of beach where my family and I have been going since I was a baby. I'm going alone, and I'm so excited! I'll be walking on the beach every day, even if it rains. I'm going to go shopping and eat in nice restaurants (but sparingly! I don't want to pig out.). I'm going to bring my laptop and try to do some writing. They don't appear to have internet connections in the rooms; I guess they figure that people are there to do things outside, not hang around online. I'm sure there will be some place with WiFi, though. I'm going down on Tuesday and coming back on Friday, so I should avoid the weekend traffic. One of the best things about taking a vacation alone is that I don't have to worry about what anybody else thinks about what I want to do. I can just do it, without any explanations. The boys would be bored with shopping. But I plan to buy several pairs of earrings, if I can find any I like. My earring collection needs updating badly. I might try on clothes (always an iffy thing; I'm in the size range on the line between Misses and Women). I might hang out in bookstores. I don't have to worry about boring my sons! I probably ought to worry about how I'm going to pay for all this, but it's going onto my credit card. Who knows when I'll get a chance to go away again? Life is too short to keep putting off the things I want to do.

I can climb the stairs again!

I watched No Country for Old Men last Sunday. What was that, a mere ten days after I received it? I didn't get it. Maybe I shouldn't admit that - I want people to think I'm sophisticated. But I'm not. The desert landscape was barren and frightening. Javier Bardem was great as the scary bad guy, but geez, shouldn't he get what he deserves eventually? I prefer movies that end, if not happily, at least with some sense of resolution. Oh, well, now I've got Season 2 of Heroes waiting to watch!

But that's not why I came here today. I wanted to add to my knee-replacement blog.

By mid-September I was ready to try climbing stairs one foot at a time again. I'm picturing the alternative as me jumping up the stairs, landing two feet at a time! But actually, I was just using my right leg, pulling the left leg up afterwards, the way a toddler does. Coming down, I'd lead with my left leg, so that I could keep it stiff and it remained more stable. Going up in a way that involved using my left knee involved my making a major leap of faith: I had to believe that the new knee wouldn't collapse under me. It didn't.

The first weekend after I started climbing stairs normally, I had to keep reminding myself I could do it. When I got to the stairs, I'd automatically grab the banister and start hauling myself up, leading with the right leg, dragging the left one up afterwards. After two years, it had become a habit. Now I'm unlearning it.

This week I was ready to try a new skill: walking up the stairs without holding onto the banister. I practiced at work, where I have a quiet stairway with banisters on both sides. I walk up it every morning to get my coffee. This week, I've done it three times without holding on. Woohoo! Look at me! I'm climbing the stairs, no hands! Coming down, I was holding my coffee and I didn't want to risk spilling it, so I held onto the banister until the last 3 steps. They went fine. Today I allowed my hand to skim along on top of the banister, just enough to give me some confidence.

I'm still having physical therapy for my knee on an outpatient basis in the same hospital/medical school complex where I work. I think my physical therapist is doing a good job. I have to do exercises to strengthen my leg. Last week he had me balancing on the weaker leg and throwing a weighted ball at a kind of trampoline that had been placed at about a 45-degree angle. I had to catch it while remaining balanced. This week I had to do squats. They aren't what I thought squats were - I have to stick my butt out as if I were sitting down, while holding onto the bar with one hand if necessary. He also had me balancing on a little tippy disc, only holding on if I needed to. That one I can do pretty well. Today he had me practice stepping onto and off of the stairs. My right leg is still a lot stronger. But the left one is coming along well.