So you can stop sticking those pins in that voodoo doll now.

I was talking with J.W. Manus the other day about my broken foot.

Yeah, shaddup. I’m a klutz. This is not news to me.

Except it was kinda funny in that when one smacks one’s foot against the bed post, typically one hops up and down, cussing for 3-5 minutes. This was more rolling on the floor screaming and cussing for 15-20 minutes.

You see, I was about to take Jake for his evening walk so I says, “Hey Jake, we’re gonna go for a walk but first I need to put the birds to bed.” (Jake knows this means I head upstairs to cover the birdcage for the night.)

I didn’t turn on any lights. I never turn on any lights. I know my way around the house and I’m super careful of our solid oak bedpost because I’ve broken my right little toe by slamming it against that dang bed post so many times the toe is no longer officially connected to my foot.

Anyways, Jake runs up the stairs beside me, brimming with his usual excitement, and he bounds into the bedroom and just as I’m heading for the bed so I can walk around the bed post and reach the birds on the other side he cuts in front of me, sending me flying, foot first, right into the bed post.

And thus I screamed and cussed and rolled around on the floor, clutching the side of my foot for the longest time. Then I laced my hiking boots up real tight and took him for a walk. I swear… my little toe is so purple it’s nearly black, my foot is purple, all my toes are purple, and yes J.W. I did go to the doctor and I made a decision to spend the next six weeks in hiking boots. Yeah, I’m still hiking with the dog, which brings me to the point of this post:

Stop sticking pins in that damn voodoo doll. You. You know who you are. Seriously, I give. Uncle. Whatever you think it is that I did, I’m sorry.

So the next day, after I saw the doctor, I took the dog for a hike at the hilly park. Coming back on a steep trail, the ‘down‘ hurt my foot. I decided to take Jake back ‘up‘ on a trail I haven’t been on in quite a while- for a reason, the first section requires hand over hand climbing.

Back in the days when I hiked the trail with Louie, it was a little easier in the sense that Louie did not have to be leashed because he didn’t run off after wildlife. But unlike Jake, the mountain goat, Louie was not a climber. So I’d climb up, find a place to secure myself, then reach back and grab his collar and haul him up. We’d climb like this until the trail more or less leveled out. Once you reach the top, the path still goes up, but at least it’s a hike-able trail.

This time around, Jake hauled ass ahead of me, on leash of course, which sort of threw me off my game. I was trying to find hand and foot-holds and I had to do it pretty quick because I only had one hand, the stupid broken finger hand- the other held the leash- and Jake was moving fast. He was more excited than usual… A new trail! Wheeeeeee!

Before I knew it, I’d slammed the top of my head against a ginormous low hanging tree branch that didn’t used to be there, by god, snapped my head back, saw stars, lost my hand-hold, figured I was fixin’ to tumble backwards head over heels down the trail that was not really a trail at all, break my neck and lie there until some poor soul found me or the mountain lion ate me. (I wasn’t supposed to be hiking so I didn’t tell anybody where I was going.)

I did the only thing I could think of. I yelled, “Go!”

And Jake went. He jerked me back into the trail, face-first, but still I managed to get a grip on a tree root and held on. Yeah, I did make it to the top, but at that point I realized:

Somebody out there hates my ass.

So stop it already. Thank you. Julia