befabulo.us: Now with 78% less grumpy.

I can't report any improvement in my foot, but my mood has been healing.

After I wrote that extremely grumpy post last night, I drank half a glass of red wine and ate three squares of Cadbury Caramello, and that little bit of deliciousness made me feel much better. (The chocolate was delicious, not the wine, the wine was actually quite grim, which was why I only drank half my glass. I bought a box of wine for tomorrow's party because we can't have glass near the pool, and I think I may have made a critical shopping error.) Chocolate. God bless it. It's an instant way to remind yourself that life, truly, can be sweet.

Unfortunately, chocolate is an ineffective painkiller. Even with Motrin and Benadryl to assist, my foot didn't stop hurting, and I kept waking up and noting that yup, it still hurts. Few hours later, yup, still hurts! Making dinner last night was a BIG mistake. The Indian spinach and chicken (my lactose-free version of saag paneer) was delicious, but I spent way too long standing at the stove. Forget that nonsense. It is going to be all crockpot, all the time now. Luckily, I have become a total crockpothead after finding the Year of Crockpotting blog a few months ago, so using the crockpot is no hardship.

My husband spoke quite firmly to me last night, about the importance of staying off my foot. And he's right. The temporary value of having me cook dinner, or clean the kitchen, or whatever, is not worth it. Every step I take on my foot is adding time to my healing period. He'd rather pick up the slack now, and have me better sooner. "Tomorrow you are staying in bed," he ordered.

I'm in bed.

It's noon, and I haven't yet taken a step today. I've done a bit of hopping, but my new mode of locomotion is the baby classic, crawling. Hands and knees. Yes, it's a bit embarrassing to be 34 years old and moving around in a fashion that my son gave up at 15 months, but hey! I'll do what I have to do. The good news is that crawling, when done with good form, is actually a good total body workout.

I could whine, I could list dozens of things that are annoying about this situation, but I've got to move past the anger and accept that this is what it is. I've got a lot of things to be grateful for, too, many ways that this could be so much worse. Those are the things I'll list.

1. I've got an amazing husband who doesn't seem to mind having to become housekeeper and nursemaid while I'm hurt. (He just walked in to ask where I keep the broom. He's not wearing a shirt, and mmm, he is sexy.)

2. My son is a kid, not a labor-intensive baby or toddler. He can entertain himself and doesn't require contast supervision. He can even help out with tasks like picking up his room or taking dirty dishes to the sink.

3. I have decent health insurance, so I'll be able to get appropriate medical care. I'll be calling local orthopedists as soon as offices open on Monday, and hopefully I'll be able to get an appointment quickly.

4. I have cable TV, a laptop, and WiFi.

5. My mom is flying down next Saturday. She'd wanted to come back in any case, and my injury has given her a good excuse to hurry back to Florida.

6. My condo is all on one level, and has soft, cushy carpet, perfect for crawling.

7. I work from home, so this injury hasn't interfered with my job. Can you imagine if I had to commute? Or wear shoes? Can you just imagine me crawling down an office hallway with the key to the ladies' room clamped between my teeth? That would be AWESOME.

8. My husband knows how to make coffee. Seriously, this is a big deal. A few years ago, I injured this same foot (terrible sprain, possible stress fracture or something else awful, though I'm not sure exactly because I had crap health insurance and a rotten primary care doctor) and I was confined to bed for several days. But my husband didn't know how to use our coffee maker. It's a little espresso machine that I use to make one cup of regular coffee at a time, and it's more complicated than your average Mr. Coffee. I tried to explain the procedure to him, but he just couldn't get it. Going without coffee was out of the question, so I wound up hopping down the hall, sliding down the stairs on my butt, hopping to the kitchen, making the coffee while standing on one foot, hopping back to the stairs, crawling up them, hopping back to bed, and then calling my husband to carry my coffee up to me. But since then, my husband has started drinking coffee sometimes, and he's learned to use the machine. I don't even have to ask him -- he just brings me a cup when I wake up, just the way I like it, with plenty of sugar and Very Vanilla Silk. Have I mentioned that he's very, very sexy?

(Can I get to ten items? I'm starting to run dry here. What else, what else?)

9. We have ample supplies of wine and chocolate.

10. The weather is beautiful. True, it does suck a bit to be stuck inside while it's gorgeous out, but it's not as if there's any shortage of beautiful weather in Florida. It will still be nice out when I'm able to walk again. But the real benefit is that I can keep the windows open in my bedroom, thus avoiding that awful sick room stale funk.

What comforts you when you're stuck in bed?