Yup, it's broken.

"What happened?" everyone wants to know.  This is it, my big chance to build my reputation as adventuress and woman of mystery.  "Well, what do YOU think happened?" I ask back.  

"You tripped in a pothole."

"You fell doing yoga."

"You dropped a pot."

"Your kid ran over you."

Oh my goodness.  Is this how boring my life is?  I need an AURA OF MYSTERY...stat!

On Facebook, I opened comments to conjecture, and some of the scenarios made good use of my foibles ("stuck your foot in your mouth?") my lack of fashion sense (tripping over my ugly croc, getting hit by a falling table at an Italian restaurant) and my Bronx Attitude ("kicking your husband in the...").  More than one put me in scenarios with the likes of Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber.  One made me put away my wide-legged pants:

"I recently sprained my toe doing the following.....Got tangled in wide-legged sweatpants and OUCHHH_ lost balance and toe/foot got caught in too much fabric."  

All of those are plausible, and given my general klutziness could happen in the next half hour.  But the guesses that were closest to the mark?

From Beth K:  "Doing a pirouette."

Kathleen: "You were standing upside down and whacked your foot on the ceiling fan."

Iris: "You finally tried tubing down a river again and bashed your foot on the ground...again."

Yep.  In the spirit of Facing Forty Upside Down, I have sustained my first blog related injury...

I broke my foot BOOGIE BOARDING WITH BARB!  Now, for all you fans who remember, the blog started with Boogie Boarding with Barb, it was my first adventure which I wrote about here and here.

This was supposed to be a triumphant return. I bought my first boogie board, and took it out for a spin.

It's funny, in all my time of being afraid of the ocean, I have only worried about getting sucked OUT to sea, of getting pulled UNDER water.  I have never been afraid of getting spat back ON LAND.

Man, that shore is hard.

So, now that I have a lot of time sitting in one place to think about what happened, I've gone through waves of guilt and regret for getting hurt doing something so frivolous, so selfish.  My kids have a lame mother, my stressed out husband has to work and keep the house running, my friends are bringing me food and clean clothes.  When I think about all the challenges blog fans and friends have asked me to do (bike-a-thons, zip lining, rock climbing) coming up I think "No way.  Not worth getting hurt. I need to hang this up until my kids are older."

But then I look at the picture of me and Barb, right before we went in, right before a great wave I rode in that felt like it would go on forever, right before the next wave that cracked a little bone:

And I think, it was worth it.  For this spot of sunshine and friendship, it was worth it. 

DH, who after a day of cooking and cleaning and conference calling from home had every right to resent my condition, said: "Look at it this way.  You broke your foot doing something fun.  That's a big change.  That's a good thing."

So, dear readers, what do you think?  Should I go back to my life of quietude?  OK, not quietude, but chaos driven by children where the injuries are most likely going to come from dropped pots and tripping on my pants? Or do I face my fear of re-injury and take up surfing?  Or something in between?

What would you do?

Field of American Dreams - my guest post on Rough and Rede

Remember when I introduced George Rede, Portland Oregonian editor and my mentor at the Asian American Journalists Association convention?  I was a spry college student back then; I jumped when he said jump, helped along by the fact that he said it nicely. He taught me a lot about how to work under pressure and not lose your cool.


Twenty years later, he hasn't lost his mojo.  Inviting me to submit a piece for his blog, Rough and Rede, he said he wanted to include me as part of a project to connect people in his life through guest posts through the month of August.  Feeling a little pressure to do an extra good job for my old mentor, I punted.  It was an honor to be asked, I want to take the assignment seriously, now is not a good time, I'm about to go traveling, etc. 


In the nicest way, he did not take no for an answer.  "How about a deadline of no later than Aug 3?" he replied.  OK, George.  You say jump, I say, How high?


He gave the following prompts:


If you're stumped, consider these alliterative categories, which reflect my own interests: 1. baseball, books, bowling. 2. movies, music, mass media. 3. reading, running, religion. Or, maybe a guilty pleasure ... or current events ... or a recent epiphany. Whatever.


Writers can't resist prompts.  Look at the categories, what stories spring to mind?  Right away, moments from childhood, good times with friends, turning points, moments and people I hadn't thought about in ages came flooding in.  I was smiling and then laughing and then on the phone with my dad asking if he was as happy as I was the night we saw fireworks at Yankee Stadium, if he felt as I did, that we finally belonged in America.


My guest post, "Field of American Dreams" is up on George's blog today.  It is one of my favorite stories, one I might not have recalled or written about with such pleasure had I not been asked.  Thank you, George, for eliciting it and giving it a place of honor at Rough and Rede.  And for not taking no for an answer.