Flotsam

First of all, thank you all so very, very much for the kind Bloggiversary wishes. I learned a lot from reading them, namely that I shouldn’t read especially sweet blog comments when I am hungover, unless I want to dissolve into tears and wake the Actually by blubbering “I L-L-Love the INTERNET!”
Also, your comments confirmed what I had long suspected: Capri pants are a fair weather friend. Oh sure, they may look fine—kicky, even—when you are lithe and thin, but gain a few too many pounds and they make a girl look downright haunchy.
But moving on. Yesterday I went to see the doctor about my injured foot. Due to the deep scrape that stretches every time I step, it is massively swollen and painful to walk on. But walk on it I had, because I am exceedingly hardcore (or as hardcore as anyone who uses sissy words like “exceedingly” can be). I may have waited longer than I should have to seek medical attention, but truthfully I rather enjoyed having a legitimate excuse to whine and ask that things be brought to me wherever I lay. Things like, as Caer suggested, a sack of ice cream sandwiches. For the pain. Besides, I reminded myself, it will get better on its own. Time, after all, Heals All Wounds.
Except, as it happens, this one, which seemed to be getting worse the more “Time” I gave it. Hence the doctor, who informed me that I had sprained some tendons, and that my scrape was unable to heal because I kept walking on it, and for god’s sake stop doing that. I told him that I would be happy to stay off my foot, if someone were willing to carry me from place to place on a gilded litter. He didn’t think that was funny, but he did kindly refrain from commenting upon the state of my toenails, so I suppose that’s something.
The doctor was quite suspicious of the Actually, who was in the room during the exam.
“That looks like a burn,” he said in an accusatory tone, glancing from my foot to the Actually.
“No, it’s just a bad scrape,” I assured him. He took a closer look.
“Hmm. But how did you get a scrape on the top of your foot?”
The doctor sent another scowling glance in the Actually’s direction.
The Actually stared guiltily at a jar of tongue depressors.
“Oh,” I said, “It twisted when I fell—high heels, you know. Dangerous! Ha! HAHAHA!” I darted a glance at the Actually. He stared at the tongue depressors. The doctor frowned. I thought about how funny it would be if the Actually suddenly backhanded me, as a joke.
Eventually we managed to quell the doctor’s suspicions of domestic violence (What did he think the Actually had done? Poured boiling oil over my ankle? Stomped on my foot in a rage?) and the blame was put squarely where it belongs, on my shoe:

At some point I remembered that I was overdue for a pap smear and asked whether I could have one done, as long as I was there.
“Oh no,” the doctor said, shocked, “You’ll have to get someone else to do that. You’ll have to make another appointment.” He sounded vaguely censorious, as if I were going around asking for pap smears just for the little thrill I get from that sexy cold speculum.
Anyway, I was urged to wear more sensible shoes and given a tetanus shot and a prescription for high-dose ibuprofen. The nurse paused before giving me the shot, and asked “Now, is there any chance you could be pregnant?”
I laughed a bit more bitterly than necessary, because my last cycle was nearly 50 days long and completely anovulatory–but never mind. Suffice it to say, I got the shot.
As soon as the Actually and I left the clinic, we began speculating: what if I had been pregnant, and gave birth to a cunningly mutated Tetanus Baby? A baby who would only eat rusty nails?
“In a way, it would be nice, because we could share the nighttime feedings,” I mused. You don’t need breasts to feed a Tetanus Baby, after all, only a package of nails and a pail of water in which to rust them.
We had several reception sites to visit with my mother that afternoon, and as the Actually and I walked through various dining rooms and halls, the subject of Tetanus Baby lingered. Over Martinis at the University Club, the Actually bemoaned the ridicule our sweet-tempered but unusual child would face from her peers. I forsaw a particularly poignant moment, on Tetanus Baby’s 21st birthday: Scanning the menu at a local bar, her eyes light up—but when the waiter returns, she is embarrassed to find that what she has ordered is a combination of Scotch and Drambuie, not the tasty Rusty Nail she had been anticipating.

“Poor Tetanus Baby,” I murmured forlornly, after describing this scene to the Actually. We sat in silence for a moment.
“What on earth are you talking about?” asked my mother from the other end of the table.