As an author, I follow a few other author blogs--authors I admire and stand to learn from. This summer they've been on exotic vacations with families, led book tours, served as faculty on international excursions to Italy, while I have battled cracked bones and drain flies.
Let's get those drain flies out of the way first. Nasty creatures, flies. I'm trying to figure out why God created them, and why one...or several...decided to propagate in our house drains this year. I'm told they may have set up camp in the downstairs bathroom because that bathroom doesn't get used a lot. I'm supposed to go down there and run the water every week or so.
If Adam the intern who was staying with us this summer had actually stayed with us this summer, he would have naturally flushed those drains. But you know these young people...transient creatures. He started apartment-sitting for his brother, the musician on tour, in June and never came back. So the flies moved in.
It wouldn't normally be a big deal to go down the stairs of your own home and run the water once a week except that we're dealing with a couple of cracked bones. Four columns, white and decorative, hold our house up and separate the living from the dining room. I have always loved these columns. White columns make me think of Greece, a country I hope to visit one day. And in the eleven years we've lived in this house, these columns have not moved and we've not had a problem colliding with them.
But in May, my husband smacked the one to the right of the dining table with his foot and cracked his metatarsal bone, then last Sunday morning, I smacked the one to the left of the dining table and initial x-rays reveal a "minimally displaced" bone in my pinky toe...the one my father used to squeeze when I was two and recite, "this one cried wee, wee, wee all the way home."
All of this to say that getting up and down stairs to discourage flies from laying eggs in our downstairs drains is not the easy activity it used to be. It only takes one fly to cause a problem, and it only takes one cracked bone to make the solution harder. We have two...left feet, both.
The good news is, I already have a boot and crutches on the ready. Even a bone doctor who saw my husband recently. The bad news is, my husband developed chest pains, which we thought were a pulled rib muscle from the crutches, only to learn that no, it was pneumonia.
Pneumonia.
In July? The same guy that completed his 7th Ironman Triathlon in November? How? From the summer colds we shared just before the cracking of our bones. Like a pesky drain fly, a germ burrowed down in his left (always the left) lung.
So...I know what you've been thinking. She's an author, she just released her second novel, she's probably out on exotic vacations with her family, leading book tours, serving as faculty on international excursions to Italy...
But you would be wrong if you thought that.
I have had three lovely book release events in the midst of these calamities. So no feeling sorry for us. The truth is, we have never laughed so hard. I mean, when we're not RICEing (resting, icing, compressing and elevating). Because you have to admit, it's comical.
If you, too, happen to be RICEing at home, the beach, Italy, or stranded in an airport, A Contradiction to His Pride is on sale now! Parnassus Books in Nashville has signed copies in-store! If you read it, please consider posting a review to Amazon and/or Goodreads.