This is going to be a short one because I’m not really supposed to be at the computer, I’m supposed to be resting and icing and compressing and elevating. And while there may be a comfortable way to keep one’s ankle iced and elevated while at a computer, I have not yet discovered it.

I twisted my ankle very badly this morning. I have weak ankles to begin with; I’ve been twisting them all my life and they never get to properly recover before twisting again, so I’m always a bit wobbly. But this one’s bad, possibly the worst I’ve had in years, and man am I in pain. Thank goodness I have some codeine left over from my surgery last year. (Does codeine go bad? If so, don’t tell me.)

Really, it was a crappy morning. I had clinic escorting duty and that part went fine, other than the general crappiness of waking up at six a.m. on a Saturday. It was a little boring, even — few protestors, few patients, few escorts. But then when escorting was over everything went all to hell. I decided to head into Barnes & Noble to peruse some magazines since I’d heard that Pamie had an interview in the recent issue of Bitch and I wanted to check it out. So I grabbed a few magazines and settled in at one of the tables in back, and was happily reading when I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye. And glanced up reflexively, and saw a guy with his pants unzipped, jerking off and grinning idiotically at me. Um, ew. What the hell possesses people to do this shit? I should have gone and reported his ass (or rather, his dick), but I guess my fight-or-flight instinct kicked in because I just wanted to get the hell away from him ASAP.

So I left the magazines (and I’m sorry, Barnes & Noble employee who will have to reshelf them) and headed for the door. Only to find Grinning Asshole Guy following me out of the store. Fortunately I was on a busy street so I didn’t feel as if I were in any actual danger, but I sure as hell didn’t want to stick around for him to catch up with me, so I started hurrying pretty fast up the sidewalk away from the store. And that’s when I failed to notice a big crack on the sidewalk and went sprawling into the street, scraping up my hands, spilling the contents of my bag all over the place, and causing blinding pain to shoot up my leg from my damn ankle. I managed to get myself and my bag out of the street but it hurt too much to stand up for several minutes, so I just sat there on the sidewalk, tears running down my face from anger and pain, clutching at my stupid leg while people stepped around me studiously ignoring me. At least Grinning Asshole Guy didn’t come after me; I guess I either lost him when I was hurrying, or I was less fun to harass when sitting on the sidewalk crying into the granite.

Eventually it subsided enough for me to stand up and I hobbled my way to the bus stop, went home, collapsed onto the sofa, and stayed there all day except to change ice packs and tell Len I had to skip his Hallowe’en party because the whole “moving my leg without excruciating pain” thing wasn’t so much happening. It’s feeling a little better now, although maybe that’s just the ice and codeine talking. But my weekend has pretty effectively been ruined, and I am absolutely furious with myself for not stopping to talk to the store manager about the jerk, who probably just went right back in and harassed someone else.

All in all, one of the worst Saturdays I’ve had in a while, including last week’s waiting-five-hours-at-the-airport extravaganza. I think maybe I should just boycott Saturdays for the next few weeks and have two Sundays instead. And with that fit of whining out of the way, I’m going to get a new ice pack and then head back to the sofa to feel sorry for myself and do some reading. I suspect I won’t be writing for the next couple of days, because there are only so many ways to say “I sat on the sofa with an ice pack on my ankle. I went to work and then sat at my desk with an ice pack on my ankle. I tripped over the damn cat and broke my ankle all over again and cursed a lot, and then got a new ice pack and put it on my ankle.”

I don’t know why I haven’t been able to write anything lately. I haven’t been doing anything terribly exciting, but I’ve been having a nice little life, doing good volunteer work, spending time with good friends. My sister came to visit for a weekend and that was a lot of fun, and I’ve read some good books and watched some good movies. Living with Len continues to be more fun than I could ever have imagined, despite the realization that two slobs living together somehow creates exponentially more slobbiness than two slobs living separately.

On a minute-by-minute basis life is really good right now, except perhaps for the rotten cold I caught last week and am still trying to shake. I think the problem comes in when I try to take a step back and look beyond the minute-by-minute. Because that’s when I get smacked in the face with The Election. Which isn’t to say that I’ve been ignoring it — on the contrary, I’ve been reading and watching everything I can get my hands on, and talking to people, and writing letters, and donating money. But even then I’m mostly micro-focusing — thinking about a particular issue, or what might happen in a particular state. I can do that.

When I step further back than that, I have what I referred to in a conversation the other day as “occasional moments of blind terror.” I look at the numbers and I try to see through the spin and I have no idea, absolutely no idea, what is going to happen in this country one week from tomorrow. I don’t know if people are going to turn all this talking into action and vote, and even if they do vote, I don’t know if their votes are going to be fairly recorded or accurately counted. And I don’t know who they’re going to vote for. But I can’t allow myself to think that it’s going to go the way I want it to, because if it doesn’t, I will be absolutely crushed. So I’m trying to be the change I want to see in the world, while also trying not to let myself believe in the change. And it’s driving me crazy. Not letting myself believe Kerry will win means I have to picture a world where I have to live in this country for another four years under Bush. And when I try to think about what that might look like, I just freeze. I think about the last four years and the violations and attacks on my privacy, my safety, my free speech, my body, and my dreams. And I don’t know how I would get through four more years, and how much worse it would surely get in those years. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as I imagine in my worst moments — but then, four years ago, while I hated Bush, I couldn’t possibly have imagined how bad it was going to get. Maybe it will be even worse than I imagine in my worst moments.

Mostly I’m just trying to go about my days, work on the little bits of the puzzle I can reach and do something about, and not let myself think too much about what the big picture will be. But honestly, I’m terrified, and the closer we get the more scared I get, and I think it’s part of why I haven’t been able to write anything. Because if I wrote, this is what I would have written, and at this point who the hell wants to read yet another person’s damn take on the damn election? But here it is anyway, and since it’s here, I might as well post it and get it out of my system. Maybe with that done I can write about something else next time. If nothing else, I have lots of cute cat pictures I’ve been taking lately, and I haven’t written a crazy cat lady entry in a while.