Thanks to all of you who sent my thumb good tidings. It appreciates it immensely. I know because I asked, and it nodded approvingly. Honest. It did so in a manner that limited the pain.

Today Jeran and I spent some time in our yard moving blackberry vines to the burn pile where they will await further attention once the rains come. I’m going to burn them to smithereens. We also moved one complete azalea, and many branches from one of the several rhododendrons that populate our yard.

Here’s Jeran ready to transport the first load. In all, there were four trips. Jeran drove most of them, learning how to drive the lawn mower. He did a really good job helping me, and I appreciated his company. I have no idea where he came from. Perhaps he was left behind when Jennifer showed up and went garage saling with  her Mother. That had to be it.

Actually, I knew Jeran was coming up to help me so his arrival wasn’t a surprise.

After gathering all the vines and branches strewn around the place, Jeran took a break and took about 50 pictures of various things from his vantage point on the swing. He took this one of me as I was cleaning up the remaining pieces that we chose to leave on the ground. My method was to run over them with the mower going full blast, shredding the remaining, offending debris. In case you’re wondering, yes, those are wings on the back of my shirt. Sadly, they are partially covered by  my festive suspenders. The wings belong to “Figment”, a very small Disney World dragon. I know this is true because on the front of the shirt has “Figment” in large letters. I think Diane got it for me as a testament to my flighty behavior.

Throughout the day, while three generations of ladies (Diane, Jennifer, and Jean (Diane’s Mom)) were out having fun garage saling, I would get occasional texts reminding me to eat, drink water, rest, take my meds, etcetera, with the ultimate threat of a visit to Urgent Care upon their return to  have my thumb checked by an expert. Since they didn’t return until almost 4:00 pm, and Urgent Care opened at 12:01 pm, I figured it was an idle threat. I validated the idle part by suggesting we go to Scappoose and see “Red 2”, which premiered today. The offer was accepted, we went, had a great time, and I ate an entire bag of popcorn using only my left hand.

On the way home we stopped at Rite Aide and purchased a thumb immobilizer, which is what the doctor would have given me had we chosen to waste 4 hours of our afternoon at Urgent Care. So, we got to see a really fun movie, and I got popcorn.

Now I have a stomach ache.

It’s always something, right?