Onion Watch: Done; The Boot, Day 12

[pameladean]

The Onion Watch is over. Both Cassie and Saffron are fine.

I am very tired of this boot, and yet two weeks is really a very short time to be wearing one of these. It's better since I got the shoe balancer. But that can't be worn outside at this time of year. I ventured out yesterday sans shoe balancer, but with a lot of help from Eric. Fortunately, my winter boots have slightly thicker soles than my regular walking shoes, so the imbalance was less. But my hips, back, and knees set up a huge complaint all the same.

We saw "The Last Jedi" so we could stop avoiding spoilers all over; went grocery shopping; had a late dinner at Pizza Luce, splitting an order of roasted Brussels sprouts and a small spinach salad and then going our own way for the entrees; and went back to his house and conversed and cuddled the cat.

We enjoyed the movie a lot, though the sound balance was such that we missed some dialogue, including, almost certainly, some punch lines. It is thoroughly and unabashedly a "Star Wars" movie; not one of the prequels, but harking back in ways great and small to the first trilogy only with a lot more different kinds of people in it. Of course we had a lot of quibbles. I am gobsmacked, however, at the reactions of a certain group who hated the movie. What they are objecting to is so mild, so nearly anodyne, and yet they can't stand it.  If anybody is moved to discuss any aspect of the movie in the comments, please clearly mark any spoilers. And I'm very short on patience with certain lines of argument.

Being outside was fine while the temperature was above freezing, but when things started to ice up I became a paranoid mass of apprehension.

On Wednesday morning, I will get up, and I will not have to put on the boot. The clinic says that if I have no residual swelling or pain, I'm good to go; otherwise they will refer me to physical therapy.  I am hoping very hard for the former outcome. The swelling is almost gone now, but there is still some twinginess right around the ankle bone.

I'm still reading Anthony Price, and wanted to note down one place where history caught him up, through no fault of his own. In an earlier book, Our Man in Camelot, a bunch of younger agents in Price's imaginary intelligence department, Research and Development, are arguing with David Audley about, well, everything; but Frances Fitzgibbon, my single favorite character in the entire series, refers to "the rot at the top" of the Nixon Administration. Audley shuts her down by saying that it was the rot at the top that brought the boys home from Viet Nam.

This line never did sit well with me, but this time, I thought, "Wait, wait, wait, didn't Nixon act to delay the negotiations that would end the war so that his anti-war presidential campaign would not have the wind taken out of its sails, and so that he could get the credit?"  Yes. Yes he did. The tapes were released in 2013. Lyndon Johnson knew what Nixon was doing, but he figured that Hubert Humphrey would win the election, so he didn't do anything. STOP WITH THAT NONSENSE YOU SELF-SATISFIED BLUNDERING POLITICIANS; IT NEVER WORKS OUT THE WAY YOU THINK.

I want to grab David Audley through the page of the book and give him this information. More than that, I want to give it to Frances.

Pamela

Edited to make an errant sentence have some sense in it.

Comments

[halfmoon_mollie1]

please don't think I"m trying to outdo you. With several broken ankles (both of them, although never both at once) and knee surgery a few years ago, I am almost always a paranoid mass of apprehension when there is ice or snow. I so understand and sympathize. Good luck on Wednesday, I hope you don't need therapy.
many hugs

[pameladean]

Of course I don't think that. I'm well aware that I got off very easily, given my loopy decision to hurry on icy surfaces. I'm glad I'm not alone in my reaction to ice, though.

P.

[tanac]

I seem to have inherited a distrust of stairs, especially those outside. (going up is fine, going down is still gingerly)

[tanac]

'course, the lack of snow and ice distrust is simply that I don't have to walk in them. If it snows, I don't have to go to work :)

[graydon]

That is entirely excellent news about the cats!

Physio is not a bad outcome when you need it, even if it's annoying as an experience. I mean, yes, certainly preferable not to need it, but some route to full function is better than not.

[pameladean]

This is the last chance I'm giving them to be so damn lucky, let me tell you.

As for PT, I do value full function and will dutifully do all the things if necessary. I just have a small hope of this being actually over.

P.

[graydon]

May the feline ingenuity not find a worse thing!

"Actually over" is when you've recovered full elasticity and compressibility and bone density probably a few more things, and that's a few months off, alas, joint injuries being wretched slow things in the direction of recovery. NO BOOT shall hopefully prove a much sooner thing.

[pameladean]

May the feline ingenuity not find a worse thing!

*nods fervently*

I'll settle for NO BOOT. Not that it isn't a technological marvel, but still.

P.

[kore]

I did PT kind of on my own -- IIRC rydra_wong had some exceptionally helpful exercises. (Slowly flexing and unflexing, pointing and flattening, was one, and drawing the alphabet with your toes is another.) Just sitting at my desk, and I didn't do it for very long periods of time, but every 10-15 minutes or so, for weeks. I obviously don't recommend this method because it's so idiosyncratic and probably not what I should have done, but PT at home wasn't that bad.

[pameladean]

I'm sure it was better than nothing, and really, given how very much the boot didn't work for you, it was probably vital.

P.

[sartorias]

I need to do a massive Anthony Price reread.

[pameladean]

I'm certainly enjoying mine, bad fairies or no.

P.

[kore]

I loved TLJ terribly, maybe more even than TFA or R1. Force Awakens was the Star Wars of my heart (Luke as a girl! what I'd always wanted!) and Rogue One was the "hope in the dark" beauty, but TLJ is like, this is what we do, we survive, we go on, everyone counts, the Rebellion is alive even if it fits in a shoebox. I loved basically everything about it.

I hope hope hope you get to keep that boot off! I HATED mine.

[rj_anderson]

I'm with you. I love TLJ to a ridiculous degree, not that I think it's perfect (what is?) but that I think a lot of the complaints against it are incredibly shallow and petty, and some people are too invested in what they think the movie should have been (i.e. Luke Skywalker coming back as a flawless hero unchanged by time or experience to save the day, with his cute li'l daughter Rey tagging behind him whose entire existence is now validated by having been sprung from Skywalker loins -- does it count as a spoiler if you're talking about something that DIDN'T happen?) to appreciate what it was.

[kore]

i.e. Luke Skywalker coming back as a flawless hero unchanged by time or experience to save the day, with his cute li'l daughter Rey tagging behind him whose entire existence is now validated by having been sprung from Skywalker loins

OH, PREACH, INDEED

IMHO a lot of the nasty fan boys who really, really hated it (in a trollish way, like having bots vote it down on RT) did so because it wasn't the story of Luke coming back guns blazin' to heroically rescue everyone*, especially Kylo, and it wasn't the story of how Rey rescued Kylo, and it wasn't the story of how Kylo was either redeemed or became the Groovy New Emperor. It was Rey's story (she's the last Jedi, in the twist I liked best), like TFA was Rey's story, and it's gonna be Rey's story all the way through. And, like having a black man in the White House did, that seems to drive some types absolutely insane. They just can't handle it. It blows their minds. -- And as you said, Rey isn't even a Skywalker! Who is this nobody from nowhere taking over their franchise? &c &c.

(Not to brag about The Guy I Married, but Luke is my husband's fave character in the OT, and he loved TLJ and convinced me to watch it and thinks it was a great ending for Luke. So nyah, horrible fanboys.)


*only he did! As a real hero.

[rj_anderson]

A lot of the bitter anti-TLJ people I know of don't like Kylo at all because he's too emotional (read: "feminine") and still visibly torn between the Dark and the Light, instead of being Vader Mark 2 like they were hoping he'd be. I haven't heard any of them complaining that

[SPOILERS HO]
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Luke didn't rescue Kylo, because they didn't want him to be rescued in the first place -- they wanted to see him completely engulfed by the Dark and taking his place at Snoke's side as the Big Scary Bad of the trilogy. Or, as you said, becoming Renperor (which he... technically is, but I give it about five minutes before Hux double-crosses him and takes over. Like, the minute Kylo decides to take a nap).

Anyway Ben's had a few kick-starts now, between Han and Rey and Luke; I look forward to him waking up and smelling the redemption coffee in Ep. 9. (Also to Luke's Force Ghost haunting the crap out of him, because he pretty much promised he would.) Rian Johnson says that Ben and Rey are "like two halves of our protagonist", and I don't think he was only referring to TLJ when he said it.

You're right that it's Rey's story, though -- we're seeing the majority of it from her perspective and her coming into her own as the Last Jedi is absolutely crucial to the resolution of the trilogy. I love that she's a nobody. I hope the last film doesn't go back on that, because the idea that the Force is tied to the Skywalker legacy is, as we've already seen with Ben, a Serious Problem.

And my husband thought Luke's characterization in TLJ was very much in line with the original trilogy too. It was the first thing he brought up when we talked about it on the way home.

[kore]

....LOL, I have many opinions about angry boy-men who go online and try to trash stuff like Ghostbusters 2016, Wonder Women, TFA, TLJ....it's just so petty.

[pameladean]

And every time, I see the trashing, at least the edges of it, before I see the movie or whatever; and if I do see the movie, I always think, "This? This is what upset you?" I always expect some really radical feminist agenda -- WHICH WOULD BE FINE WITH ME -- and it's just common sense and fairness, sometimes a bit constricted. I mean, I also liked TLJ very much, but when you come down to it, the central confrontation, on the dramatic red and white sand, is between two men. [SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER]













The torch is handed to Rey, which I loved, but for this movie, that moment, it's still two men. But that's not enough, I guess.

P.

[pameladean]

It never occurred to me that Rey could have sprung from Skywalker loins. I did find it painfully evident that Han and Leia would have been much better off with a daughter than with a son, and they got one for a little while, which was sad and lovely at once.

But I can see that having very specific expectations might have fed all the complaints and betrayed feelings. It's too bad. I think this is one of the best Star Wars movies. Not perfect, certainly not, but such an improvement in so many ways while still nodding at the previous ones.

And I feel that Luke's character arc is really just consistent and reasonable, given his conduct in the original movie and sequels. He does grow up, it just takes him a really long time.

P.

[kore]

I did find it painfully evident that Han and Leia would have been much better off with a daughter than with a son, and they got one for a little while, which was sad and lovely at once.

//SOB

Man, when Han wanted her to go with him, I was like "GO, JUST GO, GET OUT OF THE MOVIE, GO FLY AND BE HAPPY." So bittersweet.

[rj_anderson]

The devotion of Reddit fanboys to the Rey Skywalker theory has to be seen to be believed. Some are still hotly insisting that TLJ was a mere misdirection and that in the final film the Truth Will Be Revealed. Because there is just no way Rey could come from nowhere, and not be related to any of the legacy characters, and still have a satisfying narrative arc. There is no way she could find or build a family that doesn't depend on her own genetic heritage and have it mean anything. So if she isn't a Solo (which some thought before TFA came out, and some even thought afterward) and she isn't a Skywalker, she has to be a Kenobi or a cloned daughter of Palpatine at the very LEAST. But really she has to be a Skywalker because Kylo proved himself irredeemably evil by killing Han and will surely be killed in the third movie and therefore doesn't count. THE SKYWALKER LINE MUST NOT DIE.

I love how Rian Johnson repeatedly stuck it to the people who think bloodline matters by showing how messed up Kylo's (and Luke's, and Snoke's) ideas about legacy were, and how much pride and folly and devastation were caused by everyone telling Ben Solo that he had a great destiny to live up to because he was the son of Leia Organa and the war hero Han Solo, and the nephew of the great Luke Skywalker, and the grandson of Darth Vader. Bring on Rey Nobody and the message that the Force belongs to everyone, no matter who their parents were.

[pameladean]

I was very happy with a lot of it. I got bored with the initial space battle, but after that it was great.

Thank you! On the eve of my last booted day as originally mandated, the swelling is gone but there's a residual tenderness. So we'll see what one more day does.

P.

[kore]

I was "ho hum" through the initial space battle until we saw the actress playing Paige, and she stole my heart and made me cry without having like one line. It was amazing. (I cried so much during this movie. Embarrassing.)

[lcohen]

i would recommend some sort of PT exercises even if not through your medical folks--you've immobilized it for a bit and it will be good to do some things to build up some loss of strength. i still do my knee PT exercises on both legs--it doesn't hurt anything to try to keep the structure strong and i can do a couple while i wait for things to heat in the microwave which is a good use of that sort of time.

[pameladean]

I don't mind doing exercises at home, it's mostly the having to go have another medical appointment that I'm balking at. And yet getting some exercises from an expert is a good idea. I'll probably feel more like it when I am actually out of the boot and it's not snowing like there's no tomorrow.

P.