Does anyone want to swap lives with me? Read on for my 'sales pitch':
- Noel is away on business at the other end of the country.
- Liam is home from school with a throat infection
- Dudley has another ear infection
- Ella the Labrador has bust her cruciate ligament
- I've broken my leg.
Any takers? I thought not - Noel sure has picked the perfect time to go away and I pick the most inopportune time possible to break my leg. Actually it's been broken for some time and I'm really embarrassed about the whole thing - there's me, training like mad for the first triathlon of the season this Sunday. I've been getting a few niggles here and there in my lower leg for a while and it's been getting worse, but I put it down to 'overdoing it'. It was by sheer chance that I took Liam to the doctor today and thought I might as well get the doctor to look at my leg, to make sure it's OK to compete with at the weekend. Imagine my amazement to be told I have a fractured tibia! I've been running on it for at least a month and by the time I leave the surgery I can barely drive the 10km journey home. Now I'm not moaning about my injury - far from it, I'm actually quite proud as I was always rather annoyed not to have done anything dramatic like broken a bone in my youth. I also figure that being incapacitated for a while can only have a positive effect on my budget; not being able to drive, go shopping and so on. What I do have a problem with is the bone scan my GP then referred me for - costing $550! When my Mum broke her leg a few years ago, it cost her just $40! I had never considered shopping around on medical procedures before, but believe me I'm doing it now, with Mum in tow for back up!
To add insult to injury (pardon the pun), my beautiful, fat, soppy Labrador Ella has been hopping about on three legs for a while, with an injury our vet describes as a ruptured cruciate ligament. Ouch for Ella and ouch for me - the operation needed to fix this will give me precisely five cents change from $1000. It's at times like these I bow down low to Simple Savings for motivating me to open my Christmas Club account. If not for that, the festive season would be looking pretty bleak and I would be a lot gloomier than I am now. Mind you, I suppose it's never a good time to break one's leg - there's so much I want to do! Since visiting Fiona I've returned all motivated. I desperately want to create my own worm farm and have been looking for instructions on the Internet. We are enjoying harvesting the first produce from our vegetable garden; lettuce, broccoli and strawberries; it's so rewarding! It's just a shame that for someone so eager I seem to have black thumbs. After lovingly planting and tending two trays of pumpkin, zucchini and watermelon seeds for weeks, I was rewarded with two trays of weeds and one spindly zucchini plant. Not so for Noel and Ali, they can make anything grow! However, Noel says that as I am so rubbish at growing things, it must naturally be my responsibility to weed the vegetable garden. I guess breaking a leg has its advantages after all - should get me out of that one for a while!
