{"id":135,"date":"2009-11-17T13:17:48","date_gmt":"2009-11-17T20:17:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neighborhoods-in-austin.com\/tx\/?p=135"},"modified":"2009-11-17T13:19:37","modified_gmt":"2009-11-17T20:19:37","slug":"fall-injury-edition-or-boot-is-beautiful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/neighborhoods-in-austin.com\/tx\/fall-injury-edition-or-boot-is-beautiful\/","title":{"rendered":"Fall Injury Edition: Or, Boot is Beautiful"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"boot\"My wardrobe has a stylish new addition…the lovely robotic-looking boot you see at left (insert your best Transformers, <\/em>Lego, or skiing joke here.) Yes, I’m injured; I was walking my dog on Saturday when I fell into a booby trap. Well, OK, it was a hole–but a deep, grass-covered, perfectly foot-sized hole! I heard (and felt) two pops, and then I was on the ground, fully expecting a broken ankle. However, after dusting myself off, I realized that the damage wasn’t as bad as I’d initially thought, and I misguidedly tried to “walk it off”–that is, until a misstep onto the outside of my foot induced nausea.<\/p>\n

I practiced the RICE method<\/a> over the weekend (for you non-athletes, that’s Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) and on Monday I saw the very nice, super-professional, accommodating folks at Texas Orthopedics<\/a> (who, by the way, got me in within about 4 hours’ notice and out in 40 minutes, almost none<\/span> of which was spent waiting alone in a diagnostic room) and was diagnosed with an inversion sprain and subsequently fitted with the aforementioned robo-boot.<\/p>\n

As my husband can heartily attest, I am a terrible<\/span> patient. In fact, you might call me an im<\/em>patient, because I’m sick of this boot already. However, this being the season of giving thanks, I’m trying to keep my mind on the positive, and I figured what better way to do that than publicly? So here goes…my list of “boot benefits.”<\/p>\n

It’s a conversation starter.<\/strong> Everyone, from neighbors to agents in our office, to the cashier at HEB who always rings me up, wants to know what happened. Although initially this was a little disconcerting, I’m taking advantage of the opportunity to meet and greet a whole bunch of people I didn’t know, or didn’t know well, with the boot as conversational fodder. Who knew that an injury would make me so approachable?<\/p>\n

It’s a good deterrent to holiday indulgence. <\/strong>As you may know from my previous posts, I love the outdoors, and hiking is one of my favorite ways to exercise. This boot will prevent that for 3 weeks, and I have to be careful on the ankle for an additional couple of months, so that doesn’t bode well for strenuous hikes this winter. Therefore, I can’t justify that extra slice of pecan pie or spoonful of mashed potatoes (or tankard of eggnog, for that matter!) by saying I will exercise harder later. Darn it! But also, way to avoid the seemingly inevitable holiday scale creep.<\/p>\n

The sympathy factor.<\/strong> Chivalry abounds, it seems…being the independent woman of the 21st century that I clearly am, I certainly don’t expect special treatment from the opposite sex. Except, of course, when I’m injured and therefore at a distinct<\/span> disadvantage. Want to open that door for me? Thank you kindly.<\/p>\n

And the whole less fortunate thing…<\/strong> Speaking of holidays, it’s a great time to remember, injured or not, that I’m very lucky to have a job with a great company, and insurance to help with the costs of the robo-boot. So what if I have to clump around for a few weeks, dogged at the heels, literally, by the rasp of Velcro? Really, who am I to complain? Except about the unfashionable ensembles I may have to sport in the weeks to come…I reserve the right to be a baby about that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My wardrobe has a stylish new addition…the lovely robotic-looking boot you see at left (insert your best Transformers, Lego, or skiing joke here.) Yes, I’m injured; I was walking my dog on Saturday when I fell into a booby trap. Well, OK, it was a hole–but a deep, grass-covered, perfectly foot-sized hole! I heard (and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/neighborhoods-in-austin.com\/tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/neighborhoods-in-austin.com\/tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/neighborhoods-in-austin.com\/tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neighborhoods-in-austin.com\/tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neighborhoods-in-austin.com\/tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/neighborhoods-in-austin.com\/tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139,"href":"http:\/\/neighborhoods-in-austin.com\/tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/neighborhoods-in-austin.com\/tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neighborhoods-in-austin.com\/tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/neighborhoods-in-austin.com\/tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}