The poor student

Don't you just love it when you run into people who are absolutely unamused by you? People who you can tell are just really, really underimpressed by your whole existence?

Yeah. That's my physical therapist, Paul.

My last physical therapist, a few years ago, was a chatty, super-hyper Mormon guy who was great. He tortured me appropriately and fixed my shoulder, so it was all good.

Paul did my therapy with a kind of machine-like disaffection. It WAS after 5 on a Friday, so who can blame him? But it was still a bit unnerving to be such a disappointment.

My problem is with my ankles. I had a back injury that has impinged the nerves to my ankles, making them floppy as 3-day old fish. I sometimes fall off my feet just standing there. Honestly.

I sprained both ankles by falling off a curb.two days before BlogHer and I just have to say it is a good thing that being in NYC and at BlogHer don't involve any walking! Because that would be painful. Oh, wait, they DO. Totally do. Yeah. Every night at BlogHer I had cankles like a baby elephant.

Then three weeks ago I fell again going down the 2 stairs in front of my house and hurt my right ankle badly again. I didn't trip or anything - my ankle just refused to hold me up and I toppled over.

So Paul is to help me cure my fish ankles.

He made me do this thing where you lay on a slant board and balance one foot on this tippy thing and try to keep it steady while you use that leg to do a leg press. Not only could I not keep the tippy thing from tipping, I couldn't even feel that it was tipped.

I failed tippy board.

We moved on to something more remedial. Something suitable for even the terminally physically incapable, like me.

He laid these foam board shaped things on the floor, immediately giving me bad flashbacks to Junior High Gymnastics.

Yes, he was making me walk the balance beam. So guess how that went?

I failed balance beam.

He then gave up and put me on the stairmaster and went to chat up a cute athletic girl with a knee injury. And chat. And chat. Approximately 97 minutes later when he got done, he came to check on my progress.

Well, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that I don't have ankle problems anymore.

The bad news is that my legs fell off.