On the Mend

I had my surgery a week ago, and things are going better than I'd anticipated. While I'm still taking pain medication, I'm not hurting as much as I thought I would be. I was imagining discomfort and inconvenience comparable to when I had my Achilles tendon repaired 15 years ago. Thankfully, arthroscopic hip surgery is much easier to deal with.

I've been reading quite a bit for the past seven days, continuing a long streak of cranking through books. Yesterday, I finished Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away, a collection of essays that are mostly funny observations about adjusting to life in the U.S. compared to Europe.

I moved right on to David Comfort's The Rock & Roll Book of the Dead: The Fatal Journeys of Rock's Seven Immortals, which a friend of Beth's picked up from the YMCA's discard bin. Seriously. Somebody left this book behind after a workout and apparently enough time went by that the Y put it out for anyone to take.

The book spins tales of the lives and deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison and Jerry Garcia. I'm knee-deep in the Hendrix saga, which is interesting in terms of just how messed up he was mentally and pharmaceutically.

Surprisingly, I haven't been watching much TV while sitting in my living room nook, surrounded by my drugs, water, cell phone, house phone, books, magazines and computer. The only thing I've watched is some episodes of "Wilfred" from my DVR, and, occasionally, the local news.

OK, after dinner I've taken to watching "The Six Million Dollar Man" or "Charlie's Angels" reruns, but I swear, that's it. And, of course, the Red Sox.

I've also done a bit of writing. I'm working on a short story for my buddy Jim's next planned anthology, which focuses on travel. He published his first collection, Movable Feasts, earlier this year.

Much to my family's chagrin, I've been shuffling around the house, and out on the porch and front yard, while wearing my anti-embolism socks and brown slippers. I really look like an old man, let me tell ya. I believe today is the last day I need to wear the socks....

It won't be long before I'll be able to do this: