So

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcQUFHYNBg0&feature=related

For years I watched my Dad do this funky little deal with a broom – I have no earthly idea who taught him to do it, could be he learned it as a boy. I've never asked, but maybe I should have. He taught me to do it as a kid and I thought it was my parental duty to pass this skill down to at least one of my children.

After I taught Rea to do Ronald's broom trick, she wanted me to show a friend – so I did. And all was well. Or so I thought. Around Thanksgiving my arm started hurting at night, but I believed that I was just sleeping on it wrong. Then on New Year's Eve, once again a broom trick demonstration was in order and that was the coup de grace, I felt a distinctive little pop that I thought was a bad muscle pull and my arm and shoulder haven't been the same since.

I found out on Monday that I have a torn ligament in my shoulder (and not just any ligament, one that only 4% of patients manage to screw up) – not exactly what I expected or wanted to hear. I was keeping my fingers crossed for a cartilage tear or some such thing; a repair that could be done with laproscope, but it seems that this will have to done with open surgery and that will add to my recovery time. Oh, goody.

Needless to say, after having arthroscopic hip surgery three years ago, I'm not looking forward to this. I thought they'd fix my hip right up and I'd just bounce back to my old self within a couple of weeks, but it was a sweet forever before I felt human again and I hobbled around like an old woman for six months; it was as if my whole body had been completely insulted. It was after I found out they had actually cranked my hip OUT OF SOCKET to fix the cartilage that I understood why it took so long to heal and finally feel like myself again.

I've been trying to find the bright side to this surgery – the silver lining, if you will and I'll tell you I haven't had much luck, but I have come up with a couple of things. It's not life threatening, and that's such a blessing, secondly, there won't be a walker or crutches involved this time (just let me say for the record that a walker is so humiliating) and lastly, the thing I'm holding on to most of all.

At least I'm not in middle school.