Beginning of the end?

Several years ago one of my knees started to hurt every time I had to go up and down stairs more than once in a day. (I don’t have deal with stairs at all when I’m at home.) Crap, I thought. Beginning of the end. My knees are going. I’m going to need knee replacement surgery. Of course I didn’t actually want this confirmed, so it took me a while to mention it to the doctor. He had a feel round and announced my knees were fine. I just needed to do some exercises to strengthen some muscle. (Hamstrings? I don’t remember. Probably not.) Did the exercises and – bingo! – my knees were indeed fine and have been ever since.

Last month, when one of my normally two hour walks with Joe turned into three hours, I did get a bit of a twinge in my right knee, then my ankle, then my hip. I was fine the next day.

Yesterday I woke up with that twinge in/near my right hip. Uh, oh. Told Joe we were going to have to take it slightly slower than usual.

It was a good walk. A place we hadn’t been for a while, which he referred to as the tree graveyard – an old clearcut. Before you get to the “graveyard” the trail takes you past some very tall and interesting stumps. 

A couple of tall stumps in the clearcut, too.

But look what’s on the other side.

A cedar and a wild rose sprouting up in this wasteland.

And in the shorter, rotting stumps you can get a much clearer sense of how the rings on trees are formed.

Unfortunately it’s not at all clear in this photo.

It is not uncommon when Joe and I are walking and talking for one of us to wonder out loud about various things. For example, the recent conversation and investigation into how trees manage to heal (turned out to be seal) themselves. As Joe’s phone is better than mine, he quite often has a signal when I don’t and will, when we’ve stopped to sit down on a log or a bench, do a bit of googling.

One of yesterday’s questions was how the phrase “in the ballpark” came into being. Easy to find a definition. Bit more digging to discover this: “To be in the ballpark in the figurative sense of ‘within an acceptable range of approximation’ is first recorded 1954, originally in the jargon of atomic weapons scientists, perhaps referring to the area within which a missile was expected to return to earth; the idea is broad but reasonably predictable dimensions. Hence ballpark (adj.) ‘approximate’ of figures.” Who knew?

Pleased to report my hip didn’t feel any worse after the walk. Sorry to report the twinge was still there when I woke up this morning. Beginning of the end? God, I hope not.