Monday Musings

I appreciate your patience during my brief hiatus. Last week, I underwent a left Total Hip Replacement, and I’m getting back on my feet again. It’s a blessing to be relieved of the awful left hip pain I suffered before surgery due to severe arthritis, with no remaining cartilage and bone grinding on bone. Postoperative pain is minimal compared to that excruciating ordeal. Now I’m getting around the house with a walker as a mobility aid. In addition, I am working like mad on self-directed physical therapy exercises to strengthen my new and improved hip joint. And even more importantly, I’ve aggressively weaned myself from opioid pain relievers. My last dose was at bedtime on postoperative day five. Recovery is all uphill from here. After two weeks, I should transition to a cane, and two weeks later, my own two feet. Spring gardening is a great motivator. I’m becoming a real live bionic woman with all of this year’s artificial enhancements: first both eyes, now my hip! What challenges do

  Due to personal reasons, my regular blog programming will temporarily be interrupted. You can expect to see Monday Musings again in two weeks. Watch your email or check my social media sites on February 27, 2023 . I look forward to communicating with you again soon! You can follow the Author on her  Website  or on  Twitter .

Authors, are you triggered by current events to incorporate the news into your writing? Readers, are you curious about the writing process? Here's a glimpse of how recent occurrences resulted in two poems. The recent flurry of articles about the Chinese Spy Balloon set my creative juices afire. Analogies flittered, and synonyms cavorted through my mind. Chinese, hmm, ah yes, Communist “red.” Was the conveyance really a meteorologic device, or was it a “Trojan” horse carrying advanced spy devices, or was it somehow inserting Trojan malware into our internet? And was the balloon a “carrier pigeon” to return the pilfered information to China? The words sorted and arranged, condensed into a senryu format, and voila! Poem number one: