Valerie Bonham

I am not happy today.  I haven’t been cheerful for over a month, but now I’m out-and-out unhappy and it isn’t something that comedies, pharmaceutical chemistry, or reading an entire Facebook newsfeed of funny slogans will do anything to fix.

I’m channeling Grumpy Cat today because last night I had to cancel my registration for this year’s Malice Domestic  cozy crime convention. This is the Malice with Peter Robinson, author of the Alan Banks novels and one of the few authors to send me a handwritten response to a fan letter.  I’ll fiddle with the html here and <insert a sob>.

In addition to not being happy about cancelling, I’m not happy about the reason for it: I sprained my knee.  Not only does it ache, but it is taking an age to heal (that’s the “over a month” part of why I’m unhappy), and I am so. very. tired. of sitting in this chair.  The cure for sprains is to not use the affected area, which, concerning knees, is easier in theory than in practice.  I want to go for walks.  I want to walk down steps and not sit-down-bump to get downstairs. I appreciate the knee brace, but am tired of it.

It all started when the Midwest finally had a decent amount of the white stuff and my husband and I were enjoying the winter wonderland while out for a Sunday drive. On our way home, I spotted a group of people on a nearby hill having a jolly time sliding down it. An idea as brilliant as the snow popped into my head.

“Sledding!” I announced.  “Tomorrow, we can go sledding.”

My husband just looked at me.

Given the cool reception to my proposal by my better half, I switched audiences and floated the idea of an outing to two of our kids, one of the significant others, and the youngest grandkid.  Although the father of my children still refused to accompany us to the hill, he did mount an expedition into our garden shed and unearthed our sleds, German sleds that have been unused for at least twenty years.  Our game was afoot.

On Monday, the snow party trekked up the hill and attempted to slide back down on the wooden sleds. We went nowhere. Neither of the sleds would go more than two feet at a time despite having metal runners over the wood.  The sleds sat in place, whether loaded with big people or with our little person. They wouldn’t budge with pushing, with running starts, or with perching on the steepest edge we could find. All they were good for was keeping the seats of our jeans out of the snow.

Mutually-irritated, we had a discussion about how the sleds had always been more picturesque than slide-worthy, and how plastic trash bags had worked better at quickly transporting people from the tops of hills to the bottoms.  I wondered aloud whether the sleds were meant more for pulling things than schussing down hills with abandon. Bad-mouthing the sleds was marginally satisfying but none of it got us any closer to sliding down the hill.

We didn’t have any trash bags handy, but luck was with us and the sledders from the day before had been rough and tumble litterbugs who’d cracked a saucer-sled and left it on the hill.  When all you have are sleds that don’t slide, even a cracked saucer-sled is an improvement.

The cracked saucer slid just fine and we took turns.

After the sledding, there was the mandatory snowball fight.

Throughout the afternoon we sledded down, we  trudged up, the kids and grandkid pelted each other with snowballs, I took pictures.  We had fun.

Once our jeans were soaked through (we haven’t had enough snow in recent years to justify the cost of water-resistant nylon snow pants), and we were cold enough for hot chocolate, we set off for the cars to go home.   We shook off the snow, gathered the sleds, recovered all loose hats and mittens, and trudged down the hill (since the German sleds wouldn’t slide down).

As we neared the road I relaxed.  I’d made it through the day, fine and dandy. Time for a relaxing evening at home.

The lesson here is to never let down your guard.

Trust me to find the one part of the roadside with a dip hidden under the snow.  Like a horse in a field with gophers, I stepped in a hole.  Down I went with the snow now reaching above my knees.  And I fell sideways.  And I twisted my knee.

I was ticked.

I had managed to ascend a hill, sled down it, reascend, chase a child down it, go back up, follow the kid down again, reascend, and chase around in the snow, all without injury.  Then, within fifteen feet of the car, I sprained my knee. It reminded me of the time at the end of PE class where, for one “Please, Mrs. M, just one more” time, I jumped up on the parallel bars, raised myself up to do a few more swings, and fell through the bars as my wrists collapsed, spraining both of them. Because of that little life lesson, I’m usually cautious about being tired and overdoing things.

The follow-up is that the tricksy fates weren’t done with me.

I thought I was on the road to recovery but here I am, sitting again, because, after spending that month in this chair — and not getting any thinner — I went out again.  My knee felt better; I would be indoors; a little exercise would strengthen the muscles and such.  Right?  This time the outing was to Planet Comicon (where I spoke with Wil Wheaton and glimpsed George Takei!).

I’m the middle-height person — the one who puts you in mind of that lovable fairy Merriweather, from Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty — with my daughter and one of my grandsons.

I had another great time but my knee did not.  That is why I had to cancel Malice.  If over a month of parking myself in a chair hasn’t mended the knee enough to tolerate three hours at Planet Comicon, there’s no way I’ll weather three days of Malice.

The knee is recovering by inches.  I’m pretty sure that by next year, it will be back in shape for miles of convention trekking.  I’m looking forward to Malice 2014, but I’m still not happy about missing Malice 2013.

If I have an opportunity for sledding next winter, I don’t know that I’ll take it.  One late-winter of discontent is enough.