Here, Now, Then, and There

You don't have to know what a thing's all about to like it. I sat beside her.
          —Theodore Sturgeon, The Dark Room.

Yesterday I drank two pots of coffee[1] and then stayed up far too late revisiting some of my least favorite stories. Upon waking at 6 a.m. this morning, I found I could straighten my injured leg about 95-98% of the way without any hint of pain. Pressing the matter further hurts, but not in the same overwhelming fashion as previously.[2] I even managed a three-block trek to the Rose Garden without difficulty this morning and again in the afternoon. In fact, I brought along my laptop on my second visit, and I'm writing this post there now.

The Rose Garden is a small park I've been haunting for the last several weeks. My neighborhood is full of scenic little parks and gardens mostly ignored by the greater public. The Rose Garden is my favorite at the moment. Despite being a historical landmark in a heavily trafficked tourist area, it is almost always quite quiet and never crowded. And it's very near my apartment. For the last couple of weeks, the Rose Garden was about as far as I could manage before my knee called it quits. And that was a significant improvement over the weeks before, when merely crossing the street was a considerable challenge.

My knee was doing so well that I even managed to stop into the drugstore on my way home.[3] There I scored some liquid dish soap and a few rolls of toilet paper. All they had left for soap were giant bottles of Dawn, which is what I was looking for, so that was a win. The toilet paper selection wasn't much more diverse, either. There were a few packages of what looked like store-brand industrial-grade sandpaper and an entirely untouched display of 7th Generation brand bog roll. I bought the 7th Generation out of morbid curiosity. How bad can it be that it gathers dust even throughout the worst toilet tissue shortage of our age? I'll let you know in a week or two.

Footnotes

1. I have a very small coffee pot intended for making pour-over style coffee. It only holds 4 cups, which, being coffee cups, are only 6 oz each, so two pots is about 48 oz, or 3 typical large coffees.
2. Tomorrow I'm scheduling an appointment with a Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation specialist. I'm sure the medical offices are a dystopian nightmare at this point. I'll manage it.
3. You may be wondering how I can be in the park writing this blog post, yet simultaneously recollecting my trip home from the park where I'm currently still writing this same post. You ought to lighten up. I'm not really in the park writing this post anymore. I've been home for hours, days, and possibly even years now.