Top Ten

...Things to do While Waiting for a Broken Neck to Heal

1. Spin on the indoor bike trainer while watching old episodes of Amazing Race online.
2. Read almost a book a day, mostly non-fiction survival and adventure stories, then dream each night that I'm in some crazy race involving life rafts, dog sleds, avalanches, crevasses, and glaciers.
3. Start a painting, but because I don't know what I'm doing, keep layering colors until it is a uniform shade of grayish green.
4. Take walks while holding my arms out in front of me clutching imaginary bike handlebars and lifting my knees with high pedaling motions.
5. Fill online shopping carts and never check out.
6. Silently Curse all my Facebook friends who post about running and biking and hiking.
7. Pick small rocks out of the new garden space and count the earthworms I find while doing it.
8. Paint my fingernails with odd colored polishes found in my daughter's old room.
9. Sit on my front porch and watch the guys who are supposed to be building a house stand around smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee all day, or sit on my back porch and listen to neighbors argue about the same five bucks they've been fighting over for the past two weeks.
10. Talk to my deaf dog about all the above and enjoy the fact that he looks at me as if he is interested.