Back to the daily blog: you are with me all the time. Everything I encounter carries with it a blog rumination. One's inner dialogue never stops, it seems, except as Sharon Butala describes it, when one is in the middle of a primeval prairie (south western Saskatchewan). See her book, The Perfection of the Morning, 1994.

So I have lot of little fiddly semi-thoughts that have surfaced over the last few weeks, things I learned, things I forgot I knew, things I pondered on, and so on.

1) I forgot but remembered again to push an elevator button with a knuckle instead of with my index finger so as to avoid or evade a few of the germs rampant.

2) The older I get the more I am immersed in "l'essence des choses", Proust's expression for the distillation of memories from the past that return and return and return triggered by every new experience of an old, familiar object. It's a wonder I get through the day, ambushed as I am by memory. The corollary to that is, what must it be like to have had memory erased or blurred beyond recognition?

3) I saw "The Meddler" this week, Susan Sarandon's new movie in which she makes love to an egg. She fries an egg in a well carved in a slice of bread and eats it lovingly and with great relish. I was in the loo after the show was over and two women came in. From my cubicle I heard one say, "I know what I'm going to have for breakfast tomorrow". I said, "It's called egg-in-the hole." And another voice said, "In Ottawa we called it toad-in-the-hole." And I said "It's also called Pop-Eye." And that's what I had for breakfast this morning. And I guess it's an essence of one of my choses from now on.

4) Last night I finished the journal I was keeping during my Leg Ordeal. I had a couple of pages left and I wanted to end it so that I could begin afresh, but not fresh, in my trip journal. June First, you know. So I went through the weeks leading up to my trip when I started the trip record. I wrote down all the noodges (arrows and underlines) reminding me to follow up on an idea, or a person or a task, easily filling the remaining pages. Now all I have to do is do them. Not the point here; the point is, what a horrible time I had, worse than I allowed myself to admit. In another age I'd have lost my leg As it was, with all the anti-biotics and painkillers and enforced rest, I am in bad shape now. Is this post-traumatic stress? Well, I won't complain now as I (slowly) recover my previous strength - I hope. - such as it was.

More anon.

I didn't write yesterdays' blog, I'll get to it tomorrow.

Because, do you remember what I keep saying, that it takes 28 days to make a habit? And what about un-breaking or re-making?

Take swimming, which I do and have and will continue to do, thank goodness. Personal history, if anyone remembers or cares: I swam as is - was- my habit, on the morning of January 31. At 11 o'clock that evening I fell and damaged my leg, badly. So I did not swim on February 1. I did not swim again, in fact, until May 11. Three whole months! I didn't break my habit, but I needed to break in to it: five minutes the first few mornings, getting my wind and strength back until last week I swam my full half hour daily plus post-swim exercises. This week I began to pedal again, five minutes to start.

And this week I am going back to a physiotherapist for traction to help my lower back. Oh, plus more walking. I have a Fitbit now and I must walk a minimum of 8000 steps a day, more as I get stronger. To those of you who are stronger (younger) than I this may seem like puny efforts but they mean a huge difference to me, my health, my stamina and my resolve.

I realize that I was arrogant and overly confident in my assumption of resilient good health and strength. One fall is all it took to take it all - almost all - away. Very humbling. I will not take pills, if I can help it.

This is related to the time it has taken me to return to my daily blog. There were complications there, too, not of my doing. In the southern Pacific ocean, we relied on two satellites to take our messages back to mother earth. They were not quite on speaking terms and there was a time there when our email and online services were capricious and slow, at best. Add to that a misunderstanding I had with SquareSpace, the provider of my cobwebblog. Those of you who saw my efforts will know what I mean: I could not post a legitimate entry, and what I salvaged emerged at the end of the posts instead of at the top. I started a dialogue with SS and had to prove to them that I am who I am before they sent me a video to show me how to latch on again. It was very small with a tiny cursor as my guide and no sound to explain. My beloved computer guru, mentor and all-around genius, Jennifer, made a house call and guided me out of the thicket.

I shouted huzzah and posted, asking where I should begin?

In the first comment I had received in over a month, faithful Marla picked me up where I had left off and asked me to tell what happened after we picked up speed, leaving Easter Island in an effort to get a medical emergency to land for full care, thus reducing the number of Sea Days to Lima. Yes, well, we never did find out, but we were on the port side when we docked so we saw, from our balcony, the ambulance drive up and the emergency carried out to it on a gurney. There was no sheet over his face (we agreed it was a he), nor was there an intravenous tentacle attached to his arm, and no oxygen tank. We never learned what his problem was or whether he survived. On our trip last year a long-term traveller made it her business to know everything and delighted in being the one to tell all of us. She was on another cruise. My room-mate and I were happy in each other's company and didn't make many friends so we had little extraneous communication. We had only 18 days to break the friendship barrier, as opposed to 109 our last trip, and we were content to leave it at that. Every trip has its own dynamic.

More tomorrow, or maybe yesterday.