It was a rather fitting start to the month of November this morning. After a nice clear night, we awoke to the coldest start of the season, with temperatures down into the 20s. Cold doesn’t kill ticks, unfortunately, but hopefully it at least pissed them off. As for me, my worst fears were realized yesterday. OK, not my worst, worst fears (that’s coming up a week from today), but the thing I’ve been dreading since I began taking the bus to work.

I managed to get the mower off the tractor over the weekend and got the cab (mostly) on. That doesn’t sound like much (and it isn’t), but that tiny bit of exertion somehow managed to inflame one of my feet. I have an egg below my right ankle bone that looks like somebody surgically inserted a golf ball under the skin. By the time I got home last night, my foot felt as though I was walking on a water balloon, and the pain shot all the way up to my knee.

It’s pretty difficult to be my normal charming self under these conditions, let alone stand at my desk all day and then walk home. The bus driver couldn’t get to the curb to let me off, so I had to drop off the final step and onto that foot (in hindsight, I perhaps should have led with the other foot, though that one has what feels like an inflamed tendon that runs across the foot to my bog toe, so that’s not so great either). That hurt, let me tell ya.

So I kept it iced up last night before bed (and this morning), and between that and the Ibuprofen, the pain was manageable this morning. Still looks like my ankle’s nine months pregnant, though.

Today I’m sitting at my desk for a change. It’s already killing my back, but I really don’t want to stand on that damn foot all day (I wish I had some ice and could keep the damn thing elevated).

It’s really hard to explain to the dogs that I can’t get up to let them in/out every five minutes.

I’ve had these bouts last for quite a while in the past, so I could be in for a long, long month. The worst part is, I’ve been doing everything right lately. No beer in close to two months, no bad food (not all that much food altogether, really), no enjoyment. No nothing – except work.

Basically, it sucks.

Speaking of sucking, I was getting fairly confident that we not only wouldn’t have President Trump but maybe – just maybe – we’d get the Republicans out of the Senate. Then James Comey had to stick his big smelly Weiner into everything and fuck it all up.

It’s Melania I feel sorry for at this point, because you know this has given Donnie a perpetual woody, and his campaign won’t let him score any hookers until after the election. And now that Ivanka’s out of the house, Melania’s stuck with his bloated sweaty carcass on top of her. It’s 30 seconds that must feel like an eternity.

I’m sure she knew what the job entailed when she accepted his down payment, but, still. Nobody deserves that.

I don’t know if this e-mail bullshit (and it is bullshit, but it doesn’t matter because that’s not how it’s being reported to the unwashed masses – aka “undecided voters”) will put Trump in the White House (this ABC poll has him leading by one point and 538 has the odds down to 74-26 for Clinton – with a lot of swing states that looked safe suddenly appearing disturbingly close and an increased likelihood of a split popular/electoral vote), but even if not, it could really fuck up things in the Senate, and we already know the Republicans are gonna be bigger obstructionists to Clinton than they’ve been to even Obama.

Oh well, I’d better stop thinking about it. All this stress is going straight to my foot.