August 31, 2008 – I love living in the country, and find it difficult to even visit my old life. Here’s a reason why. At the county fair, while taking a photo of some farmers, a big cow stepped on my foot. I didn’t notice it, but the wound became infected, and yesterday, suddenly quite swollen and painful. I have diabetes, so food injuries are something you are supposed to take seriously, and of course I didn’t, until I did. I ended up at a nearby drop-in emergency clinic in Cambridge, N.Y. The doctor recognized me, and is very interested in hospice work. She treated my foot, and then we talked about hospice work for awhile, trading stories, experiences and favorite authors.
 Then I went over to a nearby Rite-Aid to get some antibiotics – antibiotics for diabetics are always very strong, because of circulation issues, and I hate taking them – and while waiting for the prescription to be filled the pharmacist asked me how I hurt my toe, and we got talking about that cow, and then my steers and cow, and then the ones he grew up with, which drew the woman he was working with to talk about her father and how much he loved his cows and how he always got drunk after taking them to market, and then I told them all about Elvis and my own concerns about whether it was right to spend all that money on hay for a steer, and so everybody – including two farmers in the line – agreed that it was okay to love a cow, as long as you could send it to market if you needed to, because cows are not really pets and that needs to be understood. Which led us to hospice work, because Ellie, the clerk at the cash register has just enrolled her mom in hospice and so Izzy and I are scheduled, it seems, to visit her next week.
  That is my life. And this is one of the things I love about it.  And yes, I got the meds and my toe is draining and soaking and I just have to stay off it for a couple of days, which I absolutely will not do.