In the midst of a flurry of new-president-first-day executive orders/actions that ranged from horrifying to ludicrous, I reached the two-week post-surgical milestone for my knee replacement. I saw the surgeon, who removed the bandages and said the mess underneath looked “beautiful,” and cleared me to remove the compression stockings and, even better, to SHOWER. I went home and took a nice long shower and washed my hair twice and got into clean soft clothes and felt wonderful. Except for all the news, which was unrelenting and terrible.

I sure would appreciate it if journalists could make it clear when it’s “Something he wrote on a piece of paper that will immediately change laws/lives” vs. “Something he wrote on a piece of paper that will take years for the courts to resolve and in the meantime will have no affect on our lives other than the heavy burden of despair that someone would WANT to do this.” I suppose sometimes they don’t know, either. There are a lot of things he “couldn’t do” that he has done, because it turned out the people who were supposed to stop him chose not to stop him, or that there were no stopping mechanisms in place because no one else needed to be told not to do these things.

Home physical therapy has ended, and I saw the local physical therapist for the first time. She told me I was going to hate her for ten minutes out of every session, and then she told me to relax and breathe, and then she MANUALLY BENT MY KNEE, so much farther than I have so far been able to bend it—WELL past the point where it feels to me as if I come to a hard stop and literally cannot bend it any further. Afterward, while I was panting and wondering how loudly I had yelped, she said “Was I right? Do you hate me?” and I said “Not yet.” Her efforts have made me work harder at my physical therapy exercises at home: the more I can bend myself, the less she will have to bend me.