Yesterday I made my annual pilgrimage to Fairfax Radiology for one-plus hours of pure MRI-powered bliss. One of my favorite ways to spend my free time.

The medical building housing this imaging center sits just off Northern Virginia’s “Beltway,” which is to say I-495, just across the street from Inova’s world-class Fairfax Hospital, with a beautiful glass front, and free valet parking. Rarely do I splurge on the parking perk, but I took advantage of it yesterday, because I’m still in The Boot and needed a ride up to the third floor from a qualified wheelchair pusher.

That, however, is not where the true entertainment begins. (Bear with me… I’m trying my best to build up the anticipation.)

When I arrived at the MRI suite (and why they call it a “suite” is beyond me, because there is no minibar or king size bed, or view of the Vegas strip, but whatever), I was one of something like ten other people there, and I was pushed to an office to sign some papers. As I began signing the paperwork, I heard a voice that said what I could swear sounded like, “now boarding.”

I would later realize this was an omen.

By the time I finished filling out my paperwork and was pushed back into the waiting room, I was parched and wishing I’d brought my Owala with me into the building, so I was thankful to see, not far from me, a water cooler next to a stack of paper cups. And so I got up from my wheelchair and walked on the heel of The Boot (since I have still not been cleared to put full weight on it due to a still-healing Feb. 10 osteotomy and toe amputation), looking like The Penguin (so my son tells me—not to be confused with “a” penguin), to get a cup of water. I filled up the cup and downed it in one go—something I would later regret.

I returned to my wheelchair and sat there watching HGTV, the go-to channel for every radiology suite, until a radiology tech (we’ll call him “Joe”) who had all the warmth of, well, a radiology tech, pushed me through double doors and to the doorway to a changing area, where I dismounted and did The Penguin walk down the hallway to a changing room.

I was asked all the normal MRI pre-screening questions there: do I have metal shavings in my eyes, do I have a pacemaker, do I have any prison tattoos (yes, that really is an MRI pre-screening question), am I wearing a bra with underwire or anything else that contains metal… After answering no to them all, I was told to take off my Apple Watch and put it and my phone in my purse. Joe then left me and I waited another twenty minutes until he came to retrieve me, taking the key to the room with him, and leading me back out of the changing area to my waiting chariot. As he pushed me into the MRI area, another tech rounded the corner, clearly worried, and yelled for him to stop. The wheelchair I was sitting in, that Joe was merrily pushing into the MRI area, wasn’t even supposed to have gotten past the double doors that led to the changing area.

Omen number two.

At this point, all I could imagine was dying a fiery death on my metal wheelchair as I was sucked into a whirring MRI machine. Thankfully, though, the second tech brought us an MRI-friendly wheelchair, which I happily got into, preventing me from meeting my doom.

Joe then wheeled me to the IV station, where I sat in a blood-draw chair that had arm rests on either side, to prepare for my second-most fun part of the day, until I realized I had to pee, and so I slid off the chair and sat in the wheelchair and was then pushed down the hallway to a bathroom.

“There were voices down the corridor, I thought I heard them say… Welcome to the Hotel California…”

Sorry. Wrong story.

What I really heard was the voice of a man who’d clearly not read the “what to wear to an MRI” directions, and as a result was wearing a hospital gown and nubby socks, exiting one of the two bathrooms in the suite, telling the radiology tech who was pushing me down the hallway that the bathroom was flooded and he didn’t want to get his socks wet. Understandable. So I was left there in my wheelchair, while the tech went to find help from whoever radiology techs find help from who fix flooded bathrooms in an MRI suite, and the man went to the other non-flooded bathroom. Then he exited and told me, “There’s no water in that one.”

Now by that point I’m thinking to myself: huh. No water. Given my brush with death, that tracks.

But as I smelled the colitas rising up through the air, I hoped that was not the case.

“No water?” I asked, somewhat concerned by the news, thinking it’s going to be port-a-potty Tuesday at Fairfax Radiology.

“No, I mean there’s no water on the floor,” he said, smiling.

I was relieved at the news that there was, in fact, running water in the bathroom, so I went, then left and was once again pushed by Joe back to the IV room.

He pointed to the chair I’d earlier vacated, and I sat down again and held out my arms and he proceeded to tap the crook of them with his fingers, looking for a good vein and telling me, loud enough for the other tech in the room to hear, that he couldn’t find one.

Now this is a not uncommon thing for me, and I usually blame it on the chemo I received for Ewing’s sarcoma for ten months in 2021, but the truth is I had not hydrated enough yesterday for them to be able to find a vein, and I have terrible veins anyway. (Truly, I would not be a good candidate for IV drug use.)

The other tech in the room came over, pushed around on my arms, and pointed to a vein she’d found in the left.

“There,” she told him. “That one’s good. See it?” He nodded, but I could tell by his body language that he did not. I longed for her to take over from Joe, but she left the room and he snapped on a pair of gloves, then reached for a packet of alcohol wipes lying on top of the IV supply table next to me.

Shit.

The first time he stuck me he wriggled the IV’s catheter around until it was partway out of my vein, but still attached the saline-filled syringe to it and pulled the plunger back until he got a blood return, then pushed it forward, and the saline dripped out of my arm and down the side of the chair.

“Oh,” he said, casually, “Let me try again.”

I gritted my teeth and tried to act cool as he disconnected the syringe and went to retrieve another. He hooked it up to the half-out-of-my-vein catheter and pulled back on it, once again seeing a little blood return from the catheter, but this time not quite into the syringe. Then he once again tried to advance the plunger. Nothing.

“Hmm. It’s coming out, but it’s not going in,” he said.

“That’s what she said,” I said under my breath.

“What’s that?” he asked, but I thought it best not to repeat myself.

“Nothing,” I told him.

He reached for a square of gauze and pressed it to my arm then told me to hold it, and to stick out my right arm. And as he did this, I asked him, “Is this a common occurrence?”

“Yes,” he said.

Just so you know, this has never happened to me, and I’ve had multiple blood draws over the course of my nearly forty-nine years on planet earth. But I did as I was told and he tore open another alcohol packet, tapped around, and swabbed my arm, seemingly satisfied he’d found another vein. He stuck me again and I heard the snap of the IV go in. A good sign, I thought, as he retrieved a third syringe of saline and screwed it into the IV, then pulled back the plunger and pushed it into the IV. I looked over and saw the crook of my arm start to balloon up.

“This one’s blown,” he said. “Maybe we should try your hand.” He reached for another square of gauze. “Hold this.” I held my hand against the gauze as he pulled out the IV and started looking at my left arm again, first at my forearm and then at my hand.

“I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t use my hand,” I told him.

Thankfully, that was when the other tech returned to the room.

“Hey,” Joe asked her, “would you mind coming over here and giving me a hand?”

“Sure,” she said, and came over, pulled on a pair of gloves, swabbed the crook of my left arm, still bloody from Joe’s first two attempts, then swabbed my right, hooked up my IV and pushed saline into it.

“I can taste the salt,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief.

Then she taped it up, and as she did this, Joe came over again, surprised.

“Wow,” he said. “You found a vein?”

Duh.

“Yep,” she said, rolling her eyes. He ordered me off the chair and into the wheelchair, then pushed me back to the changing area. “Sorry,” he said, “you’ll have to wait here again. Then he walked down the hallway, unlocked the door to my changing room, and told me to have a seat. I hobbled toward him and he handed me the key.

I stared at IV tubing taped to my forearm and waited as Joe went to the room next to me to ask a woman there the same pre-screening questions he’d asked me earlier.

Roughly thirty minutes later, yet another tech appeared and had me hand her my things, which she then put inside a locker in the hallway.

“I’m going to be the one doing your MRI,” she said. “But first I’m going to have to set your things inside this locker. They need these rooms. What year were you born?”

For a minute I honestly couldn’t remember. Nineteen-something…

When I finally remembered and told her, she set the combination lock, then pushed me down the hallway in the MRI-friendly wheelchair.

“Um, should I use the bathroom?” I asked her. “I mean, I just used it thirty minutes ago, but should I go again?”

“Do you need to go?” she asked.

“Not really, but I’m going to be inside that tube for over an hour, so I feel like I should try.”

She agreed and pushed me back to bathroom number one, the floor of which was now dry, and I met her outside afterward and she pushed me in my wheelchair to the doorway of the MRI room. I leaned forward in the chair as she ran a wand over me to check for metal. Then she had me remove The Boot and leave it on the floor next to the door and pushed me inside, where I was told to lie down with my head facing the Donut of Doom, and I did as I was told and she put my earplugs in and placed a blanket over me and a little panic squeeze ball into my hand, then retreated to the room behind the machine.

As I mentioned earlier, this is not my first MS MRI rodeo. I’ve had this same series—brain, cervical, and thoracic—year after year going back to at least 2015. I’m surprised I don’t just stick to the machines on contact I’ve had so many. They used to be three-hour minimum marathon sessions, in fact, and I am not even kidding. Even with as many as I’ve had, though, I still fear having metal somewhere in my body that will lead to my internal organs being fried by the machine. So far, though, knock on wood, I’ve been lucky.

I felt the table move me into the machine, and then the jackhammering started, first pinging, then banging, and then, about twenty-five minutes in, a thud, thud, thud started, and I felt a jolt of what I can only describe as an electrical pulse under the left side of my body just along the strap of what I thought was my sans-metal sports bra. The jolt was so hard that I came up off the table and, for the first time in my life, I squeezed the panic ball. So this is how I go.

Then the banging stopped and the tech’s voice came on the intercom.

“Is everything okay?”

Is everything okay. Yeah. Except for that part where my back is being burned by giant magnets. I could just see the headlines: “Elizabeth Kirkland, 48, dies in Fairfax MRI machine.”

The tech came into the room and leaned over me as the table started to move me out of the machine.

“I think it’s this bra I’m wearing,” I said. “I’ve never worn it for an MRI before. I’d like to take it off.”

She helped me sit up and left the room as I quickly pulled my T-shirt up over my head and pulled my bra off, hoping it wouldn’t get stuck halfway up my body. After I’d successfully gotten my bra off, I pulled my T-shirt back on and the tech reentered the room, and I handed her the bra, which she set on a nearby chair. Then she helped me lie back down again as I apologized profusely. She placed the panic ball in my hand again and left the room once more and I felt the table slide me back into the machine.

By now I was seriously freaking out. Is there metal in my T-shirt? Is there metal in the elastic waistband of my yoga pants?

Just as my fear began to subside, I heard the pinging again, then the banging, and then, twenty-five minutes in, the thud, thud, thud, and again I felt the jolt. I considering squeezing the panic ball again, but instead laid there thinking of the news headlines and television coverage that would follow my death by MRI machine.

Death, thankfully, did not come. My urge to pee, however, did. Then the machine stopped and the table moved me out again, and the technician entered the room to come over and hook my IV up to the machine that would administer the contrast.

“Doing okay?” she asked.

“I do have to pee,” I admitted.

“There’s only another twenty-five minutes left,” she said. I told her I would hold it and she left the room. I tried to think of anything else but the need to pee as the minutes ticked by… slowly. I was so grateful I had not brought my Owala with me to the waiting room.

When the tech came in after the scan was done, I told her I’d still felt the jolt and guessed the reason for it must just have been the sequence. She nodded and I apologized again, then she pressed a square of gauze on my arm as she removed my IV and placed a bandage around it, then helped me up off the table and I took out my earplugs and placed them in her hand. Then she wheeled in my wheelchair and situated it just below where I was sitting and I balanced on one foot and did a not-so-graceful pirouette into it, handed me my bra, and pushed me out of the room where I put my boot back on. Another tech came over and pushed me back to the bathroom where I emptied my bladder for the third time, then to the changing area to retrieve my things from the locker.

I hobbled over to the door and to the combination lock. Two numbers above, two numbers below: 1-9-7-7. I turned the knob, unsuccessfully. I looked at the tech, then tried again. Still, it would not turn.

“What’s your combination?”

I told him, and he attempted to open it. Still no dice.

“You’re sure this is the right locker?” he asked. I nodded.

“Maybe there’s another way,” he said, and adjusted the combination, then turned the knob. It opened.

Thank God.

He reached in and pulled out my purse, handed it to me, and I slung it over my shoulder and hobbled back to the wheelchair and sat down, then he pushed me back to the waiting room, which by that time was nearly standing room only, and to my metal wheelchair.

“There’s a machine down,” the tech explained. “Engineering still hasn’t come up to fix it.”

Suddenly I felt relieved that I’d gotten in before that had happened.

“Wait here,” he said, and went up to the counter to tell the receptionist to call someone up to help me back down to my car. Then he disappeared through the double doors back into the MRI area, leaving me to sit in the waiting room next to fifty of my closest friends.

As I sat there waiting, a Gen Zer walked into the room wearing a T-shirt he’d either thrifted or swiped from an older friend or relative. Screen-printed on the front was a picture of Britney Spears and the words, “Oops, I did it again.”

Fitting.

And that was the time I almost died in an MRI machine.

I have a confession: I do not like Bridgerton, nor do I like Downton Abbey. For that matter, I don’t really like British period dramas at all—except for maybe Call the Midwife. Another controversial opinion: I don’t care to keep up with the Royals—with the exception of Prince Andrew, whose life after the Jeffrey Epstein scandal has become one of the best train wrecks I’ve ever watched. And not to go off on a tangent, but seriously, bring on the popcorn, because for me, anyway, Andy’s life story deserves to score at least in the high 80s on Rotten Tomatoes. Once a Royal? Yes. Flushed his “career” down the toilet because he’s a pedo? Also yes. (And I put “career” in quotes because, let’s face it, being a Royal is no more a career than being a nepo baby who was only cast in Fifty Shades.) Which brings me back to my earlier point, which is to say I don’t care to watch anything, really, about royalty, real or imaginary. (Sorry, BritBox and Netflix.)

My sister, on the other hand, loves that kind of shit. High drama romances set in huge castles in the British countryside, and pretty much anything pertaining to Prince William and Princess Kate.

I suppose this admission of guilt makes me a pariah in many social circles.

You know what I do like, though? Shows like Forensic Files, The First 48, and Hoarders. Anything about serial killers. Gritty documentaries, whether they were originally filmed in Czechoslovakian and later dubbed in English or shot entirely in English. Traffic, Contagion, Erin Brockovich (or any movie directed by Steven Soderbergh, for that matter). A24 films…  So what category does that put me in, exactly? I guess with people interested in watching  how someone killed their hoarding royal pedo Czechoslovakian-speaking mother-in-law as she’s being chased by a serial killer until she gets sick because she lived her entire life next to a petroleum company, which is the only place she can afford to live because she spent her life savings on heroin and cocaine, all shot using a brown filter and filmed on location in Mexico? (And for the record, yes, I would 100% watch that movie or limited series.)

I always say I like that stuff because I was a journalism major, because I like to think I lived a fairly normal childhood, so I don’t think it’s that…

But I can’t be the only one who likes watching those shows, even though my husband would beg to differ. I mean, there are whole channels built around them. (Investigation Discovery, anyone?) What about you? What kind of shows do you watch? Because if it’s the same kind of weird shit I do, LFG.

Every morning when I turn on the television, the channel called “Movie Action Hub” is already playing. I have never intentionally selected this channel. Under normal circumstances I would change it immediately.

Unfortunately, I am currently laid up in a recliner recovering from foot surgery. (The surgery was February 10. It is now March 6. I am pretty much doomed.)

Anyway, the movie du jour was Freejack, and I caught only the last twenty or thirty minutes, which means I am not remotely qualified to review it. Naturally, I am going to do that anyway.

The film stars Emilio Estevez, who appears to maintain the same facial expression for (I’m assuming) the entire movie. Mick Jagger is also in it. Yes, that Mick Jagger. 

It also features Sir Anthony Hopkins, who most people know as Hannibal Lecter. Rene Russo and Jonathan Banks are in it as well, and Jerry Hall (if you’re under forty may need to Google her) shows up too, which feels appropriate given that she was once married to Mick Jagger. Esai Morales also appears. In other words, the cast is oddly respectable for a movie that seems to require a very specific state of mind.

Rotten Tomatoes gives it 29%, which honestly feels generous.

Freejack came out in 1992 and was directed by Geoff Murphy, a man whose résumé includes several Steven Seagal movies. That fact alone tells you quite a lot about what you are about to experience.

The story takes place in the distant future of 2009. In this version of the future, technology has advanced far enough that extremely wealthy elderly people can hire criminals to travel back in time, kidnap healthy young victims, and deliver them to the present so their bodies can be used for brain transplants. Mick Jagger plays one of the people who does the kidnapping. Emilio Estevez plays Alex Furlong, a race car driver who is plucked out of the past moments before a fatal crash and transported to the future to serve as someone else’s replacement body.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, he escapes.

What follows is a chase through a grim version of New York City while various people attempt to recapture him before the elderly billionaire who purchased his body loses the opportunity to move into it. I cannot speak with authority about the first hour of the movie, but the final stretch consists largely of people shouting, running, and making extremely intense eye contact.

The film is loosely based on the 1959 Hugo Award–winning novel Immortality, Inc., by Robert Sheckley. That sounds impressive until you watch the movie and realize that somewhere between the book and the final edit, several things may have gone sideways.

The soundtrack features bands such as the Scorpions, Jesus Jones, and Jane Child, which means the movie feels like a time capsule from the early 1990s. (Not that Emilio Estevez in a starring role wasn’t already doing most of that work.)

At one point the stream buffered and that little spinning circle appeared in the middle of the screen while the internet tried to catch up. You may not be surprised to hear that the interruption actually improved the experience.

You can watch the entire movie on YouTube now, which seems fair.

Dispatches from convalescence

I had my toe amputated last week.

Which, frankly, felt like the main event.

There was surgery. There was anesthesia. There was a boot. There was a whole dramatic arc involving waterproofing my foot like I was preparing it for a NASA mission just to take a shower.

And then… there was the walnut.

If you’ve never been on opioids after surgery, here’s what happens: your colon politely clocks out. It takes a vacation. It ignores emails. It stops forwarding internal memos. Everything slows down. Time becomes theoretical.

I pooped the night of my surgery because I had the audacity to eat a kale salad from Chick-fil-A, and kale fears no narcotic. Then… nothing. Days passed. I was busy managing medication schedules like a suburban pharmacist and Googling whether ibuprofen has feelings about my liver. Meanwhile, my colon was stockpiling.

And then today.

Today I became aware of my own internal infrastructure in a way that felt biblical.

There I was: one week post-toe amputation, in a surgical boot, sitting on the toilet, trying to negotiate with something that felt like it had been kiln-dried inside me.

The cramps came in waves. Actual waves. I briefly considered whether I should start timing them like contractions. I leaned forward. I breathed. I reflected on an episode of a medical drama I had watched the night before where an elderly woman arrived impacted and left victorious but projectile.

This is what happens when you watch true crime instead of editing your novel.

You assume you are now That Woman.

Spoiler: I was not That Woman. I was just a person with hard stool and a flair for catastrophizing.

Eventually—after small negotiations, strategic retreats, and what I can only describe as Booted Labor & Delivery—progress was made. Not glamorous progress. Not cinematic. Just human progress.

And as I sat there, I realized something deeply irritating:

This is exactly what writing (and editing) a novel feels like.

You build something slowly. You let it sit. You ignore it while you watch true crime. Pressure accumulates. The longer you avoid it, the harder it becomes. Then one day you decide it’s time. And it hurts. It’s awkward. You wonder if you’ve ruined everything. You consider calling in reinforcements. You think about suppositories—metaphorical or otherwise.

And then, finally, something decent-sized emerges.

Relief follows. Not immediately. There are aftershocks. Small intermittent cramps. The system recalibrates.

Colon as metaphor.

Opioids slow you down. Fear slows you down. Perfectionism slows you down. And eventually the only way out is through—gently, with breathing, preferably not straining too hard.

I would like to say I returned heroically to my manuscript afterward.

Instead, I settled back into my recliner, foot elevated and heating pad on my abdomen, marveling at how late-stage civilization allows a woman to narrate her own gastrointestinal crisis to the void while actively taking a shit.

If that’s not creative process, I don’t know what is.

Last week, I had my toe amputated.

(Stay with me.)

Today, I discovered I have been sleeping at a Sleep Number setting of FIVE for what appears to be multiple fiscal quarters.

For those unfamiliar with Sleep Number technology, five is not a “preference.” Five is what happens when you accidentally brush the remote in 2021 and never emotionally recover.

For years I have wondered:

Why does this mattress feel like hard plastic?

Why does my upper back hurt?

Why does my side look like a geological depression?

Turns out: I have been sleeping on what can best be described as a gently inflated pool float.

Setting five is not “soft.”

It is “suggestion of air.”

This afternoon, while lying flat on my back with my foot elevated like a Renaissance painting of convalescence, I realized something was off. The mattress claimed it was at 100.

Reader, it was not.

I had been inflating the wrong side.

My side was at five.

My husband’s side was fine.

Naturally.

I inflated my side to 100, briefly considered leaving his there as a social experiment, and then decided I am, in fact, a good person.

At 100, I felt like I was lying on a folding table.

We negotiated down to 85.

Peace was restored.

Meanwhile, I had convinced myself I might need shoulder surgery. (I have already had a C6/7 fusion because I like drama.)

But no.

I just needed air.

And a better pillow.

And to stop holding my phone above my face like I was training for Thoracic Olympics.

In conclusion:

My mattress is fine.

My spine is dramatic but intact.

My toe is gone.

My pride is wounded.

I have saved approximately $4,000.

If you need me, I will be napping at 85 like a fiscally responsible adult.

And if you own a Sleep Number bed, please check your settings.

You may also be living at five.

Yesterday, I did what I always do before something big and inconvenient:

I cleaned.

Not deep-cleaned. Not “let me reorganize my entire life and finally deal with the closet” cleaned.

Just… functional cleaned.

The bathrooms.

The kitchen counters (mostly).

The floors that actually get walked on.

The kind of cleaning that says, I will not be able to do much for a while, and I would like my future self to suffer less.

Apparently this is called nesting, and yes—it’s a real thing before surgery. You prepare your environment the way your brain knows how, because your body is about to be temporarily off-duty. It’s not anxiety, exactly. It’s logistics with feelings.

I did not, for the record, touch my closet.

That would have been a bridge too far.

The closet is a different emotional project.

By late afternoon, I was sweaty, proud, and completely done. And then—because the universe loves timing—I stopped moving and immediately became freezing.

Our windows are original to our 1996 house, which somehow makes them old now.

Not old old. Just… vintage.

In the same way Green Day is now considered classic rock, which I still refuse to process.

The gas fireplace was on, looking beautiful and doing absolutely nothing useful, because gas fireplaces are more about vibes than heat. The thermostat was set to 70, but my body cycled between I am overheating and I have entered the Ice Age every five minutes.

Which honestly feels like a metaphor for my entire existence lately.

Today, I’m having surgery.

They’re amputating my second toe and shortening the one next to it.

This is not news, exactly—the decision has been made—but I don’t think decision is the same thing as readiness.

I am not ready.

I know it’s “just a toe.”

I know I’ve had far bigger things happen to my body.

I know all the rational arguments.

But this particular toe has been with me for nearly 49 years.

It has survived childhood, adulthood, bad shoes, worse shoes, pregnancies, cancer, surgery, and a truly impressive five-year era of post-surgical freelancing where it stuck straight up like it was trying to get better reception.

It has history.

It has personality.

It has, frankly, overstayed its lease—but still.

You don’t spend almost five decades with a body part and feel nothing when it’s time to say goodbye.

People keep reminding me how well I handle things. How I always find the humor. How resilient I am. Which is kind—and also a little misleading.

Humor isn’t bravery.

It’s a coping mechanism.

It’s how I hold two things at once:

This is absurd and this is hard.

I can joke about pickling a toe, cremating it and turning it into a diamond, mummifying it and having my husband wear it to work on a lanyard (office dress codes permitting), or selling it on eBay. I can laugh about how my friends have collectively decided this toe deserves more afterlife options than most people.

And I can still be quietly sad about letting it go.

Both things are true.

The nesting, the cleaning, the worrying about towels being clean and whether or not I can apply lotion before surgery (I can’t) and whether my veins will cooperate—it’s all part of the same instinct. It’s my nervous system saying, If I can’t control what’s about to happen, I can at least make the landing softer.

So the house is “good enough.”

The closet remains untouched.

The windows are still vintage.

Green Day is still apparently classic rock, which I will never accept.

And now, I’m about to hand myself over to people who know what they’re doing and trust that my body—which has been through a lot—knows how to do this too.

I’m not ready.

But I’m prepared.

And sometimes, that’s the best we can do.

After two surgeries designed to save my toe (the same one that had cancer in 2020 and through nearly half of 2021), my foot surgeon and I have decided to stop pretending and simply… not do that anymore.

This feels like a mature outcome. A respectful one. At some point, you have to accept when a toe has chosen a different life path.

I briefly considered asking if I could keep it. Not in a dramatic way—more like, Hey, do you offer curbside pickup for body parts? But it’s not a whole leg, and I didn’t want to seem greedy. They can have it. I’ve had it for almost 49 years. That feels fair.

Still, I did wonder about cremation. Surely people cremate toes? Or at least someone has tried. Maybe the ashes could be scattered into the ocean. Or placed into a necklace. Nothing says “closure” like wearing your former toe around your neck at a dinner party and refusing to explain it.

This is where my sister entered the conversation and immediately made it worse.

She suggested I have the toe pickled.

Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. Literally. Pickled. Preserved. Floating.

I don’t know where one even pickles a toe. Is this something the hospital offers if you ask nicely? Do you bring your own vinegar? Is it artisanal? Do you get to choose between dill and sweet, or is that a decision for later once the shock wears off?

I briefly imagined opening my refrigerator and finding it between the olives and the mustard—just there, suspended in brine, preserved, smug, and somehow still judging my life choices. I imagine this is when a doctor would gently suggest I stop being in charge of my own medical decisions.

Cremation, by comparison, suddenly felt extremely normal. Tasteful, even. Respectable. Something you could explain to people without them slowly backing away.

The amputation itself, oddly enough, isn’t even the worst part of this news.

The real tragedy is that my other foot—the one with the bunion that desperately needs minimally invasive surgery—is not being fixed yet. Which means another full year of practical shoes, supportive soles, and pretending I don’t care about footwear.

More importantly, it means another year without my cowboy boots.

I own beautiful cowboy boots. Real ones. Confident ones. The kind that make you feel like a person who has her life together, even if she is actively Googling “can you pickle a toe” at midnight.

And now they wait. In the closet. Judging me.

I know, objectively, that this is not the biggest thing I’ve ever survived. I have endured worse than a rebellious toe and delayed footwear gratification. But loss is sneaky. It shows up disguised as a joke and taps you on the shoulder when you aren’t paying attention.

So yes—the toe is going.

Yes—I will be fine.

Yes—I will almost certainly make inappropriate jokes about it forever.

But if you see me next year still talking about my cowboy boots like a widow talks about her late husband, please mind your business.

Some losses take time.

Every time Northern Virginia hears the word snow, we collectively lose our damn minds.

Milk disappears. Bread vanishes. Eggs are treated like contraband. And suddenly people who haven’t cooked since 2019 are emotionally support-shopping like Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Which brings me to a recent post in a local Facebook group—one that stopped me dead in my scrolling tracks.

“I’m ready for the damn snow,” the caption announced.

Reader, she was not.

On the table:

– Wine (fine, expected, encouraged)

– Cold brew coffee (sure, we love a caffeinated panic)

– Nerds

– Sour Patch Kids

– Pitted black olives

– A single cucumber (???)

And suddenly I realized something important:

If our survival during a snowstorm—or frankly, a zombie apocalypse—depended on this grocery haul, we would all perish immediately.

Now listen. I am not a minimalist pantry person. I, too, have an eclectic assortment of household staples. Somewhere in my house right now there are probably Nerds and Sour Patch Kids. I am not above chaos snacks.

But here’s the difference:

Those items exist incidentally, not as part of a deliberate emergency preparedness strategy.

Because what exactly is the plan here?

Day 1:

Cold brew and wine. Vibes. Confidence.

Day 2:

Nerds for breakfast. Sour Patch Kids for lunch. A handful of black olives for… electrolytes? Hope?

Day 3:

One cucumber, ceremoniously sliced, as morale collapses.

I commented—because I could not help myself—that black olives are the perfect complement to Nerds and Sour Patch Kids, and that very few people know this.

Her response was simply:

“Really”

And that’s when I knew.

She was not joking.

She thought I was offering a pairing suggestion.

This was not irony.

This was a woman who genuinely believed she had assembled a functional snowstorm spread.

And again—wine? Absolutely. No notes.

But everything else feels like what happens when you grocery shop exclusively by vibes and dopamine.

There is no soup.

There is no bread.

There is no protein.

There is no plan.

It’s just sugar, olives, caffeine, and confidence.

Which, to be fair, is how many of us live our lives—but not how we survive a weather event.

The thing is, I don’t even seek out “storm snacks.” I don’t suddenly think, Ah yes, the barometric pressure is dropping—fetch the Nerds. These items simply exist in my house alongside boring, sustaining foods that will, in fact, keep us alive if the power goes out.

This grocery list isn’t wrong.

It’s just… unhinged.

And honestly?

If the snow comes and this woman thrives on nothing but cold brew, candy, olives, and vibes?

I will have no choice but to respect her.

But I will not be joining her bunker.