True, it has been awhile. I still have that same beach scene that I am “a week away from finishing” and have added no wander posts despite spending a good amount of time out there in the spring swiss countryside. Truth is I had been pretty absorbed in rediscovering my old pre-kids love of mountain biking (now that we live in the perfect place for it and all…)

Sadly, the healthy self preservation that kept me from taking up with this old flame – the fear of being an injured mom – deserted me. After years of riding injury-free the seemingly inevitable happened. Big time.

Long story short, I just returned home from a lovely week’s stay at the local hospital, where I received some new hardware for my right collarbone and elbow. There was no bling, however, for the broken pelvis which must heal on its own, nor the concussion,which thankfully only amounted to an hour or so of lost memory.

So, there goes my normal mobility for a short while, my hiking for a longer while, and biking for a good, long, while. Am I down, though? No!! The past week has been chock full of teachable moments and “mandatory time to reflect.” My main take-away lessons were more or less as follows:

1. It can always be worse – I am not dead or permanently (much) damaged. That is cause for thankfulness and celebration.
2. When God closes a window, he opens a language school – Once it was determined my German was functionally passable, the rest of the week was a “free” German immersion program. I am amused at the surety that the pain meds promoted some colourful if not linguistically correct self expression.
3.  Nurses are simply wonderful – selbstverständlich.
4. If you are gonna get injured, its good to do so in Switzerland – Staying at that hospital was like being at a spa. I cannot say enough about the level of care our reasonably priced insurance gets us here.
5. Do what you love, just don’t be a jacka** about it – I cannot say with any certainty that more common sense would have saved the day, but certainly it would not have hurt. (full disclosure: accident not result of doing anything remotely “brag-able”).
6. Mom says “Wear your helmet!” – Seriously. Judging by the state of my helmet post accident, I don’t think I would be writing this today if I were not.
7. My husband may well be best man on earth – I am only being slightly subjective here.

Anyhow, don’t worry about me, I am well on my way to being right as rain. And now I have time to finish that beach painting! Maybe my new left hand method will do me good.

Cheers – HD