!Over the dog
 --- 
agk's phlog 
1 June 2021 @ 2308
 --- 
written on x61, nose snotty 
with seasonal allergies
 --- 

Evy's powerful pregnant. We took a night walk down 
to the creek with her sister and her sister's 
husband. I took their dog's leash and started to 
run. The dog, a muscular large short-hair mutt, 
wanted to sprint. We did. The beast swerved in 
front of me and stopped. My momentum carried me 
face-first to skid on the asphalt.

At home I scrubbed stones and grit from facial, 
shoulder, and knee abrasions with soap and gauze 
squares, periodically howling a little from pain, 
Heilung's Lifa concert turned up high; non-
pharmaceutical pain control working synergistically 
with remaining endorphins fron the fall.

I took one day off to give my sprained neck time to 
recover and the inflammation of my sprained ankle 
to go down. I ate sardines and bell peppers, made 
broth with gelatin, nettles, shitake, mullein, and 
comfrey, and swallowed lysine tablets. I wished 
there was yarrow and plaintain out back. Evy did the 
relevant assessments from Common Simple Emergencies, 
a standard reference I host on my SDF website for 
occasions like these.

When I went back to work my eye was swollen shut, 
ankle wrapped under my boot, abrasions dressed 
with telfa gauze and paper tape. "What happened 
to you, Ms. Anna?" asked adolescent boys.

"Picked a fight with a sidewalk," I said.
"Sidewalk lost."

After 12 hours I hurt all over. The child unit coded. 
Scooby and Scrappy were at it in the hallway. "What 
you upset about?" I asked Scrap.

"Nothing," he said. He's eight years old and can 
cuss like a grown man and kick holes in walls.

"Gotta be something," I said.

"My dad just died," he said.

He had lived with his dad. He didn't know how his 
dad died. He got to make one five-minute call a 
day. After getting the news, he was expected to 
sit and watch Teen Titans Go and color with the 
other kids, as if nothing happened. Social worker 
was trying to get him placed with grandparents. I 
don't know if he knew about that.

"I'd be upset, too," I said.