Circular Wednesday

so when life gets you down and you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders, you have to ask yourself: do I deserve this?
The answer, strangely, is always yes. Whether it be the universe was trying to tell you something (and you didn't listen), or karma came back and bit you, everything happens for a reason. Everything. No matter how senseless it seems to have bad things happen to good people, or good thing to bad people, it makes sense to someone, somewhere, on a grander level. "Every good deed will be repaid" comes to mind on such a subject...

Last night (which this is never the way to start a good story), my mom go a call from a horse friend, looking for some help getting her horse trailered. This horse has been known to be a problem, but my mom has dealt with it before, and made things work. She gets there, attempts to help her friend out, and what happens? She gets trampled by the horse. her left calf was stepped on and her right leg was stood on for a little bit. That's 1300 lbs of animal placed down on that leg right there. Somehow she managed to get out from under the horse, drive herself home, and then use some choice words to describe the situation to my father. She knew her legs would bruise up, but not to the extent that the right one did.
First her leg swelled up, and blood pooled under the skin, like a hematoma. She's had those before, no sweat. The problem came when she couldn't move her ankle, because it wasn't responsive. The top half of her calf was swollen and fairly soft to the touch, but the lower half was as hard as a rock. Her ankle was numb, and her foot wasn't moving at all. Aw crap.

So off she goes to the hospital, where they tell her that this is compartment syndrome (I'll explain that later), and that they either put her leg under the knife now, or she loses the leg. She chose to take the surgery. The reason for the incisions is to access and relieve the muscle compartments along the calf; there are four of them that can pool up with blood, and if that happens, the muscles will deteriorate, and the nerves will sustain some nasty damage. In her case, three of the four compartments were pooling with blood, which means she was lucky to have gotten in when she did. This is how the family evening went, by the way. I just thought I'd share that with you.

On the upside, as minor as that is, I did get more arrows yesterday to go target shooting with. They're a bit heavy for the draw weight of the bow I'm using, but I'm moving up to a greater draw weight soon, so that should even out. I shoot longbow, which although fun, it's not cheap. It was about a hundred dollars for the bow, and then half again as much for a dozen target arrows to shoot around with; not as expensive as a new instrument (another costly hobby of mine), but it is another expense for a poor college kid, one of which is unnecessary, but improves the quality of my life.
Which I think everyone should consider weighing. If you're stingy with your money, you will never get to try half of the beautiful experiences out there; like concerts, movies, or billiards with the guys. That being said, if you're too free with your money, you may also inhibit your quality of life by impoverishing yourself, and surrounding yourself with unnecessary things. My suggestion is to spend good money on things that make you run right (good foods, some form of exercise or sport), the things that separate you from the ground (tires, mattresses, shoes), charity, and experiences. Especially experiences. Those are things that only time can take from you, and that's only if you lose your memory. Actually, it doesn't matter if it's a money matter or not, if you are too miserly with your time (or too liberal), you can wind up missing out on interesting events, or on the other hand, you can run yourself ragged. Life is a balance; if you strike that balance, between liberal and conservative, kindness to others and to yourself, you should be golden. And so we're back to kindness. Imagine that, a circular Wednesday.