Today I discovered that one of my oldest friends, Cyndi Toth, passed away earlier this year. Since returning from Morocco last week, I've been thinking a lot about her because every year on or around our birthdays we would send a birthday card or call each other. This year, while I was in Morocco, there was no birthday email, or upon my return a card.

I fell Sunday . . . yes, it's true. While taking "the boys" — Simba and Peetie — for their weekly walk with friends to Nojoqui Falls. Per usual, they are infatuated with the pigs that live in a wooded glen. Peetie can stand absolutely still watching them. Simba, on the other hand, is not so patient . . . he wants to incite them to chase him without care or concern that their is an electric fence between.

The problem was that after about 5 minutes of my doing my best imitation of a "K-Mart mom" — yelling and yanking on their leads to come away so we could finish our walk — Simba actually listened and moved towards me.The break in tension caused me (who was clearly not being present with the situation) to loose my balance and fall hard on my right knee onto the road.

For the past couple of days I'd been soaking my knees with epsom salt and slathering it with Arnica cream. However, this morning running late to meet some friends for coffee, I quickly reached into a bathroom drawer to rub the Arnica cream into my knees. Hobbling off I noticed that they felt stiffer, and made a mental note if they didn't feel better later on I would go get an x-ray. After coffee (hot chocolate, really), while sitting in the hair salon, I caught out of the corner of my eye a familiar looking tube. In that instant a flicker of understanding rose to my consciousness — the tube I reached for this morning without having my eyeglasses on and slathered all over my knees was the same one. No wonder my knees felt stiffer all day . . . I had gelled them!