My sister is four years younger than me. Her sight was always compromised, the result of a somewhat-botched forceps delivery 74 years ago. She is now, and has been for decades, legally blind. Some years ago, perhaps five, she fell down a full flight of steps. It wasn't a staircase in her own house, she was visiting the home of a friend, opened a door to what she thought was a solid floor beyond it, but which wasn't. She managed to save herself from hitting her head as she reached bottom, but she suffered from the pain and aches that resulted all over her body, for many months afterward. She never did see a doctor after the accident, and now it's just an unpleasant memory.

It's now been three weeks to a day since I fell down the stairs from our second floor to the first, and hit my forehead on the marble landing at the bottom of the steps. Remarkably and fortunately though my head hit with a real !crack! resulting in an immediate swelling and considerable pain, I don't appear to have sustained any real damage. I've no bodily aches and pains now, though I did have in the days immediately following; not uncomfortable enough to make things unbearable, just nudges of muscular aches.

My head was a different story. The left side of my face became rather grotesque in appearance, bruised and swollen, the left eyelid drooped over the eye and it was dreadfully irritating. Let alone painful to look at in the mirror, so I decided to avoid doing that. As the days progressed and the bruising became more noticeable, I more or less 'forgot' about what my face looked like as I went out in the public arena; brought to reality by the shocked expressions on people's faces and the necessity to explain that no, my husband hadn't brutalized me.

Noting my social discomfort, my husband who enjoys shopping for food, suggested that he do the food shopping and I could use the time for relaxation instead of rushing about the supermarket, and I agreed. He's done that for three weeks of supermarket shopping and since he's an excellent shopper it seems to work out well. People who work at the supermarket where we've shopped for many years have asked him where I am, and he has explained to them, and they've expressed concern on my behalf, which is rather sweet.

So while I busy myself doing the Friday baking and cooking my husband goes off to do the shopping and our little dogs aren't left on their own. We had taken to discard our original solution which was to confine them to a limited area since they're forever getting into some kind of mischievous trouble or another, to drive to the supermarket with them, leaving my husband to sit in the vehicle for the hour it takes me to do the shopping. In hot or cold weather that can be a real nuisance and a time-waster.

So, for the time being, until we can trust the little imps to more or less behave themselves on their own while we're both off doing the shopping without them, this temporary solution will do just fine.