Babies learn to walk by stumbling around with a Frankenstein gait and frequently falling on their padded butts. And people think it’s cute.

Me, not so much. (It’s true that I have an amply padded butt, but it’s not sufficient to cushion a fall from my height to the floor. Which has happened to me fairly frequently since I had my knee replacement in late April. But I digress.)

The reason this all occurs to me is that I have had to learn to walk all over again. And I don’t look cute as I waddle and toddle and go boom. The going boom part has necessitated stays in the hospital and the post-acute rehab facility (aka nursing home). At least there was someone there to pick me up when I did go boom.

(Dan did fairly well when I boomed at home. (Yes, we’re both boomers. Like that was any secret. But I digress parenthetically.) But he has to work and wasn’t available for eight hours a day, which made us both very nervous. Fortunately, he was home when I fell and broke one ankle in two places. But I digress some more.)

But everything has changed—or is, at least, back to what passes for normal here. I’m at home, doing PT on an outpatient basis, and getting around the house with the walker and a PT technique I learned called “stand and pivot.” (Sounds like a square dance move to me. Perhaps I should curtsy to the walker. But I digress yet again.)

Square dancing isn’t in my immediate (or, most likely, long-term) future. Nor are ballet, polka, and can-can. (Waltz, perhaps. It was probably invented by someone who could do the stand and pivot. But I digress even more.)

Regular walking, though—that may not be beyond my power. At PT last week, I walked 97 feet, and yesterday I walked 250 steps. Both with the walker, of course.

Dan is urging me to try trickier forms of ambulation—climbing stairs and walking up and down a ramp that we installed for my wheelchair. My PT people insist that I need better balance and stamina first. And I don’t want to do anything that involves going boom. Chair-dancing—that I can handle.