I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts...

Wait. That's not entirely true. The fact of the matter is that I don't have a single coconut; what I do have is a sore knee that feels like I have a toothache in it. It hurts so much that sometimes the pain goes up to my hip and down to my ankle. I think the medical term is 'presenting'. All I know is it hurts like hell.

I shouldn't be shocked that my knees are shot. I've been overweight for the past fifty years or so (actually forty-nine--but who's counting?) and I've put them through a lot.

The first sign I was going to have trouble happened when I was working at Stan Lee Media. My right leg locked up on me--plain and simple. I could bend it but it was pure agony. The doctors put me down for bed-rest and kept me drugged up to the gills. A week later it was all better. The same knee was bugging me around a year ago so I saw a different doctor and he said I needed to have the joint replaced. I scoffed at him and forgot about his prognosis--until now.

The fact of the matter is that I'm probably going to need to have both done. I wonder if they'll do both at the same time? I keep wondering what would happen if they took my knee(s) out and then found that they didn't have a replacement knee big enough. Aside from being a fatty, I have really big bones. Seriously. With my leg bent my knee feels like the size of a coconut. I don't want to come out of this with skinny kneecaps. I'll be the laughing stock at the beach.

I see a specialist in a couple of weeks to see what there is to be seen. Until then I'm in bunches of pain and nothing but over the counter crap to put a band-aid on it. I might as well be taking M&Ms.

Sorry my pipe is full of gripe but I'm missing a family reunion right this very minute. It's being held on the family ranch and the ground there is so rough there's no way I could handle it--even with my cane. Plus I don't want to be seen walking around with a cane. Everyone will think I'm an almost fifty-year-old fat guy with bad knees.