Arrgh. It’s times like this that I look at my To Do schedule before the end of the month and wish I had children, because they would be teenagers by now and I could at least get them to do the cleaning and laundry.

• Photograph lots of new jewelry, put on Etsy site
• Pay bills and balance checkbook
• Finish manuscript editing for a friend
• Finish video editing for another friend
• Haul all the laundry upstairs and put it away
• Clean the house from top to bottom (a major undertaking as it’s a disaster area at the moment, we have five cats and I’m the only one who cleans)
• Put up Christmas decorations
• Finish Behind the Iron Cross, get off to agent
• Finish Cross Current, get off to Evernight
• Do ebook/paperback cover for client, format book interior
• Update website for another client
• Make character doll for customer
• Do food shopping, including cat food
• Rake leaves in front yard (I may have Ramón do this)

I hesitate to say I need minions because one time someone did offer to assist me, but I think he was thinking more of office work and I need more of a jack of all trades.

Seeing as this was the release week for Deep Water (which is a category bestseller in two categories at All Romance eBooks so I’m very pleased about that) and I have been busting my hump doing promo for that and the upcoming release of Bad Alpha: Manlove Edition from Evernight, I decided to take Sunday off. I wasn’t going to do promo, clean, write, edit, nada. I was going to relax, recharge, and do what I wanted to do for once.

And what I wanted to do was go see Guy Ritchie’s reboot of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. so Ramón kindly escorted me to tonight’s 10:30 PM showing at the local Cinemark. My verdict? If any critic tries to whine at you you that it has an unoriginal plot, you tell them to shut their whore mouth. You don’t go to a Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie for original storylines, anyway.

You go see a movie like this because it’s stylish AF, because it’s fast-paced and funny in all the right places, because Guy Ritchie could direct a third grade Christmas pageant and make it engrossing, because none other than David McCallum — the original Illya Kuryakin himself — gave the movie his blessing, and because Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer have mega chemistry and make an amazing team (and are hysterical at points) and you want to see them take down the bad guy with cool vehicles, nifty weapons, and tons of great quips.

Then again, I’m looking down the barrel of 50 so I still remember the reruns of the original series. For all of you under 30, turn off your need for dark, complicated heroes and just enjoy this beautifully vintage look back to the Swinging Sixties when suave spies drove Italian sports cars, had consequence-free sex, and pulled insane stunts to complete the mission. Plus the clothing is so damn on point.

And dear sweet mother of Cthulhu but Armie Hammer is OMG *flailing* hot. He’s always been good-looking in a big, goofy, “Yes, I’m a football player but I also watch Doctor Who” sort of way, but slicking his hair down a bit and putting him in 60’s style suits elevates him to “Dear sweet mother of Cthulhu, why are my panties melting around my ankles?” status. (I don’t blame him for The Lone Ranger. There’s only so much you can do when Johnny Depp is wandering around your movie with a crow on his head.)

Oh, yeah, Henry Cavill is cute, too. But Henry is always cute as a big, square-jawed, blue-eyed button (and I must say his impression of Robert Vaughn’s speech patterns was astounding). Armie’s kind of the revelation here. So go see it, because I really want Guy Ritchie to make me a sequel.

So back in April I woke up with my left knee hurting. Since that’s my good knee (I dislocated my right knee in 1984 and chipped the underside of the patella, requiring surgery to reset it. Since no one told me I would need PT to break the resulting adhesions, it’s been borked ever since), I swung directly into treatment mode with ice, ACE bandages and NSAIDS.

It got a little bit better. Then it got worse again. Then it got better, then it got worse, etc. I finally got fed up with hobbling everywhere and waking up in pain every night and made an appointment at an orthopedic specialist on Monday. Whoa. The building looked like a five-star hotel, check-in and payment were all done on a tablet, and my knee x-rays were done in-house and digitized for the doc’s analysis. Orthopedic medicine has come a long way since 1984, let me tell you.

The doctor himself was very nice, addressed me as “young lady” (I didn’t want to disabuse him of his illusions but I suspect we’re the same age), and told me that I had a bit of arthritis under the kneecap which was causing the pain. He also confirmed that there was no need for surgery (YAY!!!) and that meds and PT should be sufficient to resolve the problem. After some discussion I wound up getting a scrip for Celebrex (yes, I know all about the side effects. I’m not taking it every day, and I won’t take it once I get the knee back up and running, but right now it’s damned nice to have nothing hurting for the first time since April) and an appointment with a physical therapist, and will go back in a month for review.

They took x-rays of both knees, I’m assuming for comparison, and he did say, “You know your other knee isn’t normal, right?” I explained about 1984. He said, “Yeah, that would do it.”

Fast forward to today, where I had my first PT appointment. The nice therapist put my through my paces and we discovered that my muscle strength in my left glute/hamstring/hip is, in a word, pathetic. Since impact exercises like walking and jogging are not really a good idea right now, I’m to swim, cycle, do a very moderate amount of elliptical, and perform a series of low impact isometric exercises that will strengthen the surrounding muscles and keep the joint lubricated. I have one PT appointment a week for the next three weeks, and after that we’ll re-evaluate and see if I can discontinue PT and do everything on my own. The therapist couldn’t say whether or not the exercises would actively help my borked knee, but they can’t hurt so I’m to do them on both legs.