A good day!

You'd never know by looking that this water feature was buried under inches of snow a few days ago. The grapes and other trees lost their new growth, but are quickly putting on more.

And today, while checking out bird activity at my son's home a block away, I was surprised to see a female Cassin's Finch. 

I've seen quite a few this past winter, and here it's spring, and the winter birds are still hanging around. Does that indicate more winter weather to come? Sure do hope not. Gonna check the oasis tomorrow and see how it fared.

Upon the advice of family and friends to wear shoes with arch support, I went to a thrift shop today and bought a pair of Reeboks for 3 or 4 dollars. My only other option was to order something online for about $100 and hope they fit, and hope they helped. Couldn't bring myself to buy shoes without trying them on first. Especially since I was sure they wouldn't help.

No one was more surprised than me that even the little arch support the Reeboks provided, took the pain away.  My latest thinking, based on my research, is that osteoarthritis in the navicular area where I have it, is caused by a stress fracture. I'm thinking that the fracture/arthritis weakened my arch. I have high arches, which makes them more prone to stress fractures. The fracture is probably long healed by now, and only the current OA showed up on the x-ray. An MRI would probably show the fracture, but no reason to get one at this point. I'm just grateful to be walking pain-free.

I'm used to slipping in and out of crocs, never wearing them indoors. But here I am this evening, sitting at my computer in Reeboks. I did take them off earlier when I figured I was going to stay indoors for the night. But my foot started hurting, so I put them back on. Probably won't sleep in them though. So I'm a happy camper. I don't know yet what this means for the future. Will things heal, or will I always have pain when not in shoes with arch support? Likely the latter. But so worth the hassle.

PS. One of the things I don't quite understand is OA. As I understand it, it's an irreversible deterioration of tissue between bones, so that it's like bone on bone, as in worn out discs of the spine. If that's the case, then all one can do is alleviate the pain, either with drugs, or with preventing the bone on bone interaction. And I guess there are fluids that can be injected into the joint to temporarily help cushion it. So not totally sure what I'm dealing with here. Hopefully, I'll get a handle on it with more research. And if there never was a stress fracture, and the tissue deterioration is a result of age and overuse, and is permanent, then having good arch support could very well fix the problem permanently.