2011 Christmas T-shirt design: WHEN WATERMELONS ATTACK!

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WATERMELONS AND YELLOW JACKETS

This is how this T-shirt design came about:

On June 29, right after we got back from a trip to Edisto Beach, my daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter came to supper.

During their visit, I was carrying the tray to the baby’s high chair to the sink to wash it off--and suddenly, I was flat on my face on the floor, with my right shoulder in a lot of pain!

"WTF???" I yelled, only I didn't use the acronym.

I had fallen over a watermelon that somebody I normally love but who gets more like his daddy every day had left smack dab in the traffic pattern of our kitchen.  I landed hard on my knees and elbows.  

My right shoulder jammed upwards into the socket. Suddenly, it was so painful I couldn't use my right hand on my computer drawing tablet, among other things.

Jim took me to the doctor the next morning instead of playing golf, which was only fair.  My doctor x-rayed it and said she didn't see any broken bones, but was not ruling out tendon damage.  At best, it was a bad strain, she said.

After the accident, Jim had blamed the watermelon, and smashed it against the deck rail and tossed it into the back yard, where it fermented in the sun for a few days.  

Then, a day or two later, he was putzing around in the yard—and a swarm of drunken, belligerent yellow jackets who had spent too much time on the watermelon attacked him!  

15 stings.  We had to wash Jim down and apply Afterbite, Benedryl gel, and Benydril by mouth.

He couldn't sleep for the itching that night.

 I figured Justice was served, and he agreed.

Anyway—back to me--my arm kept hurting, so I went to an orthopedic surgeon I know. 

I wanted his opinion on the shoulder situation. 

I trust him because his mama is a friend of mine, and when he was a kid, she used to help him collect road kill and other dead forest animals to boil the flesh off of, so he could study the bones. 

So  I’m pretty confident that he knows how bones are supposed to fit together.

He sent me to Physical Therapy.

WATERMELONS & SURGERY

Pysical Therapy didn't fix the problem at that time. 

My young friend operated on my rotator cuff Sept. 23. 

He had said it would be "easy!"  an hour, hour-and-a half at the most!"

(It did not occur to me until later that he meant it would be easy for HIM...)

I've been rehabbing the shoulder ever since then. A long and painful process.  

But this time, Rehab worked!

This watermelon drawing is the first cartoon I've been able to do on my computer with the drawing tablet and stylus since the injury.

So, of course, the annual Christmas T-shirt--(which usually reflects something I've been thinking about at some time or another during the year)--HAD to be a watermelon.  

With a few yellow jackets.