My Hip's Going Away Party

I had a fairly ambivalent relationship with my old hip. On one hand, if I'd never developed avascular necrosis, I would never have discovered wheelchair basketball, traveled around the world for wheelchair basketball, gone to Illinois, written a novel about wheelchair basketball, devoted nearly a decade of my life putting a small leather ball through a hoop etc. etc. On the other hand, however, the old hip was more than a little derelict in its duties. My old hip was like that employee who's really crappy at his job but fun at parties and when you discover that he's been embezzling company funds, you're like, "Well, yeah, ok, I guess he shouldn't have sold all of our office computers to finance his raging coke addiction, but man could he run a good hockey pool...I guess we really should fire him, eh?" 

So, even though I fired my hip (if you see something that looks like a melted blob of glass ahead of you in the unemployment line, say hi for me), I was still a little sad to do it. After all, it did support me (literally) for 26 years and give me a nifty party trick where I could make my fingers disappear into this weird little indentation on the side of my leg; (okay, so it wasn't so much a 'party trick' as it was 'a way to alienate people and maybe make them throw up in their mouths a little'). 

For that reason, I decided to throw my hip a going away party to celebrate all it had done for me over the years. (The tag line on the invites was: "My hip and I are going to Canada: only one of us is coming back.") All my friends came out to bid my hip farewell, drink, and sample the cake I made in the shape of a hip X-ray. Cake decorating is a hobby of mine (anything that involves sugar and butter in vast quantities is a hobby of mine...plus, what other hobby allows you to craft chest hair out of tootsie rolls?), so I was happy to have an outlet for my particular brand of crazy. 

So here are some pictures of my X-ray cake (if anyone has pics of the party itself, let me kn0w). Those of you who know anything about avascular necrosis or hips will note that a) that hip does not have avascular necrosis and b) the pelvis belongs to a man. Details, details.