My Cardboard Balcony

Carpenter Syndrome by Belinda Roddie medical definition: the pseudo -psychological urge to build things, from toy ducks to Noah's Ark, with a lousy hammer and a box of bent nails so rusty  that you may contract some form of tetanus while using them. (but that is a disease to be later disclosed in this volume)

With swollen feet, she could not function. She despised sitting on the couch. She didn't care for watching the idiot box. None of the shows appealed to her. She'd put earplugs in whenever her brother played video games and curl up under a blanket. She had no books to read, no movies to care for, and no people to call. She just wanted to run. She wanted to run on every surface while her feet stung from the impact, without the festering of wounds and blisters and irritations that confined her to her house.