coulda, shoulda, woulda

ok, so.....i come to the last day of 2012 with the burden of things not done rather than the satisfaction of things that i actually managed to accomplish.....how is it that my cup flip-flops between half-full and half empty so frequently?.....so, here is my 2013 bucket list, in no particular order.....rearrange the basement then repaint the walls, floors and steps.....lay bricks to the greenhouse......repurpose the area under the deck......paint the walls and ceiling of the cabin white.......get serious with drip hose placement in all garden beds.....notice the lack of travel related goals?.....hard to envision travel when one cannot walk 1/4 mile without pain.....ah well...back to filing/sorting/pitching in the newly established office area in the guest bedroom.....maybe i can finish this task in 2012....

blindsided

ok, so.....i swam laps after work....30 minutes back and forth followed by 5 minutes of leg lifts in the sem-shallow end...then home to cook supper.....opted to skip the post-meal television viewing with the remaining fam, as the third child chose a documentary on pit bulls for their viewing pleasure.....played bejeweled instead.....and that turned out to be the beginning of an unfortunate discussion at bedtime.....over concerns on the part of my dearest that i am not doing enough to quick-start my recovery....why was i wasting time on FB games when i could be walking on the treadmill.....when i found myself really disabled would not i regret sitting all those hours at the computer?.....gentle readers, i have been swimming after work faithfully four times a week since the beginning of september....when i could drive there myself....swimming is something i can do without pain.....walking is still something that i do when i have to.....my beloved contends that one must walk through the pain if one is to recover....he has been injured so many times i suppose he would know....but i have never been injured and that logic makes no sense to me.....

hope versus dispair

ok, so....i am five month's post-accident....and while my ankle does a little bit better every day, i find that battling dispair takes up far too much of my mental energy....i am reminded of just how far i have to go the moment i land on my feet in the morning.....i cannot yet manage to get to the bathroom without grasping onto furniture for support, and must still walk down the steps one at a time with one hand on the rail and the other using the wall for support....i feel as though there is a circle of hemp rope inside my sock where my big toe should be...it prickles throughout the day, even when i am not walking on it....my sister-in-law mentioned in August at the reunion that she would really like to have Ernst and I travel to France with her and Nick E. during rose season....there are several world-class rose gardens near Paris.....i cannot imagine, at this point, walking further than a block or two at a time, which greatly limits one's range in sight-seeing unless one falls back to taxi's....and there is the rub....i am not a taxi-sort of traveler......too depressing to contemplate.....if i cannot even conceive of myself in Paris, how can i entertain my grander retirement plans....of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compestello, or the Grand Traverse in New Zealand?.......heavy sigh....

another day, much like every other

ok, so.....the repetitive nature of my life is getting a bit much....i wake up, try to flex and stretch my right ankle for a bit, then put my feet to the floor, and stagger to find my footing as i wince in pain....and then i take the steps one at a time, grasping the rail on one side and leaning on the wall on the other....and then i limp down the hall, dodging the dog who seems determined to trip me up before i can put his food in his bowl....all the while the cat is darting back and forth under my feet wanting her breakfast as well....and finally i sit down at the computer desk and wish that i did not have to get up and get dressed any time soon....it is saturday, which means that i should get to the pool as soon after opening at 8:00 am as possible to assure myself of getting a lane....and then comes the round of grocery stores...first the kroger and then the aldi and then i come home to laundry, watering the greenhouse, etc.....i suppose the monotony would not seem so monotonous if pain was not involved.....well...pain is not quite the correct descriptive....more like excessive discomfort at this point....add in the continued numbness in my big toe......heavy sigh...i am so very tired of having to think twice before i get up out of my chair, knowing that getting from point a to point b is more of an ordeal that it should be....yes, it could be worse and i have no reason to complain given that reality.....i remain hopeful that this time next year this will all be a faded memory....

more of the same....

ok, so....this week was much like many others.....drag myself out of bed, after flexing my foot this way and that during the npr news update at the bottom of the hour.....then on to work...and then to the pool to swim and then home to get supper on the table and then to bed.....i managed ot get a bit of shopping done yesterday after swimming....two groceries and then stops at local businesses to buy gift cards and stocking stuffers....cannot embrace the notion of a cash-only Christmas for my children just yet.....i also bought cards to send from the collected us that includes my mother....and i started to think about the annual letter...and that is hwere i got sidetracked.....do i sugar-coat the past year into peppy sound bites or do i disclose the darker underbelly of disappointment and unfulfilled hopes/dreams? and that is just me....no clue how my family will vote....

the new normal

ok, so.....i woke up today and for a moment i forgot that my foot/ankle is still in transition between broken and whole.....it only takes the flash of pain when my feet hit the floor to remind me that i have a long ways to go....lets go through the checklist....my big toe is still mostly numb...like it fell asleep and has not quite come back to life.....pins and needles.....quite disturbing....the notion that my doctor says that it may not get any better than this....on days when my foot is a bit swollen my other toes join the big toe in the pins and needles thing, but that happens less and less.....on to the ankle....it remains swollen...not like the goose-egg coming out of each side like it once was....but visibly bigger than my left ankle....as for pain, it has centered on the right side....the discomfort appears to be in direct proportion to how fast i walk....geisha steps do not register, but strides make me wince....gentle readers....walking fast and deliberate is my trademark....and for my doctor to tell me that it may not get any better than this is both discouraging and a challenge.....to prove him wrong...all wrapped up in one...i continue to swim laps at least 4 days a week...at least 30 minutes of laps before i practice standing on the broken foot and doing ankle lifts to strengthen it. I am considering an exercycle to increase the cardio workout without putting too much weight on the ankle.....and to jumpstart a bit of weight loss....i suppose my ankle would hurt less if i weighed less.....but that is a lament for another day....

last hurrah?

ok, so i escorted my mother to the polling place this morning...after swimming laps.....and she seemed very pleased to have a picture ID to show the poll worker.....she took great care to fill out her ballot....i waited at an acceptable distance in case i could be accused of voter supression.....we drove to applebees for lunvh and then to krogers.....she fussed frequently about the television in her room that has not sound and cojoled me to drive her to the walmart to buy a new tv....no...i admonished...your doctor specifically instructed you to watch the television in your backroom because it has a back-supportive chair....you do yourself a disservice to watch television from your bed.....heavy sigh.....i recalled the last time my father voted....my mother insisted that she accompany him into the booth to shop him how to vote.....the voting place folks interceded and insisted that if he could not vote on his own he should not vote at all.....will she be with us to vote in 2016? heavy, heavy....sigh

ok, so i searched my pc files for the picture of our late yellow dog, aptly named....yellow.....and was not surprised to find him in a blog dated november 3, 2008...at the last presedential election.....i have a badge with his picture that i will wear to our regular election night party around the corner......it is one of the few places where my yellow dog leanings are not only welcome, but thoroughly understood....

getting better every day....

ok, so.....i am into week 14 of my recovery.....walking mostly without a crutch, mostly straight, and mostly without significant pain....pain is not the best descriptive for the feeling one gets when one's flesh has swollen out between the straps of one's sandal.....discomfort doesn't quite fit either....had i the stamina to walk into the backroom in search of a thesaurus to find a better word i would do so, but my foot is swollen up around my sandal and i prefer to just sit here and settle for lesser adjectives....my spouse says i must have walked far too much yesterday:....two stores in lexington and across a parking lot to RL after swimming laps, watering the greenhouse, and weeding here and there by the terrace. I also managed to carry numerous bags of groceries into my mother's house and into my house....including the bargain wines i bought at Trader Joe's...I am mighty partial to the fume blanc from chile...or it is SV....not worth climbing the stairs to be certain....these days i calculate the relative importance of each movement requiring me to get up and walk...even on flat surfaces....this truth makes the comments by others so ironic....'you must be doing too much' is how the conversation tends to start....how can a person who consciously decides to move eahc and every time she moves be doing too much?....but yet today my foot is swollen and i accomplished far fewer tasks then intended....the highlight of the week was the putting on of lace-up shoes....i really do walk straighter with arch support....the list of shoes that can accomodate the angry-looking ankle was limited to three pairs of sandals and two pairs of clogs...so the addition of another shoe that can be worn with socks on cold days is certainly progress.....Precious is making progress of her own...she has transitioned from shivering in hercrawl space hidey-hole to wandering through the house while everyone else is asleep to following us outdoors for a bit of fresh air to curling up at my feet...in our bed....for a nice little nap sometime before dawn last night....so very kind of my spouse to see the sweetness in having a rescue cat who knew no home find comfort in sleeping with her new family.....

PTSD

ok, so....i had a bit of a breakdown last evening....i was sitting on the basement floor, trying to lure out the new cat with a toy on a string......she was not buying any of this 'come on out sweet precious kitty' stuff....i got to thinking about how i had planned to paint the basement floor once the freezer was gone...and those thoughts of the months out of my planned-out life that were lost....multiplied by the nagging pain and swelling that remains in my recovering foot...i started in crying....no...outright sobbing....sobbing so loudly that my spouse came downstairs to ask what was going on...and he tried to help me get the cat out of the furnace-area croawl space where she has boon holed up since tuesday evening....it occured to him that maybe she was in stephan's room...where i had sat earlier in the evening watching a movie as a way to lure out the cat...yep...she was under his bed....and when he fished her out she darted past me so quickly i did not have time to put my sandals back on and i tried running after her in bare feet...only to stumble....and start sobbing all over again.....gentle readers....i cannot recall the last time i had a good cry.....seems to me it was well after my miscarriage.....must be a pattern....keep it together during the tragedy but fall apart after everybody assumes that i have gotten over it.....clealry i am not over the wreck, the loss of kitty, the loss of un-watered boxwoods, roses and vegetable plants...and now that my new cat seems to have foresaken me....it became too much.....

folding up the walker

ok, so.....though i am far from back to normal, i have decided that it is time to put away a few of the trappings of disability....like the walker that has stood by the toilet and bathtub in the retirement suite.....when something seems in the way rather than at the ready, it is time to move on.....will probably store it here rather than back in my mother's attic.....i could also strip the guest bed and tidy up the remainder of my belongings in that room.......for that metter, i could put my laundry away rather than continuing to live out of the laundry basket, as i have done for 10 weeks now....the crutches.....not so fast....i do use the one upstairs to get around after a long day and the swollen foot that results from being far too active.....and i do use the downstairs crutch in the same fashion, as well as to get in and out of work....we have taken up the mini-ramps at each doorway that allowed the wheelcahir to go over the hump a bit easier....the wheechair went back to the rental place last monday.....the piles of pillows i use on the sofa and on the front porch still prove useful so i will leave them be for the time being.....i could keep my fold-up cane in the car for times like today....i am driving mother to lexington to eat lunch at red lobster....seems to me a fold-up cane would be easier to maneuver in a restaurant than a crutch.....i teach sunday school tomorrow for the first time in 10 weeks as well.....at some point i need to put my feet up and read the lesson.....at some point....

behind the wheel....

ok, so i drove home from the wellness center this morning....after 30 minutes of lap swim and a few more of my rehab exercises....the drive was awkward....partly because i have not driven in nine weeka, but mostly because i have not driven an automatic in recent memory....i wanted so badly to shift gears...but i digress.....i make progress every day with walking....i am walking with one crutch outside and away from home, but walking unassisted inside the house.....my limp is slowly....ever so slowly easing up....and curiously, i can not feel my right toe...it is asleep and no amount of massage seems to wake it up.....will ask physical therapist about this on monday morning....an appointment that i will keep by myself without a personal driver.....

matching shoes

ok, so....i was given the go-ahead to ditch the boot and to wear shoes on friday during the eight-week followup visit. i was also given permission to drive....when i feel safe driving....i insisted that we stop at the house for the right shoe that went with the left shoe i was wearing at the time...only to realize that i could not fit my still sowllen foot into the matching shoe.....and so i opted to wear a pair of merrills that are adjustable at several fit-point by clever velcro straps....and so i walked slowly into work with a single crutch.....and walked everywhere throughout the building the rest of the day...and walked through the grocery aisles after work...and then collasped into the wheechair at home...exhausted doesn't even cover it because the term neglects a severely swollen foot......the notion of driving is far from my mind....i have to work through the swelling first....my order is for physical therapy three times a week for the short term....hopefully this attention to mechanics will pay off with less swelling and discomfort.....

mail order

ok, so......in the past few days i have received packages....from talbots and llbean...containing significantly marked down separates to refresh my wardrobe.....expand my wardrobe is closer to the truth, given that most of my clothing is upstairs....yes I could shimmy up on my bottom a step at a time, carrying my crutches with me....getting up there is not the issue...it is getting abck down....these stairs lack a railing and i cannot conceive of the scenario that has me safely getting from the upright position down to my bottom to shimmy back down...but i digress from my mail order goodies....a sweater set in serpentine (green) a white sleeveless button-down blouse, a pair of black capri-length pants...and to snip off tags that reflect markdowns from $75 to $12 is especially gratifying....

a recovery in progress

ok, so....successfully worked 5 days, except for the time spent at the medical followup for xray and consultation. Given permission to put limited weight on my broken ankle, while wearing a boot and using crutches. Gave out by Wednesday afternoon and went back to the wheelchair for respite. Being disabled is not nearly as effortless as it looks. By Saturday feeling up for lunch out with grandma with the eldest's girlfriend driving. Stopped at the aldi store on the way home, where i managed to cover the entire store on crutches. Another outing that evening....to see Alison Krauss and Union Station at the Norton Center....crutched in and out of there as well....even up a few steps...marvelous concert.....but so exhausted from the long day and went straight to bed....up early today to get ready for church breakfast in honor of sunday school teachers....was mostly hoping for a potato breakfast casserole woth ham or sausage....close but not quite...maybe next year.....managed to get near to out usual spot in the balcony before i just gave out and had to sit down and stay down......heavy sigh.....

playlists

ok, so...i am in countdown mode....in the final hours before i go back to work...in a wheelchair and/or crutches....after a 5-week confinement at home......i am still working out strategy: backpack rather than purse or tote, clothing that requires no ironing, lunch today that should afford leftovers for my lunch tomorrow...i have run through the audio book downloads on this pc so i am listening to playlists i do not recall making....the current is called kathy's misc indie rock and includes sufjan stevens, animal collective, ben kamen, the chapin sisters, neko case and death cab for cutie....i am down to the boxes of photos having finished up the last album yesterday. I have actually sorted out scannable selections from the first box and the pile is relatively small when separated from random or repetitive scenery...or animals for that matter...there is a series i vaguely recall...taken by our third child when learning to use a camera....of our neighbor's dog on our deck...over and over and over....i have saved them for her rather than putting them back in the box.....i must note for posterity-sake that on a normal sunday i would be getting ready for sunday school.....but on this sixth sunday of my recovery....i am not attempting church.....i have lunch in the oven and coffee at the elbow and i am working through a stack that i pulled from albums years ago for potential inclusion in a celebratory scrapbook...18th birthday? graduation from HS...or college? no clue......i am pleased to see some of these photos as i was surprised to find the empty spaces in the albums where they would have fit sequentually....i am considering the day spent in my pajamas but we will be five for lunch and i would have to admit to being depressed when the rest of my family shows up.....depressed may not be the correct diagnosis....neither is comfortably numb.....i am not the least bit comfortable...but i digress from this my 5941th blog post.....i could download the adele album lost in the wreck because my spouse could not get it out of the cd player....the other five slots contained burned cd's but the sixth was an original adele...and it was his not mine.....i had given it to him for christmas as part of a cd/dvd concert in royal albert hall set.....alas...it is gone and i need to replace it in time to listen to it in the car i do not yet own....i will be driven to and from work for the short-term but eventually i will need a car to replace the paid-for honda accord...i am still fuming about the loss of that car...it was in great shape for its age and i have enjoyed the lack of car payment for quite some time....i resent the loss of this car almost as much as i resent the loss of these past five weeks from my active existence....while i have made the most of these weeks i cannot replace the things that i have lost in my garden because i was not able to water twice a day during the extreme heat in july......five mature boxwoods moved to make way for the greenhouse went from iffy to completely dead followed by numerous perennials in the bed visble from the guest room....and then there is the vegetable garden...i can see the shriveled tomato plants that succumbed....and the cumcumber and squash plants that survive only to have their fruits grow bitter/mealy and unpicked....no clue if anything lives on in my greenhouse as it is not visible from a wheelchair-accessable vantage point....no clue if i have seeds to plant for the fall....my mind is so very cloudy on so many planes....i cannot recall the clothes hanging in a closet i have not seen in five going on six weeks....nor whether i have boxed thank you notes on my desk upstairs....heavy sigh.....my follow-up x-ray is scheduled for wednesday...at which point i may be given the green light to put weight on my ankle and begin to learn to walk again.....and learn to drive again....and move on from this unfortanate interlude....

the beginning of the end...

ok, so i am going back to work a week from monday.....i have been released to light duty so long as i do not put weight on my foot and keep it up.....which means i must essentially go back to work in the wheel chair i borrowed from work. i have called the doctor asking for a prescription for wheelchair rental.....i will use the rented chair at home and use the other while at work....and use crutches to get between the two places....i have not used crutches in weeks so i must nowe work on the finer points of using them without falling on my face....and so i have counted up the albums left to scan.....5 of misc photos, the trip to the southwest after the adoption (known to our daughter as the photoshop trip as she swears she does not remember going and that we must had digitally added her to photos....) and a middle school trip to paris. With such excursions i have taken to scanning only the photos with my child, or with me, or exceptionally well-lighted captures of the city. when the actual albusm are done there are some storage boxes of photos that never made it into albums.....and at some point my project will connect with the digital age where i have photos already stored in files and no actual prints.....i cannot remember when i printed my last photo....how is that for pitiable.....but i digress from the going back to work angle....i will have to venture back upstairs in order to expand my wardrobe options to something approaching professional......which means that i will have to ask someone to iron a few things for me.....and figure out just who will be driving me back and forth.....this dependence on others will not last much longer...i go back to the doctor for a followup xray and to discuss weight bearing on a week from wednesday.....that will be 6 weeks after the accident.....which could mean i can begin weight bearing immediately or continue as i have been to the 8 week mark before transitioning into use of the foot/ankle. either way.....the end is in sight.

adding insult to injury

ok, so.....no clue on the number of days into this ridiculous injury.....four weeks on thursday....but i digress from the newest and cruelest twist....i slept awkwardly...on my left side/left arm....and now my left arm is in so much pain i am having a hard time typing....yeah, yeah, yeah.....i only type with two fingers (one on each hand) on a good day, but on this day the left one is letting me down....i am back to the pain meds for the arm rather than the foot...whicb continues to be a swollen swirl of faded purples and mustards....the tight skin is peeling.....yech!....the right knee is still sore from where my keys gouged into the cap.....neither the knee nor the foot hurt as much at this moment than my left arm....how fair is that?

where there's a will....

ok, so....day 17....oh my but the days are passing quickly since the wreck....so much so that i have to count out on my fingers just how many days have passed...and counting in days is getting as ridiculous as new parents who persist in describing the age of an infant in days rather than weeks...or months...the recap of the wreck has condensed from a 7 minute narrative to a one-liner...so back to the 17 days.....i have been wearing a limited combination of clothing based solely on the fact that the items were in the wash basket in the basement at the time of the accident....and though they have been rewashed several times....by day 16 i had grown a bit tired of the repetition...so yesterday i backed myself up the stairs on my bottom and then backed myself across the bedroom carpet to my dresser.....getting back to the steps with a handful of clothing is not as easy as it sounds.....had i thought to bring a shopping bag of some sort from the computer room closet the task would have been easier...ah well....my stack of clothing options is taller and i know that i can manage to get upstairs should there be something else i need.....which brings me to the second milestone of day 16...the bathtub....i had taken three showers in 16 days, filling in with washcloth/sink bathing in between.....sitting on a stool in a small shower stall with a hand-held shower nozzle is not much better than balancing by a sink with a washcloth....and so last evening i decided that i would figure out how to get in and out of the whirlpool tub.....and so i managed not only a lovely bubble bath with liberal use of a sugar-based body scrub.....i did so with a nice glass of white....ahhhhhhh....the spell was broken well after i had dried off and dressed....by my spouse asking me just what was all the gunk left in the tub......16 days of dead skin sticking to sugar scrub granules i suppose......i slept through the night for the first time in....let's see....17 days.......

Day 15

ok, so....day 15 of my unfortunate series of events finds me low on enthusiam and wallowing in self-pity....and not for the obvious reasons...our cat, Phillida Erskine Brown aka Kitty, our sweet 14+ year old sickly blind cat who had been living out her days mostly on our front porch due to her continence issues....failed to show up for breakfast wednesday morning....even a blind cat knows where to be when breakfast should be served....and to know when she thinks it is time to eat....we were occassionally awakened on those cool spring mornings by her caterwalling cries of hunger drifting up through our open window from the deck.....i must mention here that when i took her food out to the back deck to appease her, i would occassionally find her atop the deck railing....i would caterwall too if i suddenly found myself blind atop the deck railing....no clue how she managed to get herself up there...but i digress.....she was MIA for her breakfast and has not been seen since Tuesday at supper for certain. My spouse has gone out looking for her on several occassions as has our daughter...every able-bodied c-dub has looked....last night when the rains came i was horrified at the realization that the (probably) dead cat was out there in the storm, her body unfound and that i was unable to put her remains at rest from my chair....contact was made with the humane society in case she had been picked up...no such luck...in my heart i know that her time had come...she was often unable to keep down food, and the hair she plucked out as she groomed did not grow back...she looked quite mangey, but given that she was quick to come over for a cuddle and still purred loudly when she was held....we had decided not to put her down...not quite yet...not when she still seemed to enjoy the life she had left....

day 10

ok, so...ten days into my unfortunate series of events......i go back for my thrid orthopedic appointment tomorrow morning....will hopefully trade plaster cast for a removable boot that will allow for a shower....have been washing hair in the sink but this method is far from thorough and i spend my days feeling this side of greasy-granny funk......have had several folks bring food and/or nibbles but only one person has been thoughful enough to stay a bit with me and chat....so nice to enjoy pleasant conversation about more than what one has done with one's day.....as for what i do with my days, it is to sit in this very computer chair, hour after hour, scanning print photos from albums...i have finished three, including our wedding album and two that included babyhoods......ah......trying to crop out the unnecessary and select only the best ones is a trial....as i think every photo of my children is precious.....i am listening to Fallen Angel...the newest by Daniel Silva.....i am on my second listen as i wanted to make sure i caught all of the finer points before i move on to another book.....i have managed to get the wheelchair out to the porch twice....both times in the mornings to enjoy the weather, the hummingbirds, my coffee and the newspapers...getting the chair out is not the hard part.....it is getting back inside without having to lift up onto my good foot and thrust the chair forward over the sill.....that is the problem......but i learn a little more about solving this problem each time....at some point i will venture up the drive to get the mail....at some point i will get out the crutches as well and make my way to my terrace, but not before i figure out how to take coffee with me....backpack and a thermos perhaps....the chair is too wide for my walkway and possibly the walkway leans a bit down hill....the drought and heat pretty much killed off most of what there was to see in the garden anyway......so that brings me to my reward fior a morning spent scanning.....netflix.....movies, documentaries, reruns of cozy british television shops....and eventually somebody comes home and asks me what i have done with my day....

a tale of woe

ok, so....I am in to day 3 of my broken ankle......i have managed to use the walker to get to the kitchen and make coffee, and figured out that the computor desk chair makes for an adequate wheelchair substitute......cannot use walker while carrying a cup of coffee.....i am sitting at the pc for the first time since thursday morning....mostly out of necessity....it is the only one of the available electronic toys that has it all.....neither the iphone nor the ipad have access to this blog.....i paid for access to the new york times for only my phone and the pc and not the ipad....you get the picture.....thankfully the pc has a wireless keyboard.....i am currently sleeping in our downstairs guest room AKA our retirement room.....and after two nights there i have identified numerous issues that will come into play should we ever have to reside in that room fulltime....like the fact that one cannot actually see much through the bay window when laying (lying?) in bed....the drapes cover much of the view.....and the bed cannot be shoved up against the wall...or one of us will have to crawl over the other to get out....on the upside...there may be room for a queen-sized bed...an upgrade for us.....we use an antique bed that fits in the best spot fore a bed in our upstairs room and it is a double....clothing is problematic......i prefer pajama bottoms and a v-neck white tshirt....but as i cannot get them over the cast i am forced into nightgowns that i never wear because they are mighty uncomfortable to sleep in despite their stylish looks.....thankfully, the two nightgown/robe sets that i own hang in back of the bedroom door and have escaped numerous clothing purges over the years....i am already trying to figure out what i can possibly wear to my MRI appointment on Monday...the capris that i wore to the orthopedic appt had to be carefully split open at the inseam for me to get them over the case......who knew that a cast would be so big?......the good news is that on my last goodwill donation frenzy i discarded clothing that i could not fit into.....which will hopefully spare me the indignity of having my spouse present me with an outfit he has chosen, only for me to admit that i was saving it until i lost a few pounds....losing a few pounds i quite likely...another upside to this incident....my appetite is diminished....and the next point i want to make must be done so delicately.....suffice it to say that i have spoiled my family with interesting food for so long that they have no idea how to come up with much beyond pasta and sauce....they make pasta and sauce every thursday while i teach at eku-danville.....every thursday....and i do not mind because i generally grab a junior rb from arby's to tide me over....and i rarely partake of their pasta and sauce....we have had one pasta and sauce meal (on day 1) and i started in early coaching my daughter on the supper menu i had in mind before so that pasta and sauce could be avoided....and so we had grilled marinated chicken, and box mac and cheese, and cucumber salad, which i actually finished from my coach command post because the person who sliced up the cucumbers and onions declined to be responsilbe for the vinegar and salt phase....we also had pickled beets because that jar is so easy to open....at some point i will not be able to recall what is still in the fridge and i may have to make meal charts and grocery lists to go along....that is if i want to eat well during this ordeal...if we do pasta and sauce for six weeks i may be able to fit into all of those clothes i just gave to the goodwill....now is a good time to bring up pain...i have been sitting at the pc for awhile now, and though my leg is propped up on the walker, it is not elevated and it is starting to throb...like it has its own pulse....i have taken my pain pill for this time slot, and it has kicked in, so far as kicking in goes.....there was a point yesterday afternoon...after the cast had been put on and it was starting to 'cure' as the tech told me it would.....my foot felt like red hot pokers were stabbing into it and the pain pill had not helped after an hour, and so i took another one despite the lable directions.....and still the pain did not ease up...and i started in crying....and my daughter who was sitting in the room (we are doing a long-version LOTR marathon) got so upset she called my spouse at work to tell him that i was crying....but he was busy and when he called back i was a bit abrupt with him who decided against filling the entire pain med prescription because surely i was tough enough not to need all of those pills.....yes- i delivered my first baby completely unmedicated...but i was motivated to spare my baby of those drugs.....and i knew that eventually the baby would be born and the pain would stop.....i have no experience with brolen bones and i have no idea when this agonizing pain will settle into nothing more than background twinges.....the wreck itself has already become a blur...i can recall checking out the green light at the intersection and then looking ahead to see if traffic was backed up by a train....one is always cautious at this interection because of the frequent trains that come through town.....traffic is often backed up as far as my office from especially long trains....and the next thing i knew i was braking to avoid a huge cream colored suv and then there was impact....like hitting a brick wall....and i can recall leaning to the right with my face down in case the windshield shattered......and in one fluid motion i turned off my car, took out my keys, grabbed my purse and got out....becuase there was smoke and flames coming out of my ignition and i was certain that my car was going to blow up ( i watch far too much tv)....it was then that i discovered that i my left ankle was bunged up....and i had to ask people who had stopped to help to get me away from the car...the three Samaritans who let me sit in their car had witnessed the suv pull out in front of me to make a left turn....and i was grateful for their help as much as for their confirmation that the wreck was not my fault.....i have never had a wreck....not in 40 years of driving and i did not want my first one to be my fault.....speaking of 40 years.....i was in europe 40 years ago this summer.....on a three week driving trip with my parents and brother.....my dad broke his leg while photographing a falls in switzerlad.....when i graduate from the walker i will be using his crutches....i can still see myself in the pharmacy in Thun where i was trying to help my mother understand that they only had one crutch and that we would have to go elsewhere for another one.....when we got to Paris, my cousin Nancy (who was a translator at the Australian Embassy) offered to let me stay with her for the rest of the summer....I declined because i was signed up to take driver's ed when i got home.....i chose driving over Paris because i was 16 and had not yet fallen in love with Paris.....ah well.....i really need to wrap up this post, and prop up my leg....it has been nice to record this episode for posterity while it is still relatively fresh...and hopefully i can figure out how to blog from the ipad....heaven knows i will have plenty of time on my hands for such things...the doctor said something about 6 to 8 weeks....yikes!

Sister-in-Law of my Sister-in-Law

ok, so....the call came at 8:50 am...as I was getting settled in for the monthly meeting of those who manage public health departments...in Frankfort.....the caller ID announced that Fred was on the line...and when Fred calls my cell phone it is serious stuff.....he called when sister Sylvia died...from a long battle with a series of brain tumors.....this call was taken on a country road in Virginia the first time Ernst and the boys attempted to finish Ernst's cross-country bike ride....we dropped everything and drove to upstate NY for the funeral knowing there was time to finish that ride at some point yet unknown. The next call was when Ernst's sister Marilynn died...after a long bout with recurrent breast and ovarian cancers....I found out later that mine was not the first cell phone number he used to get in touch....my youngest uses my original cell phone number....the one that frequently gets confused with the xray reading room at the local hospital...ah...the price the young pay for a free cell phone....and i use a new number....for Fred's name to pop up means that I had him listed as a contact.....but I digress.....Fred's sister Sally died suddenly and he wanted me to hear the news before I read it on-line....as I would....as Sally is (was) a FB friend....though I met her the first and only time at Marilynn's funeral....I have since had almost daily contact with her through Scrabble, Wordtwist, messages, and likes/comments on photos. Our last exchange was just this week...on a darling photo of her grandchild using the family cat as a pillow....I have an unfinished game of Scrabble going with her, a cousin Anne from Oklahoma and her sister Lucy who lives in New Zealand....I met Lucy on our last visit to Marilynn before she died, and I have never met Anne, though we often babble back and forth in the comment section of the Scrabble board as well as on messaging and on status updates. I am saddened that my world is smaller by one, and anxious to communicate condolences to her family...those I have met and those I have not....I actually met her parents way back when at the first Thanksgiving I spent with the Webers, and I met her husband and sons at Mariylynn's funeral....but through technology I enjoyed years of delightful interchange with her, and I feel her loss more than typed words can convey.....

infinite sadness

ok, so.....i either quarrelled or came close to arguing with most of my blood kin yesterday.....the main theme being a disjoint between my desire to inspire generosity in my offspring by example....by being generous to them in hopes that they would, in turn, be generous to others.......yesterday, i came close to changing my approach to one of itemization and score-keeping.....close.....but i will continue to with the pay-it-forward lifestyle and hope for the best.....

All My Children

........................................ok, so i successfully photographed my children just before we sat down to enjoy a meal of sushi and sashimi to celebrate Stephan's bold move to Bloomington. What lovely children I have!

Mother's Day

Wishing my mother a happy mother's day as well as happy 83rd birthday! Here she is just a week ago at Kim's wedding in Cleveland.

google map fail

ok, so.....i googled my own address on google maps yesterday as i ate my lunch at my desk....and the photo of my address is not where i live.....seems that the google vehicle drove our circle backwards....and thus my house shows up as 272 rather than 155....ohter than the mixup in addresses they did get a decent picture of my house...sadly, the trellis roses were not blooming at the time....

10 dwindling years....

ok, so....the 10th anniversary of this blog came and went on April 9.....the 1st day was a Sunday....and involved flowing dance movement of our middle child down the hall to the chant....mean mamma mean daddy......mean daddy did not get around to blogging.......i am even meaner in my dotage than i was ten years ago.....

yeah, yeah, yeah.....

ok, so.....it has been a long time since i updated this blog....so long i cannot quite remember when i last took the time......surely the fallout of time constraints versus FB games....as well as my preference for surfing web on my iphone rather than our pc or two ipads.....yes, two (hand-me-down) ipads.....my audiobooks are downloaded onto my phone and it seems cumbersome to hold tweo handheld devices when one can suffice.....which brings me to where i have been listening to audiobooks.....in my greenhouse as well as in my flower and vegetable beds whilst weeding......if the phone is turned up load enough i can actually carry it in my front pants pocket and hear well enough to multitask....but i digress from the greenhouse, which turns out to be more work than i ever imagined....i am still on the uphill side of the learning curve about watering inside the greenhouse....and have not yet figured out how to manage the hose....i really need a hose dedicated for this single purpose that is only long enough to efficiently spray the beds and one that does not require recoiling after each use......the heat problem has been sorted out, thankfully....i found the temperature to be over 100 degrees in side on several moderately warm days, and i do not consider coming home at lunch to check on my greenhouse temperature to be 'green' gardening.....our contractor has fully screened both doors, and has customized plexiglass panels that can be fastened on to each door when the temperature is expected to drop......so most days the screen allow for maximum air cirulation, and last night when the frosty temperatures were predicted, i clipped on the plexiglass.....i am stumped by the cultivation of carrots......they just seem to sit there.....carrots that i brought in from the deck last fall are still in the same stage of non-growth that they were months ago.....which is where the watering issue crops back up...couldn't be the soil, as it is premium potting soil....so is it the water?....not enough or too much?......maddening.....we are still eating lettuces brought inside from the deck....lettuces i planted are still growing on time-lapse basis that is barely visible to the naked eye while the pea pod plants are 3 feet tall and are bearing reliably.....hopefully i will have it all figured out by the second season.....speaking of seasons...the rose season will be impossibly early this year.....my trellis rose City of York has an open bloom as does Old Blush......Stanwell Perpetual will certainly bloom today.....the knockout roses are blooming but these scent-less soul-less creations hardly count.....which brings me to new roses.....I have received a replacement New Dawn in the mail....it is beside the cabin.....i am relieved that i never got around to planting Therese Bugnet or Paul Neyron because the workman have trampled the Dr Huey on the other side of the cabin door.....we have decided to spend some money on the cabin....it was either spend some money on necessary repairs or watch it rot/sag/implode.....and so we have replaced the roof, removed rotten logs, rechinked the walls, added braces to the ceiling to hold up the upstairs floor, installed new windows, poured real steps to replace the stone steps....we do not have a real plan on how we will use the space, which has been cleared of most of the junk that has been around since grandpa's time...the youngest of the workman was delighted to back up his truck and haul off numerous rusted metal parts and pieces.....could have been a few treaures, but after living here nearly thirty years, i sincerely doubt that i have overlooked an antiques roadshow valuable....i suspect that my brother-in-law can run electric out there, possibly by running it through conduit buried under the brick walk.....that only leaves sanitary issues.....will start to google composting toilets just to see how big they are and how much they cost.....we have enough stored furniture in the attic of the garage to furnish this new 'playhouse'.....and if we lack anything there is always my mother's attic....could be fun to decorate my own private getaway without having to travel too far....the wi-fi works out there, this i already know.....

well, there is is....what i have been up-to since i last blogged......well...not quite all...i did go to paris for a long weekend and failed to blog as has always been my custom.....FB makes it all too easy to post photos at wi-fi ready cafes...and mobile blogger is not user-friendly.....

sick

ok, so after weeks of regular exercise, including swims before work four days this week, i have come down with a deep, throaty cough that tastes of infection....yuch! and the cough interrupts at such random intervals that i cannot seem to find peace day or night....not the bill of health one wants within 3 weeks of a trip to paris.....i actually had a pneumonia vaccine within the past month.....only at weak moments do i suspect that the two scenarios are related...i iknow better than that about vaccines, but i digress from moaning loudly about just how awful i feel at this very moment.,...

awakenings

ok, so...dr. rick took my mother off most of her medicines on thursday....and today she has been up since 3:30 am...fully dressed and roaming her house for materials to complete long discarded projects.....she spoke this evening at supper of long-forgotten neighbors in cleveland....of her serger machine that does not seem to work...of the boxes upstairs that require sorting ....these being the very same boxes that i had intended to disperse amongst the many charities that use fabric, yarn and notions......that will teach me to procrastinate.....seems she has phoned several old friends, and dispaired at the numbers that have been disconnected since she last felt up to phoning old friends.....we shall enjoy this bolt of enthusiasm for as long as it lasts.....

unprecedented

ok, so....i got up early three days this week to swim before work......this change in schedule was forced by the inconvenience of swimming after work, given that swim lesson season has begun, my time frame coincides with aqua zumba, and the general chaos/noise level in the pool got in the way of my good time.....and so i gave before work a try....i have had to share lanes on occassion, but the peace and quiet that reigns in the early pool hours is just what i was looking for in an exercise routine. today i will try out my new heart rate monitor....to qualify as a workout for my insurance incentive scheme there must be verification....my monitor will upload into the program's website.....just like my pedometer uploads and records steps as wrkouts......you might ask if any or all of this effort has paid off in pounds lost....the answer would be no.....but i am sleeping better and i feel as though the slightly firmer muscles will be able to handle Paris with less fatigue.....in fact, plotting paris is the general theme of each lap swimm session.....the exact routes for each day's circuit amongst the sites.....but swimming is not the only unprecedented event of the week.....i signed up to be a paid subscriber to the NYT......after it became clear that they really were not going to let me read entire articles after the first 20 of each month without chipping in.....at $3.50 a week i shou;d have subscribed ages ago......so...this morning i am going to read my way through the newer articles on the NYT website, then change and go the wellness center to swim laps.....if i can get in the water before 9:30 i can avoid the zumba crowd at 10:15.....

lap swimming....

ok, so i am up 30 minutes early so i can manage all of my morning chores before going to swim laps on the way to work....a sign of the end-times?

the sunday i stayed home from church.....

ok, so....the clock in the corner of this screen says 9:48 am......a time that i am rarely at home on a sunday.....when the weather is especially bad the church will call of services altogether as a way of keeping us all safe from the perils of ice and snow.....on this morning i am isolating my cold from my church family, mostly because i likely caught the cold from someone who went on out into the world feeling wretched rather than keeping their contagion away from society.....frankly, i should have stayed home yesterday, but i thought that a warm swim followed by refreshing errands would make me feel better......yea, right.......i feel worse today, what with the sneezing, the watery eyes, the stuffed up pressure in my sinus cavities that makes my jaws ache....and so i have treated myself to a rather hot whirlpool bath with hot compresses on my face, and several cups of Earl Grey, and I am thinking of going back to bed.....