Sunday, June 28, 2009

National History

Today I saw the National Archives amongst other landmarks here in DC. I didn't expect to be all that impressed to tell you the truth, but I should have. After all, paper and the things that people are moved to put on them, the words that are the living avatars of ideas and emotions, are the foundation of what I am and do.

I wound up there almost accidentally. I got separated from the group I was traveling with early this morning. A communication error led me to believe that I had missed them in the hotel lobby, so I threw my crap in a sack, tucked my ubiquitous crutch under my arm, and hobbled to the Metro station, one of which is mercifully only steps from the hotel in which I'm staying.

The DC Metro is an absolute dream. After navigating the subways in Japan (in Japanese, I might add), these are so simple and easy! The Japanese subways were always convenient, too, but there was always the worry that I was going the wrong way because of my stupidity with the language. It happened on more than one occasion. These trains here, though, have provided me with a freedom I haven't had since before my knee surgery. It's pure heaven to be able to go and come as I please without having to wait for someone to drive me.

Once I got to the National Mall, I decided to go to the Archives instead of trying to meet my friends at the Washington Monument since a) I'd have to hike 100 miles to get there and b) there was already a mile-long line snaking its way around the base. It turned out my friends had the same idea, so we toured through the Archives together, seeing the foundational documents of our nation, bits and pieces of trivia and personal data from people who were never famous but who were important nonetheless, and a great many other interesting things.

The room everyone goes to the Archives for, though, is the room with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. It's as solemn, dimly lit, cold, quiet, and ornate as any ancient temple. Maybe that's appropriate in its way. The items in their cases are large parchment squares, and most of them are so faded by time and wear that they are mostly illegible save for the flourishes of Hancock's showy J or the beautiful calligraphy of "We the People" atop a page. One can only trace some of the letters, and in places, imagination is called to replace what the naked eye cannot scan at all.

This in no way diminishes one fragment of their power. If anything, it only makes them stronger. Despite the ravages of time, ill care, and the elements, they have survived. They have endured. Now, with the best sciences possible, they are protected as well as or perhaps even better than the Crown Jewels. I think there's a very heavy-handed allegory here, or at least I'd like to think that we're bent on conserving more than just the paper form of those documents. I'd like to think that just as much care and concern was shown by every branch of our government, by every citizen in this land, that just as much pride and respect was given to the nation as to the paper symbol. Otherwise, I think our founding fathers would agree that their purpose has failed.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Eras Ending

Today both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died. With them goes a big piece of the 70s and the 80s pop culture. My friends on FB are buzzing about Michael Jackson. We all grew up with his many incarnations, and we're exchanging notes about the first time we saw Thriller or the sparkly glove. His personal life came to overshadow his music, and I think that's a real shame, because that early stuff was really good and continues to be so. I hope that in these days when he will be a media circus for the last time the networks will be respectful. I know that is to much to ask for, but it would be nice to allow some dignity to the dead in honor of that shared spark of humanity we all share regardless of what skeletons might be locked in the closet.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Not Enough

If you're going through hell, keep going. ~Winston Churchill

Since Saturday, things have just been insane. Dad has been in CCU since the heart attack, and we've been shuttling back and forth to visit him there, going to my PT, and trying to take care of the minutia of daily life. Mom and I are both at the breaking point with it all. It's too much.

This is a season of trial, I suppose, but I don't feel like I can do enough to help out with it. I am trying to do what I can, but as I watch the toll it's taking on my mother, it seems woefully inadequate. I can only make calls, act as a communication center, deal with computer-related issues, and try to control my own reactions.

Tomorrow will be another surgery, another stressor, and there are a whole handful of things that need to be scheduled and taken care of by way of repairs, visits, and maintenance. If there were only three of me, and if at least one of them had healthy movement, maybe we could get some of these things taken care of.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Breaking Point

I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once. ~Jennifer Yane

I'm humming like a high-tension power line, like a rubber band that is being pulled tighter and tighter. When the world starts falling in, it just keeps collapsing it seems.

The past two days have been difficult on so many levels and for so many reasons. The big obvious ones don't need explanation. Watching someone you love go through something like a heart attack is sufficient unto itself. The trivial crises of daily life, too, don't need explanation, the lost items, the broken appliances, the frustrations of injury or inability. All these things are pebbles in the pan of the scale, but not the things that cause it to tip.

Instead, the things that make that balance swing are feather-light, but unbearable all the same. It's watching perfect strangers being told that I'm unable to handle basic situations like I'm some sort of mental and emotional incompetent. It's having to pretend that I'm an absolutely solid rock of Gibraltar or have to be relegated to a corner like a crippled child for daring to show a shred of emotion. It's never being allowed to talk about any experience I've ever had without being told that I don't really know what that experience is because someone else has lived through that experience or something like it before and is therefore the undisputed expert nonpareil. These are the tiny moth-wing brushes that are destroying me.

So I swallow down my every response, something I swore long ago that I would never do again, and I go on. What else is there to do, really? I comfort myself with the knowledge that misconceptions of me don't have to become the realities of who I am. But all the time, I can hear the discordant sound of the strands of my soul tightening, tightening....

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Heart Attack

My mother came in while I was participating in my favorite Saturday sport, couching, and said, "Don't go to pieces on me. Get up, get some shoes on, and come with me right now." No conversation that starts out that way can possibly preface anything good. Today was no exception. Today I saw one of the scariest things I've ever experienced in my whole life. I watched my father have a heart attack.

Dad was out in the van. I limped around the house in a moment of complete brain failure after Mom told me that he was having chest pains, but I managed to find my purse, my crutch, and my flip flops, put Roux in her crate, and get to the vehicle, flailing madly all the way. Dad was in such terrible pain. Mom drove like mad to get to the hospital, faster than I have ever seen, but I don't know that I have ever felt that short trip to town to be longer. We ran red lights, stop signs, and wove in and out of traffic like we were in a high-speed chase, and finally we wound up at the ER.

The next hours passed as if we were encased in amber. Time disappeared, but some of the strangest details are stuck with me. I can remember the bizarrely cheerful pattern on the curtain in the cardiac unit of the ER. I can remember the red rhinestone pin the cardiologist wore on her white coat when she came in, and I remember the black leather jacket and motorcycle helmet the CCU nurse had on over his scrubs as the team began to trickle in from wherever they were before they were called in to attend to Dad's emergency. Everything in the ER, of course, was blue. That observation struck me again. Blue gloves, blue gown for Dad, blue scrubs on every nurse and tech except the doctor herself, the CCU folk, and the phlebotomist.

Once they took Dad up for a heart cath, one of my very best friends and her husband along with my pastor came to sit with us. I don't know what I would have done without them there to distract me. In that timeless little waiting room stuck off in a silent back hall, I think Mom and I would have gone crazy without something to do other than stare at the walls and think.

Hours passed, and when the word came that they had restored blood flow to Dad's heart and stopped his pain, relief came for us, too. We got to see him in CCU during visiting hours, and that awful grey pallor had gone. He seemed to be much more comfortable.

We'll go back to see him tomorrow morning for the first visitation. I'm about as tired as I've ever been, but I am so grateful that he's still with us. It's such a blessing.

Learning to Walk

Wash out your ego every once in a while, as cleanliness is next to godliness not just in body but in humility as well. ~Abbe Yeux-verdi

Twice in my life, I've had to learn to walk again. The first time was in 2001 after a serious surgery. That was mostly a matter of abdominal stitches and feeling as though I was going to split in half everytime I stood up or took a step. This time has been a little bit different.

Since having my ACL replaced a month ago, I have literally been relearning how to place my foot and move my leg, consciously having to think about something most people take for granted in the same way as moving air in and out of their lungs. It's been a philosophical journey as well as a physical one.

Each day I go to PT, my therapist has me take a couple of laps around the gym, simply focusing on the mechanics of walking. The good foot takes its step; then my injured leg must strongly snap forward both from the hip and from the knee. The knee itself must go straight, something that has been a long time coming, and when the foot lands, it must roll from the heel to the ball of the foot before the good foot can take its stride. The toes need to be pointed forward, turned neither too far in nor too far out. All these myriad adjustments are things that I never thought of at all prior to the 19th of May, but are now a part of my every step.

It's amazing to me how complex our smallest motions and everyday processes are. It's humbling how hard it is to reteach myself those most basic of things. As I make my trips around the gym concentrating on straightening the knee and planting my heels firmly, I almost feel like it's a meditation like yoga. It's good sometimes to bring intense focus to simple things.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Lost iPod

Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without. ~Confucius

So once I started moving around again and trying to gather things together for short trips around town, I began looking for my iPod. I think I was going to put the Wood Bros. album on it, in fact, when I realized that it wasn't in my purse. I went to my bigger purse and dug in it. No small black case. Unfazed, I turned to the large green L.L. Bean messenger bag that had been my lifeline during the last few weeks of school and started looking through the vast wreckage of paperwork and other debris from my last day moving out of my classroom. Nada. Zip. Zero. The first trickles of alarm started to make themselves felt. I tottered around my house, and with the help of my mother, proceeded to to generally destroy my kitchen, go through every box I brought home, contort into impossible positions to explore the vehicles, look under and behind all the major pieces of furniture, and peer into all the containers or bags that might have possibly held my iPod. It was a completely fruitless search.

I don't know where it is. My parents speculate that we somehow managed to pack and tape it up in one of the 22 boxes currently in storage at school. I am praying that this is the case. That iPod, as silly as this will sound, is special to me.

It's not the thing itself so much as what it represents to me. Dad gave me the money to buy it. I had been wanting one for a long time, but coming up with big chunks of money to blow on electronic gadgets, as much as I do love them, is not something I can do very often. Dad had gotten an annual bonus at work, and he gave me part of it with very specific instructions to spend it on something I wanted, not on a bill, household repairs, or anything like that. I sat and thought about it, probably far longer than the situation warranted, and I decided that an iPod was the thing I most wanted.

I went to the online Apple Store, and I ordered the Product Red edition Nano. I even had it engraved on the back. I loved it from the moment I took it out of the box. It wasn't just the sleekness of the design and the fact that, at last, I had such a huge chunk of my music with me. I could feel that same happy surprise and that same loved feeling I felt when Dad gave me the money for it each time I used it.

Hopefully, when the boxes are all opened and my room is restored to whatever configuration the 2009-2010 school year will have, I'll find that small black case amongst all the binder clips and hanging file folders. It will be a wonderful small miracle with which to start the year. In the meanwhile, I went to amazon and found a 2nd generation refurbished Shuffle for about $20 so I'll have something to take on a trip later this month and to use throughout the months to come. It won't begin to take the place of my beloved Nano, but maybe it can be a substitute for the time being.

Incentive to Learn Another Language

Learn a new language and get a new soul. ~Czech Proverb

Friday, June 12, 2009

Into Which Camp Do I Fall?

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." -- Plato

Well, the answer to that is all too clear....

Things I Wish I'd Said

My best friend recently did something which still leaves me in awe at her bravery. She, after being put back in touch with a high school romance, asked a question that had bothered her for a long time. She said a thing she needed to say, and while she hadn't been brooding over it for years or anything Lifetime-esque like that, she had the satisfaction of saying that thing. How brave she is!

I never do that. Put me in any situation requiring any sort of expression of emotion, and I will always put on my smoothest mask, a slightly distant smile, and retreat inward. Blame it on my Aquarian nature, blame it on growing up an only child, blame it on whatever you like, but I've never had the satisfaction of saying the things I wanted to say. Only in retrospection do the right things or the true things come to me sometimes. Other times, I know what I want to say, but my reserve keeps the words trapped inside, beating against the walls of my heart like a panicked bird longing for freedom.

This, then, is a little exercise in fantasy. What would I have said, should I have said, or did I indeed long to say in some of life's small and large moments? Some of these are big deals and some of these are trivialities. These apply to different situations which I may or may not elaborate on.

1) Goodbye. -- to A. leaving Japan since I didn't know I was never going to see her again.

2) What is it, exactly, that you want from me and that you see in me? Why am I not enough for you, but you always seem to wind up on my doorstep when it all falls down? Was there ever anything at all? -- to the one I spent most of my undergrad confused over.

3) Go straight to hell. Don't think you didn't hurt me, but don't think for a minute that I won't rise from these ashes and be stronger for it. You won't win. -- to T. after Indiana.

4) Is there any more room on that trip? I'm changing my flight date by a couple of days, and I'd like to see that World Heritage Site. -- to D. and crew as they headed to Cambodia

5) Tell me more about our family. -- to my Nana before she was gone.

6) God, you're adorable. -- to I. in Ireland.

7) If you can't be a positive, hands-on part of the solution, then please shut up and get out. -- too many times and places to specify.

8) How am I today? Well, actually, I hurt like the hounds of hell are clawing their way out slowly while little men with sledgehammers are smashing my skull into fragments from the inside. I want to curl into the fetal position in a dark, cool, quiet place and whimper, gibber, or scream until merciful Death takes me. That's how I am. How about you? -- again, too many times and places to specify.

9) You know what? I will put in my application for that job. -- to M. in Korea.

10) Yes, yes...you're frightfully clever. Good for you. Yes, I AM from the South. Aren't you a clever linguist to have figured that out and to have "tricked" me into having run through that sentence so I'd pronounce all my diphthong vowels for you. Yankee Schmuck. -- to unknown linguist in Japan.

11) Sure, I'll dance with you. And give me a pina colada, too. -- to G. in Costa Rica.

I think eleven is a good stopping place. There are some trends that are beginning to emerge, I think. Interesting. Well, that's one thing a blog is for, after all, personal reflection.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Bad Dreams

I have been having bad dreams lately. I don't know what's triggered them, but I hope they dissolve soon. They're the kind that hover around even after waking, leaving a trace on the day like the smell of burnt toast.

It may be because I've felt so bad physically the past two days with headaches, etc. That should be done, now, though, and tomorrow should get me back into whatever passes for "healthy" for me. Some of that residue of discomfort may be bleeding into my nighttime world.

Normally the Topamax keeps me from remembering anything whatsoever about my dreams. Before I started taking it, I always had vivid and bizarre dreams fit for sci-fi movie scripts, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always detailed and rich. This is just another thing along with precision in language that Topamax strips away.

Right now, I don't know whether this dream muting is a blessing or a curse. The pieces I recall include the usual gamut of daily life fragments being filed -- people I know, events and objects of the day -- but also things, people, and places I know nothing of bathed in that golden slant of light that's only seen in dreams. That unknown guy with the intense blue eyes and the long-fingered hands is back lurking in the corners again, not really menacing, but a confusing stock character who shows up like someone I'm supposed to recognize. Sometimes I almost think I do. I am probably a Freudian delight if somebody with some expertise in dream interpretation cared to sit down and analyze this crap.

Of course, all of this unrest (literally) is most probably because I have no schedule and because I feel so useless right now in my activities. I hope soon I'll be able to get out of the house and do more on my own. This constant dependency on others is taking its toll. Not all the happy readings, comedies, or songs in the world can make up for the feeling of independence.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Depressing News

I never read the news or watch it on TV. Maybe that seems like the "ostrich with its head in the sand" approach to life, but every time I do read a newspaper, go online and scan the events of the day, or God forbid, get trapped in a place with either FoxNews or CNN blasting their conflicting breeds of propaganda, I always feel so bad when I'm done that it's an amazing incentive to prolong the time between exposures.

Take today for example. I do have the CNN breaking news email feature activated so if the world ends, I will at least get a message on my BlackBerry, so when the shootings at the Holocaust Museum occurred, I found out about it. That event hit one of the NYT columnists I follow on Twitter about that time, and I followed a link to learn more. What I found there made me want to cry, as such things always do: hate, paranoia, racism bearing their deadly fruit in a place that should stand as a warning of what those worst of human traits can do to humanity.

Another comment later on from someone else directed me to a local paper, and there of course, the news continued to deteriorate. Jackson, our vaunted state capital, is now 4th in the nation as far as the murder rate goes; it's second only to Flint, MI for armed robbery. How does that even happen? If you're not from here, you may never have been to Jackson. When I think about how much smaller it is than cities it's beaten for this most dubious of crowns, it completely boggles the mind....

I'm going back on a news blackout, I think. I can't stand it. It's too depressing. There is never any good mixed in with the bad, and I don't want to have to feel more anxiety about this world that I live in than I already do. Ostriches, prepare your heads....

The Blog Does Its Phoenix Routine

I completely overhauled the old blog today. Part of that was driven by the fact that I feel terrible today in the wake of last night's migraine, so I'm mostly just lying here on the couch today with the netbook in my lap. In an effort to accomplish something like usefulness today, I decided I would take care of that other blog template.

The other thing that led me to this was the absolute non-functionality of that other template. While I loved the colors and the design at the top, the notebook design itself had always bothered me, as had the little tabs down the side that read "Undefined." Too much of my life is actually undefined without every blog entry being labeled as such. It also made all the photos that I import from various sources MUCH too large. Regular Blogger templates are supposed to help put a size limit on them without the author having to download, resize, upload, etc. Then there was the fact that there was no blogger bar at the top for navigation/ease of creation of new entries. That aspect of the old template drove me crazy from the moment I installed it. I've just been too lazy and/or occupied to try to fix it or replace it until today.

This template is a return to something much simpler, I suppose, but with blogs, simple is better. Most of the templates I looked at were so over-designed that one couldn't even read the posts. I want a little pizazz down the sides, but I still want the words to be clear. I think this one might be a good blend of those two things...at least until I get bored again and redecorate.

Anyway, all the traditional accoutrement of bloggage is back, at least as far as I know, anyway. I added a couple of new widgets for you to toy with if you have the time. The Magic 8 Ball is a perennial favorite of mine in all its many forms, so I hope you'll forgive its presence here. Smile indulgently. You might as well....

Monday, June 08, 2009

Geek Flags Flying


I've been tweeting tonight with some of my twitter friends about the joys of "geekery." The prompt for this was the fact that on a Monday night, I was trying to decide between watching Sci-Fi's Star Trek: TNG marathon or the new box set of vintage Dr. Who I just got from amazon. It struck me as funny that all my viewing choices (or the only ones I was interested in, anyway) were those that would settle that Geek Queen crown more firmly on my head.

You know what? The heck with it. I'm a geek. I claim it. I even have little black stud earrings with the word "geek" on them in tiny green letters. I like computers, Twitter, Star Wars and Dr. Who. I know who Elric, Harry Dresden, and Gandalf are. Somewhere, in the back of my house, are a bag of polyhedron dice, a box holding my painted Warhammer 40K army, and several books related to various and sundry RPGs I played "back in the day." I have electronics named after deities from the Norse and Egyptian pantheon, epithets I gave because the gods and the tools matched up. I use words like "epithet" in blogs. I could go on, but I think this is probably enough evidence to convict in a court of law....

The thing about geekery is that it's a whole lot of fun, but it makes you mostly unmarriable. I love the things I'm interested in, the things I read, the friends I have. I enjoy "flying that geek flag." I just know that being this way has ensured that I'm going to live the rest of my days single. It's a real pain.

I have this fantasy guy in mind. He's intelligent, he's tall, he's funny, and most of all, he's as big a geek as me. We go do geek stuff together. He's even willing to load up and go to things like the Elvis Festival for the sheer geeky goodness that can be had. We go to the movies, enjoy the good ones, and MST3K the bad ones together (he knows what that is because he's a geek like me). He has odd collections, and he doesn't mind the fact that I have PEZ all over the walls of my office. He does, in fact, find this charming and not odd. Above all, he's not threatened by the fact that I'm independent and capable since he is, too. In my most secret fantasies, his computer gear is better than mine, and he's willing to share. Mmm.....

Okay, so I'm hamming it up just a bit. It just seems sometimes that the things I like are so different for some reason than the interests of most of the people I know. Maybe they're all secret geeks, too. Wouldn't that be funny? Of course, I guess they might be something worse.... I'm just going to keep on with what works for me, even if that means it's just me. As my friend C always used to say, "I gotta be me." That's all I know how to do.

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Wood Brothers



During those last hectic days of school, one of my students was in my classroom working on something, and he happened to recommend a CD to me, Ways Not to Lose by the Wood Brothers. Those last few days, we were all furiously working away on laptops, he on his, another student on hers, I on one loaned to me by Technology since mine had died an inconvenient death, and he played me a brief sample of their music. I liked what I heard well enough to write down the title on one of my ever-present Post-Its and stick it to the back of my Seagate case.

The other day when I was moving files from my resurrected school laptop to my Seagate, I found the Post-It, and I looked up the album on Grooveshark. It's great. I love the stripped down Southern sound of it, but what I like even more is the craft of the lyrics. If you've ever read any of my other blogs about music, you know I'm a sucker for a good songwriter, and whoever is writing these knows what he's about. The songs are original and intelligent without being pretentious.

I downloaded the mP3 album from amazon last night, and I already have favorites. I love "Luckiest Man" and "Chocolate on My Tongue," and of course any band than can pull off a respectable version of one of my favorite old hymns, "Angel Band," is going to get my respect. Another that I love the lyrics to is "The Truth Is the Light." The words and imagery in that song resonate with me.

I foresee this one going into heavy rotation with me. I'm glad I followed up on that recommendation. I'm going to link four songs here with Grooveshark. If you haven't heard it yet, you might want to check it out for yourself.

The Moon


I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day. ~Vincent Van Gogh

As usual during the nights of the waxing moon, I haven't been able to sleep very much. The last two nights, though, the moon has been amazing in its beauty. Its color and size have made it look like a luscious piece of fruit laid on a bed of blue velvet as it has risen.

Nights like this make me want to go walking in the pasture and in the woods, trailing my fingers through the long grasses and across the leaves. There are deer in the pasture, and on nights silvered like this, the angle of the light makes me feel as though I could run with them, fleet-footed and graceful.

I wish I were at the Red Field, at our shack in the pasture, tonight, so I could see the sky unobstructed. I think there is no better place to observe than the porch there. It's so peaceful and lovely.

No matter how far we come into this technological age, we cannot escape the old magic of the moon. Maybe something in our blood surges in response to it just as the tides are pulled by it. We're fascinated by it. It shows up in our songs, in our poems, even in advertising and decoration.

Maybe it's just the change in perspective it lends to everyday scenery. Even things that are not at their best (and I guess even we ourselves can fall into that category) are somehow made lovely again. What a wonderful gift to receive every month.

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Kicking, Just Not Very High

Today was my first active session of PT, and it really kicked my tail. Most of the activities were fairly easy to do, more about stretching and repetitions than about any real weight-bearing or force, but at the end of the session, the therapist, who reminds me a bit of a pixie for some odd reason, peeled the backing off three adhesive electrodes, and hooked them to the long muscle on the top of my thigh leading down to my knee. That's when all the real fun began.

The electrodes were hooked to a battery pack which released a charge every ten seconds. The charge fired for ten seconds and rested for ten seconds. The therapist adjusted the intensity to something just under pain and told me how to perform a set of exercises using the electric shock as an extra stimulant to pull the leg muscle and therefore the knee tight.

Unlike some of my electrical engineering friends, I have never had a deep personal affection for electrocution. I never stuck a fork in a wall socket (D -- you know you did it, if you're reading), I don't work with electronics and come home with arc burns in my hands (Dad), and I've never felt the need to tinker around inside my home computer or electronics to see what "that wire there does" (that one applies to so many of my friends that I will just let it hit whomever is appropriate). The feeling of electricity coursing through that big muscle in my leg was a brand-new thing for me.

The pixie therapist asked me several times if I was in pain, and I wasn't exactly. Pain wasn't the right word. I don't really have a word for what it was. It didn't hurt, but it wasn't like something you'd want to have going on all the time, either. Maybe it was like a million little things dancing a jig with a million little pointed metal feet inside my skin. My main answer when asked how I was feeling was, "Strange. Bizarre." I think this must not have been the standard answer she was used to receiving for this treatment because she looked at me a little oddly. I'm almost immune to that, though. After all, it's not like that's the first time I've gotten an odd look.

When the session was over, she took measurements again for how far the knee can bend and straighten, and I was thrilled to hear her say that it has come remarkably far since even Monday. I reduced the numbers that needed reducing and increased the ones that needed increasing, and although I'm still not able to do simple things like drive or be crutch-free, I have taken some important steps toward getting there. I left feeling buoyant. I may not be kicking very high, but at least I'm kicking.

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Baby Steps

I went to PT for the first time Monday. The therapist did an assessment, took basic measurements, and checked to see how much progress I had made since surgery. The news was mostly good. I still have a lot of work to do, but I felt quietly optimistic when I left. She confirmed several things I had thought might be true about pushing myself further with exercises, weight-bearing, and so forth, and at no point did I want to cry or fall down, so I felt like it was another small victory. Any visit to the hospital where I don't want to do one of those two things is a small victory....

Today, I got my hair cut. It needed doing badly. I hate the cowlick in my bangs that starts to curl like horns whenever it gets the slightest bit too long, and I was already way past that point. After the haircut, Mom, my constant chauffeur, and I went to eat at an Italian restaurant for lunch. It was the first sit-down restaurant meal I've had in a very long time, and one of the first non-microwave meals in a while. It was a delightful eggplant florentine calzone, and along with the tiramisu for dessert (I was NOT missing that), it was a feast.

After lunch, I still felt mostly energetic and Mom needed birdseed, so we decided to go to Big Lots. I haven't been to any kind of store in months. The last time I went was just dreadful. I tried to do some Wal-Mart shopping myself, and the pain in my pre-surgery leg was excruciating. Today, I crutched around the store for about 30 minutes before I started hurting and wore myself completely out.

I only bought one or two small things, a laptop riser and some Pirouline, but just being able to get out and be mildly independent was very nice. Granted, I can't drive myself yet, and I had to ask Mom to bring the cart to the things I wanted, but at least I wasn't sitting in my big chair or lying on the couch. Motion felt liberating, even if the feeling was something of a self-deception. Sometimes the lies we tell ourselves are the most important ones....

Well, I still have to do my last set of exercises for today and crank on the knee one good last time tonight. I also want to read some more of this really good biography of the six wives of Henry VIII I'm working on right now, so I'll draw this to a close. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? I'm going to trust that it will be more progress, and not a very, very ANGRY knee.