Random Thursday Ramble

My head is confused this week. I can’t seem to wrap my brain around anything, or get anything accomplished. Perhaps spewing all the nonsense I am able to share will help me get my thoughts in order.

Mommymobile – Still have it. This is the price I pay for not paying full price for repairs to my own car I guess. Nice that my Mom doesn’t mind (too much) lending me her vehicle for all this time. I actually really like driving it. It’s a Mercury Mariner, and it’s only a year or two old, unlike my ancient (circa 2000) Kia Sportage. I will miss the mommymobile when I have to return it, as the sensation of having my buttocks gently warmed as I drive to work in the morning is not entirely unpleasant. Kia doesn’t care if my buttocks remain cold.

I also like her sassy sunroof, which allows me to have fresh air in the city w/o feeling like I am going to get carjacked if I don’t pay attention to my open window. I don’t like her gas mileage, which is the suck, or how the car leaps forward when I take off from stop signs, making me peel out and sound as if I am a  17 year old boy with a really small penis.

It kinda makes me want to buy a new car, but then I remember how nice it is to have no car payment, and not to worry that anyone will want to steal my own POS car, and I resign myself to however many years la Kialissima has left in it. One thing that I’ve really been enjoying is my Mom’s car stereo, which actually plays real CDs (mine gave that up years ago) and has an excellent speaker system. What’s been driving me nuts though is that when I come off the highway and brake hard I would swear that the volume auto-lowers itself. It’s happened enough times that I don’t think it’s my imagination. I asked my Mom about it, but apparently she doesn’t listen to KMOX loud enough to trigger the stereo turning itself down when she brakes. This morning as I was cycling through some options on the stereo I saw something to do with “brake volume seven” and I think I am NOT crazy, there’s some kind of built-in system for monitoring your speed which assumes I want to lower my volume when i am not on the highway. Has anyone ever heard of such a feature?

Industrial Music – Been listening to a lot more industrial stuff lately, which I enjoy, but I have to laugh and wonder at the names. Why do all of these bands have to be called things like “ChristFuck” and “SkullFuck” and have songs like “Wreath of Barbs” and “Flesh Harvest”? It just makes me laugh. I guess they have to call themselves something, and fluffyBunnyBrains wouldn’t work, but it’s really kind of silly. And this morning I was listening to something on last.fm, the other main listener of which was called “Candy_Slutfuck.” I mean really. Continue reading »

Weekend Wrapup – Gastronomical Delights Edition

You know, my weekend did actually improve after my whole misery-guts Friday experience. It was a struggle, and took some epic willpower on my part (plus a lot of patience on the part of my friends who are really sick of hearing my stories) but I managed to hoist my broken carcass out of the depths of resentful misery and into a better, more productive place. Yay me.

Friday was errand-running during the day, with a surprise appearance by MyTodd™. I bought a new jacket, which cheered me. Then Friday evening was drinking and being irritated. Saturday morning was getting over myself and then some errand-running. I had to run to the grocery store and pick up about 62lbs of meat and seafood for Sunday dinner. Later, Todd and I ended up going out to dinner at Franco in Soulard, which was delicious. I had the mixed greens to start, Todd had the onion soup. We both had the wood grilled bistro steak for our entree, with raito, green beans and pomme frites. I had peanut butter ice cream for dessert, he had an apple tart/vanilla ice cream combo. We loved everything. I especially enjoyed the green beans, since I spent most of my life hating them until once I had them prepared correctly, so now every time I can find good green beans I get all excited. The interior of the restaurant was very nice, low-key, calm and modern. The staff were extremely friendly, to the point of an almost obscenely cheerful obsequiousness. When Todd got up to use the restroom, our server rushed over and refolded his napkin into a fancy shape. That’s a little OTT for me, but it never crossed the line to truly disturbing/offensive. Continue reading »

Undefeeted

So remember back in January when I posted that we’d hopefully never have to talk about my feet again on this-here blog? Wrong.

Went to the doctor yesterday because the “strained tendons” he said would heal themselves in 2-4 weeks had still not healed, close to 10 weeks later. I still can’t stand for long periods of time, if I step on an uneven surface I am in agony, and I get stabbing pains if I try to pivot on that foot. And now, due to adventures with Wii Fit, my left knee had gone all to hell as well, probably from favoring that leg due to the foot pain. So I wanted him to check it out. He poked and prodded, had me stretch and watched me walk, and decided that it was still my tendons, and he was going to send me to physical therapy. He wanted to do some x-rays of my knee, which he said was swollen, to make sure I wasn’t developing arthritis in it. I said that was fine, and that I really needed my foot to start feeling better pretty much right now. I told him that I was surprised it was really the tendons, since the pain was so sharp and wouldn’t go away, and I had been trying to stretch the foot and use it as much as possible. So, probably just to humor me, he decided that as long as I was having x-rays he’d “grab one of the foot, too.” Continue reading »

The Last of the Foot Drama (we hope)

Fascinating, ain't it?

So doctor’s appt today, much limping to get there, much things wrong with my car’s transmission, etc. Surprisingly the staff remembered me, which means I must have been a highly-amusing and beloved patient, right? Or an unholy PITA, whichever.

X-rays (I think that exhausting my $250 medical co-pay 5 days into a new year is a personal best, by the way.) and waiting around for the doctor, who prods at me and makes everything hurt, then makes up for it by showing me all the cool insides of my foot. There’s a weirdness where the break was, all lumpy up the sides, and there’s still a line there with the original fracture, but NO NEW FRACTURE, bitches. None.

After telling me that he starts explaining something to me about torque, and wrenched tendons, and monkey paws, but by that point I wasn’t listening because all I’d heard was: NO NEW FRACTURE (bitches).

So basically he said I was all injured and stuff, but it wasn’t a break, and I was going to be OK. Then he said if I wanted to wear Das Boot for a few days/week he would support me in that, but he’d also be happy to see me in a shoe. Doctors are so weird-talking. Anyway, I said no way to the boot, asked if I could walk barefoot (I can) asked if I can haz pain meds (I can) and asked how long until it was better (2-3 weeks). And I can SO DO THAT SHIT. In fact, even though it hurts just as badly now, I DO NOT CARE because I know it’s not broken, and that walking on it is not making it worse. I can stand anything if I know what’s causing it and when it’s going to stop. I ain’t ascairt of some pain.

So anyway, that’s me, twisty monkey paw torque foot. Healing. With meds to ease my way. Wearing shoes. Hopefully this is the last time we’re going to need to discuss my feet on this here blog, unless I am rhapsodizing about a pedicure or having someone massage them.

On a side note, I wish I’d asked him for copy of my new x-rays, but I thought that if I was too weird he wouldn’t give me the pain meds. To soothe you I have posted a pic of last year’s x-rays and the terrible, horrible, no-good, really bad Jones Fracture.

I hurt on my everywhere

Not that I want my vacation to be over, but I seriously want Monday to get here so I can go to the doctor. I am in so much pain right now, it’s awkward to be awake, much less moving around. There’s not a lot I can do comfortably between now and then, other than sit and kvetch. And on Monday I will either find out that I am outrageously hardass for walking around on a broken foot for six days, or an incredible whiner with nothing wrong with me at all. Although I think that last one is possibly too good to be true.

Right now not only is my foot painful to walk on, but walking weirdly to compensate for that pain has thrown my back into some kind of spasms, and my right hip is maybe made out of broken glass now, I can’t really tell. And still, I am so pissed off at life that I refuse to accept that there’s anything wrong with me. I haven’t stopped going out, and I absolutely refuse to stay huddled up here in the house. I knew I was good at partitioning, but rarely have I been able to achieve this level of knowing something and refusing to know it at the same time. When and if he tells me that I have to be back in a cast or boot for another 10 weeks, I get a feeling like I might disagree with him, though I don’t know what good that would do me exactly. I don’t know that it’s possible to reason oneself out of an injury, though I would sure like to give it a good try.

Also, I have a strong urge to yell at the doctor when I do see him, no matter the outcome of the x-rays, because he told me this shit was fine. He told me I could return to normal, strenuous activity six months ago, ffs. But he didn’t think to say that strenuous activity didn’t include stepping on uneven surfaces or, by the way, careful there because your particular brand of fracture has a 63% re-fracture rate. Might want to watch for that. Nor (in the case this thing isn’t broken) did he prepare me for the fact that it could possibly be this painful to step on something, this far down the road. At no point in my exit interview with him did he mention “Oh, and you’re going to be insanely tender for the next foreseeable stretch of time, so don’t fret when you’re in agony, that’s all normal.”  It’s just another things that I hate about doctors, the fact that they never mention anything  unless you specifically ask, and how often do patients know what to ask? But in either case (likely-re fracture or exceptional sensitivity) he should have mentioned that shit. Doctors are so cavalier because they see this kind of thing all day every day, and they don’t take into account that for each of their patients it’s always an entirely novel and frightening experience.

Doctors – the same assholish, blase, know-it-all attitude as IT people, but with the ability to fuck up your life much worse by not conveying the proper information.

Oh, and by the way, my Mom’s doing fine, she’s sleeping better now and has calmed down. Because that’s top on my worry list, making sure she’s fine w/my injury.

What, me, angry?

What do you mean, I’m not in charge of that?

So far I have employed a few different  techniques to deal with this foot thing. They differ significantly from last year’s most-used methods (weeping, cursing, throwing various objects at other objects until something breaks.)

The primary coping mechanism so far has been that trusty family standby “pretending it’s not happening.” I can really make this one work only by sitting down and not moving, since the pain of utilizing said appendage is a pretty steady reminder that there’s an issue of some sort.

The next method = painkillers. They seriously aid in the first (dissociation from reality) method but they have a tendency to wear off and also to make me sleepy and confused.

The last method has been denial of facts in ready existence, a.k.a. “If you refuse to wear a corrective device, there can’t be anything wrong with you at all.” Which is why I am not wearing that foot brace.

And a subsidiary to all of these theories is the “not fair” hypothesis – which holds that I wasn’t doing anything wrong, —was doing housework in fact—and was on vacation. It would be karmically implausible to injure myself in this way under those circumstances.

Honestly, I just can’t imagine that the world is this perverse. This can’t be happening, I refuse for it to be happening, therefore it is not happening. See how that one works?

I’ve had varying levels of pain since Tuesday, at times being able to walk with almost no pain at all (see: painkillers) and at other times having pain worse than when I first had my cast off in April. My toes have been alternatingly numb/pain free/painful, and I don’t know what that means. I wish I had a better understanding of foot/bone mechanics so that I could form a more educated guess as to whether this pain signals another break or not. One part of me says “no way – this doesn’t hurt as much as the original break, so it can’t be another break. Right?” The other part of me sasses back with “Well why hasn’t the pain subsided yet, smarty pants? What do you think you have, a toe sprain?” And I don’t really know enough about how feet work to say that toe sprain is/is not a workable theory.

All I know is that this is a gigantic pile of bullshit, and that I should never have told my mother about it at all, since she’s been steady crying and unable to sleep since I did tell her. For the record: she hates to think of me all alone in this big house with no one to help me, so very alone and by myself, isolated, in this state I am in of being without anyone else here, lonely, by myself and so very alone. Which is very thoughful of her to point out.

Although on the bright side she also posits that my state of solitary, hyper-alone, isolated, single, helpless, gaping void of pointless, useless life is nonetheless better than her some people’s state of being aggravated 24/7 by my father some people who will remain nameless. But is is very hard for her to deal with the concept of me all alone and injured in my bleak, empty household. For the record. But she’s really glad I told her about it because trouble shared is trouble halved. And now she has to go lie down and cry for awhile, while she thinks of my bravery here all alone by myself.

Ahem.

Feh

Talked to the orthopedic doctor’s office. Of course doctor is out until Monday. Asst. talked to him, he said I could go get an x-ray at the ER and then come in on Monday for him to look at it, but what would the point of that be? He can just as easily x-ray it in his office on Monday, if I have to go in.

All I wanted him to say is “Pshaw – there’s no way you broke your foot right there again! You’re fine!” but what he did say was “There’s a definite possibility you’ve re-fractured that same bone, as it’s weaker now than it used to be. The intense pain you’re having isn’t a good sign.”

This year just had to kick my ass one more time before it was over, huh? And this fits in line with the Halloween and Thanksgiving Eve crises in my world. Apparently the calm and sane xmas eve I had, with no household and/or health care emergencies, was the anomaly.

For now I am trying to stay off it, keep ice on it, and hope that it’s just aggravated and not broken. It can’t be broken. I refuse to allow that possibility into my world.

I cannot fucking believe this bullshit

So I came home from errands, decided to take stupid tree downstairs. Couldn’t find new storage bag for tree while I was out, but sick of looking at tree so it was going downstairs with or without bag. Awkward to carry w/o bag, as you might imagine. Knew I couldn’t carry everything, so I threw the tree skirt down ahead of me. It didn’t make it all the way down, but lay across the bottom two stairs, plus it knocked down some shit that was at the bottom of the staircase. Shit.

Carefully I went down the stairs, one foot at a time, as I couldn’t see where I was going and was soon to be stepping onto a pile of fabric. Not ideal. As I came down off the last step onto the basement floor, I accidentally stepped on a 1″ square aluminum pole that had fallen over when I threw the tree skirt down. It was laying across the bottom stair, so it was angled about 6″ up in the air, and I basically tried to balance on it, exactly on the spot on the bone where I broke that stupid fucking foot last year. An exquisite blossoming of pain across my entire body was the immediate result. I am telling myself that I can’t have re-broken that thing , that I have only bruised it, or angered it or something. There’s no way I re-broke it by stepping on a fucking pole, for fuck’s sake. But it’s all swollen and I can barely walk on it now, and am in some pretty agonizing pain when I try. I have taken a painkiller and I am going to bed.

Also I just realized I left a frozen bag of corn laying on the couch. Fuck it, I am not going back down there.

Protected: Energy – It’s a Funny Thing

Things I Learned Just Here Recently

So, blah blah, broke my foot. Misery, woe and pain, gnashing of teeth and everything. We all know that story. And I had physical therapy and that helped a lot. But what I never talked about was that once I started physical therapy, something happened to my OTHER foot, which I thought was a result of too much strain on it from the first one being broken and the subsequent rehab.

See, I developed a condition called plantar fasciitis and boy, is that a fucking bitch. So for the last two months I have been having horrible, stabbing pains along the arch of my foot whenever I get up from either sitting too long, or first thing in the morning. That first thing in the morning pain… OMG that’s a “clinging desperately to the wall, grimacing like a crazy woman, cursing the Fates, limping across the room like a tired old whore” kind of pain. After you take 5-10 steps the muscle stops spasm-ing or whatever it’s doing, but it’s a crazy kind of pain.

At first I thought it would go away, if it was caused by over-use of foot 2 due to foot 1 being incapacitated, but then I realized it wasn’t and decided to do some reading up on it. And after reading scary stuff about foot surgery and permanent crippling pain, I read further and then it turns out I was creating the condition myself and by fixing what I was doing I think I’ve pretty much made it go away.

See the thing is this: my broken foot is still slightly swollen. I don’t know how long that takes to go away, or if it’s permanent because the bone healed slightly wider than before. All I know is that none of my shoes comfortably fit my left foot anymore. So back in early May I took myself to Marshall’s and bought a cute pair of black Bass flip-flops which DID fit, and I’d worn them pretty much everywhere since then. I am not usually a flip-flop person, but these were special circumstances and they’re really cute, for real. This was around the time I was in PT I was having a lot of pain in my broken foot. My therapist suggested a shoe that wasn’t tight around my broken foot, and these fit that bill. This was exactly when the pain in foot 2 started, so I didn’t relate the new shoes to the pain necessarily. But then I read that article that I linked to above, and when it called plantar fasciitis the “flip-flop disease” I suddenly realized the error of my ways. I switched back to my trusty Børn sandals. And even though squishing my broken foot back into them was not at all pleasant, I sucked it up and waited to see what would happen. It’s about a week later and I am extremely pleased to report that (knock wood) my pain in that foot seems to be almost completely gone. In fact I got up from reading on the couch just now and it didn’t hurt at all! Which inspired this post. Because it’s rare that I have tidbits I really think need sharing with the masses, but if you’ve somehow stumbled upon this page because you’re Googling info about pain in your heel or the arch of your foot, foot pain when you wake up in the morning, stabbing pain in your feet, whatever – stop wearing any kind of flip-flop shoes! Wear something supportive, with a slight heel. It will NOT take long to get better if you stop wearing the shoes that aggravate the condition. Seriously.

OK that’s it for this public service announcement and that’s all you will have to hear about my feet. For today.

Now to sort out the tendinitis in my left wrist…

Random Monday Morning Crap

Warning—unfocused, rambling whine-fest ahead. If you’re not in the mood for that, please skip. If you’re up for it, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Continue reading »

So, Done with Physical Therapy

Today was my last physical therapy session. In my evaluation I said that I felt I was about 85% better, and the rest of the improving I have to do I can do with my exercises at home. I can now balance on my bad leg for 30 seconds though! When I started I couldn’t even do one second on that leg. It was really busy at the PT place, my 4:30 slot was a pretty popular one for people getting off from work, I suppose. There really are some characters at that place, for real. Made for excellent people-watching.

Oh, and (accidental I think) weirdness. When my therapist was doing my post-therapy evaluation we were chatting about how busy it is there, and how strange some of the goings-on are. Then he was saying that he thought I would do fine with my at home exercises. “But,” he said “Call me if you have any questions. Even if it’s not about your foot, feel free to go ahead and call me.” Which – I kinda blinked at. Like, what sort of questions? I have a lot about the ways of the world. And why people are the way they are, and why bad things keep happening to me, and all sorts of other kinds of queries, none of which I had thought to address to him. And then it made it kinda seem like he was hitting on me. Which I will presume he was not, but go ahead and totally take because I needed the Friday afternoon ego boost.

Fuck I had a shitbag week at work. It just keeps getting more and more insane there. And I can’t find another job that I want at a place that it wouldn’t kill me to work. I can’t work for a chemical company, or a rifle manufacturer, for god’s sake. Nor do I want to work for a stockbroker or an architecture firm. I guess I just love working in education. It’s just that my kind of position at an educational institution is hard to come by. I have several resumes out, so we will see. For now I am just hanging in there. The good news is that as my hormone levels are (presumably) straightening out, I am much more calm. That’s really good. I like being calm. So it takes more to get me wound up. But by the end of the week I tend to be somewhat wound up. And I wanted to go out tonight and realized that MyTodd™ is in Vegas for a wedding (asshole) and I don’t really like to go out without him, as I have mentioned before. Maybe I will go out tomorrow. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I spend a hefty sum on new plants tonight including an emerald phlox that has foliage to die for. And that cheered me. Also I put my keys in the pocket with the hole in it (note to self: examine why so many of my pockets have holes in them. perhaps some mending is in order?) and then had a frantic “dig through purse 30 times in vain effort to find keys” moment and then found that some kind soul had turned them in. But then I got home and two of these foul little dogs had pooped in my office because I was so late. So all in all it’s a mixed bag kind of evening.

OK /end overshare-ramble-rant.

This Week’s Garden Pics

Ajuga reptans “Chocolate Chip”

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

bleeding heart

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

Lily of the valley

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

I can’t believe the changes in the garden in just the last two weeks. Amazing. I hope it’s never winter again.

In other news, I finally got around to listening to The Weepies new album “Hideaway” and it’s just as amazing as I thought it would be. It’s so good it makes me cry and sneeze at the same time.

Every song, better and better. Just like their previous albums, the marriage of music and lyric is so perfect that it literally hurts my heart.

You can listen to some of it at their site, linked above.

“Orbiting” is my favorite so far. Partial lyric:

Guess I went somewhere to hide
Far behind my eyes
I willed you there to see
But you never came for me

Now I’m out of your range
Now it’s kind of strange
How we change orbit in our lives
You were kind of a moon
outside of my room
I could just feel you nearby

Now I feel you gone
‘Cause I know which side you’re on
And it’s not mine

In other other news, I just had my first pedicure since the infamous bone-breaking stair mishap of 2008. I like pedicures at the same time as they make me really nervous. I am not big on strangers doing personal grooming things to me, so the person has to be really good to make me relax and enjoy it. This person wasn’t like that. She just grinned a lot and was nice to me because she wanted a big tip. Fair enough.

Anyway, my feet feel wonderful and look pretty and tomorrow when I go to physical therapy and the guy “manipulates” my foot at an uncomfortable proximity to his crotch I will at least not be embarrassed of my calluses, I will just be embarrassed that my foot is going to accidentally rub something it doesn’t want to.

Actually since starting PT I have felt so much better, this weekend has been the best yet. I worked for about 3 hours in the garden today and I feel fine. I think it was just finding out what I could safely do, since I was petrified to even look at my foot lest I damage it. This guy has assured me I can’t rebreak my bone that easily and shown me all the things I need to do to loosen the muscles that are all cramped up. He’s also impugned my ability to teeter on one foot with my eyes closed and told me that if I had better balance then I would be less likely to fall in the first place. Again, fair enough. I am supposed to be practicing my balance. Shoot, gotta do that today.

OK that’s all.

Boot Free!

(Obv’y sung to the tune of the song Sinatra made famous)

BOOT free
as free as the wind blows
as free as leg hair grows,
boot-free to follow your feet.

WALK free and hazard surrounds you
the fear still astounds you,
each time you step on the stairs.

WALK free where no velcro stops you
your gait’s like a cool pimp,
so there’s no need to limp.

BOOT free and life is worth living
but only worth living,
Cause you’re BOOT free!

Update on nothing

Life lately is nothing but doctors, work, medical tests that sear away the last remaining shreds of my personal dignity, more doctors, excruciating pain, medications that make me really ill and rain. Which, surprisingly, isn’t really as bad as it sounds – at least in comparison to the winter I had.

Now it’s April, which I find hard to believe. February was the longest month evar, and then March blew by in a windy breeze. Now it’s April and I live for the hope that (a week from Friday) I might finally get my left leg back. Other than that, I think I may have finally gone completely dead inside. Which, while not a state to which I aspire, does leave me rather less upset than I have been lately wont to be.

Since that’s kind of depressing, here’s a picture of Jake which is very cute, think about that instead.

Friends do tell me it’s best to say little
The less you put out the less that’s gone
But sitting here lazing the smaller I feel
‘Cause I expand when I let on