meh

Two more doctor’s visits today, to the hospital for more tests next week, oh joy.

Didn’t get boot off, but got smaller boot. That’s good. Probably/maybe get the boot off in three weeks.

Tired.

Edit to add boot photo. See how close my toe is to the edge of the boot? No more clown shoe = good thing.

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The pre-verts has arrived!

In perusing my blog stats I found some kewl key phrases leading people to my blog.

This first one is a total WTPF:  “password protected underwear”

I don’t even have a word to say on that.

But I am also now starting to get hits for “Women in Leg Braces” which is awesome.

Welcome cast-fetishists! We knew you were out there somewhere!

You know what I would like?

• I would like to walk barefoot.
• Barring that, I would like to wear two shoes. One on each foot. A matching pair of shoes. Cute shoes.
• I would like to sit cross-legged.
• I would like to paint my toenails. Actually, I would like someone ELSE to paint my toenails. I would like a pedicure.
• I would like to walk up the stairs in a way that is somewhat less evocative of a drunken clown.
• I would like to ride my exercise bike.
• I would like to run around after Jake in the yard.
• I would like to kneel down and pull some weeds.
• I would like to sleep in any old position I want, no matter if my foot is at a 90-degree angle from my ankle.
• I would like to take my dogs for a walk.
• I would like to take myself for a walk.
• I would like to go to the doctor next Monday and have him tell me that I am the fastest-healing woman he’s ever known, and he’d like to write me up for a medical journal.
• I would like for the Feist concert in April to not be sold out.

That is all.

No, wait. I would also like you to watch this clip. I <3 Jeff Goldblum.

SIX WEEKS and counting, people!

OK, so six weeks today was when I decided to hurl myself down the stairs for attention and sympathy. And I have to tell you, the attention and sympathy are lacking and the pain and inconvenience are more than I bargained for. So I will definitely think twice before I try that trick again.

SIX WEEKS. Damn. It seems like longer. I go back to the doctor a week from Monday to see how I am healing and if I get the robocop leg off or not. I don’t know if there’s an intermediary step between robocop leg and setting me free to walk on my own, so some kind of mini-robocop-leg may be in my future too.

In the meantime I have gained much skillz in:

• cast-condom donning
• monkeying my way up and down the stairs
• finding the cripple entrance to the building
• putting up with people’s asshole “Oh I had the same thing but twice as bad and for twice as long!” stories. (Thanks fuckwad, that makes my personal hell of pain and disability SO MUCH MORE BEARABLE.)

I have not become any better at:

• learning my limits
• taking it easy
• counting my blessings
• suffering fools
• kneeling down to do things when one leg don’t bend too good

It’s getting particularly annoying now that the weather’s perking up and I want to be out in my garden. Gardening is mostly kneeling-down, and it’s just not happening with this thing on. I have raked some stuff up and cleaned some leaves away from plants though. Also, I have a SHEDLOAD of bulbs coming up. I remember planting what seemed like 796,000 bulbs this fall, and it’s paying off now because I have little leaves poking through the bare soil in many many places! Excitement. Pictures tomorrow, mayhap.

Now I am off to a late dinner and midnight movie, and to remember what it was like to be a night person, before working for a school turned me into some awful hybrid non-night-and-also-non-morning person. I had a meeting this morning at 7:30 in the AM, people! There should be a law. Enforceable with affliction of boils.

I think Mah Dawg’s Gone Craaazy

Jake has developed this thing that I would have sworn was a neurological problem. But I looked it up and it’s actually a nervous tic that means he’s under-stimulated. Yeah, I need to walk him more, once my foot is healed. It will be better when the weather is improved too.

And no, I am not getting a 4th chihuahua so he has someone to play with, but I have been playing more with him myself. He’s curiously catlike when he lays around, no?

The Day So Far

I’ve had a rather inauspicious start to the day here. Despite it being Friday, even. Firstly, I forgot until yesterday that I have to work on Sunday. 2 weekend days per year must the superBadGirl work, and this Sunday is onesuch. The worst part of working is the stupid outfit I have to wear. Honestly. You know how your outfit influences your mood? Well I have to stand around all day in khakis and a polo shirt, looking like a Busty McTitsalot’s dorky sister, and I don’t like it. Actually I will be sitting and giving presentations. But anyway. Also, Sunday is time change. And it’s just now getting bright enough in the mornings that I don’t want to stab myself rather than get out of bed. So time springs forward and we lose that for another month. Feck.

In addition to that I decided yesterday that I needed some arch-support socks for my broken foot. That was a very stupid idea. It’s amazing how much arch-support socks can hurt a broken foot. Just that subtle squeeze on the middle of my foot, but it’s shooting pains right up to my hip. Dumb me. So this may turn into a 2-painkiller day, and we’ve been having 1-painkiller days for weeks now. Also, I went to the cafeteria for breakfast, got two biscuits and some jelly and walked back to my office. For that I have to go outside. As I opened the door to the outside, one of my biscuits BLEW AWAY. I think that if one of your biscuits blows away down the alley, that’s like… cartoon-level inauspicious day start.

Anyway, at least it’s sunny here.

District Bulletin: Moth Month Dispatch

District Bulletin: Moth Month Dispatch

Our district’s great enemy, Croisquessein, has created a further eruption of tumult in the citizenry. The malactionate spectre has accelerated his actions of late, causing untold embarrassment and suffering. Days ago, he upturned a liquid in a glass upon a diner, making a bad spill and wet clothing. Yesterday, Croisquessein caused a man to drop his telephone in the toilethole.

You know, I think it’s possible that Croisquessein pitched me down the stairwell at my home, rudely snapping my tiny, tender footbones in twain, merely due to the fact that nine days previously I may have casually mentioned chaining Dr. David Thorpe to my radiator and forcing him to rub my feet with potent, medicinally-scented unguents. I think that’s an overwrought reaction, really.

Staying home again

Once this is over I am putting up a tent and living in the back yard for a month. Just to not be in the house.

Wait. No. I will get shot and killed. Fudge. Well, I will think of something to demarcate most strikingly the transition from “house-bound crippled chick” to “regular chick who goes places.” Sounds like there should be a roasted goat involved at some point.

So today is going to be more of the same that yesterday was, including pondering on my unwanted, unnecessary and yet still intensely painful reproductive cycle. Oh, and hoping that the carpet installers from next door are caught in a snowdrift somewhere and can’t get back here today to bang on my walls for 8 hours straight while they blast EZ listening music.

It’s Amazing

…what a few days of decent weather and copious amounts of sleep can do for one’s mood. I didn’t get out today but I laundered, I vacuumed, I napped, I COOKED, even. Involving pans (multiple) and fresh ingredients! I had the windows open, I walked around the back yard. I snorgled puppies, I didn’t have to clean up any poop in the house. I wore shorts! Life is good.

For this moment in time with wet hair and a tummy full of Pad Thai and clean laundry and sweet-smelling carpets, life is good.

Now, wintry mix is apparently imminent, but maybe they’re wrong about that – who knows? The one thing I am worried about is the “2 days of good weather” effect on the crime rate. Because you know my theory – all these thugs and shitheads have been cooped up for months and then last night it was nice and they got out mixing with each other. Fun right? But then they will inevitably start fighting. Now, if it’s only one day of good weather then that’s the end of it. But tonight’s promised rain did not materialize. If it stays clear through the prime shooting hours of 1-5 a.m. then the peeps with guns (everyone) will go find whoever pissed them off last night and shoot them – maybe right in the apartments, even. I am just saying it’s not going to be a good night to be on your front porch, or sitting in a car idling in front of your own house.

Will be interesting to read the overnight death count in tomorrow morning’s paper.

Couldn’t catch a break with a butterfly net.

I was exhausted all day today. It was the end of a full week at work, my first in a month, and I was really feeling it. I haven’t been getting great sleep because the dogs are reacting to my stress and getting pissy with each other at night – which means that they wake me up with their squabbling. From about 1 p.m. onward all I could think about was going home and taking a nap. Finally, end of the day, I get to come home. It’s gorgeous weather here today, too. In the 50′s maybe, and sunny. Happy times weather. I get home, I feed the dogs, I check my email and I haul my sad carcass upstairs. My bedroom is the sunniest room in the house, light streams in from four large windows, and the whole atmosphere up there is extremely restful and peaceful on a sunny day like today. I take off the huge Darth Vader leg and nestle under the covers, settling the Pack down with me, and prepare to doze off.

BANG!

BANG!

BANG BANG!

WTF?

SLAM, BANG, BANGBANGBANG.

Oh nice. They’ve started (as best I can tell) laying a hardwood floor next door. At 5:30 pm on a Friday. In the middle of prime Susan nap time. Fuckers. Dirty, dirty fuckers. BANGBANGBANGBANG. SLAM! BANG! I try to ignore it, but that’s kind of hard to ignore. So I doze fitfully for an hour and a half, at which point they stop. But by then the puppies have had all the nap they’re in the mood for – at least Jake has. He starts jumping around the bed like a crazed mini-marsupial. BOUNCE! BOUNCE! Whine. Paw. Whine. SCRATCH SCRATCH. BOUNCE! And then he jumps onto the pillow where my foot is resting and by reflex I do what? I kick out to keep him away. Motherfucking ow.

So, now we’re all up and back downstairs. I can live without a nap.

Well. I am going to have to.

First the Good News

OK. First the good news. Sort of. I called the doctor’s office today and told them about my latest cast drama and how it probably wasn’t that big of a deal, right? But they were all “No, you have to come in. Yes, you’re probably retarded in some way. No, we’ve never had a more troublesome patient.” So I went in to see them. And they looked at the wreckage of my current cast and they said “WTPF?” and I was like “Well no one warned me about jumping rope.” And then they laughed and it was OK. They cut off the cast and I got to look at the hot mess which was my hairy, scary left leg. I assumed they would just recast me again, but since I had an appt with the doctor next week he decided to x-ray me today and see how I was doing, and —long-story short—he put me in a boot thing instead of a new cast.

The plus points here are that BOO-yah, I can take this off. My leg is currently clean, fresh-smelling and hair-free! Wheee! Also, this thing is way springy and wacky when I walk. I feel half kangaroo, half robo-cop. Also it’s 97% velcro strapping and it makes really cool noises when I walk.

The downside is that if you look at the picture here you will see that these things come only in S,M,L,XL and this medium (my calf is too big to be able to use the small, apparently) is approximately thirty-two inches longer in the toe area than my actual foot. (that little white bit is my toe) This makes it particularly difficult to go up stairs. Especially narrow, steep stairs of the type I have. It’s like going up stairs wearing one giant clown shoe.

Also, I don’t know if my cast-cover thing is going to fit over this monstrosity. So showering will be an adventure. But overall just having a clean, non-hairy, non-sweaty foot and leg (and permission to take this off when I am in bed or laying down so I can stretch my leg and move my foot around and stay more limber in the foot-area) is really, really awesome. Just, the stairs are gonna make me even more nervous than before.

Side note: don’t you think there’s got to be some wacky fetish site for men who love women with leg braces? This thing is seriously hardcore. You know there’s someone out there who’s all “Ohhh BABY! Velcro strapping!”

I saw the x-rays and the doctor was telling me that it was getting better, or at least was where he expected it to be, healing-wise, and I was all… “Uh, no – the crack is wider, I totally see that. You ain’t fooling no one!” And then he explained to me that when the body is healing a broken bone it actually breaks down the edges of each side of the bone so that it can smooth them out and start with a clean base or something. Like bone sanding-down prior to bone spackle. So at three weeks in the crack is supposed to be bigger. Wacky, eh?

I was supposed to do laundry tonight, but I am even more petrified of the nail-studded-board littered basement steps than I was before. I think I might give that another day or two.

More Foot Drama

So I am going today at lunch time today to pick up my “Temporary Disabled Persons Placard”. (WTF is our DMV so British sounding?) What’s weird is that the place I have to go in order to pick up the thing to let me park conveniently because I don’t walk so good? It’s got the worst parking ever. Miles across this long parking lot, and it’s always, always full. I just think that’s funny. And even if I had someone to run in and get it for me, I don’t know that I am allowed to have someone else pick it up. So I have to do the very thing that I am getting permission NOT to do, in order to get permission not to do it. That’s so deliciously governmental, I want to lick it.

In other news, my lovely new cast is cracked. And now I am totally paranoid that the doctor’s office is going to think I am some kind of cast-wrecking nutcase, or I have Munchausen by Footsie, (or maybe that I am trying to get my flirt on with one of the cast techs or something) so I don’t want to go and get it fixed. I have an appt next Tuesday anyway, so I am hoping that it can hold out until then. But I swear, I don’t think this time is my fault. Well, actually I don’t think last time was my fault either. I do admit that the first one was totally my fault. I think I just walk up and down too many damn stairs in a day, and it puts a weird kind of pressure on the front/toe part of the cast. That’s where the crack is, under my toes. The broken part is still solidly supported, which is why I am leaving it for now. But my current nightmare is that I am going to be walking and the thing is going to crack in half off of my foot. And then I will be stuck there, unable to walk a step further. Hopefully in the middle of a blizzard. Joy.

Back to work today, for the first time in the office since last Wednesday.

This is Not my Glamorous Life, Pt II

So, finally got my ass out of the house tonight for a few hours, thank the baby Jesus. (And Todd.) Went out to Uncle Bill’s with some friends, where I was finally able to satisfy my week-long craving for crunchy pecan pancakes. Holy crap, those things are so good they should be illegal. Oh! And there was a guy there totally sporting a full-on Bret-Micheals-Lee-Roth headgear look, consisting of long scraggly hair covered by bandanna covered by ball cap.

Couldn’t he just wear a t-shirt that says “I am heartily ashamed of my male-pattern baldness, pity me.” instead?

Going out was moderately OK and accomplished with no falling down whatsoever – always a bonus. I had to table-salt my front steps because I had no rock salt, but that seemed to work just fine, turning all the ice to slush and making it superBadNavigable. In the interests of continuing my eventual transmogrification into Todd’s grandma he also took me to the grocery store afterward to stock up on supplies – he even dropped me off at the door before he parked. I was grateful he took me, if only to have someone help me in the parking lot and stuff, but nothing really looks good anymore, food wise, so I came home with a random collection of barely edible things.

We got home and Todd came in and hung out for a while. As he was getting ready to go I walked to the front door in front of him and he said “What’s that hanging out of the back of your jeans?” and I reached back to discover what it might be. It was a dog diaper. Oh yes, friends and neighbors, the humiliations involved in being me are infinite. See, I got dressed upstairs and I had to sit on the bed to pull my jeans over my giant be-casted leg. I guess Chelsea’s little denim & velcro diaper (thankfully clean) was laying on the bed and I sat on it, sticking the velcro to the back of my sweater. When I fastened my pants it then got stuck in my waistband and stuck out from there, all sophisticated-like.

“Did she wear a dog’s diaper to the restaurant?” you may ask yourself in abject horror and humiliation on my behalf.

Why yes, yes I did.

Oh well, it was under my coat until I took that off, then I sat down where no one could have seen it, then I put my coat back on when we got up, so no harm no foul except to my ego. Todd already knows too much about me not to be aware of the fact that I am a Grade-A dipshit, so it’s not like I am losing street cred with him by walking around with a dog’s diaper sticking out of the back of my jeans.

Here’s the article of doggie clothing in question:

Speaking of the Foul Ones, I took this picture of Chelsea Anne tonight. Look how dainty:

You can almost hear the inner monologue here.

“I am so pretty! I am a princess! A pretty-pretty dainty little ballerina-princess!”

That seems like it would be the case, but it’s not accurate. The actual inner-workings of her tiny brain is more along the lines of:

“Hi. I eat my own poop.”

Anyway, I really wanted to go out to the bar with Todd & Co, but no matter how bored I am I can’t convince myself that it’s a good idea to go to a dark and crowded bar on an icy cold night and have a couple of drinks, leading me to come home at 2 a.m. and (with my luck) fall down the stairs again and break some other necessary part of my body. So I am in for the evening, it seems, and hoping for better weather from here on out.

Three Weeks and Counting

So, believe it or not, it’s been three weeks since I broke my foot. It’s been intolerably slow-going and yet seems impossibly long ago. Probably five weeks left to go be-casted, minimum, though I go back to the doctor a week from next Tuesday to have an x-ray and see how I am healing.

In the meantime the weather has not been cooperating and I have been stuck in the house way more than is conducive to my continued (?) good mental health. This sleet and freezing rain, in particular, would be insanity for me to try to get around in. Todd said that “even with two working feet” he could barely get to his car yesterday and that the roads were awful. So here I am another day, stuck in the house – can’t go anywhere, ready to climb the walls, feeling like a giant pussy for being scared to go anywhere. I feel like I am caught in some kind of Twilight Zone life, where nothing will ever change again. Get up, let the dogs out, eat breakfast. Sit around and wait for the day to end. Go to bed. Do it all over again tomorrow. Todd has promised to come and fetch me tonight and take me to dinner with some friends, bless him.

I can’t even do any projects around the house. Yesterday I tried to hang some shelves but that only lasted about twenty minutes before my stupid foot was like “Bitch, please.” And also the shelves were not cooperating. Now I just have four new spots on my wall that need spackle and touch-up paint. And I can’t get on a ladder to do anything I want to do, project-wise, of course. I can’t even carry the vacuum cleaner or the carpet steamer from one floor to the other so I could clean. I guess I never realized how much of a busy-bee I am (for lack of a better term that I can’t think of this early in the morning.) I really want to be DOING something. Not necessarily something monumental, but some kind of puttering around. Everything I *can* do is frustrating and boring me, because I’ve been DOING it for three weeks already. If the weather would break I could at least go out places and look at other people doing stuff.

Hate to Tempt Fate

Kids, I hate to tempt fate – but things are really going well chez Susan. This new cast is the bomb! So much more comfortable, plus the height and the rocker thing he put on the bottom has changed the way that I walk to a much more natural gait. Also, it does NOT smell funny. It smells like chemicals and plastic, but not anything worse than that. W00T!

I got some new stretchy cover things for my toes that don’t fall off every 15 steps I take, that’s a major bonus.

My heel is still ouchy, but bearable, and I am up and down the stairs (at home) like a champ! Love it! I am actually to the point where I will voluntarily go up and down stairs to fetch things I have forgotten. (Not, y’know,  burst into tears when I realize my shoe is upstairs and I just came down, as previously.)

The new pain meds let me stay in the same mental plane as the rest of the world (well, as much as I was in the first place, anyway) and still keep the pain at bay. Peeps – I think I am totally adjusting to life as a gimpy-ass dork! Wait, should I be proud of that? No matter, if I have to live this way for 6-10 more weeks I’d better fricking embrace it.

Also, Aiko4 came out today. Still downloading, so no judgments yet, but the sweet news is that due to the previously mentioned GCs from DAZ, I got the pro bundle for <$4! I am disappointed that there won’t be an A4-A3 cr2, but I pretty much expected it since she’s based on V4′s mesh. Wonder if someone will come up with a way to Frankenmorph A4′s head onto A3′s body? Either that or I will finally have to invest in Wardrobe Wizard. But now I have something to look forward to playing with tomorrow after work.

Work… work is still the suck, but I have too much to worry about otherwise to pay it much attention.

Anyway this may be just a temporary blip in ye olde serotonin levels, but  hey – I will totally take it.

OK, up too late – bed now!