tip-toeing around regret or something

*weeks rip past me at the speed of Barry Allen*

Srsly, I try not to die a  little inside every time I miss TWD and Flash live tweets now.

Ok, so I wasn't really done with my thought organizing in the last post, due to time constraints, but let's jump back into that, shall we?

• I have finally titled a piece I'm working on about *entire brain stifles fingers and mouth*
• Still 6 pounds down from August. I'm hungry. Oh, yeah, I haven't had nachos in a week. I know everyone in the Force just felt my starvation pain. Thank you. I felt you feel that.
• Cut my coffee in half again this week. Officially down to exactly one measured cup. My big mugs look half empty now. The withdrawal headache is easing up a bit.
• The size 7-8 slippers I finally caved to picking up from Walmart this week feel like size 6. The disappointment is real. The saddest part is me having the smallest feet, so I can't gift them to anyone.
• Now that I've managed to establish a somewhat firm fuzzy boundary around my bedroom (extremely fuzzy), my entire brain of cells is chanting TAKEBACKTHEHOUSE TAKEBACKTHEHOUSE TAKEBACKTHEHOUSE and I'm doing my best to plug my ears and go lalalalala.

I met a woman in therapy today who has nearly 20 years on me. She was there after reconstruction on thumb because arthritis ate up a bone in her wrist. Even with the usual 'growing old' rhetoric, which I heartily agree with, the context was still so lopsided that I was glad when she had to leave so our convo could be over. I'm still having difficulty empathizing with people way older than me who have less difficulty than I do and think something is so hard when clearly they've been enjoying more capability far longer than I ever dreamed, although yes, a thumb reconstruction sounds horrid. (She was literally able to do way more than I was with the exercise putty, and I'm 7 weeks out from carpal tunnel release, so clearly something is still wrong with my hand.) It's not so much feeling self pity as ok, I already dealt with that, is there anything more interesting to talk about kind of thing. I mean, so many other drops and mentions about a real life, I wouldn't have minded hearing about what she assumed was boring, right. When I'm with a therapist, I generally try to talk about something we both find interesting since they must hear pain junk every single day and they're probably sick of it, I know I am, and I'm not there to find new friends to whine about the cold snap with. She suddenly blurted all the interesting stuff as she was walking out and I felt so gypped. Really? You just leave me dangling full of questions now...

I looked up scleroderma, since my therapist thinks I have it. I have follow up with primary the day before my birthday. I'll likely get a flu shot and now possibly donate blood to see how much worse my life might have been all this time behind my back. Meh. It could certainly explain a few things, but I'm already beyond my personal life expectancy, so it's not really bothering me, aside from it also explaining a lot of how my mom went down. One of my sisters has sjogrens, the other has I think 3 kinds of arthritis all over her body, and other things abound as well, so I'm just not terribly surprised. What did you get for your birthday? Scleroderma. Oh, sounds nice. I am really appreciating the wicked sense of humor a friend of mine on my street had before she moved away, and I'm missing it lately. It didn't matter how badly something sucked, she lived her life the way she wanted and always presented as having it all together, and that humor was a sort of mockery I didn't understand back then. Totally getting it now.

I'm the sort that pulls back into a corner making sure other people are doing ok first. That's a tough challenge, especially since I'm not at all mousy about how I feel. I shut up because I love them. Well, poor @bonenado hears it, and I do regret that more often than not, but I have so many memories of what I thought of people around me as a kid, and I know how ugly grown ups can be even when they think they are being kind. I'd like to think I'm living up to this life challenge, being a natural narcissist and definitely being territorial in a matriarchal way, meaning that my challenge is about learning to be sweet. It's hard. I wasn't born sweet.

But yeah, I'm all swimming around in a head full of where are we now kind of month because here comes my birthday, and *bam*, Google pulls the G+ rug out from under me, and inside a very dark room I don't generally share even with my psychologist, the swears I can hear inside are making even me cringe.

Our world revolves around the whims of the uber wealthy, you know that right. I should have gotten slippers from my local sheepskin guy. I should have stayed my course instead of following people on wayward ventures over the many years, and there have been several. I should have branded by now. I should be merchandising already. *quietly rests head on table because banging my head on a wall would only make it worse...*

My birthday number is fascinating me this year. I mentioned becoming this age in my #Pinkyblog post pink is the new dark, or, my life without any meth whatsoever.

Kinda got lost in this. Cue the video!

baby blob

I'm a big baby today so I got myself some ice cream. I last mentioned ice cream on this blog on June 2nd. That's right, I managed not to cave to ice cream for 109 days.

I brought up a few specifics I'm having trouble with regarding a couple things around my house while I was in physical therapy on my knee (4 weeks out from surgery, doing pretty good but still a long way to go), and UFFDA there we went into strength training on top of the tissue work. My two biggest challenges, between the arthritis in my lower back and this knee being weak and swollen from surgery, are a particular hamstring stretch (easy to solve with a different approach, thank goodess) and rising in a bathroom without special maneuvering on a fixture or a sink counter (because of my hand also still healing from surgery), which turns out to be the top number one challenge everyone in the world has anyway.

Seriously, the number one physical therapy work across the board is rising from a toilet, bar none. Doesn't matter the injury, the procedure, the arthritic condition, the age- we all get stuck on the pot. Suddenly makes sense that the top injuries in one's home, besides stairs, occur in bathrooms.

So now I'm doing extra work adding my other knee in, and of course it's been weak the entire time (my good knee, haha) because in the 7 years I've been in physical therapy, this knee arthroscopy recovery work is the first time we've done anything below lower core strength, basically waistline or hipline. Around 2015 everything shifted from core and balance to saving my arms, and now I'm finally being asked about my feet.

I first mentioned my feet in 2013 on my grandfortuna blog, but that post got pulled into private for a reason and this last year I missed my annual fee because paying off something else, so I can't go grab a quote from that or link it.

*live blogging* Just got a call from a number on Casady Dr. in Republic- Marcus, I can pull up your street on Zillow. Stop calling me.

Ok, where was I? Oh, hey, you wanna see that call / text messaging history from the 'publisher' I tweeted about today? Hang on while I get that.

Ok, there we go. Ridiculous for this day and age.

Anyway, I was talking about my feet. Back in 2013 I had posted pix of a nustep I was using because my feet were so bad I could barely walk, and physical therapy was working on getting me into a regular workout routine. I didn't know back then why my feet hurt so bad, just chalked it up to having blackened both my ankles with various nasty sprains through my life, right. Even broke a bone in my foot once. Turns out it's a combination of spinal stenosis (arthritis that narrows the area the nerve trunk runs through, compressing the nerves that go down to the feet), and real stuff that a podiatrist later discovered. I have too much bone in my feet. He called my heel spurs "spectacular" (thank you, 8 years of retail, hospital housekeeping, and hotel desk), and then added that the reason I get pain when I walk is because a bone is overgrown and compressing a nerve in a toe joint, and that is unrelated to anything in particular. It's been that way all my life. I just thought it was from running and jumping so much as a kid. As I've gotten older, the area has become arthritic, and no wonder it hurts to walk. Eventually that nerve is going to be crushed enough to just die off, and then I won't be able to walk at all. Add diabetes to all that, so faster nerve death if I carb out.

And I just ate ice cream for the first time in 109 days, so I'm not helping that.

Anyway, going back to the original original story, I happen to already have so much pain from preexisting conditions in my feet, my spine, and fibromyalgia in general that to throw a knee surgery on top of that is evidently considered pretty acute for self care therapy, so today I got slung over into leg strength training on top of the surgery recovery.

~~~~later~~~~

35 days till my birthday. I texted @bonenado a link to this purse, which I've had my eye on for a long time. I get a new purse about once in five or six years, if that often. I know I got my last purse before Batman and Bunny were both born, so that's over 5 years at the very least, and I'm kind of betting maybe 7. Anyway, what do you think? That clicks out so you can see it better.

The purse I have now came from the same place and has lasted forever, and it's very unique and got lots of compliments. I'm not seeing that style for sale any more, sorry, can't link it. Anyway, I grew up around out there, really love native southwestern fashion.

Don't worry, I've barely eaten about 3/4 cup of ice cream. Got a big salad coming for supper. Really getting tired of this being crippled s#*t. I refuse to go down like a whiny blob.