Chickens Being, and turkey butt

Turkey butt. I was netting fish on a claim I was clearing on server and looked up, cracked me up.

It wouldn't be the holiday slide without something throwing monkey wrenches like my bank being acquired into another bank and breaking my auto payments. What I thought was money working out beautifully was a major payment being missed, so on my birthday, when I finally get more money, I've got to make a final double payment and then that one is over.

I have 4 days to get my driver's license renewed. Don't let me forget that. I know one year I blogged about being happy I remembered it and then promptly forgot and missed it.

I'm otherwise doing really well with my xanax taper, weight is holding steady this month after dropping 6 pounds, switched to organic blue corn chips after nearly two weeks of no nachos at all (no more supporting the big corn companies), and nearly doubled my vegetable intake over what it used to be. ASTYM therapy on my hand was like a magical breakthrough, going up and down stairs on my knee without any problems now, did I mention I'm already talking Christmas tree? Basically, having one of the best Octobers I've had in many years. Allergies are ridiculous between the trees forgetting to turn and suddenly dropping dried leaves during a cold rainy spell, but no problems with ears and glands complications like I used to get regularly. I'm an antihistamine machine this year.

I'm thinking about pumpkin cake for my birthday. I haven't had really good cake in ages, and y'all know I can't use regular flour so cake is a big rare deal. People who blow off gluten free and wheat allergies, try using flour or baking mix that is nearly $10 a pound. I have to make sure the flour is processed in a nut and peanut free facility (you'd be surprised how much gluten free is cross contaminated in manufacturing), so that cuts the cheaper ones out. Also discovered lasagna is fantastic with cabbage in place of the noodles, so I really enjoyed some good old fashioned homemade comfort food lasagna this month. Going to make more this weekend.

My sleep schedule is topsy-turvy more than usual lately, so I'm just going with it. I'm up when I feel like it, sleep when I feel like it, and barely keeping up with anyone in real time. I have been more relaxed lately than I have been in years, so I guess my body has finally turned off alert mode that I used to constantly live in, with all those anxiety and panic attacks and constant self monitoring and powering through and whatnot. I'm actually feeling like I'm enjoying myself just living now. That's never really happened before. I think a lot of it is solid consistent pain control and finally getting much needed surgeries and recoveries out of the way. I'm physically able to just chill and veg now without anything nagging my system constantly. It's nice.

Ten years ago I wrote Chickens Being.

Had a dream about the chickens last night.  Somehow they were people, but not like us.  I don't remember any more.  I've been wondering for some time what the world view of a chicken is like, what it's like to live like that.  You really have to bend your brain around just to think about not having hands, having such a flexible neck and moving your head everywhere without being disoriented, having feathers projecting from every inch of your body.  I think that would be terribly cumbersome.

And then to think about never being able to say how you feel to someone, never having real contact like a hug, the only comfort you ever get is simply in being part of a group, being near each other and hearing each other when you're scared or feeling sick.  What would it be like to not know more, not understand the possibility of these things?

I've been trying to wrap my brain around the concept of 'being' since I was a small child.  I was terrified very early that I had bones in me (grew up on a farm), and that the bones weren't *me*.  They go everywhere I go, make it possible for me to do and feel things with my other tissues, but they are the sign of death in every culture.  I carry the sign of death around inside of me.  I think I was dealing with that before I was even 10.

I won't go over everything I've thought since then, I'm sure it would make a book.  But I still think about it a lot, about 'being'.  About the possibilities we can't imagine, about the limitations we take for granted, about the horrifying thought of seeing ourselves both from the inside and the outside with our perspectives.  I think a lot of people can't really do that very well, and I don't know if it's the Asperger's, but I can peel away perspective and put it back together in different shapes and forms, and wonder how in the world can we be stuck in our bodies this way?  It seems impossible.  Yet here we are, experiencing.

I was always intrigued by the old testament guys who got to 'see God', or at least come close.  They always fell to their faces and couldn't move, and had to be stood back up by someone else.  The experience of being able to see outside this dimension of thought and mind was enough to disable them, either from terror or being so overwhelmed that they couldn't respond to the new sensations and realizations flooding their minds.  Maybe being aspie gives me an edge on thinking about it, because so much has been so overwhelming for me in THIS body in THIS dimension of being.  I want very badly to be able to go beyond what we are and see all this for myself.  I'm sure someone will have to stand me back up.

lyrics

jetsetting

One of the players on the game server built that awesome house, and I was invited to see since I crafted and sold all that red netherbrick.

I know, right? My colors.

I could live there in real life.

Weekend was super busy. While my jetsetters came and went, I deep cleaned all the bathrooms including floors and rugs, laundry, dishes, cooking, and hanging out in game practically all weekend. If I ever learn and test on the plugins I'll really be crushing it.

Basically, energy level didn't bomb out on me too badly, hand and knee kept up really well, and my brain worked the whole time. THAT is a really big deal for me.

I'm already thinking Christmas. I'm going to set up @bonenado's Vikings tree in our bay window off the kitchen. The kids can have the livingroom for their tree.

*runs off to orthopedic therapy*

holiday brain in 3, 2...

~started yesterday~

Finally. Got assessed into hand therapy today. Came home with a light splint, a  squeezy gel egg, and a couple of instructions. My right hand is officially only half as strong as my left hand right now. Today was the first time anyone said it's ok to use heat for the pain, which was bliss. I'm five weeks out from the surgery and everyone else is still saying use ice. Now that I'm back home in slight shock at the amount of pain increase over such a tiny amount of focused therapy baselines, I'm running into a spike in wrist pain, and now I'm seeing there is a wrist tendonitis dynamic with carpal tunnel and a whole page about the art of icing... 😕

~this is today~

My resolve to cut coffee down is happening, just in time for National Coffee Day, lol. I'm down to one cup a day now, and *bing* suddenly much more awake. Not a clue if that means I'm finally past the surgery exhaustion or it's really my system breaking a little more free from chemicals, since I'm also finally off the daily opioids now. Or it could be the cold front that moved in and is messing with me, who knows. Whatever is going on, I dropped another pound, so huzzah.

all my pix click out 🎃

Today is my last follow up with knee surgeon, possibly, unless there is a 3-month or something down the road. I have 3 more physical therapy appointments for knee and a sparkly new grueling occupational hand schedule that goes up through November 1st, which is also my last follow up with the hand surgeon. Somewhere in the middle of October I have primary care checkup and likely a flu shot. All the driving so far has flared impinged shoulder nerve on 'good' side, which lately is spiking up my neck into headaches (driving is bad, mkay), because it's been hurting to drive with my surgery hand, so you can imagine I will be thrilled when all this driving into town slows down in November.


Got my bank and calendar super synced this week. I'm already missing sending a couple of birthday cards (not cool when your dad makes it to 89!), so it's crucial I get all my ducks in a row before my brain collapses into an alt dimensional state of mush during the holiday slide. I usually have all my stuff lined out as far ahead of Thanksgiving as possible because by the time that gets here, I'm just done the rest of the year while Christmas blurs by and I stumble back out of my daze later in the winter.

Stuff I need to work on (super facepalm fail this month, I'm soooo sorry, guys) are getting back with Mike and Myke and Emily on stuffs we're working on, wrapping my brain around plugins so my tech-moderator tag is more than just a pretty badge, and writing. I have so many things I want / need to write / get written. There is always too much going on, and when there's not, there's depression, so swimming in syrup is just a lifestyle. That reminds me, I also had a great talk with psychiatrist about my super low dose xanax being a psychological crutch, and goal over the next six months is get it shaved down to half of what I'm taking now (very laughable in the medical world, not funny at all in the addict world), and from there get ready to leap off again. The gabapentin is my fallback for that safety net feeling, thank goodness it's good on anxiety along with the nerve pain.

click to get lost in pinterest

I know I get too blabby repeating some of this stuff, but sometimes I look back a few years at how hard it used to be just rounding up my brain to type a few sentences out, and I can see how easy this has become, and that it really has helped me stay on track and not slide into the decay of weight gain, self incrimination, hiding, justifying, and more depression. Eat your salads, kids.

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.