Various and Sundry

It seems like I should post again so here you go:

• I'm thinking of changing the focus of my posts for the next year. I'm more than a year out from surgery and frankly it just isn't that big a deal in my life anymore. (Hence, I'm not posting so much) That said, I want to keep stuff archived so people looking for shared experiences have somewhere to turn, and I'm always open to questions on old posts.
  
• The poly parts of my life are definitely taking center stage in my personal growth plan right now. There are a lot of moving parts in my world of relationships which means there's rarely a dull moment. The tricky part of adjusting the blog to this emphasis will be in relaying genuine experiences without stirring up undue drama.
  
• I haven't stopped being kinky either--though the realization of these desires hasn't been quite as prominent as playing the poly balancing act. I would like to take at least a post or two in the near future to try to put into words what I get out of all this and what I'm still longing for.
• Performance/theatrical art has certainly made a come back in my life and I'm quite happy about that. I'll be dancing in an upcoming show at Little Red Studio here in Seattle. Rehearsals are going well so far.
  

Thanksgiving Benchmarks

This has been an interesting and informative holiday break.

Last year at this time, I was just about 2 months out from surgery and doing quite well.
This Thanksgiving, I spent a lot of time working in Kaylee's kitchen and making little notes about how much has changed. Besides the addition of Tony to our Thanksgiving celebration, the best improvement this year was that I could handle all the heavy pots on my own. I remember how frustrating it was to try to make the "Best Mac'n'Cheese Evar!" while having to ask other people for help draining the pasta and moving pans around. I'm still pretty conscious of which muscles I'm using when I lift heavy things, but it's more out of a learned awareness than imminent danger of damaging myself.

Other things have gotten better too. There's a girl out there who can confirm with certainty that, as of last night, I have zero trouble moving around a bed. The couch risers have been stowed away so long that I was surprised to find them while cleaning house for a small party yesterday.

When I dug into the archives looking for last year's Thanksgiving status update, I found a couple other posts. Some things change but others stay the same. I still have that piece of hardware creating a lump on my back, and I'm still struggling to stick to plans of exercising to maintain my upper back and shoulders. But hey, what would life be without a few consistent plot lines?

Gym=Blogging?

When I got home from the gym tonight and sat down to blog, I realized the last time I sat down to blog was also one of the last times I'd been to the gym. I don't think this is actually a causal relationship. I think it's more about the number of nights when I've had enough time and energy to do more than basic needs self-care. That's not to say that I've been all work and exhaustion for the last month. It's just when one has four key relationships to maintain in addition to adding another 20 hours a week in extra-curricular activities, time to reflect and focus on body awareness can slip to the side.

Good news is; I have more time now (including a 4-day weekend that starts tonight).

It Worked?!

Recently I've had a couple strange ideas that I resisted acting on for a short while and then thought: "What the hell, lets give it a shot."

Now I find myself a little stunned that they both worked with better than expected results. I'm not sure what kind of charm I've got going, but I think I should continue to make good use of it for as long as possible.

Go go gadget weird idea manifestation!

When the going gets tough...

I posted this to another journal a while back (10/22/09 to be exact) and couldn't get it cross posted here until just now. So this is old news, but still worth archiving:

Back pain: About the end of August I started having a lot more back pain than normal. There was a bit of a panic briefly, then I started up with a new set of physical therapy sessions. I was officially discharged from those last Friday.

Stage managing: A little more than half-way through the run things are moving pretty smoothly. Everybody knows what to do and how not to fuck up. The script failed to grow on me, but such is life. It just means I get to enjoy making snarky comments over the headset. It is fun to do the pick-up rehearsals where the actors have permission to goof off significantly and mock the script themselves. It's a nice hour-long guided improv that also happens to get the lines back in the actors' heads.

Curriculum writing (and other zoo work): The kick-ass anatomy curriculum draft was submitted on Wednesday. I expressed at least a couple moments of educational brilliance. Boss Lady is currently in a mood though so I'm not sure how she's going to react to my pure genius. Just in-case I was worried I might have time to take a breath, I also had a meeting with another subdivision of the education department and have had my curriculum brilliance skills contracted with 3 (THREE!) major re-writes to teacher packets that will likely occupy most of my non-registration time for the next 10 months.

So the season of way too fucking much to do is coming neatly to a close. What does a girl like me do to celebrate?

Buy new undies of course!

I stumbled into a store having a sale on some very cute panties and spent some money there. Then, when I got home after rehearsal, I got a marketing email from figleaves.com (aka the devil to my pocketbook). They were having a sale on some things that have been sitting in my "shopping bag" for quite some time. Then like a good little impressionable consumer, I also found a couple other things that needed purchasing too.

Ha!

I made it to the gym again! Hooray! I'm a little surprised by how things have slipped away over the last 2 months... maybe surprised isn't exactly the right word... what's the word for being fully aware of potential outcomes but still solidly in denial until reality will no longer be refused?

Anyway, I got some good stretches in, did my PT before work and 45 minutes of cardio after work today. It feels good.

Anniversary Plus Techweek

On Thursday, it will be exactly 1 year since surgery.
However, party-like social celebrations of this anniversary are being postponed until November.

This is because on Thursday night I will also be stage managing for the first time in about 10 years. On many levels, being able to stage manage is its own form of celebration of the anniversary of surgery. (The show is Psycho Beach Party at the Burien Little Theater if you're interested in that kind of thing)

PT and Volteran are working out well to deal with the back pain of earlier this month. Hopefully once the show is up and running I can get back on my exercise routine and keep up my goals of staying fit.

For now, I'm off to bed so that I can get up and do this crazy theater thing all over again tomorrow night after work.

(I'm going to tag this post later)

Verdict

There was a lot of waiting involved in this "quick rush in" appointment. I'm pretty used to that with Dr. Williams, so I just rolled with it and was appreciative that he was willing to squeeze me in before the long weekend.

The bones and hardware are all still in place and in tact. I have some uber anti-inflammatories, and a script for more PT (pretty much what I expected). He offered massage and other pain blockers, but I declined. Really I just want to do something to make it feel better. I don't mind hard work or habit changing, but I'm not interested in covering it up and hoping it goes away.

Now, what was I going to do with my Friday again?

Update

Since Mom is reading this I thought some other folks might be also. Here's the latest:

After leaving a message with "Jennifer the Amazing" last night, I waited until 9 to hear back from her. My back woke me up at 7, so 9:00 was much later in the day than it normally is on my days off. At 9:05 I hadn't heard back from the usually very prompt nurse, so figured Jennifer was wrapped up in something else. I decided to call in to the front desk and get the appointment process started with them.

I'm pretty happy with Dr. Williams, and Jennifer is great, but OPA as an organization is a very typical corporate medical institution with ridiculous hoops and phone trees. I try to avoid calling the front desk whenever possible. This morning was a good example of why:

Call 1: "Please listen to the whole menu as our options have changed. For appointments press 5...(I press 5)...This is the perscription refill request line. Please leave the following information at the tone...(I hang up)

Call 2: "Please listen to the whole menu as our options have changed. For appointments press 5...(I press 5 very carefully)...This is the perscription refill request line. Please leave the following information at the tone...(I try all the little secret get me out of this menu buttons I can think of including * and # with no success. I hang up)

Call 3: I try for Jennifer's direct extension again, but she's still not there and I'm not going to leave a second message to bother her.

Call 4: "Please listen to the whole menu as our options have changed." This time I listen to the whole stupid menu and hear that I should press 8 for perscription refills. I press 8 hoping that the two lines are just reversed. Instead I get the emergency response nurse who is peeved that she's talking to me. She doesn't seem terribly interested in the fact that the phone tree sent me here unwittingly, and transfers me to the front desk. I sit on hold for a while, get a brief contact with someone and sit on hold a while longer. Eventually the receptionist gets back to me and I find out that Jennifer isn't in today so she's going to transfer me back to the operator where I should dictate a detailed message to be typed up and given to the person filling in for Jennifer today. Turns out that the operator is also the person who answers the emergency line, and she's again delighted to hear my voice.

I've left the message and I'm once again in a holding pattern waiting to hear back about an appointment.

Sigh.

The nice thing about cell phones is I can still go out to breakfast with my boy and I won't miss the call back. (deleted unnecessary snarky comment here) Maybe I'll give a couple PT exercises a try while I wait for Russell to be ready to go eat.


By the time I finished typing this I got a call back, and I'm heading straight to the office right now.

Truth in Advertising

Hi folks,
For the last several days my thoracic spine has been really painful--like keeping me up at night, the perscription drugs from last fall are looking really appealing kind of painful. I've been wracking my brain trying to think of something, anything, I've done lately that might be causing it and I'm coming up blank.

Over the course of the last two days I've started seriously regretting having this surgery done at all. It's a horrible feeling to think that I went through all that shit of the last year and came out on the other side being in pain more often than I ever was before.

Max convinced me to call the surgeon's office tonight and hopefully get a quickie appointment for tomorrow. I'm hoping that a little physical therapy and body retraining will be all that's required, but this is a pretty dramatic change from a month ago so I'm kind of nervous about what might be revealed.

More Tylenol, ice-packs, and trying to get to sleep for me now.