Bang for the Buck Reminder

LADIES: If you are anywhere within driving distance of the club tonight, get thee to The Bang! (Even if you're "not into girls" this party is an absolute blast. Think slumber party gone really really wild...with fewer PJ's and more silly dancing.)

Gentlemen and Out-of-State Voyeurs: Thanks to a very generous photographer friend, you will at least get a taste of the act Kaylee and I have planned. We will be doing a quick dress rehearsal before we head down there this evening, and he has graciously agreed to take a few pictures during the rehearsal. Poor guy, alone in a room with two spirited redheads obligated to watch closely as they take their clothes off repeatedly.

Kaylee's a Keeper

My back is chronically sore for the first time in a while. That's not what this post is about.

This post is about Kaylee and her awesomeness.

She conspired with Max to surprise me with a full day of yumminess on Monday. As is my nature, I did not exactly make it easy for her. I'm often one of those people who can see surprises coming long before they're supposed to. If I don't see them coming I have an uncanny ability to create scenarios in which the person is forced to reveal the surprise before they want to.

When I woke up, I thought my Monday was going to be a slow morning followed by noon brunch and girly stuff with Kaylee and concluded by a dinner with Max. I wanted to be able to squeeze in some gym time between the two dates, so I called Kaylee to see if we could move brunch up a little earlier and possibly eat in to save money. She seemed a little resistant to a change in plans, probably because she wasn't as awake as I was, and this didn't seem like the kind of thing worth pushing.

When she got to my place to pick me up, we did our usual doddling and pestering of Russell before leaving. Then as I was getting in the car Max appeared out of nowhere! At first I assumed this was a conicidence. I figured he parked near my place to go to one of the meetings he had planned for the day. THEN he got in the car with us.

The three of us had a very nice mellow day together. Kaylee and I ate silly quantities of sweet breakfast foods at brunch. We walked through a lake-side neighborhood. Then we headed back to Max's place and spent some nice quiet time in front of a fire enjoying each other's company. A truly delightful surprise.

In addition to being unbelievably cute, Kaylee is also the sweetest most loving girl I know. The joy she takes in seeing her loved ones happy is truly compelling. She's a bundle of creative energy that expresses itself in a myriad of sparkly ways. She's also extremely smart and highly capable. Kaylee's a keeper.

Landmarks

Landmarks of recovery just keep racing up on me lately.

Bondage-focused scene with Max: Check
Working a 40-hour week: Check
Scrubbing the tub so I could take a girlie bath: Check
Passing muscle tests at physical therapy: Check
Submitting "Art" to SEAF: Check
Dancing at Bang for the Buck! (even though it's coming up a month earlier than I'd expected): Obviously I can't check this off quite yet, but I'm pretty confident in my ability to drop my drawers in less than two minutes without falling on my butt or otherwise hurting myself. This is a really big one for me folks. I pinned this goal to my wall very shortly after deciding to have this surgery. It was so much fun last year I started planning for it with Kaylee the morning after the event. I think the only thing that having a month less time to prepare physically will affect is my footwear. I'm just not ready for the risks of 6" spike heels yet. Fortunately, we have this covered.

The 80/20 Rule

In my favorite class from grad-school ever ("Non-profit Management" of all things), I was introduced to the 80/20 rule. Essentially, when one embarks on a sizable task a vast majority (say 80%) of the progress is made during the initial piece (say 20%) of time and energy invested. This was used in the context of starting up non-profits and exercising. Part of the point of the discussion was to evaluate whether 80% was enough to meet the needs of the initial project thus freeing up a significant chunk of time and energy for other projects. It's hard for perfectionist, control-freaks like myself to grasp, but sometimes "good enough" is really truly "good enough" Other times though that 20% of change and improvement has a big enough over-all impact to merit the 80% energy investment.

At three months after surgery I feel like I'm 80% percent back. I can work full days, I can shake-it at Grind, and now Max can safely tie me up again. Basically, all systems are go.
So what might I spend the next 80% of my time and energy working to accomplish?
Growing a back bone (literally), regaining muscle, training my body to be flexible in different ways, increasing stamina, and other boring, slow-changing stuff. Also safely supporting my body while in full suspensions, picking on Kaylee until she wears out before me, wrestling with Russell, and swing dancing. Those are all things that fell solidly into the "not sure if I'll get them back" category when I started this journey, but I think well worth the effort.

And honestly, if I can get into this (NSFW) position just three months after being barely able to walk down the hallway, I don't see any reason not to keep going forward.

The Three-Month Check-up

When your surgeons are so proud of themselves they want to bring in other members of the practice to show you off during your appointment, it's a pretty good sign things are going well.

We established that the thing poking prominently out of my back is probably a cross-link, (one of two pieces that attach my two longer rods together to keep them from tipping to the side). Since I'm young enough and strong enough, I probably only need one cross-link to stabilize the fusion. Dr. Williams gave me the option of going in and removing it right away. He estimated it would be a 1-hour surgery with one night stay in the hospital. Much less traumatic than the original surgery. However, the original surgery is still very fresh in my memory. So long as it's only a cosmetic nuisance, I'm quite happy to leave it in until I'm at least a year out from surgery.

My nerve explosions/phantom piercings were a mystery to the doctors. Not a concerning mystery, just one of those things that doesn't have an exact cause and will probably go away with time. Since my mom (who had scoliosis surgery 44 years ago) has been living with them alright for as long as I can remember, I'm not too concerned.

I also got permission to return to work full-time, so today was my first full day of work since the end of September. This is the calm-before-the-storm season for my job so working full-time isn't really necessary. The good news is, I can stop sucking the paid leave resources dry and I'm not overwhelmed with high-impact duties. The less good news is I'm at a loss for what to do during the extra couple hours.

Nerve Explosions!

There's something about the way nerves grow back or die off completely that I don't fully understand. It results in sudden, sharp, tingling sensations that my mom calls nerve explosions. In mixed or vanilla circles that seems like a pretty apt description to me.

Given my more recent experiences, I'm inclined to describe them to members of the kink community as phantom piercings.

Imagine if you will my kinky friends, someone sneaks up behind you and pops a needle in your back--no warning, no warm-up, just wham-o. Sometimes this imaginary sadist just pops it in and leaves it alone, the sensation fades pretty quickly and you can pretend like nothing happened. Other times though the person decides to twist it and push on it for a minute or two requiring that you explain to the rest of the room why you're making that particular face and breathing funny. It would be much more entertaining if everyone else could see the glee on imaginary sadist's face too.

For some people this is just a passing phase of the recovery, for others it's a constant annoyance that never goes away. I'm not sure which way things will turn out for me, but right now they seem to be increasing in both frequency and intensity. What fun!