Trying to Get My Mojo Back

Yes, she’s alive, if anyone has been wondering. It seems that the past year of my life has been on a bullet train to nowhereland, but I am still here. Let me catch you up with the goings on. Looks like I haven’t posted anything since New Year’s. Wooooooow that was like over five months ago. We have a lot of catching up to do. Believe it or not, I have started several of these over the past few months, but I just couldn’t find the words. Writer’s block, I believe they call it, if I were a writer. I hope to be someday. I would get them all about half finished and start to reread them and think no one wants to read this drivel. So it is still in my handy dandy notebook.

So, let’s see, the big news in January was my knee replacement; the second one. I was so excited to get this one done that I was counting the days until I ‘get my new knee’. The other one had done so well, and the pain had gone away quite quickly. (You can already feel where this is going, can’t you?) This time instead of starting physical therapy immediately, they wanted me to wait a couple of weeks for the swelling to go down. So my six weeks off work turned into eight, which was actually fine with me as I had been suffering burn out since I was screwed out of early retirement last year. And it is ok, my supervisor knows, I’m not saying anything I wouldn’t say to her face, or haven’t already. We’re good that way. I’m not one to publicly complain about my government job, but I have let those above me know how I feel about these things.

I had but three goals while I was sitting home healing; binge watch some shows I had missed, learn some crocheting, and get my eBay inventory processed. Oh, and sleep a lot. Of that I started and completed “Landman” up to date. I learned the waffle crochet pattern. I was unable to start on Ebay stuff until I was probably in my fourth week because I couldn’t sit at my desk comfortably.  I did, however, sit a lot with my feet up and play on the laptop computer a lot, and I started talking to someone new.

I had connected with this guy in the past but didn’t think much about him as I was talking to a couple of others at the time. After my surgery he reached out to me again and I had nowhere to go so we just started talking. The first time I heard his voice it took me right back to Boston. He was yankee through and through, from the Bronx, New York. It took me awhile to get used to the accent again. I expected it to go nowhere, because the love of his life had left him only about a month and a half before and I knew he was not over her, nor could he be. I also knew I didn’t want to be the rebound girl. But we continued to talk. I even told him on multiple occasions that he was just going to end up going back to her and hurting me and I didn’t want to get involved. He swore he wouldn’t, that she hurt him too bad, and we continued talking. <sigh> More about that later.

I had my surgery on Tuesday, before the big snow on Friday. Once the snow hit, I had flashbacks of covid days. I had nearly two weeks of no physical contact with a living soul other than my little Abbey. My mom was coming over to help with things and to bring food that first few days, but after the snowstorm, everything stopped. I saw no one. The snowplow came through and piled about three feet of snow at the end of my driveway. Because I couldn’t get out, I had been ordering what I needed. I called the city and asked if they could please remove the snow that they dumped into my driveway because I couldn’t get my packages delivered. The answer was no; they don’t do that. She said there are people on Facebook advertising that they were cleaning driveways. Well, I looked and found no one, I asked and found no one. She also told me that her driver will park out by the road and carry her packages to her porch. I told her I didn’t see that happening when it came to carrying a 70 lb. box of litter over a mountain of snow and slip and slid up a 60 ft. long driveway to get it to my door. I also told her I had had surgery and couldn’t get out to the road to get my items. She was not sympathetic at all and basically said that if they did it for me, they would have to do it for everyone. I told her I am not asking for anything special, just that the city remove the mountain of snow that they put in my driveway preventing me from getting food and medicine. I totally feel for those who must deal with this every time things are out of their control.

Two weeks after my surgery I had an appointment to see my surgeon. My brother-in-law was sweet enough to get the tractor back out and come over and clear off my driveway the night before so Mom could take me to the doctor, and that neither of us would fall on ice and break our new joints. I started physical therapy the next day and was able to drive myself from then on.

I could tell by week three that this surgery wasn’t going as well as the last one. It got to where just bearing weight on it was excruciating for a few days. I don’t think that ever happened with the first one. Once I started physical therapy a lot of things started getting better. If you have never been to an open-bay physical therapy before where you saw the same people, all the time it is kind of fun. I was there with multiple knee people every day and we were all at different stages of our therapy. We all cut up and talked and acted like we knew each other. To me physical therapy was my social time. I would sleep until about 11ish and have something light to eat and get ready for PT at 1:00. After PT I would go home and take a nap. I was taking the get plenty of sleep thing seriously. However, I usually didn’t hit my pillow again until about 2 AM. I would spend some time most nights talking to the guy and then playing on eBay after he went to bed.

We finally met on February 21. He came to see me. We met at a place to eat and we had a very nice first date. He didn’t come on strong, he didn’t try to come home with me, he was a perfect gentleman. We sat and talked for a long time, kissed in the parking lot, and parted ways. I think we both had a nice time and were soon plotting our next meeting. It had been a while since I had had a nice date. I was welcomed to PT the next day with lots of questions from my social group. It felt good.

I continued PT all February and the knee kept getting stronger and therapy was getting easier. I was walking without assistance by mid-month and was wandering out some. I went to my Master Gardener meeting that month, which was a shock to my system, both for my knee and being around so many people. I remembered quickly that I am introverted and awkward around people. I just wanted to go to the safety of home.

While I was home, I started looking at new vehicles. I had a Terrain that was a little over a year old, but it was a base model, which was what was on the lot when I needed to purchase a vehicle. I am bringing in a bit more money, and I wanted to get that vehicle that I have always wanted, the charcoal grey all blacked out, with all the bells and whistles. I figured it was a good time to do it so I could get it paid off by the time I retire (in less than three years). I contacted my dealer and told him what I wanted. In just a few days he found it. By the time all the transfers and exchanges were made, it was the Thursday before I started back to work. It had been over seven weeks since I had been in the office. I went to the dealer and did all the paperwork and committed a lot of money and drove my new car to show my family at work. I didn’t have my badge with me to go through the back door, so I went to the front door. Everyone was standing in the office doorway talking and when they saw me coming up the hallway, they all got excited. Vicky, the crazy one, ran toward me almost knocking me over. It was so good to see them, and it was so good to see that they had missed me. Sometimes I have to try to convince myself that I make a difference, but obviously my absence was noticed. It was a good feeling. I stuck around for a little while and then decided to go see my fella.

We had only seen each other twice at this point and I was growing attached. From the long, strong hug I received when I walked through the door, I would say that he was also. I sat in his office for a while and talked to him while he worked.

The Friday before I had hurt myself in PT. I felt it happen, the muscle above my knee just went spongy, but it didn’t really hurt. I thought I had achieved muscle failure because we were pushing it a little that day. In the Army, muscle failure was a good thing. I didn’t mention it to the therapist because it was near the end and it didn’t affect anything else we did. As the day went on, my knee became increasingly sore. The next day I could barely walk, it hurt so badly. When I returned on Monday, they noticed immediately that I was having trouble. I told them what happened. For the next thirty minutes or so, the therapist performed soft tissue mobilization all around my knee, nearly bringing me to tears several times. I have very high pain tolerance, so bringing tears is not insignificant for me. When she finished, I could walk much better. Unfortunately, it did set my final accomplishment on my flexion down from 119 degrees to 106. The next session I graduated from PT and was ready to go back to work, as far as being medically fit. Mentally, I had a way to go.

I started back to work on Monday and lasted half a day and had to go home and go to bed. The next day I was off for an appointment, but the next day I made it the whole day. I was back in the game. My work life was back, my love life was much improved, my morale was high.

There isn’t much to say about March that I can remember, except my knee wasn’t cooperating which caused my opposite hip to start acting up. The more I tried to exercise and strengthen them the worse they seemed to get. I was also starting to get sidetracked by everything. I was trying to get my shed cleaned out so I could work on some projects for the MG plant sale. Today is May 24. The shed looks like it did in March. I worked on planting seeds and digging up transplants when I could, when it wasn’t raining or too cold or I wasn’t sleeping. I found that a day of work was taking all my energy and at least a couple days a week I was coming home and crashing. On weekends I slept a lot. I thought that my body was just trying to get used to working again.

April was not much different until nearly the end of the month. I had surgery scheduled for April 22, to get the last kidney stone removed. The one that has been stuck since last July. It wasn’t bothering me, but it was bothering my urologist. Since he knew that I did not want another stent and he would have to use one if he did the surgery, he set me up with a visiting surgeon who he said was more skilled and probably wouldn’t use stents. Because of this, I wasn’t very worried about the surgery. They would put me to sleep and when I woke up all would be good and I wouldn’t know the difference.

The weekend before the fella and I got into an argument about something I had no control over and I really didn’t think was a big deal, but he did, so we argued about it for three days. I got to the point of begging him several times to just stop, I concede. He wins. But I have learned he isn’t nice when he argues and he doesn’t stop. On Monday evening we called a truce and he said he would put a poll on TikTok to see if he was just out of touch or if more people agreed with him. The next morning, he was very upset that the vast majority of responses agreed with my position. But another thing happened that day, he found out his ex had broken up with her man. Instead of admitting defeat like he promised, he fought harder until I told him best of luck, that I can’t do it anymore. By the end of the week, he had his ex back. I’m quite sure he picked a fight with me that last day for me to give up and leave him. Well, it worked.

In the meantime, I had surgery the next day and before I went in the surgeon told me I would have a stent put in. I asked him to please not use one and he said if he didn’t, I would end up in the ER in a couple days. He said I could get it out in a week. So, I dealt with it for a week. I hurt and I was miserable. I had to beg the office to move my appointment up a week to get it out, but they finally did. By the weekend I wasn’t feeling good. I woke up Monday on sheets soaked in sweat. I called in sick. I just felt bleh. By Monday night I was shaking and having cold sweats after sleeping all day and sweating profusely. It was very stormy out that night, but I went to the ER around midnight, and they found that I had a UTI (because of the stent that was supposed to keep me out of the ER!!) I was given some antibiotics and sent home. The next morning, I got a call from the Urologist’s office saying since I was on antibiotics, I couldn’t get the stent out the next day as planned, I would have to wait until the antibiotics were finished, another seven days!!! Have you ever had a week where you wished you could have just slept through it or skipped it altogether?

The next day was my dad’s back surgery. On the way to the hospital that morning we got a message from Mom that he was all ready to go. That was around 9:00 a.m. We sat at that hospital all day waiting. My dad has zero patience. He had not eaten since the night before. I know Mom was doing all she could to keep him calm. They finally took him back around 4:40 p.m. We were all livid by then and just happy he was finally knocked out and not a threat. It takes a lot to turn my dad into a grizzly, but you don’t want to be around when it happens. He wouldn’t be violent, but his bark can be ferocious.

Thankfully, April is over. Dad is doing better. I will be having surgery next month to remove some scar tissue around my knee that is keeping it irritated. Hopefully that will finally allow me to get more active. The kidney stones are gone as far as I know. Hopefully for good. I will be vigilant, however, to make sure we keep an eye on them and make sure they stay small enough to pass in the future. I want to be done with stents, UTIs, ER visits and hospital stays, because of stupid little stones.

The fella and his lady were posting how unbelievably happy they were for the first few weeks. I haven’t seen anything in a while. I hope they work out for the long haul. If she can fight with him, more power to her, I cannot. He loves her and I want him to be happy. We had a couple of nice months together, and I do care about him and his happiness. I just hope that eventually God will answer my prayers and send me the right guy and this can quit happening.

So, May is here and half gone. I started writing this a couple weeks ago. I am still so distracted I cannot stay focused on anything. All I want to do is sleep. This past week I came home and crashed four of five days. The other one I had an appointment after work. This weekend I have done little more than slept. I don’t know if it is something I am taking, or depression, but I am going to have to come out of it. My house looks like a tornado hit it and my yard looks just as bad. I sleep instead of doing the things I need to do. So, I am now trying to figure out what is going on.

I finally paid for this blog for another year, so hopefully that will motivate me to write more. I need practice. I have lost the passion and all the stories that were in my mind. I have also lost 90% of all the data that was on my old computer, including stories, blog articles, and pictures. That took the wind out of my sails. I don’t know if I will be able to recreate some of that. All I can do is start over and try to get my mojo back.

I hope to be here lots more in the future. Now that you are all caught up with my excitingly dull life.