Life is Good
I took the girls to the grocery store to stock up after vacation. Big I was thrilled to see one of the nuns from her school there. As we passed her in the aisle, I realized I was wearing my new t-shirt that I bought on vacation that says, "Girls Just Wanna Have Rum." No wonder I got a slightly disgusted look from her. I’m guessing nuns don’t drink or approve of rum-related activities? Oh well.
Upon returning home, you’ll never guess who was parked in front of my house! The low-ball offer people! They were just leaving as I was pulling in. They had to drive directly past me. I know it was them because my neighbor (who also spies when we have showings) was outside at the time and saw them sitting in front of my house, staring longingly at it for quite some time. Guess who now has hand? Uh-huh, that’s right. We do.
I asked my realtor and apparently if I get an insulting offer twice from the same people, I am fully entitled to some retribution in the form of a good swift kick to their shins or perhaps spitting on their offer. Sweet.
I was also informed tonight that we did have a showing this week. It was a third showing and the couple has narrowed it down to our house and one other, with ours looking better at this point. You know what this means, faithful readers. It is time to assume the position, as in the crossing of the legs, arms, fingers, toes and eyes. I’m remaining calm and quietly optimistic that this will work out. If not, our realtor and mortgage guy have planned an open house extravaganza (my idea) complete with give-aways (that they are providing) for the end of the month. Here’s hoping we won’t need it at all.
I also got a call from my physical therapist today. I’ll be getting my karate brace on Wednesday. Apparently my insurance company has agreed that I need a third insanely expensive knee brace. This doesn’t mean I’ll be using it for a while. Getting radar detection, metal spikes, and ear-piercing alarms installed on those braces takes time.
This t-shirt attitude adjustment thing is really working, even when I’m wearing my rum shirt. Life is good.
Home Again, Home Again
We’ve made it safely home, although several DVD’s were almost thrown into the Chesapeake on the drive home since the girls wouldn’t stop fighting over which movie to watch. I figured throwing them overboard was littering and obviously wrong so I just stuck my fingers in my ears for a while (my knee prevented me from crawling out onto the roof for a much-needed reprieve). A 9-hour drive (with frequent stops) is a long one with two very opposite munchkins and only one DVD player.
Here are the highlights:
- Lil C decided she’d like to potty train while on vacation and is 90% there. I’m as shocked (although pleasantly surprised) as you probably are at this revelation.
- We had not a drop of rain until we hit the road to come home today. The weather was perfect and so was our week.
- If you don’t spray sunscreen on your lower back and then spend the entire day bent over awkwardly while building a huge sandcastle for the girls, you will have a horribly painful line of bright red sunburn that makes every relative come up to you at least three times a day for the remainder of the week and tell you that you should put more sunscreen on.
- I am not the Mexican Train Domino’s Queen. I have been dethroned and I’m not happy about it.
- I am however, the Sandcastle-Building Queen (photographic evidence to follow later this week).
- Homemade sangria is really good. No, really good.
- I returned home to find that we had no showings all week long, but we’re now advertised in the big glossy real estate magazine and had a bunch of people pick up fliers today (this from the local Britney Spears who stood out front all day answering questions from curious drive-by people. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing yet. I’m thinking it will highly depend on whether or not she was wearing a bra at the time).
- I found a pretty cool swimsuit that does not second as a piece of cellophane or transparent window screen in its off-time (Photographic evidence will not follow. I repeat, not follow).
- Nothing horrible happened this year. No food poisoning, no internet catastrophes. Nothing. Nothing is so nice.
- I bought a "Life is Good" t-shirt while on vacation, because I figured if I wear it I might start believing it and then this big storm cloud that’s been following me around might dissipate and move on to make someone else miserable and unfortunate. I’ll let you know if it works.
And now I’m off to bed, my bed, the one good thing about being back home.
Operation Relaxation
I am not an exhibitionist. However, my swimsuit tells another story (It did last year too, unfortunately).
Today, the crew went to play tennis and I would be lying if I didn’t admit I was a little jealous. To cheer myself up, I decided to slather sunscreen on the kicking and screaming girls and head to the beach solo. After they were ready, I put my swimsuit from last year on and turned so that I could see my back while I sprayed sunscreen on in the bathroom mirror.
I saw much more than my back.
In place of the previous opaque fabric was something resembling a window screen. Beyond the "window screen", a very white butt and accompanying crack. The offending area ran about 3 inches down the crack and two inches side to side.
I gasped in horror as I recalled the previous day. I’d spent hours in that swimsuit only yesterday, strutting my stuff around the pool in the company of the girls, Mr. BBM, my father-in-law, his fiance and her son. Fan-freaking-tastic. I silently thanked God that I had spent much of the day sitting in the pool because a sunburned butt-crack would be all kinds of unpleasant.
Upon closer inspection, I found two more smaller hole areas on the front of my swimsuit bottoms. Off it went.
Because my past few days have consisted entirely of: beach, sangria, pool, hot tub, yummy food, more sangria, and oh yeah sangria, instead of shaking my fist at the universe for following me with bad luck to the beach, I shrugged the patchwork swimsuit off as a sign from the gods that I’m supposed to go buy another swimsuit.
That’s It Folks
I’m done.
I’m finished with physical therapy and I’m finished with follow-up surgical appointments. I have been officially released. The ACL saga of doctors visits and physical therapy has come to a close. It’s been a really long time, eight months to be exact.
I told my surgeon about the pain I’ve been having at that lowest incision today. He pressed on the exact location as I pretty much levitated off the table in agony. He said there’s no way it’s anything to do with the ACL and within seconds he was injecting the sore spot with cortisone and Novocaine. It hurt for a second and then he slapped a band-aid on it and told me to just sit there for five minutes. When he pressed on it again, there was no pain.
He said that it’s a stubborn piece of scar tissue and that it gets the nerves all worked up in there as well, which is why I had that radiating pain and sore spot. He said I’ll be sore from the shot and within two days it should be feeling just fine. He reiterated that although I have small incision scars, I had major surgery. This kind of stuff is normal.
So, no activity for a month and then I am free to do what I want "within limits." He told me I can do straight kicks and punches, but no sparring or tricky pivoting kata business. "You only want to do this once," he said. He also cautioned me on any deep stances and deep knee bends. "Remember," he said, "people go back to sports after this, but they’re not good at it again for a while."
I shook his hand, thanked him, and told him I hope I don’t have to ever see him again. "Not here anyway," he said and smiled.
I went out for my final physical therapy appointment and my PT told me there would be no exercises today since my surgeon injected my knee. He told me to go home and ice it which is what I’m doing now. It’s starting to feel pretty sore. Before I left, he fitted me for my brace. He has one in stock that he’s putting aside for me while he gets approval from my insurance company. Apparently it’s not cheap. No surprise there.
My PT shook my hand and wished me well and I just started to cry. It just hit me all at once that I’m done. I’m really done. I shook his hand and then gave him a huge hug while I cried and thanked him for everything. He’s been my knee confidante since October. It kind of feels like losing a good friend. He assured me that he’s there for me if I have questions or problems; and I’ll see him when I get back from vacation to officially get my brace and another lesson on how to strap that thing on. The only disappointing thing is that it doesn’t come with spikes or something on it, perhaps an alarm when someone gets too close to my knee.
I can’t believe I am finished with this part of the journey. When I get back from vacation, I’ll be finding a gym to continue my exercises. This is one vacation that is coming at just the right celebratory time.
RIP
We knew it was coming but we didn’t expect it so soon. Sure, the keypad was quirky and it made me hit "compu cook" every time I wanted to use it, but I just thought it was being tempermental. I didn’t know there were serious issues. I didn’t know it would be leaving us so soon. . .
It is with great sadness that I tell you that our microwave is dead.
Of course our microwave is dead, because the day before we go on vacation is a wonderful time for an appliance to die on you. Any showings this week will see a non-working microwave and our disclosure statement that once had a few things on it such as "quirky keypad," needs to be redone since now it is virtually spotless, as we’ve continued to replace and upgrade anything that goes wrong.
Did I mention we lowered our price this week? Do you realize I now need to buy two microwaves? I need one for this house and one for the presumed new house if this place ever sells. I’m sensing a trend.
New carpet for the current house; new flooring for the new house.
New microwave for the current house; new microwave for the new house.
New kitchen floor for the current house; new kitchen floor for the new house.
Freshly sanded and stained deck for the current house; no deck for the new house.
Wait, something doesn’t feel right here.
When I leave for vacation, I am going to do my best to completely forget about anything happening beyond the shoreline.
Dead microwaves this morning and a visit with the surgeon in just a few hours. . . can’t wait to hit the beach.
***There is a new review up at The BBM Review. If you’re looking for a samurai movie to watch this weekend, you might want to check it out (to know which one to avoid).
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