Meh.

Praise Jeebus, I'm finally able to log onto my blogger account.
About a month ago I enabled some ridiculous Windows Live family safety computer program because my child has been spending an inordinate amount of unsupervised time on YouTube.  I didn't want her accidentally clicking on any links that were going to show her videos on how to make her own a-bomb because you NEVER KNOW.  I quickly found out that not only does this program block dirty sites from your eleven year-old, but it will also render the 34 year-old college educated woman in the home completely unable to use her computer for anything other than checking her bank account balance.  And God help me, I can NOT figure out how to get my 'puter back to where it was before I installed the stupid thing.

I haven't told Chad yet.

Another reason it's been a while since I've been here is that my life is has become the most boring of lives you can imagine.  I wish someone had warned me before this tendon surgery that I would be unable to do anything useful for three to six months.  Because that's what my doctor and my physical therapist are telling me now that I'm already sliced and diced.  So even though it's been three months since my surgery and my scar looks beautiful and I even went out an got a pedicure I still can't do anything normal like I used to do without wearing out and needing drugs.  I can't walk long distances.  I can't run.  I can't walk my dog.  I can't garden.  I can't clean my house.  I can't leave on an anniversary vacation to Vegas because I can't walk the strip!  I can't walk around barefoot.  I barely make it to and from work and have to take long breaks between cares on my patients to make it through my twelve hour shift.  I've spent the entire summer on the couch and the last thing I want to do after I come home from work is SIT ON THE DAMN COUCH but it seems that's all I can do because I have to recover so that I can just GO BACK TO WORK.  I can't take any more TV.  I don't want to watch any more movies.  I don't want to sit in the heat anymore.  The fun of having a handicap parking sticker has worn off.

I.  Am.  Burned.  Out.

I desperately need a tropical vacation or I'm going to go completely postal.

I know that I should be grateful that I have my legs.  That they function.  But I am so angry at my traitorous body that I am slipping into that grey area before depression.  I am hurting all the time and it is seriously draining me of my happiness.  I completely broke down at my physical therapist last week and insisted that it was all JUST TOO MUCH and that I needed to slow down on my PT.  (We're moving it from three times a week to once.)  My doc even lectured me about having gone back to work too soon and ended up giving me a cortisone shot two days ago.  But it's been THREE EFFING MONTHS.  Come ON foot.  The last thing I want to do is slow down but it appears that that's all I can still do.  And I know that my husband (and most likely everyone else in my life) is sick of my whining so I try to just keep moving.  But I feel like I'm just sliming along at a slug crawl and barely arriving to the next day.

So there you are, I have officially dumped on you, Internet.

More random:

Emma started sixth grade.  I caught her texting a boy and put the squash on that quickly.  I have a feeling the teenage years are going to be interesting.

The foot today: 

Mommy and Emma pedicures:

Emma fishing with Daddy:

A Friday night impromptu piano recital.

(What a rude audience.)

I'm sure I'll be out of this funk soon, since truthfully I get 1% better every day, but let's hope that by the next time I get on here I won't be so damn depressed.  And that I'll back off on the profanity a tad.

Week three! Peroneal tendon surgery recovery.

So.

Turns out there was no "freak bone" in my foot once the doc got in there.  But the tears in my brevis and longus tendons?  Much more considerable than the MRI let on.  Let this be a lesson to all of you:  MRI machines are dirty liars.

Even though every meth head in the world might disagree with this sentence I'm saying it anyway.  Devouring strawberry Hostess cupcakes while downing Tylenol with cocaine every four hours (ok, it's Percocet, but it's in the same drug class as crack!) does actually get old after three weeks.  (It is interesting to note that it's the inhalation of strawberry Hostess cupcakes that go me into this pickle in the first place.  The cupcakes made me fat, which made me run, which tore my stupid tendons.)  

I spent the first two weeks in THIS:

And then last week graduated to this:

I was excited to get the Neato Blue Cast before I had it but now I can't wait to get the Stupid Ten Ton Brick off on Monday as planned.  It's coming off if my doctor knows what's good for him.  Every time I get up on my crutches the weight of the thing seems to slam down on my incision.  It does NOT feel good and makes me say naughty words in front of my daughter.  I'm having these sharp stabbing pains along where my incision presumably is that makes me worry it's dehiscing.  I don't have access to it to do a proper nursing assessment so I'm freaking out even more.  I've made a few calls to my doctor's office about my cast being too loose but the nurse there was obviously annoyed with me and told in few words to DEAL WITH IT.  I have now gone five days without calling them.  I deserve a medal.  It bears repeating: nurses make terrible patients. 

So here are before and after pics of my actual foot.  They're gross!  You've been warned!

The yellow is betadine, not a horrible toenail fungus.  (And NICU nurses reading this, please stop checking out the veins on my foot.)

(At one week post-op.)

So to bleach your brain after seeing that, here is a picture of my adorable nephew.

And the cake pops that his mama and I made together.

And the zucchini from the garden that were harvested JUST before they invaded Spain.

(With - what else? - a bottle of narcotics for reference.)

Emma has really stepped up and turned into quite the little nursey.  She can now clean bathrooms, do dishes, vacuum, dust and clean up dog vomit.  (Two dogs in one day.  Joy.) 

And Chad?
The.  Man.  Is.  Amazing. 

(Breep!  Breep!  Sap alert!)

I am so smart to have married this guy!  I know so many other wives who would KILL to have a guy that works all day and then comes home and makes dinner, cleans the house, goes grocery shopping, carts his wife's crap from room to room without even being asked, helps her get dressed and showered and obsesses that she's comfortable/fed/loved/has easy access to chocolate.  Truly.  I don't know how we went an entire year without him.  Dude, I LOVE YOU.  Now there are those reading this blog who have actually MET Chad and observed him fart, belch and make fun of.....well, pretty much everything.  You might not believe me as I gush about him.  But really!  I'm not lying here:  my husband is more awesome than any other husband out there.  We will have a contest.  And Chad will dab at this tears as they place a twinkly crown on top of his military haircut and name him Mr. Awesome Husband 2011.

Ok, maybe he won't cry.  But he will win.

And here are more end-of-post photos in lieu of any kind of real conclusion:

My YouTube channel

Must.  Share.  Videos.

Click to view:

Sadie!

I got scolded by horseback riding instructor for teaching her yearling naughty tricks.

That is all.

Blah blah blah

One would think that because I'm practically housebound that I would have nothing to blog about.  NOPE.  Life doesn't slow down just because you're a gimp with a boot on.

Chad had sinus surgery, similar to the one I had a few years ago, but they removed a cyst from his face instead of just chopping up his sinuses.  It turns out that a man who has made two year-long trips to a war zone doesn't come out of anesthesia calmly, but other than that he's had a very smooth recovery.  (I wonder if he'll kill me when he finds out I'm posting this picture here?  If I go missing you'll know who to blame.)

This leads into our NEXT topic, MY surgery.  (Because really, isn't it all about me?)  T minus two days today. I have a feeling I'm going to regret putting this on my blog because I know that work friends read this thing and OH THE TEASING.  Nurses are filled with EVIL, despite their friendly outer shell. We LINE UP to poke human beings with needles and find joy in stuffing tubes into places that tubes frankly just don't belong. That said, here goes: I have a sharp "accessory" bone at the base of my fifth metatarsal (foot bone) that is continuing to shred the tendons in my right foot. So I hurt it running, and it keeps getting hurt because I'm a freak of nature.  Can't wait until the respiratory therapists get hold of THIS one. I'll be in a cast for a few weeks, on crutches, and then hopefully I can transition back to The Boot of Doom and eventually get back to taking care of babies at work.

I still hobble out to the backyard daily to check on the garden, but haven't done a lot of work there except for hacking off part of the tomato plant that insists on repeatedly invading his neighbors. (It's got to be a dude because how often do you see a woman trying to take over other countries?) Despite my neglect the garden is thriving. I'm actually kind of scared that one of these mornings I'm going to wake up and find that our house has been entirely swallowed by the zucchini plant.  It does look slightly aggressive, no?

 ROWR!

(That's a baby watermelon!)

 


Miss Thang got her braces off.  Here she is with one of the dogs Chad came home with after a walk to the mailbox.  Woah woah, let me finish - WE FOUND THE OWNERS.  The Dixons are not taking in any more dogs, no matter how cute and licky they are. 

We can't leave Joey out of this Photo-palooza.

Oh!  And check out this weirdness.  These were our fortunes from a recent lunch.  Army man Chad's on top and NICU nurse Corinne's on bottom:

More signs of the Rapture?  Oh wait, that already passed.  Well it's Twilight Zone stuff anyway.....

I have plans to post my nasty post-op foot and more pics of our baby watermelon as it grows.  (Emma has already been recruited to take pictures of it as I'll be restricted to the couch after Thursday.)  I suppose that means I'll need to name it.  Stay tuned!

Found this in Emma's backback

Yes, I know it's from nearly three months ago.  I'm really on top of things around here.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, my daughter, the next Shel Silverstein.

(Yerg!)

This entry brought to you by cupcakes

No, I'm not dead.  I've been really busy trying to train myself to run a 5K.  I'm doing so great!  I have new custom-fitted running shoes!  I can run for a full continuous five minutes without dying!  I'm up to 10 miles a week!  I am a running machine!!

Wait, what is that numb feeling shooting up my right leg?

Yeeeeeah.  My effing body decided to give me the big middle finger. My MRI shows a tendon tear in my foot.  I might need surgery and am waiting to hear from the specialist.  If I have to suffer through one more morning of daytime TV (those View ladies are RIDICULOUS) I'm going to brain someone so he'd better have a snappy solution for me.  Let this be a lesson to all of you:  EXERCISE WILL KILL YOU.  And if it doesn't kill you it will at least disable you.  So don't do it.  I'm switching to cupcake therapy.  I'll be fat and happy.  I'll just need bigger clothes.  I don't care. 

Sexay!

Here's a photograph album of everything else that's been going on around here:

Chewy the Haflinger turned twenty.  She had a party.  With cake.

Ask a genius child to dust and what happens?  She rigs herself a Mission Impossible dusting ensemble.

Ok, those of you with heart conditions might wanna skip these next photos. Jessica taught ME how to sew.  No really.  She did.  Because she's awesome.

Jess has the coolest scrap room on the planet.  And also makes the world's best cherry chip cupcakes.

 I want to marry her.

She CAN BE TAUGHT!  (This is right before we sewed ALL the patches together.)

Chad got his E7 promotion.  He brought me home the E8 patch for MY uniform because he says that I outrank him. 

So I used my newly acquired rank to start a project!  Look at him go!

 

Yes, I know I need to weed.

Expect me to be on here a lot more in the near future.  Because until I know whether I can get up off the couch I'll have NOTHING ELSE TO DO!

We took a little road trip up past Payson today.  We planned in advance to eat at a little diner in a town called Happy Jack, AZ.  The food was outstanding but Emma wasn't thrilled about the ambiance of the place.  She informed me that she didn't like how all the dead animal heads on the walls were staring at her while she was trying to eat.  (She completely lost her shit when she saw an elk body dangling out of the back of some hunter dude's truck, too.)  Some people are just so picky.

None of us were prepared for the amount of snow we would find (it's March! in Arizona!) and Chad was especially not prepared to have his ass handed to him by Miss Thang in a snowball fight. (She plotted chucking a snowball at him the entire way up - quite loudly actually - so I don't know how he wasn't ready for a smackdown.) He is still complaining of tingling in his nearly frostbitten fingers because we, being the most intelligent of native Valley of the Sun.....ites.....brought NO cold weather gear.



 

As we decided to make a detour on the way home to visit our favorite camping spot we saw posters for a lost dog taped onto every little mile marker in the middle of the forest.  It's very sad that someone lost their doggie in the middle of the woods.  It was a small dog and there are bears and bobcats in that area so we can all guess what fate the poor guy met.  We *are* so sensitive to the plight of the random lost dog that somehow the conversation devolved from Emma trying to guess what kind of dog it was to the parents making up the most idiotic dog breed names imaginable. 

Chad won with "Labradonkey".

Emma was not amused with the turn of conversation.

Actually now that I think about it I can't believe I'm telling this story because it really does make us look like a bunch of heartless buffoons.

So to distract you from our evillll here's a new picture of Joey the Lovebird!

Awwwww.

Have you forgotten yet?