My Cape Cod Vacation, Part 4

October 16, 2008

I have to go home today. I want to stay here forever, but no vacation lasts forever. I have to go back to earning money to pay for more vacations someday...

It's sunny today, at last. I hope I can do a major beach walk before checkout time, 11 a.m. I'll bring my camera, and with any luck, I won't get caught by high tide. If it was at 1 yesterday, it won't be at 9 today. I think it's around 6 1/2 hours between tides, which would make high tide later than that. I could look it up online, if I had an internet connection...

Last night I went to the Impudent Oyster in Chatham for supper. We used to go there back in the 80s and 90s. My parents and my sister liked it. Well, it's nice enough, I guess, but it's horrendously overpriced and just a touch pretentious. I had steak au poivre, which was delicious. I followed it up with a cup of coffee. The whole experience, including tip, was just over $40. YIKES. Imagine what it would have been if I'd had wine... I'm still feeling bad about it - not just guilt, but regret for what else I could have bought with the extra $25-$30 I spent on that meal. All for an experience that I could have done without. (Whacks self mentally on head.)

I had gone early to avoid the crowds and was back in my room before 7. I then spent four hours watching TV. I was kind of in a red-meat stupor - but I also got a great start on my new hat that I'm knitting. As I said, it's a very complex pattern, and I now know that I can do it. I wanted to make sure before I left the yarn-store ladies behind!

I was thinking about how, when I walk the beach alone here, I'm never really alone. I'm walking with myself as a little girl, running ahead of my mother and grandparents with my little sister, feet always dancing. And I'm walking with my own kids, the baby slung in a hip carrier while the older kids run ahead of my mother and me, just as I did. My personal heaven will look a lot like the strip of beach between Allen and Wychmere Harbors. Sun, clouds, moon, stars, whatever the lighting, it's always my beach, and it always will be. I plan to come back here and repeat this vacation next year.

Later. Allen Harbor has been achieved! Hallelujah!

It's a beautiful sunny morning. The walk seemed short; it was no time before I saw my first landmark. I took lots of pictures this time, since I actually had my camera with me! It was low tide, probably about dead low, which left a lot of beach for walking. I'm going to share a few of these pictures.



I actually took this one to show a little crowd of birds (terns? sandpipers? something else?), but it's a good shot of the expanse of beach.



This is the same part of the beach where the waves were washing up against the seawall yesterday. Look at the difference today!



That's the jetty at the entrance to Allen Harbor. I used to love to run out to the end when I was a little girl. I didn't attempt it today; my knees are still too unstable. Who knows, maybe by next summer I can run out to the end again - or at least walk sedately there!

My knee bothered me some on the way back. The beach was slanted, with the higher side being on my left, so the leg with the new knee had to pretend to be shorter than the other one. But I got back and sank down on the bed gratefully, my cold pack on my knee.

It's almost 10:30 now, and I have to be out of here by 11, so I'm shutting down now. This vacation has been everything I hoped it would be, and I can't wait to come back to the Cape!

My Cape Cod Vacation, Part 3

October 16, 2008

Another cloudy day. The sun peeked through earlier, again, but this morning it was gone by 8. I woke up during the night trying to figure out why so much light was coming through my back window. Was there an outdoor light on at the inn next door? Nope, it was the waning moon, shining brightly. It was still almost full the first night I was here. I watched it rise and waited for it to move across the sky to where it would be shining on the water. By the time it got that far, it was lost in cloud cover. My mother and grandfather had taken pictures of the full moon shining across the water when we spent the summer down the beach a ways in 1952. I scanned these slides into my computer during the past year, and I wanted to take my own picture... but it won't be happening on this trip.

Later. This afternoon I walked down to the end of the street, where I'd seen a sign for a Day Spa that said they took walk-ins. I thought that was its name - Day Spa - but it's really the Girls Just Want To Have Fun day spa. As I walked over to the spa, a couple of women came out, and one of them looked at my feet, which were in sandals, and asked if I wanted a pedicure. Since that was one of the reasons I'd come down there, I was happy to agree. I asked about having my eyebrows done, and the young woman who does eyebrows said she'd be glad to. So I had my first eyebrow waxing, something I'd been eager to try for a long time. I'm all for it. I've never been good at tweezing and shaping my eyebrows. It didn't hurt all that much, either. I'm pleased with the results.

Then I had my pedicure. There was a foot spa, kind of a hot tub just for feet, and I soaked in it first. The pedicurist (a different young woman from the one who'd done my eyebrows) clipped, filed and shaped my nails, trimmed and buffed off some of the calluses, and put on four coats of nail polish - a clear one underneath, probably one of those nail hardeners (I didn't ask), two coats of a lovely bronze polish, and another clear coat. I'm pleased with them, too. The shop was having a special - 20% off everything - so I got all this done for less than $50. This is the kind of thing I can do at the Cape that I just can't seem to make myself do in the city. I'm just so much more comfortable with myself when I'm down on the Cape.

This morning I drove up to Orleans. My original goal was to find an internet connection at a coffee shop. I saw a place called the Hot Chocolate Sparrow in the Yellow Pages and decided to go look for it. I also wanted to find a bookstore I remembered and to see if Earth House was still there. We used to go every summer. It's an old hippie shop. Anyway, I went into the Hot Chocolate Sparrow, ordered coffee (so-so) and a berry blast muffin (spongy and bland), and sat down to read a Boston Globe that had been left behind by somebody else. A little while later, two young girls with laptops came in and sat down next to me. They appeared to be reading email, so I guess there was WiFi there even though I couldn't see a sign saying so. There was a data port right in front of me, too. But by then I was almost done eating, and it seemed a little odd for me to go out to the car for my laptop then. So I let it go. It wasn't all that important anyway.

The bookstore I was remembering was no longer there. Not really a problem; I just like to hang out in bookstores.

I couldn't remember where Earth House had been, and the more I drove around looking for it, the more I was convinced it had disappeared. I found it at last on Route 6A. It didn't seem to be open, but it was definitely still there. They may just open on weekends at this time of year. There used to be a car parked in back of it that was just plastered with those New-Agey bumper stickers - "Love your Mother" with a picture of the earth, things like that. It wasn't there; in fact, the parking lot was empty. [Note: They don't indicate that they close for the non-tourist season on their website, so they might have actually been open...]

I came back here after that and took a beach walk. It was high tide. I don't know why the tide was so high; it's past the full moon. But it seemed to be in as far as the most recent tide line, and it was still coming in. There's a point down after the seawall starts that there's really no beach at all; the water comes clear up to the seawall at high tide. So that was as far as I could go. If it hadn't have been high tide, that's when I would have done my Allen Harbor walk. It was as bright out as it was likely to get today, and I thought I might get good pictures. Here's one I took of the waves washing around the staircases.



I thought I might do my Allen's Harbor walk later this afternoon, but when the time came, I didn't want to wreck my pedicure, so I decided not to. I feel guilty about it; tomorrow's my last day, and I'm meeting the boys at around noon, so unless I do it in the morning I won't do it at all. At least I got to our old beach yesterday, even if I didn't have my camera... All in all, though, I did a lot of what I'd hoped to do on this vacation. I didn't start to outline my NaNoWriMo ideas, which I'd hoped to.

Which brings me to why I originally came over here at the “Later” header above: I just finished the first section (the Eat section) in Eat, Pray, Love, and I wanted to comment on it.

Basic premise: woman in her 30s undergoing journey of self-discovery. She'd just gone through a miserable divorce, probably even more miserable than mine. (heh.) She, however, is a successful writer already, and gets her publisher to give her an advance on this book so that she can write it. Oh, well; she has books, I have kids. Sigh.

It's a very enjoyable book. She's not especially religious – hesitates to call herself Christian, even. I think she's a Unitarian-Universalist and doesn't know it.

I know there were several sentences that made me say “Yep, I've been through that,” but of course I can't locate them now. I can, however, find the Italian words I wanted to remember. Her friend Luca Spaghetti (apparently his real name) brought her to a soccer game, and she points out that the word for “fan” is “tifoso”, derived from “typhus” - “one who is mightily fevered,” she points out. And right after that, she quotes the tifoso standing behind her, who is yelling obscenities. [In the original blog, I quoted them at this point, but for the online version, I'm leaving them out!] So if I get nothing else out of the book, my knowledge of world language has grown!

Some of the “me too” moments I had while reading this came from what she writes about her depression. She tried to wean herself off her Wellbutrin while in Italy, and I guess she succeeded. But it wasn't easy at first. She relates an incident from her life where she sees herself in a mirror and thinks she's seeing somebody she knows, a friend of hers. In this period of post-Wellbutrin depression, she writes: “Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend.” I really like that.

My Cape Cod Vacation, Part 2

October 15, 2008

It was cloudy all day today. The sun peeked through early on, but by later in the morning the clouds had moved in for good. I got up after 7 and took a brief walk along the beach before breakfast. I took this picture from the deck at the inn:

I was trying to capture the pearly quality of the light. I'm pleased with this picture, and I put it up as wallpaper on my laptop.

The continental breakfast was disappointing. I was hoping for muffins, and I got Thomas' "bagels" (in quotes because whatever those bready things are, they aren't bagels). The coffee was weak. The orange juice was fine. I talked to a couple from Pennsylvania for awhile. They come up here regularly.

I found out that they do in fact have WiFi here. It costs $10/week. I looked at my wireless connection icon and determined that their signal strength was poor, so I didn't even ask for it. I still want to find a coffee shop with free WiFi.

After breakfast I walked up to what I still think of as the Snow Inn jetty, the one by the entrance to Wychmere Harbor. That was the goal I set for myself this morning, just that small section. The sun was still out at that point. Here is a long shot of the beach:

The area where we used to go when I was a kid, the same area I brought my own kids, is in the misty distance.

When I got back to my room, I elevated my feet and read until around 11. Then I packed up my laptop and camera and went to Chatham. I stopped at the Chatham Jam and Jelly Shop (one of my goals for this trip) and bought pumpkin butter - my #1 item that I wanted to procure there - and a jar of dietetic cranberry jam. It uses Splenda. They give out free samples in the store, and this one was delicious. I haven't used jams with sugar added for years; if I had wanted to, I could have gotten any number of exotic jams like rose petal (flavored with petals of the rosa rugosa) or lemon geranium (I didn't try it; the saleswoman told me it had geranium leaves floating on top). They also have beach plum jelly, strawberry rhubarb jam, and other favorites.

Once in the center of Chatham, I parked on the street and went to Soft as a Grape, which was having a huge end-of-season sale. What a major disappointment! I remember this shop as having beautiful casual clothing with flowers and birds and whatnot screened onto them. I never could fit into their clothing when we used to spend summers in the area (1988-1992). When I lost enough weight to fit into them, my mother and sister took me to the Soft as a Grape outlet in Bourne and I bought a couple of tee shirts and a couple of sweatshirts. I still wear those sweatshirts in the winter. The tee shirts are more worn, so I don't wear them as much.

Today, when I went in, the entire store was filled with Boston Red Sox or Chatham, MA lettered stuff, still tee shirts and sweatshirts, but not a flower in the place. The closest thing to a print I saw was a Red Sox logo. Sigh.

So one of my goals in Chatham came to naught. My second one was to buy at least one pair of earrings, so I wandered down Main Street. I went into the Mayflower - reminiscent of an old dime store, but with lots of interesting junk and Cape souvenirs. My sister loves this place, and I went in mostly because I'm pretty sure she'll ask me if I did. I didn't buy anything, though. I went to the Yellow Umbrella bookstore and bought a couple of books: Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, and Whose Boy Be You? A Parcel of Recollections of Cape Cod Yesterdays, by Ben Thacher, "an old Cape Codger." He was born on the Cape in 1928 and has lived here all his life. I kept leafing through the book and seeing things that caught my attention, so I blew $20 on it. Eat, Pray, Love is subtitled "One Woman's Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia." It's been around for awhile (written in 2006), on all the best-seller lists. I've been avoiding it because it has the word "Pray" in the title. (How pathetic is that?!) It's non-fiction and the author was striving to find her own identity after a divorce. I can definitely relate to that. I keep hearing good things about it.

Finally I got to the jewelry shop (which shall remain nameless for this chronicle) where I had gotten my bronze scallop-shell earrings many long years ago. I've found pretty stuff there in the past, and that's where I expected to find earrings. I was disappointed. Nothing reached out and grabbed me. I decided not to buy anything. I've still got a couple more days here, I thought, and I can always come back.

I crossed the street and walked up the other side, passing another jewelry shop, which didn't tempt me. Chatham Cookware, a shop where I've found good things in the past, is closed on Wednesdays. Maybe I'll go tomorrow. I didn't go into the candy shop where we've always gone - I'm not really in the mood for candy these days, which is a good thing. I was parked right in front of it, so I got into my car and drove down Main Street, thinking I might as well drive by the lighthouse.

That didn't happen. A little further down the street, I saw a shop called Dolli Llama. Clever name, that. I'd seen it on the way in and was curious about what they might sell there. Well, they sell jewelry. Lots and lots of earrings in a vast range of prices. I stood in front of the wall display for about half of a Sarah McLachlan live album (the music helped; I love her singing) trying to decide whether I should spend $55 on a pair of chalcedony earrings. Finally I decided to spend half as much on a pair of man-made opal earrings. They were very pretty, too, but they weren't the pair I wanted, so in mid-decision, after the saleswoman had taken them down from the wall, I asked her to show me the chalcedony earrings, too. (It's pronounced "cal-Sidney", the woman said. I'll have to check with my daughter the geologist, but that's probably right.) I ended up just getting them and putting back the opals. I'm delighted with them; they're the ideal souvenir of this vacation.

By then it was around 1 and I was finally hungry. I decided to go through with my plan to get lunch at Marion's Pie Shop. I got a pint of chicken vegetable soup and a cinnamon roll and brought them back to my room here. The soup was delicious, chock-full of real vegetables, zucchini and summer squash and green beans and peas and carrots. The roll was huge and decadent; it took me until after supper tonight to finish it, so it was two desserts! I was very pleased with my experience there.

After lunch I rested for awhile. Okay, for most of the rest of the afternoon. At maybe 4:30 I decided to go for another beach walk, since that's why I'm staying in an inn on the beach, right? Actually, the reason I chose this place is that every time I step out my front door, I am struck by how wonderful the view is.

I took this picture right after I arrived. Look over the parking lot to the dunes, sand and water and sky...and to me, the knowledge that it's the same sand and water and sky I loved when I was a little girl. Anyway, I thought I'd walk as far as the beginning of the seawall. (At some point in the past, when such a thing was still legal, a seawall was put in for probably 2/3 of the beach area.) When I got there I still had a lot of energy, so I kept going. I kept seeing things I recognized, which I won't list here even though they're in my original blog, because they won't mean anything to most of you. When I got to the beach where I used to bring my children, I turned around and went back. I want to go to Allen Harbor, but I didn't have my camera with me because the clouds were so lowering; I want to have better light for my pictures...oh, and there was somebody standing at the top of the stairs, or I would have climbed up. (The beach is accessed by a staircase down the seawall.) I got back here without any trouble. That's a lot of walking for a person with a fairly new artificial knee and a sprained "good" knee.

Supper tonight was a chicken cutlet sub from Harwichport House of Pizza (they go for the all-one-word spelling of the town's name), and the rest of the cinnamon bun. I watched the Presidential candidates' debate for awhile, but eventually turned them off because I wasn't paying attention. I called my son and confirmed when he and my other son would arrive on Friday. That's it for now.

My Cape Cod Vacation, Part 1

I was fortunate enough to have last week off. After the summer I had, I thought I deserved a real vacation, one that didn't involve lying in a narcotic stupor with my feet elevated and an ice pack strapped to my knee. I wanted to go alone, not make this a family excursion. So I made reservations in a seaside inn and drove off to Cape Cod.

I had a wonderful time. I didn't have internet access while I was down there - a mixed blessing; I've gotten used to checking the weather, looking up things in Wikipedia, etc. whenever I want. But I couldn't possibly check my work email, either!

I kept a blog, with the plan of posting it when I got back. I'm going to do it in daily installments, with some editing and the occasional picture.

October 14, 2008

My Harwich Port Blog

Or at least that's my intention as I start to write this. It's something after 11 at night, and I'm slumped on my bed (my intention was to be propped up comfortably, but that doesn't seem to be working). So I moved to the ditzy little round table, the one with the plastic lawn chairs. Other than those, though, this room seems to be well furnished.

My trip almost didn't happen. Well, I guess that's not really true; I would have gotten down here if I had to crawl. But yesterday, when I was fighting to make myself walk properly up the cellar stairs, my right knee (that's the good one) gave out on me and I fell to both knees at the top of the stairs. I had sprained it badly. It's better today, and it didn't bother me when I was driving. But I felt for awhile that the Powers of the Universe were conspiring against me.

I arrived in Harwich Port (as it says on the map; there's a mixed opinion about whether it should be one or two words. I always think of it as Harwichport) at about 12:55 p.m., roughly 2 hours and 10 minutes after I left home. I wasted most, maybe all, of that 10 minutes looking for a Dunkin Donuts in Weymouth and, after finding one, trying to find Route 3 again. I thought I knew where it was. Oh, well, this is New England; you can't travel more than a mile without passing a Dunkin. There's even one here in Harwichport, where the Christy's market used to be, in the strip mall where the A&P was when I was growing up, the one my sister and I (ages 7 and 5) were allowed to walk to, even though it meant crossing busy Lower County Road.

Check-in time for the Sandpiper Beach Inn is 3 p.m., so I had a couple of hours to kill. I went to an amazing yarn shop in the center of town, in a new building next to the municipal parking lot. I think it might have been a furniture store at one time; that's what my dim memory is telling me. Anyway, it's been broken down into a series of shops, some of which haven't been rented out yet. The yarn shop, Adventures in Knitting, was displaying a lot of knitted goods made up in variegated yarn. I loved them and knew I had to make something! I bought yarn, a circular needle, and a pattern to make myself a hat in a very complex pattern where the strips of knitting appear to be woven together. I'll take a picture of it when it's done. It's made in a Japanese yarn called Noro Kureyon (which I'm willing to bet is Japanese for "crayon"). I chose a purple, blue and green blend (no surprises there; most of my wardrobe is purple, blue, or green).

After that, I wanted to get some lunch, and that's when I discovered that most of the downtown restaurants either closed after Labor Day or closed before 1:30. I ended up going to Seafood Sam's, a favorite family restaurant which I was saving for Friday, when my sons are coming down for the day. I got the lobster bisque, which was just as good as I remembered it.

I drove up Route 28 to Chatham, turning around at the traffic light by the Unitarian-Universalist church. I'm saving the center for tomorrow, when I can give it the serious attention that it deserves! I noticed that some of the places we used to go aren't there any more, and others had closed already for the season. Marion's Pie Shop is still there, though, and was doing a great business. After I drove by, I realized that I probably should have gone there for lunch. I don't think there's actually a restaurant on the premises, but I think I could get soup and maybe a slice of pie to take out. It's worth a try, anyway; I think I'll give it a shot tomorrow.

The nursery where Mom and Dad bought a hydrangea in about 1958 is still there. It's an Agway now. Interesting, the things that stick in my mind.

It was about 2:40 by then, so I drove over to the Bank Street town beach parking lot (right outside the Sandpiper Beach Inn) and read the Boston Globe until it was late enough to check in. The manager is very young, about my kids' age (somewhere between 20 and 27). He lives on the premises with his little long-haired Dachshund, Louie, who gave my shoes a thorough sniffing. Probably smelled the cats. The office has windows on three sides; it's like being on a boat. He told me that they're going to turn it into another room and put the office where his apartment is now.

The place is really more like what we used to call a motel (it's a row of attached rooms). The part I'm in has a second story, but the part across the grassy lawn doesn't. The cars park in an adjacent lot. My room has a king-sized bed, which is overkill in my case. The room is tiny and the furniture typical motel stuff, all except for the aforementioned white plastic lawn chairs at the table. There's a mini refrigerator and a microwave in each room. There are windows at the front and back, and outside the back door there's a small enclosed terrace, exclusively for this room.

After I unpacked, I changed to shorts and sandals and went down to the beach to wade in the water. I walked along the beach towards where we used to go. I didn't go that far; I didn't want to overdo it on my first day, and my sprained knee was aching. I hope to get down to Allen Harbor before I leave. It's been windy ever since I got here. I was cold on the beach. I passed a couple walking in long pants, sneakers and jackets; they seemed to be looking at me as if I was crazy. Not crazy, just my first trip to the Cape this summer, and I'm going to wade no matter what!

[The actual blog blathered on a little longer, but I think I'll stop here for today.]

Rock Band and the Topsfield Fair

I had a busy weekend. I wanted to write at home so that I could put in a picture or two, but when I get home I put my feet up and put an ice pack on my new knee, so I can't sit at the computer desk comfortably. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Saturday my older son came over with the PlayStation3 and Rock Band. If you've missed out on this, Rock Band is a very popular video game where you can perform, sort of. We made up a group of the three of us. I got to create my character - a rocker chick singer named Summer. Older son "played" the guitar - really just striking keys in a particular rhythm and sequence. Younger son played the drums. That's a little more realistic; there's a four-headed drum set with a bass pedal. I tried it, and my ankle was soon aching from the pedal. I like my microphone a lot better.

Anyway, we wasted hours as we gained in skill and scored more points, visiting more locales, earning a tour bus, then a jet, and touring the world. Singing in this game is my favorite part, of course - I always wanted to be a rock singer. It's a very forgiving program; I could slur words and approximate pitches, and it'd still say "Awesome!" at me. We were performing on the Medium level, mostly. Next time we're going to do Hard. The game's addictive. I'm glad it's not in my house all the time, or I'd get hooked on it. I'd start a solo tour.

Sunday we played handbells in church. The choir was very short of sopranos, so they asked the handbell director and me to fill in. Finally, I was asked to sing in the choir! I've been holding out for an invitation. The soloist with the heavy voice seems to have dropped out. She was a nice person, but I didn't like to sing with her, one reason I was staying away from the choir. The director and the other sopranos encouraged me to keep coming. They rehearse on Thursdays. Maybe I will. I don't know; it's so hard to get me out of the house once I get home from work. Also, if I join the choir, I have to be in church every Sunday. I have mixed feelings about that. I miss being in a Unitarian-Universalist church, and I don't really want to commit to this UCC (Congregational) church. But I miss singing, too. I stay there because most UU churches don't have handbell choirs.

In the afternoon, the boys and I decided to go to the Topsfield Fair. I was expecting a large-scale country fair. All I ever hear about it is the competition for the largest pumpkin - some of them go over 1,000 lb. Well, we hit traffic as soon as we left Route 95, and it took us over an hour to get to the fairgrounds. Once we got there, the closely-packed and brightly lit food places took over our senses. We eventually got to the cow barn, the sheep barn, and the poultry barn (we avoided the pig barn). But I was expecting something along the lines of the 4H Fair that we used to go to in Westford. What we got was a vastly commercial carnival. We never saw the huge pumpkins; I have no idea where they were hiding them. How do you hide a 1,000-lb. pumpkin, anyway? We weren't interested in going on the rides (and there were many). There's a limit to how much anybody can eat. I did get some blueberry crisp which was especially good; that didn't disappoint me. We don't think we'll ever go back.

Monday I took the day off. I had an appointment with the surgeon who did my knee surgery. Everything seems to be healing well. I can walk almost normally. My biggest limitation now is a muscle I pulled in my good leg.

I'm going to take a vacation next week. An actual vacation! I decided to spend a few days on Cape Cod, in an inn which is right on the same strip of beach where my family and I have been going since I was a baby. I'm going alone, and I'm so excited! I'll be walking on the beach every day, even if it rains. I'm going to go shopping and eat in nice restaurants (but sparingly! I don't want to pig out.). I'm going to bring my laptop and try to do some writing. They don't appear to have internet connections in the rooms; I guess they figure that people are there to do things outside, not hang around online. I'm sure there will be some place with WiFi, though. I'm going down on Tuesday and coming back on Friday, so I should avoid the weekend traffic. One of the best things about taking a vacation alone is that I don't have to worry about what anybody else thinks about what I want to do. I can just do it, without any explanations. The boys would be bored with shopping. But I plan to buy several pairs of earrings, if I can find any I like. My earring collection needs updating badly. I might try on clothes (always an iffy thing; I'm in the size range on the line between Misses and Women). I might hang out in bookstores. I don't have to worry about boring my sons! I probably ought to worry about how I'm going to pay for all this, but it's going onto my credit card. Who knows when I'll get a chance to go away again? Life is too short to keep putting off the things I want to do.

I can climb the stairs again!

I watched No Country for Old Men last Sunday. What was that, a mere ten days after I received it? I didn't get it. Maybe I shouldn't admit that - I want people to think I'm sophisticated. But I'm not. The desert landscape was barren and frightening. Javier Bardem was great as the scary bad guy, but geez, shouldn't he get what he deserves eventually? I prefer movies that end, if not happily, at least with some sense of resolution. Oh, well, now I've got Season 2 of Heroes waiting to watch!

But that's not why I came here today. I wanted to add to my knee-replacement blog.

By mid-September I was ready to try climbing stairs one foot at a time again. I'm picturing the alternative as me jumping up the stairs, landing two feet at a time! But actually, I was just using my right leg, pulling the left leg up afterwards, the way a toddler does. Coming down, I'd lead with my left leg, so that I could keep it stiff and it remained more stable. Going up in a way that involved using my left knee involved my making a major leap of faith: I had to believe that the new knee wouldn't collapse under me. It didn't.

The first weekend after I started climbing stairs normally, I had to keep reminding myself I could do it. When I got to the stairs, I'd automatically grab the banister and start hauling myself up, leading with the right leg, dragging the left one up afterwards. After two years, it had become a habit. Now I'm unlearning it.

This week I was ready to try a new skill: walking up the stairs without holding onto the banister. I practiced at work, where I have a quiet stairway with banisters on both sides. I walk up it every morning to get my coffee. This week, I've done it three times without holding on. Woohoo! Look at me! I'm climbing the stairs, no hands! Coming down, I was holding my coffee and I didn't want to risk spilling it, so I held onto the banister until the last 3 steps. They went fine. Today I allowed my hand to skim along on top of the banister, just enough to give me some confidence.

I'm still having physical therapy for my knee on an outpatient basis in the same hospital/medical school complex where I work. I think my physical therapist is doing a good job. I have to do exercises to strengthen my leg. Last week he had me balancing on the weaker leg and throwing a weighted ball at a kind of trampoline that had been placed at about a 45-degree angle. I had to catch it while remaining balanced. This week I had to do squats. They aren't what I thought squats were - I have to stick my butt out as if I were sitting down, while holding onto the bar with one hand if necessary. He also had me balancing on a little tippy disc, only holding on if I needed to. That one I can do pretty well. Today he had me practice stepping onto and off of the stairs. My right leg is still a lot stronger. But the left one is coming along well.

Avoiding your Netflix rentals?

Arr, Mateys! It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Okay, now that that's out of the way, I'll get down to serious business.

Earlier this week I read something about people who get out movies from Netflix and then put off watching them - sometimes for months. It seems to me that there was a term for people like this, but I can't remember it. I Googled it, and I searched the Boston Globe, but I can't find any reference to it.

Anyway, the point was that the movies we put off watching are the ones that we get out because we think we ought to watch them. Usually they're serious movies, the ones we know are going to deal with "heavy" subjects. Hotel Rwanda comes to mind. I feel as if I ought to want to watch it, but it hasn't even made it to my queue. In 2007, I received The Last King of Scotland on the same day I received Wild Hogs. Guess which one I watched first? Guess which one sat on my desk for a couple of weeks?

But my personal failure was The Queen. I sat on The Queen for a month, then returned it unwatched. (Ooh, she sat on the Queen!) Helen Mirren, an actress I admire, won an Oscar for it, and I thought I ought to watch it. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I was never a fan of Lady Diana, whose title was never Princess Diana, incidentally, even though everybody called her that. Queen Elizabeth II herself doesn't interest me especially. The thought of sitting through a movie dealing with the Queen's reaction to Diana's death just doesn't appeal to me.

A couple of weeks ago, Pride and Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version) arrived. Somebody somewhere said something (I'm so vague...) that made me feel I ought to watch it. I liked the book, last time I read it, which was probably 35 years ago, but it isn't one of my favorites. So I sat on it. (The movie, not the book.) Finally, last night, I made myself watch it. Lightweight all the way through. Quite a contrast to the usual kind of movie I avoid. It was cute. (My sons always pick on me - if I say a movie is "cute", it means I didn't like it.)

No Country for Old Men arrived earlier this week. I ought to want to watch it, right? It won the Oscar for Best Picture this year. What's not to like? I don't know. I wonder how long I'll avoid watching it...

White-bread Jesus

These days I don't attend church very often. I grew up in the Unitarian-Universalist church, but I married a Congregationalist, and my kids were raised in the United Church of Christ. I was first introduced to handbells there, and after my divorce, when I moved to my home north of Boston, I decided to choose a church based on whether they had a handbell choir. It was another UCC church. My sons now play handbells with me there. (My daughter has substituted in our choir when she's home from grad school in Maryland.)

Anyway, on those Sundays I do attend, which happen to be the Sundays when the handbell choir plays, I'm strongly aware that I'm a UU sitting in a Christian church. My boys have decided they're more UU than UCC these days, too, so at least I'm not the only one.

But that really has nothing to do with my humorous experience in church yesterday. It was Homecoming Sunday, the first Sunday after Labor Day, when the church year really kicks off. We played handbells, accompanying the choir on the anthem. It was also the first Sunday of the month, so it was a Communion Sunday. I like the idea of Communion as a way for people to bond together into a group, a fellowship. But Jesus for me is a teacher who lived a long time ago and doesn't have an active presence in my life today, which is fine with me.

So the deacons passed out the Communion bread - cubes of white bread. When I was a kid, we used to get cubes of Wonder bread for Communion, and we'd squish them as small as we could. I restrained myself from doing that yesterday, but I suddenly had an inspiration for a blues song:

I don't want no white-bread Jesus,
He's too bland for me,
I'm lookin' for a whole-grain Jesus...

Okay, it needs work, but it cracked me up.

Then, in the prayer after Communion, the text read "we go from here to be eager bearers of his word..." Well, I read it "eager beavers". Fortunately I didn't actually say this, but I couldn't stop giggling.

For the first 47 years of my life, I was always active in church. I grew up in the church, always there for Sunday school and junior choir and church suppers and youth group and the church fair, which I still go back to attend. I raised my kids in the church - they were always there for Sunday school and junior choir and handbell choir and church suppers and youth group. I was always there on committees, senior choir, handbell choir, teaching Sunday school...

Then my marriage broke up, and I moved away. My ex has "custody" of our former church, and I can't really attend there without feeling awkward.

Where churches go, I'm homeless. The church where I play handbells hasn't exactly taken me in. They made a few attempts at the beginning, but I resisted being sucked back into the bottomless pit of being asked to be on committees, teach Sunday school, etc. etc. If I became active in church again, I'd have to start attending regularly. Also, I'd have to pledge money, and when I first started coming to this church, I was barely making ends meet.

But I'm teetering on the fence now. If people tried to get me to be more active in this church, I might do it. I'm also considering looking for a UU church to attend on weeks when I'm not playing handbells. I dunno.

That's as far as I got.

So that was it, my knee replacement blog. I'm a trifle embarrassed; originally I wanted to write every day, but it got a little tedious.

I went back to work on August 4. I had hoped to start back half-days, but nothing ever works out quite the way you'd planned. . . When I arrived and saw six weeks' worth of work piled on my desk, that plan fell by the wayside. I stayed half a day on my first day back, about three-quarters of a day my second day back, and after that, it was full-time. I was walking with a cane, but I felt as if I'd hit the ground running.

Last Thursday I saw my orthopedic surgeon for a post-surgery check-up. It's been about two months since my surgery, and I guess this is routine. I told him that I was still having a lot of pain - nerve twinges, I call them, and sometimes it feels as if my kneecap is going to pop right out through the scar. I said that at that point, I would say I wished I hadn't had it done. Now I have a knee that hurts more and doesn't work as well as the old one. I think he was hurt. He got out my pre-surgery and post-surgery x-rays and told me how much better my knee was now. Easy for him to say.

I still have hope that my knee will eventually improve, though. I am having physical therapy twice a week. I still haven't tried to climb stairs one at a time (alternating feet, the way normal people do), but I hope that eventually I'll be strong enough that I can dash up a flight of stairs again. I want to be able to stand for long periods - something I'm going to have to do tonight, as my handbell choir starts up. I want to be able to take long walks and simple hikes. I'm still not well enough, but at least now there's a chance I will be.

It must be my Percocet-addled brain. . .

July 9, 2008

I've been home from rehab for a week now, and I haven't updated this account yet. I'm still recovering quickly. The staples in my knee were removed Monday, and the scar is healing well. I've still got some swelling, and of course, I don't have full function of the knee yet - but why should I, two weeks post-surgery?

The rest of my time in the rehab hospital went quickly, with no more major problems. Minor problems - the dreadfully uncomfortable hospital beds, the horrible food - remained, but with everything else going smoothly, these didn't seem as bad. I continued to fight the No Eggs at Breakfast battle until the last day, when they finally got it right. Of course, they gave me regular jelly instead of sugar-free, but by then I decided it wasn't worth fighting any more.

I left the rehab hospital on Tuesday, July 1, a day ahead of schedule. If I had been willing to stay one more night, they would have had my home physical therapy arranged before I left. But I couldn't stand one more night in that uncomfortable bed. My back and hips were protesting; I needed round-the-clock Percocet to relieve the pain in them more than the pain in my knee. The physical therapists had taken me off the Continuous Passive Motion machine a day early because four hours of lying flat on my back on the flimsy plastic mattress were hurting me more than they were helping my knee. So I left at around 4 p.m., promising to call my primary care doctor the next day to get the home physical therapy going. My kids (all 3 - my daughter was staying until Friday) and I had a great evening, eating Bertucci's pizza and playing Rock Band. My older son has a PlayStation 3 and the video game Rock Band, which includes a guitar, drum set, and microphone. He brought them in to my house so that we could all play together. There's a fourth track, for bass guitar, but we only had the one guitar, so one of us would take a break while the other three played. I sang. Next time he brings it in, I'll try the guitar, but I won't do the drum set until my knee heals.

I called my doctor's office the next day, leaving a message. At the end of the day, somebody called me back to tell me I should have had it set up before I left. Yeah, I know... She said she'd see what she can do. I didn't hear back on Thursday, and Friday was the Fourth of July, a holiday, so I knew I'd go the rest of the week without any physical therapy. I continued to do the exercises they gave me at the rehab hospital.

We went down to my mother's for the Fourth of July, as we do every year. She turned 84 on July 3rd. She's combined her birthday celebration with the Fourth since she was a kid and thought the fireworks were for her. My kids cooked hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill for lunch. Mostly I sat in the recliner and let everything happen around me. But I was there! We stayed to watch the fireworks, which were beautiful, as always.

Monday I bought a cane and I've been using it instead of the walker, which increases my mobility a lot. I drove my son's car yesterday, so I don't feel housebound any more. Not that I plan to go anywhere else this week! Also on Monday, I heard from the physical therapist. She came out on Tuesday and will be back today and probably Friday, too. My insurance is paying for this. I'm very lucky.

Rehab, Day Three

Bright and early on Saturday morning, the occupational therapist strode into the room. Briskly she told us what we'd do today as she laid several odd-looking objects on each of our beds - a very long shoehorn and a half-pipe with strings, among other things. Then she gave us each a pink dishpan filled with the toiletries we'd been scrounging for ourselves for two days already. Toothbrush and toothpaste! Soap! Deodorant! Towels! Well, that started us off. Why hadn't we received these when we first arrived? Well, my roommate and I gave this poor woman an earful about our treatment during the first two days. She was duly horrified.

The weekend nurse came in, also very nice and concerned about how we'd been treated. From that moment on, everybody was very nice to us. We think the aides were lectured; I really hope the "fricking sleep" one was fired.

The occupational therapist sat down with my roommate and showed her what each of the tools was for. I was on the CPM machine and couldn't see what was going on, but she said she'd go over them with me later. After I got off the machine, I ate breakfast, and an aide took me down for a shower. (She was a trifle ungracious about it, but at least she did it when I wanted it done.) By the time the OT got to me to show me the tools, we had run out of time before her next appointment. She showed me the thing that you can use to snag something at a distance. Frankly, tongs work better. I was sitting there in socks and sneakers I'd put on myself without the aid of any special tools, so she didn't show me the long shoehorn or that other device, which was to help you put on socks. In fact, I was doing so well I didn't really need this part of the training at all.

Then, two physical therapists, one of whom was perky Jen, dragged us down to a "group therapy" session. We were snickering about what to expect - would we all hold hands and share our struggles? What we got was an exercise class, sort of wheelchair aerobics, since half of them were in wheelchairs. The other six participants were elderly and much less able than we were. I know I was wondering why we were there...

After I got back to my room, my sons arrived and we played cards for awhile. It was lively and probably the most fun I've had while I've been here.

That afternoon, my mother and sister visited. It strikes me as particularly funny that I may be the only denizen of this facility who has ever been visited by her mother...

The staff were going out of their ways to be nice to us now. The weekend night nurse was young and inexperienced, but eager to please. The aides weren't openly hostile any more. What an improvement!

Rehab, Day Two

My roommate is around 70 and had her hip replaced. (We're "the knee and the hip.") Both of us are very young for our ages, unlike virtually everybody else on the rehab floor. Most of them are off in la-la-land. We think we might be the only two people here who realize how bad the care is. Or maybe not. Anyway, the story continues.

We didn't have towels (except for the one I filched from the shower the day before), so I washed up with soap I'd brought over from the hospital and paper towels. I managed to convince somebody to give me a toothbrush and toothpaste, so my mouth felt a lot better. I had my son bring over my hairbrush and deodorant from home. All of these were supposed to have been supplied by the hospital, but hadn't been. I put on clothes (YAY!) for the first time since I'd arrived at the hospital Monday. (They were the same clothes; they still had some use left in them.)

Two unbelievably perky physical therapists came by to evaluate us. Seriously, one of them, named Jen, of course, has a cheerleader flip and a toothy smile. It's as if she'd been supplied by Central Casting. They walked me down the hall and back. I'm still walking with a walker, so every time I say "I walked", you can mentally add the walker.) Nothing really changed because of this; I already had unescorted bathroom privileges.

My younger son was visiting me later that morning when my office sent over an Edible Arrangement. It was wonderful. I'm glad I had it because it may be the only nutritious real food I eat until I'm back home. We passed it around to everybody who came through.

Okay, the next character-from-the-nether-regions was The Night Nurse. He's the one I mentioned yesterday who took my water pitcher and abandoned it. When he took my blood sugar, he blew on my finger after he swabbed it off. Didn't that recontaminate the field? What an idiot. He was generally arrogant and incompetent. Here's an example. This happened to my roommate. She had a small sore near her wound and was concerned that she might be developing a bedsore. So she called in the nurse, hoping he could treat it for her. The nurse looked at it, said it looked fine to him, and started to leave. She asked him wasn't there anything she could do about it? "Don't sit on your bum," he responded condescendingly. I'm not making this up. I was there. Where was she going to sit, then, on her head?

I've spent a lot of time on the Continual Passive Motion machine, the one that bends and flexes my knee for me. I'm spending two hours in the morning (6-8 - they hook it up and I go back to sleep) and two hours in the evening. Anyway, the first time they hooked me up to it was that evening, and my knee puffed up right afterwards. Well, I'd already learned about the ice-bag situation. The Central Casting PTs were supposed to be looking for an ice pack, too, but hadn't come up with anything. The night nurse did supply the two little ones from the night before, so I had some relief. But I was beginning to wonder: was my joint actually going to be rehabilitated here?

The other brilliant moment from that day took place at about 5 a.m. the morning of the 28th. I was awake, and I overheard one of the night aides complaining at the top of her lungs. "Why don't they all just fricking SLEEP?" She and whoever else was out at the desk commiserated about how their friends all thought they had it easy working nights, when they could socialize and relax, but no, they actually had to do some work once in awhile. (To hear her tell it, she spent every minute running around, but clearly she wasn't spending that one.) Every time she had to answer a call, she complained about it. This is a fine example of the cheerful service we had been given there during our first 48 hours.

As promised, the Knee Replacement Blog

I really want to be a blogger. But there's a gap between my wanting to write and my actually doing it. . . Anyway, I did post a knee replacement blog on another site, and I'm bringing it over here, just in case there's anybody reading this who's considering knee replacement surgery. Mine was over 2 months ago now, and it's coming along, sort of. I still have nerve twinges. When I saw my surgeon last week, he put me back on Percocet, which gave me a wonderful long weekend without pain. But I can't take Percocet and work at the same time. It makes me stupid, in its literal sense - puts me in a kind of stupor. I still can't do stairs, and I walk with a cane for balance. I loathe that cane. It makes me feel old. It usually scores me a seat on the subway, though.

So, with no further ado, the first installment of the Knee Replacement Blog!

June 27, 2008

Last Monday, June 23, I had my left knee replaced. Everything went well. I spent three days in the hospital, as expected. The hospital staff was wonderful. Everybody was pleasant and helpful. Tuesday they had me sit up in a chair (which consisted of standing up, grabbing the walker, shuffling a couple of steps to the right, and sitting down again). Wednesday they had me walk (with the walker) across the hall - which gave me bathroom privileges, so goodbye, Mister Bedpan! Thursday I walked (with the walker, as usual) down to the next room. They told me I was doing wonderfully. I felt great. This was going to be a breeze.

Then I moved to the rehab hospital.

Now, my recovery is still going well and I'm walking fairly long distances with the walker, so that's not the problem. Here's what I wrote the day after I moved here:

6/27

I really need to write this down – nobody would believe it anyway. This lovely little rehab hospital (or so I thought) with Wifi in every room and large-screen TVs, remodeled two years ago... well. It's a prison camp. My room is opposite the nurses' station, and the nurse notification signal is a loud screech, kind of like a smoke alarm. The annoying chimes and beeps at the hospital suddenly don't seem so bad.

First of all, the ambulance sent to pick me up was an hour late, and the attendants didn't know how to get to the rehab hospital. One of them ceaselessly harassed the other one about being girly and feminine (he wasn't). They missed the driveway the first time, but turned around and got in all right on the next pass. When I got wheeled in the door, [my older son] was waiting for me. He'd been waiting two hours, from my original arrival time, which had already been delayed an hour...

My heart sank even further when they put me in the room across from the nurses' station. I knew it would be noisy, and I have enough trouble sleeping in strange places as it is... It just so happened that my roommate's granddaughters were visiting her at the time, and I was disappointed – I had hoped I could be by myself. My roommate has turned out to be great, so it turned out not to be a bad thing at all. The rooms were small, the beds were tiny and, as it turned out, dreadfully uncomfortable. I was hot and sticky and sweating like the proverbial pig, and all I wanted was a shower.

Somehow I managed to convinced them to let me have a shower. This involved having a nurse's aide wheel me up to the shower room. Here she turned me over to the shower attendant (who was another nurse's aide). She transferred me over to a “bathing chair”, which looked like a commode without a tank. I'm going to get showered on a toilet seat? Oh, this should be an experience! Well, of course I had to strip naked, which wasn't all that hard, since all I was wearing was two hospital johnnys (one on back to front so my butt wouldn't hang out) and a pair of pressure stockings. Well, after three days in the hospital I didn't have any modesty left anyway, so I ripped 'em off. (They helped me with the stockings, which are thigh-high, have open toes, are white, and help keep my legs from swelling.) I had my blue T-shirt nightgown to put on afterwards.

So I was pushed into the shower stall in this large commode-without-a-tank, and the attendant proceded to scrub me off. I was uncomfortable about it because she was a black woman and it made me think of slavery, which I'd never want to practice. Anyway, she was rough and dictatorial, and she was hard to understand. But I got my hair washed and my body to the waist. Then she spread a towel in front of me and allowed me to stand up long enough to soap my belly and crotch. Then she hosed me down. I felt like an elephant being washed. She made me sit down immediately. Then she wheeled me back out to the outer stall, and we dried me off. I was allowed to stand to get my butt and crotch toweled off. I put on the nightgown. Another nurses' aide came in, and she was drafted into helping get me into the wheelchair. That second aide pushed me back to my room. She let me keep a towel to finish drying off my hair. I didn't realize how precious a piece of bathroom linen would become.

I was returned to my uncomfortable bed. I felt much better for being clean at last.

Then the struggles really began.

The kitchen consultant came in and made notes of our food preferences, so that they could ignore them, as it turned out. I made myself sputteringly clear to her that I wanted the diabetic menu. I was frustrated by the fact that the hospital never figured this out.

My nurse for the evening (who had originally escorted me to the showers), had rinsed out my pressure stockings and hung them in my bathroom. Within a few hours, my left knee had ballooned alarmingly. So I rang the nurse and asked for an ice pack. You'd have thought I asked for yak butter or something equally unlikely to be found around a hospital. She gave me a tiny one, maybe 4 “ x 4 “. It melted almost immediately. I managed to get her attention again, and she gave me a standard-sized cold pack , maybe 12 x 6. She thought maybe I needed one of those Physical Therapy ice packs that can be secured around the leg. I asked if they had any. They didn't up here, but she could ask at PT when they were in tomorrow...

Wait a minute. Isn't this a REHAB hospital? Am I the first patient they've ever had who had post-surgical swelling? I doubt it. This is just another example of how woefully unprepared they've been.

Not only that, but this turns out to be a place where there's one nurse for 20 patients. Stupid. And every single one of the nurse's aides I've met so far has been a bitch. They stick their noses in the air and act as if you've insulted them if you ask them to do their job.

Example: I asked the attendant who wheeled me back after my shower if I could have a box of tissues. She said she'd look for them. I'm sure she didn't. I asked the next person I saw for a box of tissues. She said we'd have to wait until the next day; nobody knew where anything was during the night. So I asked a third person for them. She said she'd check, and disappeared. I suspect she went back to the station to talk huffily with the other nurses about the patient who had the nerve to ask them for something they were supposed to supply.

I asked for the toothbrush and toothpaste the staff had promised at the interview. Oh, sure, whoever this was (probably my first nurse) said, and promptly forgot about it. She was kind enough to rinse out my support stockings, but didn't think she could find a second pair for me.

I asked if I could have a trash bag where I could reach it from my bed. I wasn't supposed to be walking around, and they kept leaving pill cups and little alcohol towelettes and their packages around me. It seemed stupid to have the only trash receptacle in the room up by the door. Wasn't this a rehab hospital? Wouldn't they want to make things easier for the patients they were trying to rehabilitate?

I asked for my Percocet, which the hospital had been supplying every 4 hours. Before the surgery, I had been sternly warned to keep ahead of the pain – don't wait until it really hurts to take more medication. The hospital had had to be nudged, too, I'll admit, but this place is unbelievable. The nurse's alarm, as I've mentioned, sounds like a screeching smoke alarm. It's horribly annoying. I was lying there in pain, well past my time for my medication, and I didn't want to contribute to the horrible screeching only to be ignored again.

Getting new pitchers of ice water is like pulling teeth. The nurses' aides are supposed to do it. I asked my nurse to do it tonight, and he took the pitcher and, heck, he could have thrown it away for all I know.

Back to last night. At some point when I had a nurse's aide's attention, I asked for more ice water, and she brought it. This is the same one who brought me back from the shower, the one I asked for tissues. I poured myself a glass and spilled it. Some of it went onto my laptop. So I managed to get the nurse's aide back in there to help me mop it up. “See, this is why I need tissues!” I shouted, panic-stricken. She went off again to search for them. This time, she came back...with a fistful of paper towels. Okay, they'd mop up the water, but I wouldn't be blowing my nose on them if I could help it. She brought me a wastebasket liner and taped it to my bed table, too, so she was really trying to be helpful.

Okay, so without tissues, without a toothbrush or toothpaste, and with a severely aching knee, I was ready to call it a day. I struggled out of bed without my walker to turn off the bedside lamp that the first nurse had turned on because she thought it made the room look warm. I hadn't wanted it then, and I didn't want it now, either. Then I reached up to pull the chain to turn out the lamp over my bed, one I assumed was just like the light over my hospital bed. I pulled it, and the light directly over my bed came on. I pulled it again. It went back off. And again, and again...I remembered those light switches they had put up by the door. They wouldn't...would they? They had. Both my roommate's and my over-the-bed lamps (the ones that point towards the ceiling) are controlled by one switch. By the door. In a rehab hospital.

I had closed our door to shut down on some of the din. When I turned off the lights, the room was plunged into darkness. More poor planning, but this was on my part. I found my way back to bed...

And lay there, unable to sleep. The stress of the surgery, the move, and the realization that this place was totally unprepared to rehabilitate people was just too much to process. Why had they put me so close to the nurse's station, when I sleep so lightly? Why were they so unaccommodating?

I'm not sure of the sequence of the next few events, but I don't think I was the one who rang for the nurse. I can't remember what my roommate wanted – probably pain medication that they had scheduled an hour earlier. And an older woman came in (heh – she was probably my age). She did whatever she'd come in to do. One of us, or maybe both of us, mentioned how abandoned we'd felt since we'd been here. She made some placating remarked and left without closing the door. Seems it's against regulations to have the door closed, which doesn't really surprise me. Anyway, I ended up crying. I think my roommate might have been making some of the same complaints over the phone to her husband, very quietly. She might have been crying, too.

The nurse came back, maybe with my roommate's pills, I don't know, and I managed to get her attention. I tearfully spilled out some of the miseries of the day. Not sure of the sequence, as I said, but within a few minutes I had a spare pair of pressure stockings, two boxes of tissues, and an Ambien to help me sleep. Just had to ask the right person...and I can't even remember what she looked like.

Well, I got to sleep eventually, and slept for 4 and a half hours or so. When I woke up, I could hear my roommate talking with a nurse in the bathroom. The toilet was clogged. I knew it had been running slowly and assumed she'd called him because of that. Nope. It had actually overflowed, and when he grabbed something to mop it up, he got her bathrobe with it. Fortunately, the bathrobe didn't get wet. Oh, and it gets better. He didn't know where the plunger was. Maybe they didn't have one. Somebody would know in the morning...

And we hadn't even been here for 24 hours.

It was a great bonding experience, though, and we've become fairly friendly, keeping the curtain between the beds open except for times like when her family's here or one of us is sleeping.

Morning comes and the kitchen staff eventually wheels the trays of food out into the hall outside our door. We are among the last people to be served, of course. My heart sank when I saw my tray. I had specified the night before “NO EGGS FOR BREAKFAST.” And when I lifted the dish, there they were: scrambled eggs. Well, I yelled and screamed. When the aide who delivered it tried to say it wasn't on the order slip, we looked more closely at it, and what do you know? There it was: No eggs for breakfast, and diet jelly, please. (They'd supplied jelly for the two slices of limp toast, but it was regular.) Apparently word got sent down to the kitchen pretty quickly, because the aide came back with another dish, which contained six slices of limp toast which appeared to have been scavenged off of other plates, coffee creamers, and diet jellies. We'll see what I get tomorrow. I'll bet they spit in it.

How are we going to last out another week here? Stay tuned...

My Left Knee (Replacement)

Getting my knee replaced is a huge event in my life. I've never been hospitalized for surgery before. My only overnight stays in the hospital came with the birth of each of my children (3 days with #1, 2 days with #2, and 1 day with #3). I had day surgery (arthroscopic) on the same knee in 1989, and I had my gall bladder out in 2001, also day surgery. It's so easy these days; they do laparoscopic surgery, so the biggest scar I have is in my belly button.

Getting a new knee is a big deal. I feel as if I have to run a gauntlet of tests just to be accepted into the New Knee Program. Last night I overcame the first hurdle: I donated a unit of my blood to be used during my surgery, if needed. (I asked if it could be donated to somebody else if I didn't use it, but they said no.) I've given blood before, so it was no big deal. They had the Red Sox game on; it had started early because of the Celtics-Lakers game at 9. While I was watching, there was a brawl. It's a long and kind of typical Tampa Bay vs. Boston story; they're always hitting us with pitches, and we're always retaliating. And this year, Tampa Bay is fighting with Boston for first place in the American League East, so there's even more tension. (Maybe it's because when the Red Sox play at Tampa Bay, there are more Red Sox fans than Rays fans in the stadium! All those retired New Englanders...) Anyway, two nights ago there was an incident involving Coco Crisp (don't you love his name?) and his attempts to steal second. I don't want to go into lengthy detail; read about it here if you're interested; they tell the story much better than I do. So last night, when the Rays pitcher James Shields hit Coco, he charged the mound. The dugouts emptied, and Coco found himself on the bottom of a huge pig-pile. Three players were ejected - Coco himself, not surprisingly, Shields, and Jonny Gomes, a Rays player who had taken an active part in the brawl. They showed it over and over, of course. Everybody in the blood donor center was talking about it - the staff and the donors. This is New England - everybody's a Red Sox fan. (Actually I think one guy might have been a Yankees fan, but he didn't make a big deal out of it because - hehe - this is New England...)

So, there is a unit of my blood waiting for my surgery.

I have already had a couple of required tests - a chest X-ray and a urinalysis. I need to have an EKG. This is all routine stuff.

Over the next two weeks I have three surgery-related appointments. The first one's with the hospital, and I don't know what will happen there. The second one's with my primary care provider; she needs to clear me for surgery. Another major hurdle. What if I don't qualify? Although I can't think of why I wouldn't... The third one's with my surgeon. I'll talk about them if there's anything worth telling.

What's a joint like this doing in a nice girl like me?

It's been awhile since I wrote here. Oh, I haven't been silent - just blogging elsewhere. I'm reactivating this one to share news of my upcoming knee replacement surgery. I'm starting out by reposting an entry I originally wrote on April 25, 2008:

My knee replacement surgery is scheduled for June 23. That gives me two months to think it over. I can still back out. But I'm pretty sure I'm going to go through with it. 99% sure.

Reasons I should have a knee replacement:

• The knee is bone-on-bone in two places. It's not going to get better. Cartilage doesn't regrow, and it can't be regenerated.
• I am sick and tired of not being able to walk for long distances.
• I want to be able to hike again. I won't be climbing Mount Everest, but if I could climb even a small hill it'd be great.
• I want to be able to climb stairs again. These days I either shuffle up one step at a time, never bending my left leg, or I cling desperately to the banister, wincing with every step. Downstairs is just as bad.
• This is a good time in my life to have it. I'm relatively young, and my sons are around to take care of me. I've got health insurance that will cover it.

Reasons I shouldn't have a knee replacement:

• I can still go about my daily activities. I walk well on level ground. Sometimes I even walk without pain.
• I can lean over and pick things up off the ground without pain. Last weekend, as I was raking my lawn and picking up the litter that blows into my yard from the nearby convenience market, I was thinking, would somebody facing knee replacement surgery be able to do these things?
• It doesn't hurt when I'm sitting or lying down.
• What if it's even worse after I have it done?
• I'm relatively young. Yeah, that was a good reason, but it's also a bad one. Chances are I'll have to have it done again 20 years down the road.

Having my knee replaced was never part of my life plan. Of course, neither was being single at my age... I had planned to be a successful author, or at least a successful something... instead, I've got a job as an administrative assistant. It's a good job, but it will never earn me the respect of my college classmates.

But I'm not here today to talk about my failures. I'm here to talk about my knee. At least it's just my left knee; my right knee is fine. It'll probably be even better once it can share the work with my left knee again.

One of my co-workers sent me a link to a great site, Edheads. This is a Virtual Knee Replacement exercise aimed at grades 7-12. If you want to know more about what happens during knee replacement surgery, it's great.
http://www.edheads.org/activities/knee/