Grass and Sky

The stew turned out pretty well. A little bland (I do need to stock up on a few things for next time) but decent. I made some Jasmine rice to go with it and it made a good meal, with lots of leftovers. I still also have leftovers of the tortilla soup I made last Monday, although that's getting a little old. That's the problem with those soup kits. You don't have a lot of control over how much you make and that particular one made eight servings. I just can't eat eight servings of anything before it starts to get a bit yucky.

Today was a better day than yesterday. I made it to the grocery store, had a mini donut at Starbucks - not as good as a DD donut but enough to curb the need for sweets. Made the stew, washed a drainer full of dishes, and tidied up the living room a little bit. Still a lot of housework to be done, and I didn't do any sewing at all.

I won't get any sewing done next weekend, either, since I'm taking a little mini-vacation to visit lyda_pearl. However, I'm fairly confident that it won't take more than a month to make the gown, so I feel like I'm in good shape. And my shoulder is much happier after getting a break this weekend. It's been really sore the past three weeks but right now it's not bad at all.

Once upon a time, I had muscles in my left arm. They weren't very strong, admittedly, but they were at least functional.

( My arm exercises, let me show you them )

After much internal debate, I did call off work today. Slept until two pm. And I've decided to keep my arm in the sling as much as I can this weekend. I've definitely taken a step backwards in the healing process.

I have babysitting to do this evening and an all-day work conference tomorrow, so it's not going to be much of a weekend, but I have two 3 day weekends in a row coming up, so that should help a little.

On the plus side, I woke up to a nice, grumbly thunderstorm. It was lovely to lie all snuggled up in bed listening to the rain and thunder.

I might be wrong about this, but I think I slept the whole night straight through, last night. That would be the first time in almost seven weeks, at least. Sadly, I think it's more a product of unusual exhaustion yesterday, rather than any great sign of my arm being better. But I'll take it any way I can get it!

Note to self: when making oatmeal in the microwave, please remember to put the water in.

I do believe it's time to start looking for a new microwave. I got my current one second hand a few years ago and it already had a big, burned out spot on one side of the interior walls then. It's ticked along well enough since then, but this seems to have put it over the edge, with billowing clouds of smoke pouring out of said burned out spot. It was definitely NOT the oatmeal that was smoking.

I learned, to no great surprise, that Mal is afraid of the noisy smoke detector when it is going off. He sat in the living room, staring at me as I tried to swat the smoke away with no success, crying every bit as loudly as the thing was shrilling. On the plus side, I now know that the battery in my smoke detector is still good, despite being something like 2 years old. On the minus side, everything in my apartment smells like smoke. Now I just have to hope I can put the blasted thing back together when I get home from work. Why don't smoke detectors come with off buttons?

In other news, there was a hockey game yesterday. Final score was Penguins 2, Montreal 0. That's right, folks. Marc-Andre Fleury earned himself a shut-out. Only his second one all year, and his first playoff shutout since May '08. It was a fun (read: nail-biting and crazy-making), dueling goalies sort of game. It all came down to a question of who was going to crack first and in this instance the answer wasn't Fleury. I love Fleury, a lot, but he's had a pretty mediocre season, so it was really nice to see him making the big saves and standing tall in net.

It's going to be a long day. I managed something like four hours of semi-decent sleep before my arm started screaming at me (no great surprise there, either, since yesterday was not exactly Be Kind to Injured Arms Day). Advil did pretty much nothing, so the second four hours involved lots of tossing and turning and 'will this be a comfy position? Why, no, it won't.' I finally gave up on sleep altogether about an hour and a half before I usually get up, which may at least partially explain the brain fart that allowed me to explode my microwave. *sigh* And we're having a room party at work, which means I won't get home until late.

This room party, incidentally, is the Year End, Grandparents and Special Friends Picnic and Cinco de Mayo extravaganza. All the families signed up to bring chips and dip (apparently no one could think of anything else even vaguely appropriate - unimaginative, lazy group). There's going to be a lot of dip and not much else at this party.

In the meantime, I'm going to be happy that my coffee brewed perfectly fine, and go help myself to a second cup of liquid life support.

I'm a crankypants today.

Can't sleep because my arm hurts every time I move and I move a lot at night. When I'm not moving it just aches. A lot. As it does during the day, too. Two steps forward, one step back and to the side. I definitely have more range of motion in some ways, but things I've been able to do all along, like reach behind my back to do my bra strap, have become a lot more uncomfortable/painful.

Did I mention I can't sleep. 800mg of advil is no longer doing much of anything to make my arm feel better, but it's all I've got. The Vicodin prescription the doc gave me isn't any stronger and I don't like Vicodin. So I get to continue to be very uncomfortable all the time.

Bleh, I am not nearly patient enough for this. I want my arm to stop hurting, NOW! I don't care if I don't have 100% strength or range of motion yet, just please stop being so achy and sore all the time, with those fun little spikes of omgpain! every time I move the wrong way. *sigh*

Did I mention that I'm crankypants today?

Today was my second physical therapy appointment. The P.T. was happy with my increased range of motion and reassured me that the discomfort I still have, especially during the exercises he gave me, is within the normal range and not to be worried about. I now get to do some exercises with resistance as well as some new passive ones added on.

The p.t. exercises went a lot better today. I think the problem yesterday was that I was trying to figure out how to keep my shoulder 'soft' and instead just ended up tensing it up more. 'Soft' is not a very useful descriptive for me, since the shoulder is, by nature, made of hard things like bone. I'm pretty sure the P.T. meant low and relaxed as opposed to tense and hunched up around my ear, so I was trying to drop my shoulder, and only ended up with it low and tense, rather than high and tense, lol. I pretty much managed to fix that today.

I had my first experience with physical therapy this morning. It went well. The P.T. was very gentle in assessing how much movement/pain I have and at this point doesn't want me trying to push through pain for anything. As soon as I reach the point where it hurts, stop. I can get behind that.

He gave me a bunch of exercises to do, all of which are passive (using props to make the arm move, rather than the unhappy muscles themselves). I also have to remember to keep my shoulder 'soft' since I've fallen into a bad habit of hunching up and placing additional strain on the muscles of my neck, especially when I need to reach my hand up for anything. All of this is supposed to soothe the angry muscles while gradually restoring range of motion. I'll go back in two weeks for a reassessment and at that time the P.T. thinks I'll be ready to do some strength exercises.

I liked the place and felt very comfortable with both the environment and the people. I am pleased, despite the fact that my arm is now protesting all that attention rather loudly.

There's a new Med Express place, right across the street from my old doctor's office, which has in turn been turned into an urgent care office. Choices, choices! I chose med express just because that's what came up first in my google search.

I was in and out in under an hour (on a thurs evening, the place was completely empty), x-rays and all. Nothing broken -I would have been shocked if there was. The doc diagnosed it as a torn rotator cuff. I get to wear a sling thru the weekend (one-handed typing sucks) and if it isn't starting to feel better by then, I have a scrip for pt. I also have vicodin for bedtime, so hopefuly I'll get a little more sleep tonight.

Now I just have to figure out how to make this one size fits all sling actually fit me. Yay.