Wednesday Bag o’ Solitude

Well, doesn’t that sound self-serving and dramatic! It’s not nearly as bad as it sounds. Donna left this morning for a five-day sewing expo in Puyallup, Washington. Her greatest concern, leading up to this long-planned trip, was that I’d be okay by myself for a few days. Since my recovery is going so well, I was able to reassure her I would be. I can dress myself now and even put socks on. I can drive again. I cook, and there’s plenty of food in the house. Polly can come over and help if I need her, and I have two dogs and a cat to keep me company. All is well.

My daily routine includes two hour-long home PT sessions consisting of leg strengthening and stretching exercises. I’ve started walking one of the dogs through our neighborhood again, and will head out as soon as I finish this post. I take Schatzi, who is good on a leash, and leave Maxie home. I’d walk them both if I didn’t have to use a cane with one hand. Maxie was never leash trained so she’s quite the boob on a walk, constantly entangling herself in her own leash, walking circles around my legs, crossing from one side to the other. She’d trip me up for sure.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I go to outpatient PT, where I’m working on achieving full 360-degree leg rotation on a stationary bicycle. Not quite there: I can make it around the horn backward but not yet forward. Getting closer each session, though. And of course there are several other exercises as well, a lot of them involving stepping up and down from one of those aerobic training platforms. Always, more stretching, especially the hamstring.

When you’re up for a total knee replacement (or two), people are always telling you about friends who had them both done at once and were hiking and riding bicycles again with a week or two. Do not listen to such people. The stories are urban legends, outright bullshit. It takes time and a lot of determined work to recover from a knee replacement, and if you were able to find a doctor irresponsible or foolish enough to agree to do both of your knees at once, you’d be absolutely helpless afterward. You need one functioning leg to get through it.

Things are going well, and my recovery is on schedule. I’m looking forward to being able to sleep through the night again. The muscles around my new knee are stiff and sore, and they ache at night. But it’s getting better day by day … the aching didn’t wake me up until four this morning, and that’s two hours more sleep than I got the night before.

Speaking of dogs, poor Maxie finally got rid of her bad breath. I always suspected she had a rotten tooth; turns out she had three. The vet pulled them and cleaned the rest, and now she smells great. Wish we had done it sooner. When Schatzi was little the vet discovered she’d cracked a molar right through, probably from chewing on a toy that was too hard. She pulled the tooth and we got rid of all the really hard toys. The vet said at the time that dogs don’t complain about tooth pain, and all this time Maxie must have been miserable with pain. She is certainly perkier now.

So we dropped Netflix streaming when we discovered they didn’t have season two of Downton Abbey, and switched to Amazon Prime streaming, which did. Now I discover Amazon Prime charges for episodes of Breaking Bad, at least for season three on. They were all free on Netflix. Damn it! I told Donna I’d probably suck it up and pay for a few episodes while she’s away. Wish I could just afford to pay for both services.

The Oscars left us both flat this year. The jokes were stupid and mean, and nearly every award category centered around the same four or five movies. As usual, we’d seen only a few of the movies beforehand: I saw Prometheus in a theater (and was sorry to have spent the money); together we watched Moonrise Kingdom, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and Flight at home. Now that the Oscars are over, the other nominated films are becoming available on Netflix and we have them all on order (including Les Misérables, and I hate musicals).

I’ve been wanting to hike my leg over the motorcycle in the garage to see if I’m getting closer to being able to ride again, but during our recent cold spell Polly decided to store her Ducati in the garage and borrow Donna’s car for a few days. She parked her bike so close to mine I can’t straddle mine and stand it up without knocking hers over. She’s coming over tonight, and I’ll have her help me move the bikes around inside the garage so I can practice. Still hoping to take a solo ride to Nevada and northern California in late April or May.

Politics? Just. Don’t. Care. I’m sure it’s temporary. One thing I don’t understand … why doesn’t Obama sic the Justice Department on all these states that are trying to rig voting, undermine health care, and do end runs around Roe v. Wade? I mean, what does he have to lose? He can’t run again after this term, so why not show some spine?

Time to walk the dog. More soon!