Musings from Gimpville

Lately I find it difficult to get out of bed in the morning.  I mean aside from the physical difficulty associated with not being allowed to bear any weight on my cast-covered right foot, combined with the fact that I am too uncoordinated to use crutches, leaving me pushing myself from bed to bath and back on a wheeled office chair.  It's beyond physical difficulty.  It's more a case of lying there looking at the ceiling and wondering "If I get up, what's in it for me?"

During the week it is the paycheck which my employers have generously agreed to continue to provide while I work from home during these four to eight weeks of imprisonment.  On the weekend it's the love for my dogs, and reluctance to clean up pee and poo that gets me down the steps, on my ass.

Some might call this pity party that makes me want to sleep all day "Cabin Fever". If that's a cutsey term for severe depression brought on by the inability to leave one's home then yeah, I'm pretty sure I have that.  I may have circled back for an extra helping.

Since I had surgery 17 days ago (17 days? Seriously??  It feels like a year!) I've been out of the house four times.  The doctor by taxi, the office with coworkers, the grocery store with a friend and last night to a friend's house to visit.  The most recent outing ended a five-day stretch of home-bound misery and was desperately needed.  We had a very nice visit, good company, good wine and good food.  I was home in six hours, and a half hour after that I was already cursing the walls and stairs and pink fiberglass cast that keep me prisoner here.  Today The Boy was supposed to take me grocery shopping and when he said "I'm in a big hurry, I'll just pick up what you need" I had a little melt-down...because I didn't get to go to the grocery store.  I recognize this is not the behavior of a rational person.

Day after tomorrow is my birthday.  The boy is taking me out to dinner.  By that I mean that he is driving me, in my car, to a restaurant of my choosing (as long as it's not too far away and doesn't take too long) where I will buy food for both of us, then he will bring me back home and leave me here alone so he can go out with his friends.  There is not one person on this planet from whom I would expect a gift.  I would be thrilled with a card, though I know I'll get emails and Facebook well-wishes. A coworker will bring me lunch.

Times like this I have to wonder where I went wrong.  How did I end up 48 and alone?  I have good friends, any of whom I could call and say "Hey..it's my birthday, take me somewhere!" and they would.  But how did I end up this age without someone with whom it is just assumed I will spend my birthday? A significant other. 

We make our choices I suppose, but never did I think it would come down to taking a taxi to a doctor's appointment because I don't have anyone to take me, or forcing The Boy to spend time with me against his will to keep me from sitting alone and wondering exactly where I ruined my life, or relying on my dogs for the majority of my daily interactions.  

Sorry...I don't have a happy end for this one.  I thought writing would make me feel better.  Wrong again.  I guess I can just offer the advice that if you have a family, cherish them.  If you have one of those pain in the ass families that's always wanting to get together, make time and do it. Because they may not always be there, and you may find yourself relying on friends, neighbors and coworkers in your time of need.  It's humbling, that's for sure.

Today's lunch....Big Mac & small fries.  I had to threaten The Boy to get him to bring it to me.  Good times.

Edit-----What a fucking ray of sunshine I am, huh?  I'm pulling my head out of my ass long enough to acknowledge that I am LUCKY in that my physical situation is temporary.  And I'm lucky to have a boy I can guilt into giving me the gift of his time on my birthday, and friends who take time out of their busy lives to come get my gimpy ass to save my sanity. Hell even my ex husband would come get me if I need him to.  But I do think I realize how the elderly become homeless and crazy.  Yes, I mourn the absence of a Significant Other or big family to help me, but there are some people who have NOBODY...and that would be soul-crushing and mind-breakingly sad.  

Using the Interwebz as God Intended

I have all this stuff I should be doing on my lunch break.  And I don't mean woe-is-me type stuff.  I don't have a pile of shit that needs to be shoveled from point A to point B, nor are there a bunch of unwieldy large rocks that will remain forever freakishly huge if Yours Truly doesn't break them into smaller, more manageable, rocks.  I'm talking about sitting in my air conditioned office, eating my Subway sandwich and balancing my checkbook, making some personal phone calls, maybe writing something hilarious and thought-provoking and worth reading.

But what am I doing?

Reading Baby Sideburns, looking at Funny Dog Pictures, becoming obsessed with music videos and wasting time gathering lots of useless knowledge (because everything on the internet is true).

That's what Al Gore invented the internet for, right?

Things I Should Be Doing Other Than Writing

I wish I was a writer.  I don't even mean that in the sense of "One who is paid to write", though that would be awesome beyond belief, but I just mean someone who regularly composes more than emails and Facebook blurbs (I do, beeteedubs, rule both of those venues).

I mean like I would like to be able to tell people "I am the author of Blogoverlunch.  You've never heard of it?  Oh it's a blog on blogspot.com, you should go check it out!" and know that if they do they would find something more entertaining than my vacation pictures or musings on a three month old news story.  I want to be able to point people there and know there will always be something new and relatively entertaining.

Yeah, I also want to be able to invite people into my home and know it will always be clean.  Like that'll happen.

Every time I vow to be better about most things (responsible, grown up things), I experience a crazy and fascinating metamorphosis.  I become.....

Credit: I have no freaking clue but if anyone knows who does this comic let me know because she is AWESOME!!!

But the thing of it is is, this writing deal is something I actually ENJOY.  So why don't I do it more?

Because my brain insists that before I make time to write I need to.....

• Do the laundry
• Clean the bathrooms
• Clean The Pug's ears
• Mop the floors (running Scooba doesn't count)
• Vacuum (running Roomba doesn't count)
• Force The Boy to eat a healthy meal
• Mow the Goddamned yard
• Fertilize the Goddamned yard
• Weed the Goddamned yard
• Burn down the Goddamned yard
• Shave my legs
• Pluck my eyebrows
• Revolutionize Payroll as we know it
• Make everyone who doesn't like me love me
• Mend fences
• Build fences
• Fireproof bridges
• Go to the grocery store
• Go to therapy
• Go to the chiropractor
• Power wash the house
• Stain the deck
• Write a mission statement
• Join a gym
• Become vegetarian
• Plant a garden
• Learn to garden
• Rescue some dogs
• Wash my dogs
• Empty the dishwasher
• Load the dishwasher
• Run the dishwasher
• Repeat repeat repeat
• Repave the driveway
• Burn the grass clippings
• Get more sleep
• Learn to be realistic
• Google images about procrastination
• Figure out the source of the comic

And so the blog waits.

But you guys I'm going to try to move BOL up on the to-do list.  Somewhere under laundry, grocery shopping and making sure the Board of Health doesn't cordon off my house.  

I miss you.  

So hey!  Good news!!  I have to have foot surgery in about three weeks.  I will be in a cast for a month and unable to drive.  I'll be a prisoner to my home, with my laptop as my only connection to the outside world (well, yaknow, aside from all of my awesome friends who have offered to help me and take me places....cut me some slack, it's called "poetic license").  I won't be able to work in the Goddamned yard.  What a shame.  I'm heartbroken. I'll be limited as to the stuff I can do around the house.  I also won't be able to drive to McDonald's for my beloved iced coffee...but I'm almost ok with it.  My point is I will have far less pulling at me and I hope to make more time to write

For now, however, thar's weeds out thar that need killin.  

Today's lunch...holy crap it's lunchtime!  Where did the morning go?  Gotta run!!!

The Dreaded Vacation Slideshow

To the 18 people who viewed my blog last week...or the one person who viewed it 18 times...thank you!  But, what the heck were you looking for?

To the rest of you, I'm sorry I've been so absent.  I've been pretty dang busy, as you'll see below.

Remember when you were a kid and you'd be visiting family and they'd bring out the slide projector and looked at vacation pictures?  Yeah...buckle up.

The Boy and I went on a cruise.  On Carnival.  Yes, I'm brave like that (or I'm CHEAP like that).  Eight days with The Boy.  And I didn't even force him to do it.  Turns out HE'S the brave one.

On Saturday the 25th we jumped in the car (I say that as though it wasn't a monumental, stress-inducing feat of planning and work both at the office and at home) and drove to Baltimore.  It's a 6 1/2 hour drive without stops.  With a 47 year old woman possessing a bladder the size of a pea and an 18 year old smoker who isn't allowed to smoke in the car it's more like 8 hours.  Thank God for Pandora's comedy channels, making it only seem like 20 hours.

We spent the night at THE WORST HOTEL EVER.  Upon arrival The Boy found a bathing suit hanging on the back of the bathroom door, causing (paranoid) me to wonder if the previous guests weren't entirely checked out.  The whole place smelled overwhelmingly like my grandmother and (I shit you not) the water was BROWN.  When I called the front desk to inform them that the sink and tub water was coming out brown the response was "Yeah sorry, that happens sometimes".  And this was a four star hotel!  Very disappointing.

Sunday afternoon we boarded the ship.

SO freeping cute!

This was The Boy's first cruise.  I truly expected him to find a group of people his age and desert me.  I was armed with several books, one being full of writing prompts.  A little notebook and my laptop.  But it turned out to be lots of really good Mom/Boy time.  So my lack of inspired writing is his fault.

Sunday evening, all day Monday and all day Tuesday we looked at a whole lot of this, which was exactly what I needed.

Oooh...aaahhh.

Chillin.

We could not have asked for nicer weather.  We swam a little.  Went to comedy shows at night.  But mostly just relaxed.  We even sat in our little cabin and rented a couple of movies...because that's what we felt like doing...so mneh.

On Wednesday we were in Port Canaveral Florida.  We went to Coco beach.  The ocean was rough and I'm a big baby.  We swam a little, we went to Pizza Hut for lunch (gee...whose choice do you think THAT was?) and we went back to the boat...uh ship.  Whatever.

On Thursday we were in the Bahamas.  Nassau.  We took a bus to Atlantis.  Oh my GOSH is this place beautiful!  But HUGE!!!

Our "little" ship on the right.

Ok Mom, enough with the pictures.

Dolphin Cay was beautiful and the dolphins were just SO cool!  This one was pregnant.  She was very sweet.

Two beers, two mudslides, two APPETIZERS..$75.  

Buying The Boy his first legal beer...priceless.

Friday we were in Freeport, but only from 7am to 1:30 PM.  We decided not to even get off the ship.  My foot was DONE after all the walking in Florida and Nassau.  So we relaxed.

Our view of Freeport.

The rest of the trip was just on the boat, just me an the boy hanging out, which was fine with me.

 The view from our favorite seat on the deck.

We got back to Baltimore on Sunday morning and were home on Sunday night.  I unpacked Sunday night and re-packed on Monday night.  I was on a plane to Chicago on Tuesday afternoon.  I spent three days in a classroom during the day and here at night.

I'm DONE.  I'm whopped and I'm glad to be home.  I missed The Boy while I was in Chicgao and I missed my dogs the whole dang time.  Now I'm at the point where I have so much to do I'm frozen in indecision....and therefore doing this.  And not a very good job of it at that.  I'm sorry it's such an uninspired blog entry.  It is,  remember, The Boy's fault.

Today's lunch.....no idea.  Frozen in indecision again.  

A & F You.

Lately I've been beating myself up a lot.  I mean A LOT.  I'm sure this will come as a huge surprise to all of you, but I'm not perfect.  It's ok.  Sit down if you're feeling light-headed.  Have a glass of water, or some vodka.  Breathe into a paper bag.  I know I just rocked your reality but it's going to be fine.  You had to face it eventually.

I'm overweight.  And while losing 25 lbs had somewhat lowered the volume on the "you are a fat piece of shit" voices in my head, a recent plateau has sort of kicked my self-esteem in the ass.  And by "plateau" I mean several weeks that have consisted of three days of bingeing followed by four days of starving myself.

I'm undateable.  I don't really know why this is, but it is.  It has been proven again and again.  There was a time when I had it on good authority (the aforementioned voices) that my undateability was due to my fat-piece-of-shit-ness.  But I had expected that the minute my BMI moved from the obese area on the chart to the overweight area on the chart men all around would suddenly be able to see past the now slightly thinner layer of fat and notice my redeeming qualities.  Alas this has not been the case.  The men who say they want a no-drama, low-maintenance, real woman actually seem to want a 25 year old hoochie-mama with fake nails, fake eyelashes, fake boobs and fake hair.

This is not to say I have not had suitors, but seventy year old men, men who are six inches shorter and 50 pounds lighter than me, men without teeth, men whose opening line is "nice body baby"...these are not my target demographic.  Call me picky.

My house is falling apart.  The one point of pride I had, the fact that I've managed to keep this house, the only house The Boy has ever known, for seven years post-divorce, has been overshadowed by dysfunctional smoke detectors, wrinkly carpet, broken screens, freakishly healthy weeds and faulty wiring.

Then there's my outlook on life.  As you might have guessed I'm not exactly a ray of fucking sunshine lately.  It could have something to do with the fact that my stupid foot is still broken.  Maybe there's some truth to the whole exercise-endorphin-mood thing.  Who knew?

But my point is this...I've been doing a really good job of beating myself bloody, figuratively speaking.  This is a long-cultivated skill, learned at a very young age.

When I was twelve my mom took me shopping for school clothes.  She was appalled to discover that, at the prematurely advanced height of 5'9" I was wearing a size 13.  This prompted my first diet.  Every day for lunch I had a peach.  And only a peach.  Oh and I could have as many ice cubes as I could eat.  The "you're a fat piece of shit" voice was born.  It was kept alive through my teens by a steady diet of bullies, barbie, mainstream media, TV, magazines and boys who, while I had no problem finding a date in my teens, made it clear that I could stand to take off a few pounds.

And by no means am I delusional enough to think that I'm at all unique in all of this.  Find me a woman who doesn't beat herself up over her appearance on a daily basis and I'll show you....hell I don't know, because I don't think she exists.

And then this waste of skin comes along:

Uglier on the inside.

I'm not really upset that he doesn't want ME shopping in his store.  I'd be about as likely to want to wear something from Abercrombie and Fitch as I would wear a pair of overalls from Baby Gap or a pair of work boots from...well, wherever they sell work boots.  What pisses me off is that this ugly inside and out sorry excuse for a human being has found yet another way to separate what he and society consider the pretty people from the not so pretty people.

In the past, what, 50 years or so we've managed to drastically reduce discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation but we, as a society, still place such a value on size that shitbags like this are allowed to publicly admit not only to wanting to keep the the less-than beautiful people (as judged by him) out of his store but also he flat-out states that he discriminates in his hiring practices....and that is LEGAL.

That's right...he couldn't say he hires only one gender.  He couldn't say he only hires under a certain age (though it's implied and obviously very very true) or ethnicity but it's completely legal and professionally acceptable for him to admit to hiring only thin employees.

That, my friends, is some serious bullshit there.

Like the teenage girl who is five pounds (FIVE POUNDS) overweight isn't beating herself up enough...now she has to feel self-conscious when she goes into A & F with her skinny friends, not to buy clothes...because she knows they won't fit her...but just to BE with her skinny friends while they shop.  Tell me she's not going to go home and dive into a pint of Ben & Jerry's when it's all over.  This is how it starts.

In the end I think karma will stomp this guy's ass into a pulp and I'll tell you why.  His target customer, cute and thin as they may be....for the most part they don't have the kind of funds that can support a company of that size.  They go to school, they hang out at the mall, MAYBE they work part time at McD's for gas money but a pair of A & F jeans would be a week's pay for them so guess who buys them....their overweight, overworked, middle-aged mommies.  I'm sickened by the fact that I have supported this fucktard, either by giving The Boy gift cards so he could shop with his friends, or by following him around the dark, cologne-soaked store while he picked out an overpriced shirt or pair of jeans.  No more.  And I'm not alone in this.

We beat ourselves up enough every day...the last thing we need is some botoxed, capped teeth, overpaid pretentious self-loathing turdbag telling us he doesn't want us in his store.  

My guess is American Eagle and Aeropostale are loving this.  As for me, I'm happy at Wal Mart.  They have a whole department made just for me.  :)

Today's lunch.....A mother's day treat.  A mocha frappe and chicken McWrap.  I'll starve myself tomorrow.

Dear Facebook

Dear Facebook,

Enough with the mobile updates every other day FFS!

1) While it's updating, AGAIN, I can't get on Facebook to bitch about the fact that Facebook is updating. AGAIN.

2) Something like ten updates in the past two months and it is STILL the only app I have that doesn't switch to landscape orientation when I turn my phone sideways.  Get with the program!

3) During the long updates I want to yell at my phone "WHAT THE HELL IS TAKING SO LONG???"

4) During the short updates I want to yell at my phone "REALLY?  You made me update for THAT?  What was so important you couldn't add it to TOMORROW'S update?

5) Enough of this nonsense....give me my money back.

Love, Me

I Told Me So

How many times do I have to tell myself "I told you so!" before I start to listen to me?

This stupid foot injury of mine.  It started out back in late October when I helped a friend move.  Knowing I'd be doing a lot of walking I wore my most comfortable shoes.  Unfortunately they're not the most supportive and at some point carrying boxes across her gravel driveway I started experiencing searing, blinding, mind-blowing agony some discomfort.  I might have twisted it.  I'm not sure.  I'm so uncoordinated that nearly falling on my face doesn't even register in my memory anymore.

The pain continued for a couple weeks until I finally called my foot doc.  Unable to return from her vacation just to see moi, I settled on my family doc.  He diagnosed me with tendinitis in my foot, which seemed entirely reasonable since I've already had it in both elbows and both shoulders.  He sent me home with orders to stay off it for a week and a note for work saying I had to wear tennis shoes basically forever.  He refused to put an end date on it, saying that he did not understand why businesses insist that people wear shoes that are unhealthy for their feet.

Preach it Brother!!!

So I stayed off of it for a weekend, and I wore sneakers for a couple weeks, and everything seemed better so I went back to business as usual.

But roughly mid-February the pain returned.  I actually went to the foot doc this time.  She took x-rays, saw nothing, and got on board the tendinitis train.  She told me to stay off the elliptical, wear sneakers, and try to stay off it as much as possible.

I stayed off the elliptical and wore sneakers.  I kind of forgot about the last part.

I went back in two weeks and told her I didn't think it was tendinitis.  I'm far too familiar with that bitch, and this aint her.  She assured me it was, because my x-rays looked fine.  She offered me a cortisone shot, which I refused.  It was a temporary fix for my elbows so why would it help my foot?  I continued to wear sneakers and stay off the elliptical.  I tried to stay off the foot but since that meant making The Boy actually, yaknow, DO stuff, it was difficult and frankly more unpleasant than the pain, so I continued to do far more walking than I should.

And it kept getting worse.

So finally at my third biweekly appointment, after saying once again "This does not feel like tendinitis.  It feels BROKEN", I agreed to the cortisone shot.  And I agreed to keep it elevated, stay off it for all but the barest of necessities, and I worked from home for the remainder of the week.  Who am I to argue?  I'm not a doctor.

Except that it continued to get worse.

My physical therapist was the one who finally encouraged me to seek a second opinion.

So when the radiologist at the orthopedist's office said "Want to see?" and I hobbled around the protective wall to look at the screen, what to my wandering eyes should appear but a break that any moron could see.  But not being an expert I pointed and said "Um....what's that?" and the radiologist replied "Well I'm no doctor, but it sure looks like a break to me"

Yep...the foot is borked (adj.- broken so entirely that the word to describe it is also effed up.)

The doctor explained to me that I have a Jones Fracture, to which he added "When they name a fracture, it's never good".

WHY doesn't anyone, including me, listen to me??  Why didn't I get a second opinion earlier on?  And why am I resisting the urge to hobble to my foot doc's office and plant my crutch firmly in her...

Moving on.  Violence is never the answer.

Now the new doc said that even if I had come to him in the first place he probably wouldn't have seen the break on the original x-rays.  These types of breaks often don't show when they're new.  And what we're seeing now is not so much the break but more the new bone formation.  His protocol would have been to send me home with exactly the same instructions I received from my foot doc, BUT when I returned two weeks later reporting continued pain, he would have taken new x-rays, at which point the break would have been visible.

Grrrrr....

The theory is that it was a very slight crack back on October, which caused comparably little pain and healed in a few weeks.  BUT there is a 30% to 50% re-injury rate with Jones Fracture, so I re-broke it in February, gradually making it worse until recently when I finally started staying off it, at which point it finally started to heal.

From here on out I need to wear supportive shoes more often than not and I need to continue to lose weight to keep it from re-breaking.  Or is it re-re-breaking?

So anyway, I'm on the mend, in a boot and on crutches.  Going on day four and the foot feels GREAT...the rest of my body feels like it's been hit by a bus.  You guys walking on crutches is HARD.  I have bruises on my upper ribs under my arms and the muscles in my chest, arms and even abs feel like I've been abducted and tortured by Jillian Michaels on her period.  I spent a good portion of yesterday sitting around feeling sorry for myself because the automatic air freshener in the laundry room has run out and it's just too much trouble to go to the store and get a refill.  Seriously EVERYTHING is hard.  I sit here in my jammies right now because getting ready to go anywhere feels like an ordeal on par with construction of the pyramids.  But I do need to undertake this endeavor because The Boy will be home soon to take his invalid mother out to lunch and to the grocery store.

I'm not sure if it's the fact we now know it's broken or the fact that I could take him down with the swing of a crutch but The Boy's attitude toward helping me has improved and he's no longer accusing me of "milking it" (oh yes he did).  So hopefully we can have a nice lunch and get the shopping done without either of us leaving the other at the restaurant or store.  We're going to need to figure out how to get along soon because come the end of May we will spend 7 days on a very big boat together, sharing a very tiny room at night.  Here's hoping the doc's prediction that I'll be healed by then comes true, and The Boy and I are still talking to each other when the cruise is over.

Today's lunch...something from First Watch.