Leggy update

Back to Doc P today for a checkup - he took new x-rays and said they looked the same, so all the new movement isn't bothering it any. He was impressed that I could bend my knee as far as I can (117 degrees bend just by pulling it back with my leg muscles, and I can get to 130 degrees if I actually grab my foot and pull it back - the other leg goes to 135 degrees). He also said he thought I was farther ahead than he would have guessed at this point. I don't have to go back for 6 months.

Not that I'm entirely healed, but he said the rest of it would just take time. I walk unassisted and usually don't look like a total gork. Sometimes I even look like I'm walking normal. My left leg is still weaker than the right and you can really see the weakness when I walk up and down stairs. They had me jog in place for 30 seconds on Monday and I've been sore all week. But I didn't fall over and die, so there's that. Anyway, Dr. P said most of the rest would take time to come back. I can quit PT anytime considering my progress, even though I'm not 100% yet.

Conversation of the week:
New PT lady: So is there anything you still can't do?
Syl: Well, I can't run.
NPTL: [looks at me suspiciously] Did you before?
S: No, I don't mean like a marathon. I mean I can't run. Like ever. Like to avoid oncoming cars. Ever.

Smartass.

My 20 Gallon Project

Remember how I wanted to be a fish owner? Pusher and Puck offered us their fish tank, which had been sitting in their garage since they took it off AKJ and Dude's hands. So, rather than a little, tiny, 1-fish tank, we are now full-fledged owners of a 20-gallon aquarium.

It's a complete system, though, and quite nice. It looked way too complicated at first, but once I started cleaning the pieces and putting it back together, I figured it out. It came with a heater, filtration system, hood with light, and supplies. We went out this evening and bought new tubing, air stones, and gravel (bye bye turquoise!) so we could get the tank set up and have it running for a day before we get fish.

But guys, what was with the laughably wee plants and stuff? All of the decoration that came with it, which is what I assume y'all had in the tank when you used it, are WAY too small for the size of the tank. The plants don't even come halfway up! The lighthouse, as described by Kitten, is a "teeny castle". I'm going to have to purchase a couple new items that are a bit more to scale for a 20 gallon setup.

Still, a great deal. Thanks to everyone. Pics to come when it's ready and has fish.

Conversation of the day:
Pants: Let's get one of those fish. I like the price.
Syl: We're going to have a thousand dollar setup and 27 cent fish?
P: They just die anyway!

Education is for the rich

Pants and I toured a school this morning, The Goddard School. It would be ideal for our kids - on the way to work, more of an educational environment, a friend from daycare already there. But they wanted over $2000 per month to take our kids.

We have been considering moving our kids to a more educational environment so they get more socialization, more educational opportunities, more time playing outside, and are better prepared for school. The home daycare we are in has worked phenomenally well while the kids were younger, but as they get older I think they need more than what they are getting.

If we weren't already in debt up to our eyeballs, I might put our kids in this school anyway. But killing ourselves over pre-school? Who affords this school? Some people must, there were kids' names all over the classrooms. (Maybe they put up fake names. Does anyone really name their kid Anakin??)

It actually made me incredibly angry. I have been unable to find a pre-school program that is not phenomenally more than what we are paying a month now (hundreds more per month) or that runs all week. My kids don't have a way to get to and from pre-school for partial day programs, nor would our daycare allow us to go down to three days per week to put our kids in pre-school the other 2 days. I get it, my kids would take up a slot that could go to a full-time kid. Not that it matters, the ones I have looked at would still be too expensive for us.

There is one option, a Montessori school in Anoka, that is pretty close to what we're paying now, but both kids have to be potty trained before they can enroll and we have to figure out how to get to work from Anoka. It will mean more time commuting every day and more time away from the kids.

So my kids may have to start school without a lot of the skills other kids will have. I don't even know what those skills are, as I can't seem to find a list of what they should know. Should they be able to write letters, or just recognize them? Should they be able to just count, or do some rudimentary math? Tell time? Count money? I want to help my kids get a little more education, but what do I focus on?

I feel really lost on this.

Busted

So, I'm flipping through Jezebel this evening and watching the "10 Things You Might Have Missed on TV This Week." Kitten runs over to watch one of the videos and Pants immediately protests.

So I flip to the last one and say, "Ok, let's watch Judge Judy."

The Hammer pipes in: "I want to watch Judge Judy on our TV, like at [daycare lady's house].

Oh dear. My kid is watching Judge Judy at daycare? I'm paying this woman to watch Judge Judy with my children?

Conversation in the car

Syl: You know how they make those little fences for the car that keep dogs from jumping out of the back compartment of an SUV? We need one of those, but for the back seat so the kids can't touch each other.
Pants: We could just try shock collars.

"Creamy" is what you're looking for

Because, apparently, yogurt doesn't come in a tub labeled, "No chunkies."

My Big Redneck Wedding

My LPT is getting married on Saturday and I've been keeping tabs on her preparations for a couple of weeks. I started to relive my own wedding on the way to physical therapy today and I realized something. As beautiful as I wanted it to be, my reception was really, really redneck.

I present the evidence:

• My brother and someone who will remain nameless (because he is NOT dead) snuck out to my rented Lincoln Town Car and blazed up a joint.
  
• A co-worker of ours got so drunk that she was hitting on everyone at the reception. Including the BRIDE and GROOM. She later got into an actual fist fight in the parking lot because some other coworkers thought she might be a little too far gone to drive.
  
• Apparently an anorexic we know drank too much and ate WAY too much cake, ended up puking her guts out in the bathroom, and got hauled out in an ambulance. Don't even know where I was for that one.
  
• Pants' friends The Michaels got incredibly drunk and we played rounds of "Where's Michael?" for an hour, where a different one would show up every 5 minutes, ask where the other was, and stumble off to find him, no matter how hard we tried to make either one stay put.
  
• One of them also brought a date, who none of us saw before or have seen since, who was 9 feet tall in a solid turquoise dress. She's the only thing I remember seeing walking down the aisle (What the HELL is that?).
  
• I have a photo of two women (regular readers here) dry-humping Pants on the dance floor.
  
• The groomsman who missed the wedding because he was IN JAIL showed up in a red suit and pink leopard-print hair.
  
• Pants and I spent every dime we had on the wedding and had to take the wedding cards with us to the hotel so we had some money for our honeymoon. If you gave us money, thanks.

So although I have lovely memories of my wedding, I realize now that an open bar was perhaps not the best idea. I realize now that although our friends and family have come a long way, you can't take the redneck out of the country-raised. I realize now that I didn't know half of what went down during the reception and I'm kinda glad.

So there it is - my big redneck wedding.

Feel free to disagree...

Hoping to become a fish owner

Kitten has been doing very well on the potty, going most of the weekend staying dry, although she is still having accidents once or twice a day, mostly in the evening. Last night she was dry when we changed into pajamas, though. We sent her to daycare today in underwear and agreed that she would wear a pull-up during nap time. She doesn't seem to have the sleeping thing down at all.

I promised her this weekend at the pet store that if she could stay dry for 7 days straight, she can get a fish. We will also be pulling her from daycare then and putting her into a preschool - another mom at daycare who put her older child in preschool recently said that any residual potty issues they had before cleared up immediately when he started school with the other kids.

So I'm hoping by November 1 to have both a small aquarium and a kid in preschool. Then we start working on The Hammer (who does seem interested, but will just sit on the potty and hasn't actually peed in it yet.)

S to the I to the M to the P

So, most mornings I wake up with a song in my dream/head. I've become attached to some songs this way, songs that I hadn't given much thought to before.

But this morning, I awoke with my favorite P&F song cycling through. I'm a total web doofus and I can't get You Tube to imbed here, so click here to enjoy Squirrels in My Pants.

I told Pants. His comment - "You just got served. Again."

A few minutes later, in a totally different room, I started singing it. Kitten's response? "You just got served. Again."

4 weeks

It's been a long week. I was really disappointed on Monday with my leg progress - I was so sore, leaning on my cane a lot. I spent the weekend in unbearable sciatic pain and it felt like my leg had a hangover. On Tuesday morning I went to PT and talked about the disappointment and the regression and it occurred to me that my soreness might have been from the furniture moving. I didn't tell my therapist.

The soreness lasted through Wednesday, but since yesterday I have been walking on my leg without a cane on and off, mostly without a limp. It has felt surprisingly normal. Very little residual weirdness once I get moving.

I thought about it today and it's been four weeks since I was given full weight-bearing permission on my leg. It surprised me that it's been so little time and I felt like I have actually come a really long way. It's been hard work and I'm not fully back to normal yet, but I've gotten pretty far.

The hardest thing to get used to is the up and down of it all. I thought recovery would be a straight line, steadily moving upward. It's actually been a series of back and forth, up and down movements, with the progression eventually moving up and forward, but in a really convoluted way. Like my nav system was programmed by a paranoid schizophrenic - eventually I'll get there, but we have to go in the most circuitous route in case we're being followed.

Um, did I just break into plural?