Sunday Fits and Starts

Dear Internet,
This is how it goes:
Wake up.
Get ready for the day. Read the Internet. Wipe the dog down after her romp outside. While both lounging on the bed, have a discussion with TheHusband about Canterbury Tales vs Inferno vs Decameron vs Arabian Nights. Intrigued, TheHusband brushes up on his medieval authors on his tablet while I finish writing a blog post that was started earlier in the week. TheHusband moves to obtain sustenance for us while I move to my office.
Begin the final prep of the white Macbook (Rakish Cad) I’m selling, I finish installing software on TheHusband’s old Macbook (Brazen Hussy) which I’m turning into desktop. Update The Sims Medieval, start new game, and use iPhone (Wanton Harlot) to find names of a famous/infamous medieval woman to name character. Find an interesting woman to model my Sims charceter on but get discouraged by how the game continues to crash on a machine that is far better equipped to handle said game then on Rakish Cad. Kill the game, turn on Of Courtly Love and Bawdiness Pandora station. Start writing a new blog post, interspersed with beating up Rakish Cad and eating lunch.
Think about earlier seen websites about medieval women, Chaucer, and medievalism in general plants the seed to see A Knights Tale again. Check Netflix to see if it is streaming, IT IS. Add to Instant Queue. Netflix then recommends I should watch Trailer Park Boys. Which means since Kristin is not on gTalk, get on Twitter to let her know about the my Trailer Park Boys discovery (find out later, she’s already known). End up having a great discussion with @hubbit [snippets] on the changing of the Englisc/sh/sch language. Titles are swapped, I end up back at “ye olde shoppe, Amezone” and end up purchasing a few more books, The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology (Oxford World’s Classics)
and The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales for a project I’ve been ruminating about for a few years.
Close out of Twitter, for it is dangerous.
Go back to working on blog post. Ruminating, ruminating. Marvel at how much I bounce from one thought to the next. Open up Twitter to tweet lines of thought and opted to write a blog post on the subject instead. Close out Twitter before I get sucked in yet again.
That was several hours ago.
It is now after 5PM, Rakish Cad is almost ready for its new owner, and my office is no closer to being cleaner or as organized as I had planned. What should have taken me a few hours from start to finish (prep Rakish Cad, move Brazen Hussy, sort out desks, vacuum) is in the process of being an all day affair. Which means the work that I had slated to get done today on my other projects will get pushed out to later this evening or tomorrow.
Plato reputedly said,

The first and the best victory is to conquer self.

 
But Plato didn’t have access to the Internet.
ttfn,
Lisa

The Hours (6 Weeks and Counting)

Dear Internet,
Thursday marked the six-week anniversary of my lay up (lay in?).
When TheHusband and I started discussing what exactly the surgery was going to entail, I genuinely thought I would be laid up for 2 weeks of bed rest and than have a walking boot for another 4-6 weeks, then physical therapy as prescribed. I thought I would be back to work by mid-July.
At the two-week follow-up, 30+ staples were removed (20 on the interior incision, 10 on the exterior incision, and 6 on the fascia incision. I went from this to this (go Hammers!). I was told to remain 0% weight baring and due to the nature of my job, was off of work for the another five weeks.
Three weeks after plaster cast was placed, I started getting a lot of irritation inside the cast, against the incision. With two weeks more left before I could go back for the next followup, the irritation may not be able to wait, so I called and was immediately seen. When they took the cast off, which due to how ticklish I am had me laughing like a loon, this is what greeted us. The MA said that we caught the pending infection in time, for if I had waited, things could have been a lot worse.
Because they were planning on putting me in the walking cast in the appointment two weeks out, it was decided that I would get the walking cast now instead of another plaster case, on the condition that I would remain 0% weight bearing. They would also load me up on antibiotics to stave off any infection cooties. As I was to continue to be 0% weight bearing, work would still continue to be out of the question. The advantage this time around was that instead of having a plaster case that weighed 5 lbs, I would be wrapping my ankle in dry dressing twice a day and wear the walking cast boot. My foot and lower half of my leg could have freedom, but I could not shave my leg. If you look closely in some of the more recent pictures, you could see the inches long hair on the top of my feet. I could now wash my foot in the shower, instead of wrapping the leg in a garbage bag as I was doing before and I could put lotion on my toes to ward off the dehydration that was occurring from lack of moisture.
So six weeks of near complete bed rest; the number of times I’ve left the house can be counted on one hand and the number of times I’ve gone down the stairs wouldn’t be that much more. I started the convalescence before the beginning of one of the hottest summers on records and for every small break we’ve gotten in the heat, I’ve cracked the windows open and gulped the fresh air like a person long deprived.
We found that any small movement could and would disrupt the healing process, like sitting upright in a chair longer then a few hours or wearing the walking boot, which fitted while the leg was swollen and caused undue pressure. I’ve spent much of my time in bed, my leg propped at varying degrees, all my electronics spread around me, a TV in front of me, and pretended I was some modern version of Rear Window. This has been Wednesday’s position for almost the entire time.
I had set up loads of plans to keep myself occupied while I was laid up: Watch a TV series I haven’t seen (or haven’t seen in forever) and write about each episode, finish my cross-stitching (I got a total of two letters added), do some knitting, work on research for a writing project, catch up on professional interests; the list was endless.
And I’ve done almost none of that.
[to be continued]
ttfn,
Lisa

Insecticide! (Or how I may die)

Dear Internet,
When it comes to bugs inside of Throbbing Manor, I take a very druidic approach: They can hang out here as long as they are not going to damage anything or annoy me. If they keep their end of the bargin, I won’t kill them. Spiders hang out, I don’t scream like a banshee when I see something inching along the floor; all in all it’s a pretty symbolic relationship.
Until I saw this crawling across the wall the other day:

Boisea trivittata (Boxelder bug)

True to my word, I let it go on its merry little way.
Until I saw another one.
Until I saw a few more.
That night, TheHusband and I killed close to 20 of them and we haven’t stopped the killing since.
And the best part? They are ONLY in the master bedroom, the one room I’m in 98% of the day.
TheHusband did research and found the bugs are harmless, and not really invasive, mainly nuisences. According to University of Minnesota’s Department of Entomology:

They are most abundant during hot, dry summers when followed by warm springs.

Considering the weather we’ve been having this year, this makes total sense! It also explains why didn’t see them last year. We’ve identified that they are coming in through the sitting room windows in the master bedroom somehow. We’re not quite sure HOW but since there are boxelder bug carcases inbetween the double glass window panes, and every morning when we wake up, the floors look like a boxelder bug massacre occurred, that seems to be the most logical reason. And Wednesday? She can’t be arsed by all that is going on as long as she has her fan.
But the real fear is not the bugs themselves (UofM’s site says that what we see is all that we get, they do not nest in homes), but because my lackadaisical attitude towards bugs in the home has flipped 180 degrees and I’ve become an insect killing machine, TheHusband may one day find me covered like this:

ttfn,
Lisa