Six Days til Surgery!

Mornings around our house follow a pretty standard routine.  The alarms goes off and I allow myself the luxury of hitting snooze twice before I get up.  After that we are off to the races.  I get Zack up and free the puppies from his room.  Zack runs downstairs and feeds the pups while I follow him and get his breakfast ready.  As soon as his breakfast is ready it is on the table along with his medications that he takes every morning.  When he is eating I let the dogs outside and then select some clothes for him to wear.  Though he is in seventh grade I do select his clothes because if I didn't he would end up wearing stuff that goes together like oil and water.  After that it is all him as he gets dressed, brushes his teeth, puts his contacts in his eyes, checks his backpack to ensure he has everything, gets on a jacket and heads out the door.  Sometimes he will even make a semi-decent attempt to comb his hair.  But that doesn't happy too often because he is a boy and just doesn't seem to care about that.

Once he is out the door things slow down dramatically.  I'll let the dogs in the house and then sit down in front of my laptop and start the daily routine of checking my e-mail and calendar and preparing for whatever meetings I have that day.  Normally this work is done while I am sitting at the kitchen table or at the desk in my office.  Then there are mornings like today when I allow myself to indulge in a more relaxing routine.  Instead of working from the kitchen or my office I will take my laptop and head upstairs.  Then I will burrow down underneath the covers and spend the next hour or two working from my bed.  I usually do this when I am feeling cold and I want to get warmed up.  This morning was one of those mornings in which I was freezing so I went upstairs and crawled underneath my covers.  I have a lap desk so I prop my pillows up against the headboard of the bed and use the lap desk for my computer. Our house is typically much cooler these days than in years past.  Prior to Nancy's move to Cranbrook I had to keep the temperature a good 3 - 4 warmer than I do now.  If I didn't she would be freezing all the time.

About 5 minutes after I had settled into a good working position on my bed, I heard the jingle of the tags on Finnegan's collar as he walked up the steps.  He came into my room and stood by the side of the bed looking at me with pleading eyes.  I gave him the OK and he jumped on the bed as quickly as you can say lickety split.  Then he did what I love so much, he came up to me and put his head on my lap while he contorted his body into an unbelievable shape.  I petted him until he curled up in a ball at my side.  It was like shear heaven sitting there working with my little pup curled up beside me.  After just a minute he was sound asleep and I could hear his breath reach this steady quiet cadence.  It was so wonderful it almost lulled me to sleep, but that couldn't happen as I had a ton of work to do.  Regardless of my work, it was one of those small little pleasures of life that makes so much worthwhile!

As of today there are 6 days remaining until my surgery.  Never in my life have so looked forward to having surgery.  Due to the fact that surgery is only 6 days away I can no longer take Advil as it acts as a blood thinner.  My supply of oxycodone is almost at an end so I have been rationing them.  The end result is that the pain levels have built up to the point that it is difficult to walk.  So I am tending to not do a whole lot physically right now.  Despite the fact that there are some risks with this surgery, I just can't wait.  When it is over and I am awake, you can be darn well sure I am going to post some joyous happy blog entry! 

On the other hand I am doing a lot mentally.  Since my stress fracture occurred back in March of 2011 I have really been restricted in what I can do physically.  The things that I want to do physically have been piling up ever since.  My mind has been in constant motion planning these things and thinking hard and long about all the steps I am going to take to "transform" our lives once I have recovered from the surgery.  I expect that I am going to be one very busy person once I have healed since I have been laid up for so long.

Massive and radical change is needed to put my life back on a track that I feel good about.  Because of the injuries and because of all the other changes that have occurred, I want to do something very differently than I am doing them now.  I feel like I am in the biggest rut I have ever been in during my life.  I want to break out of that rut and live differently.  It's very hard to articulate all that I am thinking along these lines, but big change is needed for me! 

One of the reasons why I talk about change and doing things so differently is because I have been laid up for so long.  In the olden days this blog was more about the hikes and trips that Zack and I would take then anything else.  Since my injury it has been impossible to write about these things because I am not doing them.  Most of my activity has been limited to doing my "company" work, writing and sitting around.  Just the thought of the freedom from the pain and physical limitations makes me giddy with joy.  My doctor told me within several days of the surgery I can doing pretty much anything I want with the exception of lifting heavy weight.  Regardless of the weather, I will be out walking throughout the neighborhood by late next week.  I cannot tell you how good that is going to feel! 

I got somewhat of a please surprise yesterday.  The surprise occurred in my yearly review with my manager.  I didn't know what to expect from this year's review as this was the first year I had worked for her.  She has been an effective manager and has done some things for me that have gone over and above.  This past year was a challenging year from an overall work perspective and so I did not expect a stellar "grade" coming out of my review.  I was pleasantly surprised by the "grade" that I got.  So it was a great discussion with my boss.  My company distributes bonuses in March so hopefully this is going to translate into a good bonus.

Time for me to go for the evening.  Finnegan has brought me one of his "foosas" to play Finnegan's Foosa Fetch with him.  Zack and I call any of Finnegan's stuffed animal toys a "foosa".  A toy I got him awhile ago looked like an actual foosa.  Both Zack and I thought the name was cute so it stuck for all his stuffed toys.  Then I thought of the phrase "Finnegan's Foosa Fetch".  So whenever I now say that, Finn runs and gets one of his toys.  He is really good about playing fetch, as he goes after everything I throw for him and then he actually drops it for me.  He is the first dog who I have ever had that will drop whatever you are playing fetch with.  Devon, Bailey and Lex just refused to drop their toys.  Nowadays Lex is too "snobby" to even consider playing fetch! 

(This is a picture of a real live foosa.  They only live on Madagascar - yeah just like in the movie.  I tend to think a real foosa would use Finn as a fetch toy as opposed to the other way around.  Just look at the claws on him!)

Have a great rest of the week folks!  As I indicated earlier I am not doing a whole lot these days so I am not even sure if I will have anything interesting to blog about.  Yikes - that is saying something for me the person who can't normally shut up.

Thank you all and until later - peace! ~ J.