Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

Finally saw the second orthopedist on Monday and he’s recommending an arthroscopy to go in and clean up the meniscus and some cartilage, and that we don’t need to do a more invasive repair of the tendon on the inside of the knee. Unlike the other guy, this one physically manipulated my knee, moving it around to see what was going on, which is why he recommended the minimally invasive route (based on that and my original MRI). Got ahold of his scheduling person yesterday morning, and I’m set for outpatient surgery next Thursday, the 12th. This morning I’m off for pre-op bloodwork and an EKG from my regular physician, whose office was amazing at working me in. Was remarking to the husband that it had been a while since I’d had an EKG, and he reminded me of the hospital stay for the not-stroke-that-turned-out-to-be-migraines. I was thinking of the baseline one I’d had years ago with my physician in his office, and not the hospital. Whee.

Bodies are such fun.

Recovery time is typically 12 weeks, which again beats the more invasive stuff. So here’s hoping this does the trick, as I am really tired of not being able to walk like a normal person without pain.

I’m approved for situational telework afterwards (huzzah!), which means I have to clean up my office, as it’s gotten junky, post-return-to-the-office-full-time. And I need to plan & shop for some easy meals the husband can make for us (we divide kitchen duties normally – I cook, he bakes). Only thing it’s going to spoil is a Loudoun United game we bought (cheap) tickets for on the 14th, and I’ll see if I can move those. If not, not a huge loss.

Beyond that, the trip to the eastern shore was wonderful. Got through three books, and didn’t check the news, so I actually relaxed. Managed not to go into the jewelry store so I didn’t buy anything expensive this year. All in all a good way to wrap up May, and with the surgery planned, not a bad way to begin pride month.

The husband and I are prepping for our annual get-the-heck-out-of-the-DC-area-and-away-from-national-politics anniversary getaway to the Eastern Shore of Virginia; we take off tomorrow. Cannot wait to get back to the shore. Supposed to be pleasantly cool, and perhaps a little rainy (which will hopefully keep the more obnoxious tourists out).

Saw the orthopedist at the end of last week. Consensus was that the shot didn’t really help this time around, so he’s sending me to another doc in his practice to see about going in to clean up the tendon on the inside of the knee and maybe the meniscus, a repair short of a full knee replacement at this point. Here’s hoping that will help get it all settled down, as I’m very tired of limping and not being able to walk normally, much less do any sort of exercise.

Work has calmed down somewhat, and I managed to empty my inbox of emails before I went out on leave. In a way the past week has been like “convention drop” – where you’re so keyed up during a convention with all the energy that brings that when you get home and all that energy is done you just collapse and try to recover. My little work group has been delving into some of our backlog, as well as prepping for all of the litigation that has begun and is coming. Full employment, for sure, but I could do without the messiness of it all.

But anyway. Books for the weekend are picked out and ready to go. Cat stuff is mostly ready for the neighbors to check in on them. Just need to pack clothes and head out in the morning.

The lawsuits against 47’s crew and my agency in particular continue apace. Thankfully we hired another attorney last year partly to handle litigation tracking, so she’s been on top of all of that. One we got that was filed yesterday tried desperately to make overhead rates sound sexy, when they’re actually boring as fuck (but also very important to grantees). Litigation holds (on records) abound these days. Not that I’m in the habit of deleting any of my emails anyway.

Knitted a few more rows at lunch on the dishcloth. Keep this up and I might even be able to make these into Xmas gifts or something. Ha. As if I knit fast enough for that.

Finished The City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett today, second book in that particular series. Loved how he resolved the central conundrum at the end. I’ve become a fan of his books, from the Foundryside series to Divine Cities series. I have the Poisoned Cup as well, but the husband heard a recommendation to read it, so I lent it to him first. Will take a break and read the second book in Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty next, before I turn to the City of Miracles. That is one good thing about the Metro commute – enforced reading time, and a lot of it, since it’s about an hour door-to-door (including time to/from the Metro stations themselves). And I’ve started putting books aside for our annual trip to the beach as well.

The husband has been dealing with work stress and that has meant he’s been baking. This past weekend was cupcakes, then a cake-for-two using the leftover frosting on Monday. Banana muffins on Tuesday. Today was peanut butter sandwich cookies. I am eternally grateful now that america’s test kitchen put out their “baking for two” cookbook this year, as it gives him ways to indulge stress baking without making enough for a dozen people. Six cookies was just enough. The cake-for-two was still a lot, but better than having an entire cake sitting around. Best gift ever.

Off to the orthopedist tomorrow to see what sort of injection he has planned. I just want normal movement – having the knee lock up while trying to walk ain’t fun.

Pulled back on a couple of subscriptions today, just trying to take stock of spending and rein some in.

Last virtual meeting today with my small group from the training class. Hopefully we’ll see most of each other at the end of February. A couple might not make it because of 47’s order or other budget woes, but most should be there. What a mess. Also apparently now I need to do a lot of reading before we get there so we have more time to talk and need less reading time. Whee! Good thing I just finished the last big fantasy novel I was working on (the latest Brandon Sanderson tome).

I decided for a variety of reasons to switch from my Apple watch as my daily watch to a Garmin watch instead. I’ve long used Garmin for sports-specific efforts, or step tracking, but not as a daily watch. One of the things the Garmin does in the morning when I first wake up is give me a readout on level of effort, recovery, etc., and it includes a suggested workout for the day. This morning it told me it was happy with my level of sleep (news to me, since I was up and down with a certain female cat who couldn’t decide where on me she wanted to sleep), and recommended a 45 minute base building run. I audibly snort-laughed when I read it. Thankfully the husband was already awake. I turned that into a 45 minute walk on the treadmill, instead, which felt good. Also had my first successful test of listening to an audio book while walking; the previous attempt I was later told by the husband was a dreadful audio book so he wasn’t surprised it didn’t work. I have never been completely sold on them, but decided to give it a go when a news email from someone I followed mentioned the book series (The Codex Alera by Jim Butcher), which I have read several times now, and that they had enjoyed the audio books on long drives. One chapter down.

Got a ton of books for Xmas, so trying to sort & prioritize those. Also have a massive backlog of comic books, dating back to the training at the beginning of this month (I would estimate a couple dozen in queue).

Walked on the treadmill this morning. Waiting for a big Amazon order to show up “by 10pm”. The husband is downstairs trying out one of his Xmas gifts from me, an adult, exercise version of the 90s “skip it” toy. It sounds like he’s having fun, and is out of breath from it.

I’ll hop onto the work computer tomorrow to monitor stuff and clear out my inbox (so many reminders and news items await), but leave the out-of-office on so people don’t bother me. Glad I figured out how the ‘delay sending’ thing works in Outlook so I can have stuff go through on Thursday if I write anything up tomorrow.

I’m definitely my mother’s child – found a third batch of misplaced stocking stuffers this morning (she regularly forgets where she stashed Xmas gifts, and would find them weeks or months later). Really need to do a better job finding a consistent place to put those. These will get handed off when we see them next month for a family event.

We went out for the last haircuts of the year this morning, then hit the mother ship of our local comic store for stocking stuffers. On the way there the road was blocked so we decided to hit a Barnes & Noble and let the blockage situation work itself out. We were forcibly reminded of why we don’t hit physical stores the weekend before Xmas. It actually wasn’t that bad, and I’m glad they were busy as I hope that helps keep them afloat, but it reminds me of how devout church goers must feel when the CEOs (Christmas-Easter-Onlys) show up at the holidays. It also reminded me of working at a mall in graduate school, when they made us park off-site and shuttled us over, which I was initially annoyed at, but then grateful for when we could get out of the satellite parking a lot faster, even with the bus, than one could leave the garage.

Stocking stuff picked up. Finished the brim on an elf hat for the husband and started on the body. The green yarn pull ball for the body is behaving a lot better than the brim; the white brim yarn kept catching and was just a nightmare to pull out until I finally managed to pull the bit that was catching out of the middle and undo it.

The in-laws arrive tomorrow afternoon, so the husband was baking up a storm. Ginger cupcakes with gingerbread men and vanilla frosting. Sandwich cookies (chocolate with vanilla frosting inside). And I think he has more planed, but that’s all that got done over the last two days. Good stuff, but I’m finding that I have less of an appetite for a ton of sweets. I’m trying to steer him toward snacking size cakes when it’s just us (aka a single layer in an 8×8 pan) so we don’t have, say, an entire 9″ two-layer cake with frosting staring us down.

Two last things to wrap, and one last thing that’s to arrive Monday, then done.

Spent the early afternoon culling books from my office. Mostly old triathlon books that I am not going to use again, and who could find a better life elsewhere. Rearranged some of the remaining books, and left some space for more which are sure to come. This shelf serves as my Zoom background when working from home, and always gets compliments, so I like to shake it up from time to time. Plus I really do need more space to fit some of the stuff (books and legos) I got for the holidays.

The husband is up in NYC for a day trip, seeing musical performances numbers 99 and 100 (he’s currently in number 99) for him for this year. He realized he was really close to 100 about a month ago and I urged him to go ahead and aim to hit it before year’s end just for the bragging rights of his “year of theater”. And it gave me a good space to clean without him getting bored and wanting me to drag him out of the house to go do something. 😉

This upcoming year is going to be a challenge. There’s the knee, and the ongoing medication adjustments from the TIA (BP was almost in the normal range this morning, which was nice to see). There were some shenanigans with pay for our top ranks at work, including me, because our former GC was a bit fast and loose with his legal work, so I will take a slight haircut on base pay for the year. Not paralyzing, but definitely annoying. And whatever else life tosses my way. Nothing unsurmountable (so far), just mostly annoying. Though I would like the knee to get back to normal sooner rather than later, since moving is important to me and I would like to do it like a normal person again, and not a semi-invalid.

Likely going to go catch up on some comics this afternoon, and maybe hit a long-delayed cross-stitch pattern that I had lost the bits for on the shelf, but which have now been found.

The vacation was what we needed. Downtime, lots of reading (finished two books, though not the Grant biography I’ve been “reading” for three years now; I’m up to his run for President). The weather looked like it was going to be rainy the whole time, so a lot of people bailed on the town, but then we had a glorious, sunny Memorial day, so the husband and I got a beautiful day with not as many other tourists in the way.

One of the books was Born to Run 2, the sequel to 2009’s Born to Run, about barefoot running and other crazy people. The sequel bills itself as a training guide. There were a lot of stories mixed in with the training bits, which makes it a little difficult to use, but what is in there is helpful (100 ups!). So when we got back I pulled out my running shoes and got started again, albeit very slowly and very short distances (I did a mile this morning of 2 on/2 off).

Work wasn’t too bad. I’m still catching up on emails, which will probably take me another week or so as I respond to more urgent things that keep popping up. Still learning the new GC’s style, but am actively working with the Deputy GC to manage upwards there (and, frankly, to help the Deputy look good for the new GC).

One of my nieces asked about the new Diablo IV that’s out officially in 3 more days, but which is offering early play for preorders. She and I used to play Diablo III online, so I’m sure she’s looking forward to the new one as well. I know I’m going to dive in eventually, but I’m also in the midst of loving Tears of the Kingdom on the Switch. I’ll probably switch the Xbox One in my office for the PS5 in the living room, since the niece is on a PS5, and that way I can let the husband use the new, enormous TV he bought just before we left town (so far it’s mostly been used for my gaming, and while Link looks great on 85″, it’s kind of a waste of the TV).

The big surprise for the husband for the anniversary was that I got us a fancy washlet for the owners’ suite bathroom. I think I may have created a monster, but frankly, it’s been worth it. So much better than just wiping. I fear we’re going to get spoiled, which is okay, but will make leaving the house that much less attractive.