Between the pain in my knee and the beloved hot flashes, I've been awake since 2. At 5, I said f*** it and decided to just get up. Already read the paper, did the LA Times crossword and played a silly computer game. Now what?
Let's see.
Went to physio Friday morning and told David that I really pay for visiting with him in the afternoon and the next day; my knee swells up and gets really hot, so he told me to just get on the bike and not to do the other exercises that he had me doing. Poor guy's really pissed that I still haven't heard form the sports medico and is about ready to rip a strip off someone. I don't blame him. Patience is not my long suit either. But then, the horror stories that I've heard about how long people have to wait for an MRI have me expecting to still be on the sticks come July. David and I seem to be making progress with my knee. I think I could probably get into a pair of jeans now. I've been living in sweats and yoga pants since I hurt myself. Not my preferred attire, I'll tell ya.
Friday afternoon I had an appointment with Dr. Anna, the needle-in-the-eye doctor. So hauled my sorry old carcass downtown (did I tell you how much I absolutely hate downtown Calgary?), found a parking spot in the building parkade and went in to my appointment (set for 2:30) and waited. And waited some more. It was 3:30 by the time I got in to see her. For. A. Total. Of. 5. Minutes. AARG. Glad I don't have to go back again until July. Coming out of downtown on a Friday afternoon is absolutely the shits too. It took me 3/4 of an hour to get home, so I was definitely NOT the good humor person when I got here.
Friday night I could tell that I'd done too much. We swelled up again and were really hot. And then like an idiot, I went to the grocery store and did a mini shop yesterday. We be payin' for it today.
How have we adapted? Well let's see.
I've finally (after over a month) figgered out that the sore leg goes into the pants first.
I've figured out how to carry a go-mug while using crutches.
I've graduated to being able to stand long enough to be able to shower (instead of the dreaded bath EEW) (thanks David). Let me tell you, the first time was definitely a job and a half and I was exhausted after.
I've figured out how to use 1 crutch (handy for carrying the beer in from the truck).
I found a way to fill the dogs' water dish. I need both hands for that, so I push a chair into the kitchen, grab the dish and go fill. Reverse the process, and voila the dish is full.
I've managed to be able to defeat those dang bloody commercial doors with the extra strong and extra fast closers on them. Whip the door open and jam the end of one crutch in the bottom.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
From today's op/ed pages
Bye-bye, Obama
Re: "Obama denies permit for Keystone pipeline," Jan. 19.
Dear Canada, Please hold off sending your oil to China because of our "learn on the job" president cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline. We are working hard to replace him this November.
Your southern neighbours.
George Zurbuchen, Palos Park, Ill.
Read more:
Friday, January 13, 2012
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Canada's own 'War Horse'
Now this is pretty cool.
Read more: http://www.canada.com/news/Move+over+Spielberg/5923599/story.html#ixzz1hwxUmCVT
Move over Spielberg
Undated handout photo of Lt. Col. Charles Bent, commander of Canada's 15th Battalion during the First World War. Lt. Col. Charles Bent returned home to Nova Scotia after the war with a captured war horse named Fritz.
On a farm in Paradise, N.S., lies the grave of a horse named Fritz - a warhorse, it turns out, that survived the horrors of the First World War and lived out his final days in peace in Canada.
As the fictional tale of the Steven Spielberg film War Horse appears on movie screens across North America, and as a stage version of the novel by the same name opens in Toronto, the real-life saga of a true Canadian war-horse is now emerging from the past.
The details of Fritz's story have been investigated for several years by retired Toronto brigadier-general Greg Young - an Afghanistan veteran and former reservist with Toronto's 48th Highlanders regiment.
From 1914 to 1918 the regiment fought as part of Canada's 15th Battalion, and Young now heads up the 15th Battalion Memorial Project, which preserves and promotes the unit's wartime history.
For most of the First World War the battalion was led by Lt.-Col. Charles Bent, a Nova Scotian who, despite his slight frame and bookish looks, was a highly competent field commander widely respected by his men.
In 1918, as the war was winding down and Allied forces were finally pursuing the German army out of France, Bent and his unit were ordered to attack a German strongpoint called the Crow's Nest.
"They captured the Crow's Nest in the early morning of Sept. 1," says Young. "The Germans did three counter-attacks to take it back, but the Canadians held it. Afterwards, during a lull in the fighting, in rides this Ger-man officer on horseback, who obviously wasn't aware what the hell had happened, and that the ground had changed hands.
"He and his aide rode into the middle of the Canadian position and bingo, they were snapped up."
According to the 48th Highlanders' regimental history, written after the war, the German officer "was mounted on a splendid dark bay - a typical cavalry mount, which had been captured from the Russians in the east."
The two Germans were sent to a prison camp and the horse - having survived its service with both the Russian and German armies - was taken by the Canadian soldier who captured it, Capt. Gordon Winnifrith.
Winnifrith was killed in action a few weeks later at the Battle of Canal du Nord, and the horse, renamed Fritz, was adopted by Bent.
Remarkably, both Bent and Fritz survived the war and when Bent came home to Canada he took with him not only the battalion's mascot, a stray Belgian sheepdog named Bruno, but also Fritz.
"Bringing the dog home was one thing," says Young. "But a horse? I don't know what strings he pulled. The battalion was in Belgium turning in all its heavy stuff, including the unit's horses. Somehow, the CO obtained permission to bring Fritz home on the ship."
After the battalion was demobilized in Toronto, Bent returned, with Fritz and Bruno, to his family farm in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley.
Young's research into the story hit a dead end at that point, until this week, when he discovered Bent's son - Donald Bent, now 91 - living in Nova Scotia.
"The farm is still there, although it's been divided by a highway since then," Donald said in an interview on Wednesday. "We lived there for quite a few years after World War One."
He says he remembers, as a four-year-old boy, his father riding Fritz around the apple orchards on the property.
"My father was quite proud of that horse," Donald said. "It had been a German horse, and some German colonel owned him. The German went to a PoW camp and Dad took the horse home.
"He loved that horse and the horse loved him. They got along great."
Several years after the war Fritz grew old and sick, and Bent euthanized the animal.
Fritz was buried alongside Bruno on the farm property, where the graves remain today.
Bent, who earned the Distinguished Service Order in the war, died in 1955.
Read more: http://www.canada.com/news/Move+over+Spielberg/5923599/story.html#ixzz1hwxUmCVT
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
from today's paper
This one is too funny.
Exercising ‘wilful’ dog is no walk in the park
When I adopted a puppy five years ago, it was hard to believe what the SPCA ladies told me: that she was purebred. It was not even entirely clear to me that Murphy was a dog. With her comically long ears and mottled, scrawny frame, she looked more like a rabbit — not the fancy kind exhibited at county fairs, but the ordinary kind exhibited as stew.
Though the SPCA ladies assured me Murphy was a genuine Plott Hound, I was suspicious. It didn’t sound like a real breed to me; it sounded like an in-joke, an invention for gullible customers when you have to unload an especially homely mongrel. But I found a book that confirmed the breed and described its temperament thus: “Plotts are intelligent, affectionate, courageous, wilful, loyal, alert. . . .”
You probably just read that line the way I did five years ago, before I got to know Murphy; so, like me, you probably skimmed right over “wilful” without stopping to consider it, underline it three times, highlight it in yellow marker, draw little devil horns on it, etc.
Plotts were only recently fully recognized by the American Kennel Club, meaning there aren’t many Plott breeders yet, meaning the breed hasn’t yet been ruined. No one has yet done to Plotts, for example, what was once done to collies. When it became clear that people liked Lassies with exceptionally narrow noggins, breeders obliged, creating a dog with an aerodynamic head shaped like a doorstop wedge; the only downside was that there was room for only one brain cell. (ah yes, the destruction of the collie)
I once had a collie named Augie who never figured out that it is actually possible to watch a child on a swing without being repeatedly kicked in the face.
But the Plott remains largely unchanged since the breed debuted in the 1700s in rural North Carolina. Plotts still have a temperament suited for their original occupation, which was hunting boars, a job that apparently required an uncommonly high degree of pigheadedness.
Murphy is a great dog, but she denies the supremacy of any one species over another. She believes that in any matter under contention, she and I have an equal vote. Frequently, the matter under contention is in which direction to walk. The debate plays out like this:
Me: We’re going this way, Murph.
Murphy: (No, we are going this way. The way I am currently pulling you, which, coincidentally, is vectored 180 degrees from your intended direction.)
Me: We. Are. Going. This. Way.
At this point, the leash is as taut as a tightrope; you might think this would give me an advantage, inasmuch as I outweigh Murphy by 100 pounds. But that is where you would be wrong, because, unlike Plott Hounds, humans are unable to assign every molecule of their bodies to a single task. Some of me, for example, will be manufacturing insulin or advancing food along my alimentary canal. Murphy however, will have transformed herself into a Going That Way Machine, a tensely packed bundle of protoplasm dedicated to one mission only.
It is usually Murphy who ends the tug of war. She doesn’t do this, however, by giving in. She does it by sitting down, facing the direction in which she wants to go.
Though the SPCA ladies assured me Murphy was a genuine Plott Hound, I was suspicious. It didn’t sound like a real breed to me; it sounded like an in-joke, an invention for gullible customers when you have to unload an especially homely mongrel. But I found a book that confirmed the breed and described its temperament thus: “Plotts are intelligent, affectionate, courageous, wilful, loyal, alert. . . .”
You probably just read that line the way I did five years ago, before I got to know Murphy; so, like me, you probably skimmed right over “wilful” without stopping to consider it, underline it three times, highlight it in yellow marker, draw little devil horns on it, etc.
Plotts were only recently fully recognized by the American Kennel Club, meaning there aren’t many Plott breeders yet, meaning the breed hasn’t yet been ruined. No one has yet done to Plotts, for example, what was once done to collies. When it became clear that people liked Lassies with exceptionally narrow noggins, breeders obliged, creating a dog with an aerodynamic head shaped like a doorstop wedge; the only downside was that there was room for only one brain cell. (ah yes, the destruction of the collie)
I once had a collie named Augie who never figured out that it is actually possible to watch a child on a swing without being repeatedly kicked in the face.
But the Plott remains largely unchanged since the breed debuted in the 1700s in rural North Carolina. Plotts still have a temperament suited for their original occupation, which was hunting boars, a job that apparently required an uncommonly high degree of pigheadedness.
Murphy is a great dog, but she denies the supremacy of any one species over another. She believes that in any matter under contention, she and I have an equal vote. Frequently, the matter under contention is in which direction to walk. The debate plays out like this:
Me: We’re going this way, Murph.
Murphy: (No, we are going this way. The way I am currently pulling you, which, coincidentally, is vectored 180 degrees from your intended direction.)
Me: We. Are. Going. This. Way.
At this point, the leash is as taut as a tightrope; you might think this would give me an advantage, inasmuch as I outweigh Murphy by 100 pounds. But that is where you would be wrong, because, unlike Plott Hounds, humans are unable to assign every molecule of their bodies to a single task. Some of me, for example, will be manufacturing insulin or advancing food along my alimentary canal. Murphy however, will have transformed herself into a Going That Way Machine, a tensely packed bundle of protoplasm dedicated to one mission only.
It is usually Murphy who ends the tug of war. She doesn’t do this, however, by giving in. She does it by sitting down, facing the direction in which she wants to go.
Murphy: (Very well, then. I am prepared to remain here until hell freezes over.)
As any dog owner can tell you, you cannot succumb to this, even once; dogs operate entirely on precedent. So I also refuse to budge. The conversation continues.
Me: Is this what you want, Murphy? Really? Is this the walk you envisioned when I got your leash and you seemed so happy?
Murphy: (Yes, it is exactly what I envisioned, thank you.)
Because I say my part out loud, and because Murphy’s body language is equally articulate, often a small crowd will gather and point and laugh. These standoffs have lasted as long as three or four minutes. Eventually, Murphy will get up and walk in the direction I wanted, but she does it with dignity.
Murphy: (I haven’t given in. I’ve merely changed my mind.)
Gene Weingarten is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist with the Washington Post.
As any dog owner can tell you, you cannot succumb to this, even once; dogs operate entirely on precedent. So I also refuse to budge. The conversation continues.
Me: Is this what you want, Murphy? Really? Is this the walk you envisioned when I got your leash and you seemed so happy?
Murphy: (Yes, it is exactly what I envisioned, thank you.)
Because I say my part out loud, and because Murphy’s body language is equally articulate, often a small crowd will gather and point and laugh. These standoffs have lasted as long as three or four minutes. Eventually, Murphy will get up and walk in the direction I wanted, but she does it with dignity.
Murphy: (I haven’t given in. I’ve merely changed my mind.)
Gene Weingarten is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist with the Washington Post.
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/life/Weingarten+Exercising+wilful+walk+park/5915764/story.html#ixzz1hqHBjmry
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
An update
So I went off to the physiotherapist this morning and the news is really not that good. He (Dave) started manipulating my knee and my hamstring immediately went in to a spasm so I got to lay there with heat on it to get it to relax while he went off to see some other patients. When he came back he manipulated it some more and felt around in there. Not good news. Apparently I've torn (or as Dave put it, 'popped') a ligament and done cartilage damage.
The good news? He's going to get me in to see a sports medicine doctor. AND since I don't have a family doctor (it's dang near impossible to find a physician that's taking new patients in Alberta) it will make it easier for him to get me in.
In the meantime, I'm going to go elevate my leg and put some more ice on it.
The good news? He's going to get me in to see a sports medicine doctor. AND since I don't have a family doctor (it's dang near impossible to find a physician that's taking new patients in Alberta) it will make it easier for him to get me in.
In the meantime, I'm going to go elevate my leg and put some more ice on it.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
I've really gone and done it this time
My knee that is, AGAIN. For. The. Third. Time. This. Year.
Only it's really hooped this time. An occasional correspondent asked me in all sincerity how I was doing the other day and I had to tell him not good. You see, Friday evening on my way to bed, I twisted it so bad that I went down like a sack of shit and could not get back up. So, being the tough guy that I am, I clawed my way down the hall and off to bed, thinking it would be better in the morning. WRONG. It was just as bad, if not worse and I had to claw my way back down the hall in the morning to let the girls out and navigate the stairs on my ass. My knee was twice the size of the other one and extremely painful, but it'll get better right? Nope. I sent a text to my good friend Andy to ask if he still had his crutches from when he had ankle surgery a couple of years ago and God bless him, he still did and would bring them over after he finished curling. That was Saturday.
Sunday morning nothing had changed even though I had been icing it and elevating it all day Saturday and I still couldn't put ANY weight on it and being my right knee, couldn't even drive. So I made a call to my boss and let him know what was going on and that I was pretty much out, and not knowing when I would be back. Good thing it's the season and the office is closed next week. I went to see the doctor yesterday that once again my good friend Andy took time off work to drive me to and it's not so good.
The good
It's a long way from my heart (as my Daddy would say) and I'll live.
The bad
Stay off it for another week.
The ugly
Go for a week of physio therapy. I wonder how bad that's going to hurt.
The ugliest
When the physio doesn't get the desired results, go for an MRI and find out what's going on in there.
Oh, and in the meantime? Stay on the sticks. Not the most fun thing to learn when you're my age. The girls have adjusted very well to them. They haven't knocked me over and seem to know to get out of the way. They seem to realize that I'm struggling to get dressed before I get out of bed in the morning and wait patiently for me (I don't even want to try to use crutches wearing my bathrobe, I think that's a wreck looking for a place to happen), and the night it happened and then again the next morning they very patiently escorted me down the hall.
Sigh. This can ONLY get better.
Only it's really hooped this time. An occasional correspondent asked me in all sincerity how I was doing the other day and I had to tell him not good. You see, Friday evening on my way to bed, I twisted it so bad that I went down like a sack of shit and could not get back up. So, being the tough guy that I am, I clawed my way down the hall and off to bed, thinking it would be better in the morning. WRONG. It was just as bad, if not worse and I had to claw my way back down the hall in the morning to let the girls out and navigate the stairs on my ass. My knee was twice the size of the other one and extremely painful, but it'll get better right? Nope. I sent a text to my good friend Andy to ask if he still had his crutches from when he had ankle surgery a couple of years ago and God bless him, he still did and would bring them over after he finished curling. That was Saturday.
Sunday morning nothing had changed even though I had been icing it and elevating it all day Saturday and I still couldn't put ANY weight on it and being my right knee, couldn't even drive. So I made a call to my boss and let him know what was going on and that I was pretty much out, and not knowing when I would be back. Good thing it's the season and the office is closed next week. I went to see the doctor yesterday that once again my good friend Andy took time off work to drive me to and it's not so good.
The good
It's a long way from my heart (as my Daddy would say) and I'll live.
The bad
Stay off it for another week.
The ugly
Go for a week of physio therapy. I wonder how bad that's going to hurt.
The ugliest
When the physio doesn't get the desired results, go for an MRI and find out what's going on in there.
Oh, and in the meantime? Stay on the sticks. Not the most fun thing to learn when you're my age. The girls have adjusted very well to them. They haven't knocked me over and seem to know to get out of the way. They seem to realize that I'm struggling to get dressed before I get out of bed in the morning and wait patiently for me (I don't even want to try to use crutches wearing my bathrobe, I think that's a wreck looking for a place to happen), and the night it happened and then again the next morning they very patiently escorted me down the hall.
Sigh. This can ONLY get better.
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