An actual real non-tweety post of statusing and picspam
Well, there's about a year of catch-up to do here so I'll jump right in.
1. Had total hysterectomy. Much endometriosis and scarring found. Surgery went well. Menopause is fine. Mostly recovered from surgery but not totally.
2. Charlie continues to be ridiculously cute. Is now 5 and 3/4 and is learning to read (with difficulty) and is a whiz at numbers and spatial stuff. Is often kind and thoughtful, and makes friends easily. Has mad gross-motor skillz, and acceptable fine-motor skills. Is left-hand dominant which is a bit of a drag given the absence of his left hand, but this may be why he is particularly good at doing things with his left arm. Has the impulse control and temper of a stick of sweaty dynamite. Also is magnitudes more hyper than his already-hyper peers. Getting some evals in May.
3. We have a dog now. Pepper, age 1.5 ish, half border collie, half pit bull. Great dog if you don't mind a certain amount of chewing of everydamn thing in the house, including our hands and feet. Also there is occasional ankle nipping. He is quite trainable, though - he has learned sit, "soft" (soft mouth/no teeth, that is), and all of the parts of fetch except letting go of the ball after bringing it back. Now that it's not 20 degrees below zero we can get back to training. Goal is to teach him to recognize "ow hey stop biting me ow knock it off goddamn it!" Anyway shortly after my hysterectomy Charlie, whose teacher was having a baby, said our family was too small and we needed to get a baby or a dog. So off we went to the dog shelter.
4. My Dad took a bad fall in November and ended up with a spinal injury and significant paralysis, which he has been in rehab working on diligently and with some progress. This situation required putting Mom into a memory care facility since she has dementia and he had been her caretaker. We have a helper who takes her to visit him every other day so they're managing. Overall good family cohesion has come of it but it's also been a source of depression and drama for more than one of us kids (we are seven). I doubled up my anxiety/depression meds (Lexapro) which has helped quite a lot, and have spent a lot of time playing video games. The new-ish (2013) Tomb Raider is particularly awesome.
5. In the course of taking care of my parents and their house, I have become the official family archivist of all papers, photos, and letters that we could find. There are letters going back a couple of generations. It's all pretty amazing and mind-blowing, particularly because my aunts and grandmothers died or developed dementia before I got to know them, so I suddenly have this whole trove of the female history of my family to scan and sort through.
6. Since the hysterectomy my energy has been much better but my concentration has not improved - well, now that I'm on enough Lexapro it's starting to come online again actually - so I've set my not-writing aside entirely (I have a novel that I'm not writing as well as some short stories that I'm also not writing) and decided to spend more time drawing, since I don't have to think too cohesively about that. Also I do sort of feel that if I'm at risk for having dementia in my later years, which is possible and is much on my mind at the moment, I'd like to have a creative pursuit that doesn't depend so much on words. Also because I don't feel physically like crap all the time now, I want to take advantage of that and do some physical artistry. Anyway these are WIPs - they are on their way to being either full watercolors or complete failures, depending on how the next phase goes. I invested in a small set of really good pan colors and I'm experimenting with them to get used to the stronger pigments before I start in on these.
1. Had total hysterectomy. Much endometriosis and scarring found. Surgery went well. Menopause is fine. Mostly recovered from surgery but not totally.
2. Charlie continues to be ridiculously cute. Is now 5 and 3/4 and is learning to read (with difficulty) and is a whiz at numbers and spatial stuff. Is often kind and thoughtful, and makes friends easily. Has mad gross-motor skillz, and acceptable fine-motor skills. Is left-hand dominant which is a bit of a drag given the absence of his left hand, but this may be why he is particularly good at doing things with his left arm. Has the impulse control and temper of a stick of sweaty dynamite. Also is magnitudes more hyper than his already-hyper peers. Getting some evals in May.
3. We have a dog now. Pepper, age 1.5 ish, half border collie, half pit bull. Great dog if you don't mind a certain amount of chewing of everydamn thing in the house, including our hands and feet. Also there is occasional ankle nipping. He is quite trainable, though - he has learned sit, "soft" (soft mouth/no teeth, that is), and all of the parts of fetch except letting go of the ball after bringing it back. Now that it's not 20 degrees below zero we can get back to training. Goal is to teach him to recognize "ow hey stop biting me ow knock it off goddamn it!" Anyway shortly after my hysterectomy Charlie, whose teacher was having a baby, said our family was too small and we needed to get a baby or a dog. So off we went to the dog shelter.
4. My Dad took a bad fall in November and ended up with a spinal injury and significant paralysis, which he has been in rehab working on diligently and with some progress. This situation required putting Mom into a memory care facility since she has dementia and he had been her caretaker. We have a helper who takes her to visit him every other day so they're managing. Overall good family cohesion has come of it but it's also been a source of depression and drama for more than one of us kids (we are seven). I doubled up my anxiety/depression meds (Lexapro) which has helped quite a lot, and have spent a lot of time playing video games. The new-ish (2013) Tomb Raider is particularly awesome.
5. In the course of taking care of my parents and their house, I have become the official family archivist of all papers, photos, and letters that we could find. There are letters going back a couple of generations. It's all pretty amazing and mind-blowing, particularly because my aunts and grandmothers died or developed dementia before I got to know them, so I suddenly have this whole trove of the female history of my family to scan and sort through.
6. Since the hysterectomy my energy has been much better but my concentration has not improved - well, now that I'm on enough Lexapro it's starting to come online again actually - so I've set my not-writing aside entirely (I have a novel that I'm not writing as well as some short stories that I'm also not writing) and decided to spend more time drawing, since I don't have to think too cohesively about that. Also I do sort of feel that if I'm at risk for having dementia in my later years, which is possible and is much on my mind at the moment, I'd like to have a creative pursuit that doesn't depend so much on words. Also because I don't feel physically like crap all the time now, I want to take advantage of that and do some physical artistry. Anyway these are WIPs - they are on their way to being either full watercolors or complete failures, depending on how the next phase goes. I invested in a small set of really good pan colors and I'm experimenting with them to get used to the stronger pigments before I start in on these.