Shared Pain is Lessened, Shared Joy is Increased

"There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern" -- Samuel Johnson

Re-reading Callahan's right now, from the beginning...

Because I need it.

Wash is still gone. My best friend is suffering from a serious antibiotic resistant infection post major abdominal surgery, and not doing well. Another good friend is very ill, and we won't be able to see them very much, if at all... And life just isn't simple, or easy... It never is.

Shared Pain is Lessened, Shared Joy is Increased.

Thank you Spider Robinson. If you don't know Callahan's, and you're not one of my few friends who dislike science fiction or fantasy... Go, Read, NOW.... Seriously (or even if you are... you should read anyway).

When I was a kid, Callahan's helped save my life... as it did so many others. It was a place, and an idea, I very much needed at that moment... and many moments since.

In fact... Spider himself has said that Callahan's is the kind of place that people find when they really need it... "It's the kind of place you only hear about when you really need to... if you're extremely lucky".

No, I'm not anywhere near that bad off right now... Just... needing something... and right now, praying isn't doing it for me... My prayers just... won't come together.

...I think this might be what I need right now.

A Year Gone

My mother passed a year ago today.

http://anarchangel.blogspot.com/2012/02/my-mother-is-gone.html

It's been a bad... Decade... but a bad month, and a bad week before it...

This on top... not having a good day.

Owwwww....

That's what I've been saying the last few days.

Why?

Well, the weather here the last month or so has been a bit screwy. We got some pretty heavy snow for a   couple weeks, and then mixed light snow, rain, ice etc...

Then, for the last two weeks or so we've been cycling between as high as 46 (that was a freak day, but 39 hasn't been uncommon) to as low as 4 degrees (again that was a freak low, but 14 degrees hasn't been rare, and 24 has been common) in a single day.

That has meant we've been having lots of melting and refreezing; complicated by some additional wet snow, and some freezing rain.

What that has meant, is that my driveway, which is a fairly steep slope, has been a sheet of ice.

And I've fallen on that ice several times.

I've given up on taking things in and out of the shop for now, or carrying anything heavy around... I'll wait for some more melting so I can break up some of the ice etc...

Anyway last week I took a pretty nasty spill, which strained some things, bruised some things etc... Made me sore enough that I wasn't moving very much at all most of the week.

Then we had some friends over this weekend (had a "friends weekend" combined with a superbowl party)... and I warned them not to try parking in the driveway unless they had 4 wheel drive and good tires.

Unfortunately, not everyone listened to me.

Saturday night, two cars got stuck hard enough that I had to go around them with my truck, then set a recovery rig, and pull them out.

In the process, I had to climb up and down that icy slope several times... and I fell several times.

Twice, I fell and hit very very hard.

In the process I badly bruised my back, ass, and the back of my head, my left elbow, and left palm; and I badly tweaked both my knees, my back, my neck, and my left wrist.

Sunday it wasn't too bad... It hurt, and I was stiff, but I could move... even had a good time with our superbowl party.

Monday was a different story entirely.

I haven't been out of bed except to use the bathroom since Monday morning.

I have been too stiff and sore to even take a hot bath.

My range of motion without pain for my neck has been about jaw to shoulder both side. My back... the best way to describe it is overtightened overstressed cables?

I think I might be able to do so today... maybe even walk down the stairs to the main floor and participate in life for a while.

So, the GOOD news, is that its supposed to be well above freezing every day this week, and the ice sheet is already showing gravel through it in spots, so my driveway and shop are becoming accessible again.

Overxtending myself... again

Every once in a while I am forcefully reminded that, though I feel a thousand times better than I did two  years ago, I am most definitely not in any way shape or form, recovered.

Thursday and Friday, I decided to take advantage of the wonderful indian summer we've been having up here in north Idaho, and get some long overdue yard work done.

Like... six months overdue.

Between the long warm season, and the very wet spring, out grass growing season this year has been... very fruitful shall we say?

Farmers have had as many as four cuttings of hay on their lands this year, and most everyone made three cuttings.

However, my yard, was not intended to be a hay field.

1.67 fenced in acres of 3 foot high grass and brush, on a 20-30 degree slope, is not all that fun to clear out

Before my surgery, I tried to deal with the overgrowth using our wheedwacker and a brush cutter attachment.... And discovered just how surprisingly tiring it is to attempt such a thing, and just how little progress you will make over the course of four hours.

So, Thursday afternoon, I picked up a heavy brush mower from the equipment rental place, to really take care of it all before the rain and snow came back (thus making it nearly impossible to cut down).

I got it home, and realized I needed to take down a few trees first; so for a couple hours Thursday I felled and bucked four dead birch trees (with my chainsaw). So dead in fact, that when I cut them and stuck the moisture meter on them, they were already seasoned for burning.

So, starting out on the yard Friday late morning (it was 20 degrees overnight; didn't warm up to 40 until 11am, on its way to 65 by 3pm), Mel and I managed to get the entire fenced portion of our yard done in about four hours.

1.67 acres of brushy hill terrain is not exactly easy to clear, even with a 13hp billy goat mower.

Now, I was expecting that Saturday, I would be paying for my overexertions, but actually it wasn't too bad. A little stiff an sore, but otherwise mostly OK.

SUNDAY on the other hand...

Yeah, late this afternoon my knees and back started locking up. By the middle of the night my knees were swollen up like grapefruits and basically locked.

Yay.

The good news though, is that my best friend of not quite 30 years, is visiting us (up from Arizona) for the next couple days.

Painkillers and anti-inflammatories. Lots of them.

I don't talk about this much...

...But, there are some days, when the pain is just too damn much.

Some days where I can't walk... Where I can barely move at all.

Days where it hurts so bad... just walking to the bathroom and back makes me wheeze like I've run a damn marathon; chest heaving, heart pounding. It's actually exhausting.

It's hard to describe just how exhausting pain is. How it wears you down. Tires you out. Saps every bit of energy in you. Makes you stupid.

Yesterday and today were days like that.