positive reinforcement

Why has it so gone out of fashion to encourage progress through praise? Why have we veered off course, preferring to tell the world what's wrong with products, people, places, instead of what's great about them? 

I'm at fault too: I dont write snappish comments, but when I travel, I devour all the trashy stuff others post on places where I want to overnight, excursions I think of taking. I tell myself -- I want to weed out the losers! But this morning I had a thought: maybe I shouldn't? Maybe behind the occasional moldy bathroom and creaky floorboards, there lies something special? Maybe by aiming high, I miss out on the fun of arriving in a spooky guest house with colorful characters sipping cold tea from chipped cups? 

I get it: we have so little time and so we want to spend it wisely. Why take an excursion to an underrated museum or village, why eat a poorly prepared meal, when we can easily find something that hasn't these obvious flaws? 

Still, I have to wonder -- who is helped by the endless nose wrinkling commentary, written or spoken? Wouldn't it be more useful to suggest ways in which tweaks could be made to improve something, noting all the good stuff that's already there?  It's the generous and encouraging words of others that make us want to get better in life, no? I'll give you an example straight from this day:

I wake up early, because that is my fate this May -- to get up and move ASAP so that the darn knee has a chance to wiggle and bend before it totally freezes over from lying still most of the night. Ed is still sleeping so I am determined to get showered and dressed on my own. The only tough job is to get the white support stocking on the cut up leg. Impossible! Well, as it turns out, not impossible. After sweating it out for a good many minutes (I can't believe Ed slept through so many grunts and groans!), I'm ready for the day -- which, of course, begins with exercises, followed by ... a nap.

And then I check my email and I find a lovely message from one of my former colleagues, noting a review of Like a Swallow that appeared in this month's Wisconsin Lawyer (you can read it here).

Of course, everyone likes good reviews of their work, so there's that. But what really moved me about this one is that the author of it exactly set out the map of my life as how I want to live it. I aspire to all those things she writes about! And my immediate reaction to it was -- I want to do even better at meeting those goals! Double down and make a huge effort. Don't slack off. Stay focused. Observe with gentility, write with care, speak without malice.

You see the point -- a kind word is like a nudge to keep going, to do well by others, to stay on course.

And now, about this second of May which happens to be a significant improvement over the first of May!  Outside -- more sunshine, slightly warmer temperatures. Inside -- the knee is gaining strength!  [Though my Physical Therapist corrected me on this: your knee is perfect right now. Good to go. It's the other stuff, the tissue, the nerves, muscles etc that are saying -- what just happened here?!] But, I am not yet able to do the Tuesday shuffle with my granddaughter. I take a day's break and let the parents do the pick up/dance class routines. 

(Breakfast, with cinnamon rolls, held over from pre-operative days...)

I concentrate on loving the feel of early May.

(Do you see him? Our resident cardinal, in the soon to bloom crab apple...)

(These are tulip weeks; a special thanks to the groundhog for leaving these alone!)

(The much neglected front road facing bed does put on a great display of late season jonquils!)

(Old orchard pears and apples even make Ed's '86 Ford pick-up look great!)

(Young orchard cherries, with the willow dancing in the wind!)

And in the afternoon, Ed again nudges me out for a walk, this time by Lake Waubesa.

I swear, there's never been a walk that I have taken that I haven't loved, even this one, still at a snail's pace, though Ed assures me that it's looking a lot more "normal!" Fantastic! Tomorrow I'll strive to do even better!

May 1st

It's the start of my new normal: for the next two months (so, all of May, all of June), I can expect to be uncomfortable and less mobile than at any other time in my life. I can pay great attention to my exercise program (which consumes too many hours to allow for any meaningful time for less boring stuff) or blow it off and suffer the consequences.  I have so many visits with the PT guy that I expect we'll be on first name basis by the end of the season. Oh, we already are? Well now, there you have it. My spring in a nutshell.

But it's a great season nonetheless! I mean, aside from the weather yesterday today and tomorrow. Really, May -- you're starting us off with March temperatures!

I haven't yet figured out a good way to sleep at night so I begin the day with getting up, getting dressed and taking a nap! This is a ridiculous routine, but I rather like it!  Eventually Ed and I sit down to breakfast.

And afterwards, I start on my Physical Therapy visits. David, my PT person, has been doing this for 37 years. I say to Ed -- he's so experienced! Ed replies -- he must be so bored with it by now! But I think that's not the case. Every patient is different, right? And indeed, David offer a lot of comments on where I am at on this fifth day after surgery, as compared to other similarly situated patients. Here are some of his words: That leg is just two degrees off! That's amazing! Incredible! ... No, you're doing that all wrong ... You have to use your cane even if you dont think you need your cane ... Dont skimp on the Tylenol! ... All nicely black and blue, just as it should be! 

I like him. He's very... realistic and just slightly more upbeat than Ed!

At home, I force myself to do some of the hoists and wiggles and shuffles. And in the afternoon, Snowdrop comes over. I wasn't sure I could drive, so a parent picked her up at school and brought her to the farmhouse. Once here, the girl is totally self sufficient. My big effort requires nothing more than to cut up some fruit and find a comfortable position in which to read with her.  

(trying out my ice pack machine)

And after she goes home, I return to light cooking. I'm supposed to challenge myself to a big(ish) walk every day, but of course the weather sucks to high heaven so I'm not going anywhere. But at least I can shuffle around the kitchen and throw together a veggie soup. This of course proves to be exhausting -- sort of like hiking the Grand Canyon only without the hiking or the Grand Canyon. 

May 1st -- it's a holiday in so many countries! For me, the day marks the beginning of intense blooms in the farmette gardens. I cant say that they are exceptional yet. The buds on the crab haven't opened up. The tulips are holding their heads tightly shut. 

But it is lovely out there. Tentative, but so full of potential! May is the stubbornly pretty month. You could not ask for more delicate and lovely colors! Pastels and pinks, yellows and blues, all wrapped in the subtle greens of spring.

Heaven...

birthday celebrations, completed

That was some weekend! Horribly cold weather, sore knee, exceptionally beautiful everything else! This morning, my older girl served brunch to the whole lot of us -- with an added friend and her two children. So now there were seven little ones, all well under 8, doing what kids that age do best -- scattering toys, dressing up, dancing, eating big fat bagels with or without all the bagel stuff us grownups love.

Here's our day then. Or, a sampling of all the wonderfulness that was heaped upon it! (Well, except for the weather. And the knee.)

(Heading out: the cane got very muddy.)

(At my daughter's home: a welcoming committee!)

(Another day of birthday presents! the boys help me with this one!)

(I join the kids' table. I'm only 70 after all!)

(Dress up time! My cane enters the act...)

(Can you do housework in a long gown? yes you can!)

(there are four moms in the room; here's the youngest one!)

(Cousin dance!)

(And more of cousin dance!)

(Tired, but happy -- that probably describes us all! Sad to say good bye to Juniper and Primrose...)

("We'll block the door and not let anyone leave!")

(Back to the farmette... The pears are blooming... We're looking forward to a warmup this week!)

Evening quiet. Ed sleeps, I run through knee exercises. For dinner, he and I fill up on leftover steaks frites from yesterday's meal. We dont ourselves cook or load our plates with beef, but we make an exception when kids leave us reasonable portions of their tasty restaurant beef dishes!

And so ends a fantastic April of celebrations! It could not have been a finer birthday. I'm left with a computer full of photos and a heart spilling over with love.

Time to rally and make the next month a good one!

family birthday

In this family, you don't check off your birthday until all relevant parties have had a chance to celebrate it with you! Today the Chicago young people are coming up and along with the Madison young family, and of course Ed, we are going to have ourselves a party, puffy bruised leg and all! At the end of this weekend, I will be officially 70.

The days now are cold and a tad wet, which perhaps is a shame, but hey, I'm not much of an outdoor rambler right now anyway. The key is to make the house warm and welcoming. I'd worked on that before the surgery. This morning, I need only get myself ready, which believe me, takes for-ev-er! Too, I would like the place not to look like a hospital ward. The cats are already freaked by all the additional equipment. A cane terrifies them all. The big square walker sends them flying out the door. They're okay with the ice pack machine, only because it doesn't move. But add to the decor all those bottles of pills (and a dripping ceiling!) and you really have a yourself a messy situation. So we try to fix that up a little. Flowers help!

Breakfast with Ed.

And then they are all here! From the youngest up!

I had an idea for this day. It's perhaps a touch funky, and maybe a bit out there, but I had this image: all my grandkids have a lot of Polish in them, even if they have never (yet) stepped foot in that country. What if, what if, I got them something that we value back in Poland (especially if you head away from the cities) -- what if I gave them traditional and authentic Polish folk costumes?

I'd ordered them in early March, rather blindly because the sizing is crazy different than what we have here. The little ones are not even two years old, so they got a modified version of the full garb.

And what if they all dressed up together and I could take this celebratory photo today, a photo of my partly Polish grandkids?

Yeah! 

At the farmhouse, my daughter fixes lunch and we squeeze in around the table without adding a leaf. What for, we can all fit!

In the evening we go to Sardine for our celebratory dinner. Honestly, yesterday I was thinking this was going to be tricky. I could not sit up with my leg bent for more than five minutes! But today things are looking so much rosier! A dinner out at our beloved restaurant, en famille? Yes!

And yep, there is a cake. From my beloved Madison Sourdough...

And here we all are, together, which makes me so very happy.

Thank you kids, Ed, thank you grandkids. For everything. With so much love for you all!!

adjustments

Thoughts on being 70 and having a new knee put in:

In the middle of the night, I get up (very awkwardly) and shuffle my walker to the bathroom. Ed, who is still downstairs, says that it sounds like the scratchy noises of ghosts in a haunted house attic.

I was told it would take a while to reclaim a good night's sleep. "Every day you will add an hour." Turns out to be true. I'm up earlier than early.

Since Ed now has to feed the animals in the morning, he comes down with me and we bump into each other a lot in the kitchen, in part because there is a chair with a drip bowl in the middle of the kitchen floor, in part because I have a clumsy walker, and in part because we are not used to navigating the small kitchen space at the same time in the wee hours of the morning. 

I am surprised to see that I am better at (assisted) walking than I am at sitting or manipulating my leg. (Manipulating it is the worst!). This means that I have no problem fixing breakfast, though I haven't the dexterity of yore. I spill blueberries everywhere. No, I cannot easily pick up berries from the floor. Ed tells me I have to "rein in my clumsies" in the days to come.

Normally, we eat a late breakfast, but this wont do in my post-op mode. I have a thousand pills to take and they all prefer to be taken with food. So I start alone, but pretty soon, Ed gives up on sleep and joins me. 

Not for long though. Someone has to clean up after Dance. [We have a bulimic cat: she cannot resist eating any food left out for others. And then she throws it up because it is, of course, too much. If we keep track of her access to food, all's fine, but if she lands something unfinished by, say, Pancake, then we're in trouble!]

Doing exercises takes soooo much time.

Ed dutifully refills my ice pack machine with his home spun supply of ice. I am so surprised at how sweetly attentive he is to all my needs. Always good natured, always asking what else he could do. Like him, I value independence so I don't ask for much help. Still, he is a good tender of a very busted up and stapled in knee!

Sometime in the early afternoon he proposes we walk. I am actually supposed to do that in short spurts, but I can't imagine what he would get out of it: I drag long like a reluctant snail! Still, he insists it would be good for the both of us. I need a smooth surface for my walker so we go to the new development where he studies the newest construction methods and I shuffle slowly along. Exhausting? You bet!

I am not using the camera much, but I do take a pic of the flowers on the table. They're nothing more than grocery store flowers, but in spring, even those can be sublime: peonies and tulips! Magnificent!

What's blooming outside right now? The same thing that's blooming inside!

I do squeeze in a bit of gardening! One pot, at the front of the walkway to the house, has every bloom in it chomped off by the chickens. That cannot be! I stick in a cosmos and cross my fingers that the chickens will leave it alone. How do I get down to ground level? Same way I did with my busted knee before surgery: spread legs very wide and bend at the waist. It can be done! Though I wouldn't recommend it unless it's an emergency. Replacing an entryway decimated flower is an emergency.

Tomorrow is a wild day, in the best of ways. I mean, you're only 70 once, right? 

going home

Honestly, my overnight at the hospital feels luxurious. The structure itself -- a branch of the UW Hospitals and Clinics -- is new and at the edge of town. The staff that cares for me is energetic, very professional and totally kind. The food choices are good and someone other than me is buying/cooking/cleaning it up. My bed goes up and down, the view out onto the forest is lovely. Pain is readily controlled, and I have time.

And what do I do with that time? I worry about my garden. There wont be frost (knock on fake wood!), but none of the new transplants like it when the wind blows and it feels very cold. We have one more weekend of chilly weather and I know I have some unhappy campers out there. Just a few more days, I want to tell them -- hang in there!

The night was, of course, wakeful, but who cares. Drifting in and out of sleep can be relaxing. My legs are wrapped in some kind of gizmo that blows up like a balloon every minute or so -- as if someone was taking deep belly breaths next to me, squeezing me as they expand, releasing when they exhale. Rhythmic, comforting. The fake knee leg also has an ice machine attached to it. I get to keep it, even though ice at the farmhouse is very hard to come by.

Breakfast? Oatmeal! Okay, not as good as my own, but this one was placed for me on a tray in bed. When was the last time that I had breakfast in bed?? (Admittedly, I don't really love eating in bed, unless that bed goes up and down and a tray is wheeled to me, in which case I am totally delighted.)

In midmorning, the PT/OT person shows up in my room to help me live with my new knee (made of titanium and plastic, to the best of my knowledge). Tricks how to put on socks. Tricks how to navigate steep stairs. Exercises to do 7 times a day. Others to do 3 times a day. Walkers, ice pack machines. Phew! My vacation time is over!!

By noon, Ed shows up. I can see his eye scanning all the equipment! But, he has taken on the burdens of taking care of Gorgeous and so we pack it all up and, along with maybe 100 bottles of medications, we take it all home. With me, learning how to gingerly get in and then out of the car. And then up one step to the mudroom. And another two to the kitchen. And that's it folks! I need to sit down!

Of course, much as I appear to be the center of familial attention at the moment, there's a lot going on in the lives of others and I spend some time catching up on that in the afternoon. Until I can catch up no more and I plop down with my tea, not on the up and down hospital bed, but on the old and somewhat destroyed by cat paws love seat.

Photos? What possible photos could I take on a day of institutional decor, cars on highway and then finally of home, pretty much from the vantage point of the love seat?!  My knee is puffy, sort of like that of a Pillsbury dough boy. I know! Let me go out and attempt to water the tubs. This is a challenge: to get myself and the walker out, to hang the big camera around my neck and then to drag the hose to each pot. While leaning on the walker. Which is being wheeled on wood chips. 

The chickens are wondering -- what is she doing??

I manage!

The doc had said -- whatever you do, do not fall! I take that direction seriously because he is a man of few words and so anything that comes out of his mouth is indeed important. I move slowly. And perhaps I overdid it. Who can tell. (I let Ed water the porch flowers. I cant manage the porch steps! Yet.)

I return to my spot on the loveseat, plug in the ice pack machine and exhale.

The house is clean. The fridge is stocked. I am home with my new knee. 

new and improved

When you fix old stuff around the home, often you're in for an upgrade. We need a new thermostat in the farmhouse. The new one will be fantastic! (Well, at least it will look more fantastic than the old one, which already was pretty cool.) When I sold my ancient car and bought a new one, the improvements on the new one were epic! New eye lens? Better than the old ones!

The same cannot be said of knees, I hear. My doc told me that one fifth of patients are totally dissatisfied with their new knees and that's because they expect the replacement to be so good that it's as if you got a new car working your joints for you! At best, he told me, you can expect less pain, though also less flexibility. So I bent my leg at the knee fully today many times knowing that this would likely be the last time I am able to do so. For the heck of it -- bend, straighten. Bend, straighten.

But honestly, I did not pause for much this morning just because of that very brief window of opportunity that was granted to me by virtue of the late morning scheduling for my hospital stay. 

Very early in the morning I rush. To feed the animals. 

(still empty tubs...)

Then I make myself a cup of  coffee (Columbian Arabica because it has red fruit flavor notes and I'm missing my bowl of fruits today!) and tea (Patagonia super berry because it has super duper healing powers. They say...). That is all I can have today.

And then, gloriously,  I get to it! Ed helps me transfer the flower baskets to the porch and the flats of annuals to the picnic table and I begin! I have 2.5 hours to do my work!

(Was there frost last night? Yes there was! It all melts by 8 a.m.)

(baskets, finally on the porch!)

And I get it all done! Tubs are rather minimalist: most have just two or three annuals, but they will expand in size and besides, I can add stuff later. I do put in a pot of just alyssum, because I know the chickens love it so and sure enough, within minutes, they're munching away. By the morning's end, the flowers will be mostly chomped off.

I also plant some creeping vines and I bring out the overwintered pots of (rather spindly for now) impatients. Finally, the farmette landscape is looking colorful and grand! (Please please please let this have been the final frost for the season!)

No ambitious photos though. I have to load everything onto blogger quickly! And I still have to scrub down and get my stuff in the car and drive over (with Ed) for my 11:30 check in.

Later:

Ed drops me at the hospital, I wave good bye and settle in to wait in the lobby. I see a tiny ant crawling up my arm. Oops. Must be from gardening. But there's another. On my purse. And another, in my purse. Oh boy. The farmhouse ants are looking for a nest home. Have they found one in my purse? 

The nurse comes to get me, I'm frantically picking out the last of the ants and taking out the caramel in the bag, which is what first caught their fancy. Can we start off with finding a garbage can?? 

In all, the wait isn't long. In fact, the nurse tells me I'll meet with my doc then my anesthesiologist soon because the doc is running ahead of schedule. Ahead of schedule?!? And the name of my robot, the one doing the actual replacement is Cinnamon. 

Later:

I'm in my room, in that wonderful dozy state of half sleep, completely mollified by medication and a superbly attentive staff. I have a view onto a forest and they say by evening deer will come to graze here. 

The surgery (they say because I surely do not remember any of it) went well. Now will come the hard paint of managing a new knee. But that's for another day, another week. For now, I am starving for my supper, and still dreamy-woozey, and so very grateful!

with love...

mad dash to the finish line

It's nuts to do gardening in such a frantic way, but this is my lot this year! (You dont have to remind me -- it is my choice.) Three updates that I take seriously: first, the drips from the ceiling increase then decrease then increase in frequency once again. Ed has concluded that this is in sync with the water pump activity and thus it portends of a further leak somewhere in the pipes. In other words, the kitchen ceiling has to come down. Not before your surgery -- he assures me. As if it ever will be fun to live with that mess!

Second update-- the expected lows overnight will be at 32F (0C). Well, 30F according to my smart phone's more pessimistic forecast! That's a degree (or three) too cold for most of the annuals. Bummer luck. It means that I can't put anything out today. Except the ever reliable early spring pansies.

But, the third piece of news is that I have to show up at the hospital, bathed, starving and ready at 11:30 tomorrow. That means that between 8 in the morning (when it will be the coldest for the day and indeed for the whole rest of spring) and 10:30, I will have some planting time! I doubt that I'll get everything in, but I will speed like a woman possessed and do as much as I can.

Today is equally crazy rushed. I must change all the bedding (hospital request). I must stand outside and wave my arms frantically (this is what we do with the spring time hawk attack -- we have six large ones circling over the farmette lands as we speak). I must do the last grocery stockpile. And I must purchase the remainder of the annuals and fit them in as best as I can into the mudroom.

But first, the morning walk...

And breakfast (photo-bombed by Dance!).

Ed comes with me to pick up the remainder of the annuals at Koepke's. Our mud room is very colorfully cluttered at the moment!

And here's what I can also accomplish today: I think I'm safe sowing the seeds in the meadows. And in planting the sunflower seeds. And the cosmos. They need to stay away from frost, but with a low of only 31F I think we are safe. 

So this is my morning. Crazy busy! Meditative gardening? Hahahahaha!

In the afternoon I pick up Snowdrop. 

Her mom is away for a few days and her dad is handling the ship and so we decided to skip dance to help with coordinating the drop off/pick up stuff. This is a treat for me as I at least dont have to rush her to dance and instead, we do a very indulgent reading session. I do sneak out to plant the sunflower seeds and when I come back I see that Ed is showing her his baby drone. Which she loves!

And now it is evening. I cook up chili, because this will give us meals for at least three days. And as per instructions from the hospital, I have my glass of wine at 8 p.m. I am so obedient!

Tomorrow I'll see if I can twist arms for an early release. If not, I'll try to post from my bed. Once the new knee is in!

With love...