Two Steps Forward & Three Steps Back

The scene: fourth grade vocabulary lesson.

The word is 'disgruntled'. Use it in a sentence.

"I am very disgruntled that my recovery is taking so long."

I called a really wonderful nurse on Friday to discuss the seemingly slow path that I'm on to recovery. I needed particulars from her: am I overdoing it? Is that why it stills hurts so much?

Hmm, yes, apparently.

When I was discharged, there were no orders other than "activity as recovery allows" and "no heavy lifting". Well, define 'heavy'. For we girls who live in the sticks, 'heavy' is a portable generator . . . and I haven't lifted any of those within these past two weeks. But, is 'heavy' the 30 lbs. that the feeder in the chicken house weighs whenever I fill it in the grain room and then hang it back up for the chickens? Unfortunately, yes! Is 'heavy lifting' inclusive of shoveling out the frozen chicken poop and litter so that the hen who found her way into the droppings pit could finally get out? Apparently so.

Moreover, 'heavy' lifting includes the following:

Loaded laundry baskets.
Unloading wet clothes from the washer and loading them into the dryer.
Making beds or folding sheets.

AND, lifting "anything heavier than 20 lbs. for three months following your surgery".

PU-LEEZE! I have a life to live here!

Obviously, I've already done everything on the "do not do" list several times over in the last two weeks, and the only thing that remotely gave me a "ooh, maybe shouldn't have done that" feeling was hacking at and shoveling away the 8" of frozen poop and chicken litter. But, aside from that one thing, nothing feels bad when I'm doing it . . . until the next day when I'm sorer than ever and/or my abdomen is constantly cramping for a couple of hours in succession.

So, the upshot is that I'm T-R-Y-I-N-G to "take it easy" . . . even tho I already thought I was! And, sorry to say, but some of the "do not do" things are just gonna have to get done: I have a small laundry business going here!

Anyway, that's the latest with me and the recovery. I have my post-op check-up on Wednesday. We'll see what the good doc has to tell me then. :)

Meanwhile, back on the ranch . . . .

March 1st dawned absolutely beautiful yesterday, and Tom took the dogs for a hike a couple of miles down the Swamp River. In between (everybody together now) "TRYING TO TAKE IT EASY" (and using the binoculars and telescope), I spied him a couple of times wayyyyy out on the river. His report upon arriving home a couple of hours later was quite uneventful. No wolf tracks, no moose sheds. He saw fox tracks, but that was it. Even the birds were quiet, he said. He did walk down a tributary and came across the largest beaver lodge we've seen (we discovered it a couple of years ago). He crawled up to the top where there was a big breathing hole, so it's an active one. But, other than that and the brilliant day, there wasn't much happenin' on the ol' Swamp.

That's all for now. I'll try to get back later.