Too excited...

I want to write an entry, I swear.  I really want to write an entry!  But I'm too excited.  My cast comes off in four hours. 

MY CAST COMES OFF IN FOUR HOURS! 

Four.  Hours. 

Nutting up...

And just as the last week before Christmas or a long-awaited vacation, so is the last week of having my cast showing signs of dragging along like molasses mixed with crazy glue running down a rocky hill.  Five days, y'all.  Five.  Days.  The day after tomorrow, I leave for a teacher training weekend which will make the last few days fly by - - I hope.  But that doesn't start until the day after tomorrow.

My new thing is saying, "On Friday, I will be able to say that tomorrow I will be able to say that I get my cast off the day after tomorrow."  I don't find this the slightest bit confusing.  Patience has never been among my set of virtues, but I'm going above and beyond crazy with my desire to have this week over and done with.  I've even started going to bed at 9.00pm, not so I can get up nice and early without an alarm clock, but so the days will be over and done with.  Boom!  Nine o'clock!  Time's up for you, day!  Hasta la vista, sweet cheeks! 

And the day is planned out, too.  First thing is ordering a nice prize for myself that I'm not talking about until it arrives, and then I'm going to run a lot of errands to avoid bouncing off the walls until time to go to the doctor.  I know exactly what time I will start to get ready, and the exact second I will leave to go to my appointment.   I have a script running in my head of what I will do when I leave the doctor's office - come straight home, go right upstairs, and have a nice bath during which I will shave my leg. I'm clearing my calendar for the next day so I can have a celebratory stay-cation. 

Five days left.  Five.  More.  Days. 

Yes, it has been a week...

I'm not even going to begin to act as though I don't realize how long it's been since I've written a post.  Let's do this as a list:

Friday through Monday - Miami, FL
Monday night - Ocala, FL
Tuesday - HOME
Wednesday - BED
Thursday - BED

Why BED?  No damn good reason at all.  Slight sore throat from allergies.  Didgeridoo Boy threw a pillow on the bed that the cat has been sleeping on, which left me in a devil of a puffy-eyed, stuff-nosed mess.  But other than that, no reason.  I didn't lose momentum as much as I threw it in the floor with my luggage and told it to leave me alone.  Took care of my laundry, which counts for something (right?), but other than that...

Nada.  And I can't say I liked it.

So today I got up at 6.30am, got my coffee, had breakfast, had my morning meditation, verified a couple of times that I only have ten days left in my cast, and wrote in my journal for the first time since Friday in Miami.  I'm hoping the rain that seems to be wanting to stay for a few days does so, so I won't be tempted to go out and play and can catch up on all of the studying and writing I need to catch up on.  (Better to catch up now than to catch up the first couple of days after my cast comes off, when I know I will want to  put on pair after pair of skinny jeans, get my hair done, and soak in a bath for precisely 37 hours.)

Enough sitting.  I'm off!

Another quick check in...

After Monday's frankly hellish visit to the doctor (I really didn't like that cast saw), I flew into preparing for where I am now - Miami.  I'm attending Foundations in Action with Baron Baptiste from this evening through Sunday.  (Yes, in a cast.)  (I say that because I get, "In a CAST??  You can't do yoga in a cast!", a lot.)  (Yes, you can.)

Mom and I drove as far as Ocala yesterday, and then picked up Florida's Turnpike this morning for the remaining five and half hours in.  Have to say - I'm kind of glad of the cast.  I'm in MIAMI.  I want to put on a cute outfit and go PLAY.  The cast is keeping me from going to play, because I have to sit with my foot up and rest when I'm not at the studio.  It's also keeping me from wearing the cute outfit, which would have involved a maxi dress and beaded sandals.  Can't jack my leg up on a Roll-A-Bout in a dress.  Could, but won't dare.

I leave for the studio at about 4.30pm, and until then I'm hydrating like mad while alternating sitting with my foot propped up and taking Viparita Karani.

Wish me luck.  But do NOT tell me to break a leg. 

Very quick update...

I have a date!  I have a date! 

My cast comes off on 30 April at 4.20pm.  Three weeks from right now, I will be free of a cast and into a walking boot. 

And now, I am going to collapse.  The saw freaked me out, and my foot had to be pushed into the right position, so I'm in a little bit of pain.  I want my dog, my pillow, and about twelve hours of sleep. 

But I have a date.

Flying again...

I woke up this morning wondering if I had *really* made it through what I've been calling "the big stretch" - - the part of this chunk of time of having a cast that involved no travel or anything more exciting than going on errands.  Yes, I created an exciting thing for the halfway point, but that was the only highlight in a blur of days that has left my brain a little bit numb. 

I remember leaving the last teacher training weekend, which was 16 to 18 March, and thinking, "Okay.  Four weeks from now I'll be in Miami.  In a couple of days, I find out whether or not I need surgery.  There's nothing in between."  It seemed comforting at the time, but then the reality set in of having to create marker points to keep time from dragging.  Name a coping mechanism, and I've probably set it up.  Finding out I would get a new cast (today) put something out there - - in the same week I leave to go to Miami.  So - nada.  No time accelerators.  Just a whole lot of sitting.  (And, yes, that's what I'm supposed to be doing for the most part - - but STILL.  Holy shit!)

This.  Has.  Driven.  Me.  Bananas.   The night before Halfway Day, I popped awake, convinced I was wrong about it being the halfway point.  I broke out a calendar and counted over and over again, and then tallied it up in my head, "Okay - this week.  Then I go to Miami.  Then I come home.  Then I have about ten days, and then I go to Beaufort for teacher training.  And then it's been eight weeks.  Wait.  No."  And so it went, with me finally falling asleep still halfway convinced I had counted the weeks up wrong.  As soon as the rush of Halfway Day was over, I realized how much time I still had left, and down the emotional super slide I went.  I vowed to never want a bed day again, and fell into the fear of having my time in the cast extended to sixteen weeks.  It was *ugly*.  Then yesterday afternoon, I pulled my Filofax (hush!) out and started to plan out the next few weeks - making packing lists and study schedules, and realized that what I'm now calling the Big Bad Bed Stretch has ended.  All of the lights came back on. 

So today, I go to the doctor for a fresh, new cast, and tomorrow I start packing for my upcoming trip to Miami - where I'll be attending Foundations in Action with Baron Baptiste.   Mom and I leave early Thursday morning, and return home the following Tuesday evening.  The day after I get home, I have eight days to tie up a lot of studying and practice teaching before hitting the road again.  I have never been so happy to return to having external commitments. 

Damn, it's nice to be busy. 

This feels odd...

Alright, y'all.  Prepare for a princess moment.

Any of you who read regularly have probably gathered that I live in Augusta, Georgia.  You likely also know that every year at this time, I am one of the very, very fortunate souls who gets to attend the Masters .  Yes, every year.  It's what my mom and I do.  It just is.  And although we broke tradition last year and sat on the first fairway due to her aching hip, we prefer to sit at ten.  That, too, is just what we do.  We place our chairs, walk around for a bit, then get pimento cheese sandwiches and sit back down.  Through the day, we spot people that we've seen year after year, go for more pimento cheese sandwiches (we walk them off, so hush), and go to the gift shop to see what new colors shirts are being offered up in.  And hats.   And the little ribbon belts.  Every year, we forget to refresh our stash of Masters socks.

But what am I doing this year?  This didn't really hit me until today, when I checked the weather and saw it would be raining, then thought, "Whoa.  I'm glad I'm not going to be there in this weather."  That is a lie.  I am *bummed*, and wish I would have decided to go out there for just a little while, maybe just a couple of hours one morning.  I could make it to where Mom and I sat last year without a lot of drama, I think.  Someone could drop me off, I could roll up to the gate, and in I would go - - right to do a little shopping so I would have a handy logo picnic bag (ahem), and then straight to the nearest concession to get my sandwich(es) and mini Moon Pie(s).  And my water(s).  Can't forget my water(s).  Then I could roll to the nearest safe surface and just *be* there for a little while.  And then I could roll right back out and come home happy, full of pimento cheese sandwich(es), and not feeling like something is missing.  But I decided not to go, and told Mom she could let one of my stepbrothers use my ticket because I was being practical.  Now I am using my cast to kick myself.  Hard.

I'm going to go get my pink Masters plushie bunny to snuggle and pout through Sunday evening.

Halfway Day!

It's finally 4 April - Halfway Day. The day I got my cast, once I had finished moping and lamenting not being able to wear skinny jeans, I broke out my trusty Macbook and set about flagging dates in iCal that would serve as milestones along the way to getting my cast off. Some were automatic - teacher training weekends, for instance, and my upcoming trip to Miami. In the middle of planning out what amounts to Christmas in May on the day the cast comes off (oh, it's going to be good), I realized marking the halfway point provided yet another opportunity to celebrate and indulge myself a bit, and planned out how to observe it. I wanted it to feel like my birthday did when I was a kid - big, but not quite as big as Christmas.

Part of this is food. I have just polished off a lovely celebratory lunch of half of a Mellow Mushroom roasted red pepper calzone with two garlic parmesan pretzels. Celebrations call for feasts. Dessert? Nutella s'mores. Another part is not studying one blessed thing other than participating in tonight's practice teaching session with a classmate. Not one school book will be cracked. Not one note will be taken. The flash cards are put away.

The really big part is ordering myself a nice little techie upgrade in the form of an adorable white iPhone 4s. I had wanted to actually go to my service provider's location and pick it up, and kept putting it off. On my way to training in Beaufort on 2 March, I made the decision to jot over that way first thing on the Tuesday morning after I got home. That was the weekend I broke my foot. So instead of merrily going to pick up my new precious, I was sitting in bed with my foot propped up. Then I decided to go pick it up after going to the doctor on Wednesday, you know, when I would have a nice boot or an Ace bandage to support my (ahem) sprained ankle. Go ahead and laugh.

So, rambling story short, when I sat down and marked all my milestones, I decided to give myself things to look forward to and put off getting the phone until today. I've been amped about Halfway Day for four weeks. Last night, I actually had trouble getting to sleep, and this morning as I was drinking my coffee, I ordered my new phone.

(Now - - how should I decorate the tree for the day I get my cast off? All I know is I'm using the pink one.)

Enjoy the rest of your Wednesday, and do yourself a favor and have Nutella s'mores.

Battle royale...

It's easy to bust Didgeridoo Boy. (See this post about his body language.) Since I got my cast, he's been on a mission from hell to sign it. I won't let him, as I know all to well what he's going to do. He's damned well going to write something offensive because that's just how he is. Yet I have to admit, I admire his perseverance. Tomorrow marks the halfway point with this thing - I will have had it on for exactly four weeks. And yet, as if he had never tried before, into the bedroom he pranced last night with a Sharpie and a grin:

Didge: "Hey! Let me sign your cast!"

GKG: "No."

Didge: "You let other people sign it. Come on!"

GKG: "No!"

Didge: "Why not?" (At which point he turned his body in such a way that had him no longer facing me full-on.)

GKG: "Because I know what you are going to write on it."

Didge: "I AM NOT GOING TO WRITE 'FART' ON YOUR CAST!"

GKG: "Then you're going to write something like 'booger'."

Didge: "I AM NOT. Let me sign your cast. Really. You let all those other people sign it and not me."

I looked at him. He was still at a diagonal, and then his left leg jiggled. A-ha.

Didge: "Why would you think I would do that?"

GKG: "Because that is who you are."

Didge, with his leg still jiggling: "I won't! I promise! I'll just write my name!"

And with his leg still jiggling, he got the giggles.

GKG: "Get away from me. Now."

I can assure you, he's not signing my cast.