Goodbye to You

And just like that, the brace is gone! Hallelujah! Not wearing it is going to take some getting used to, but that is something I can live with. I also had my first piece of king cake yesterday, officially marking the opening of Carnival season–and am going to have another this morning, thank you very much. I can’t believe it’s Carnival again already; last year’s was all tied up with Mom going into hospice and dying; I missed the first weekend driving up to Kentucky, and the second driving to Alabama for the funeral. I used to associate Carbival with Whitney Houston dying; she died on Endymion Saturday that year, but I guess now Carnival–and especially Valentine’s Day, will now always have losing Mom as an association. It’ll be rough these first years, I suspect, but gradually it’ll become more of a nice, regular reminder.

My surgeon also moved up my strength therapy, from twelve weeks post to eight weeks post. I have one more dexterity therapy session tomorrow, and then I can sit out until around the 21st or so of this month before I get to start that again. So the recovery is going well, the surgeon is very pleased, and so, frankly, am I. Now that the webbing mesh is off (he removed it) the incisions are so small the scarring is actually going to be minimal, which was an unexpected delight, and the stitches themselves will gradually dissolve. It was so nice to go make groceries and drive without the damned brace, you have no idea, Constant Reader, and going to bed without it was even better. Managing to and from work in addition to the therapy is going to be a bit of a bitch during parade season, but I’ll figure it out somehow. But right now, today, I am going to enjoy the fact that I can type without the inconvenience of the brace–but I also have to pay attention to the arm, and when it gets tired and so forth.

I started reading Tara Laskowski’s The Weekend Retreat, which is quite good and sucks you right in, yesterday and will most likely spend some more time with it today. I worked on filing and organizing and getting the apartment back into shape again for the most part yesterday–dishes and floors and filing, oh my–and there’s a little touching up that needs to be done around here today while I write and read and get things done around here. We also started watching the new Harlan Coben show on Netflix, Fool Me Once, which is also quite engaging, and will probably finish it today. I also watched some more War of the Worlds and an episode of the original Jonny Quest show, which I had started rewatching a long time ago but they didn’t have all the original episodes available. Jonny Quest is one of the first cartoons I can remember watching, and I loved it–the Rick Brant science adventure series reminded me a lot of this show, and is part of the reason I enjoyed it so much. It doesn’t quite hold up in modern times and with modern sensibilities as it did when I was a child with a single digit age, but it was done very well–outside and around the rampant racism that was everywhere in entertainment in the 1960’s. I may rewatch the entire original series so I can review it and assess it here, but the show also pulled me into the world of mysteries and adventure, so there’s always that, too.

I still want to write a series for middle-grade before I die, too.

And this morning’s slice of king cake (and yes, you always leave the knife in the box, unless you’re a heathen) is delicious.

I feel good this morning, which is terrific, and hopefully will last through the morning and the early afternoon. I suppose we’ll watch the Golden Globes until it’s time for me to go to bed so I can get up early and start my work week, but next weekend we have another three day weekend, which is going to be amazing and lovely again. So far, 2024 has gone well, and let’s keep that mentality and energy going, shall we?

And on that note, I’m going to make a second cup of coffee and get going on my day. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; one never really knows with me, do we?