Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Checking In

Many thanks to those of you who reached out wondering how things are going after my surgery! The procedure went smoothly, although the nice young medical tech who took me back to pre-op and asked me what I was going into surgery for looked a tad taken aback when I announced, "I'm getting new boobs!" in a manic sort of way.

Strawberry season! Takes the sting out of post-op, it does...

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of thinking this wasn't "real" surgery, because they were adding something, not taking something away like the last two times. This, my friends, was a really dumb assumption. Granted, things didn't hurt for as long as they did after last year's boobectomy, but I still couldn't use either arm to push myself up from a lying-down position, I couldn't knit for long because somehow that irritated the stitches, I couldn't do DuoLingo on my phone without ending up in pain, and - quite frankly - there isn't much else to do when you are supposed to be lying around and convalescing.

So I was pretty cranky for a while there. Somewhere along the second week post-op, I sat up most of the night crying because I was doomed to spending the rest of my life in unceasing discomfort; but then I went to sleep around 5:30 AM and woke up at 9 feeling just fine. It's always darkest before the dawn, I guess.

The week before the surgery, I intuited that our washer was about to break (something about the fact that we had to keep nudging it along during the wash cycle and it was taking us hours to finish a load), so I expeditiously ordered a new set from Home Depot to be delivered the Saturday before I got my new boobs, so everything would go smoothly. And I decided to save money: electric dryers are cheaper than gas dryers, so I ordered an electric one this time. 

Sure enough, the next day our valiant washer gave up the ghost, as it were, but there was no need to panic - we could surely manage 2 days until the new one arrived. Good thing I was so proactive! Yay, me! Proactive and thrifty!

After 48 hours of my patting myself on the back, the delivery guys arrived with our new appliances and informed us that they couldn't hook anything up because they weren't authorized to disconnect a gas dryer. They also told us we needed an electrician to put the right type of outlet in for the new electric dryer. 

In short, things were NOT going to go smoothly, after all.

Laundromat-core, it's our new vibe

So then we had to pay for our HVAC guy AND an electrician to show up, which means I was not really seeing those anticipated cost savings of going with the electric dryer. I'll give Larry some credit here, he has said NOTHING, but this whole situation? It is costing me an untold number of marriage points.

Theo and wife and baby have been here for the past couple of weeks, because they are between leases, and it has been fun to have a baby in the house again, especially when I am not the one obligated to get up all night to feed and change her. The baby does insist we pick her up and keep her on the move, though, as she cannot quite get around on her own yet. One day, while her parents worked from our house, I racked up 24,000 steps BY NOON, just walking her around and around the neighborhood, which excess of activity almost killed me.

Babies are adorable but exhausting, is what I'm saying, and I have no idea how I managed to raise 6 of them. I feel very, very old.

In other exciting news, I completely remade my bedroom by buying a new duvet cover and pillowcases. Cheapest makeover ever, highly recommend. 

Colorful! Cheery! 

Coming soon: Susie (MY BABY) will be leaving for college, making us officially empty nesters. Larry and I will fly to the Pacific Northwest to see David in his natural habitat. Peach jam-making is also planned, which I know makes for riveting copy. Stay tuned!

7 comments:

  1. That "darkest before dawn" stuff is no joke.

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  2. Surgery and recovery is hard, painful work. Dh tells me I'm uniquely suited to just lie around and do nothing (and he's not wrong), but even that gets old after a while.

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  3. Oh, the appliance issue that was supposed to save you money? Ugh. What a bummer. It reminds me of our washer dying a day after I gave birth to baby #5. I left the house, chose a dryer, and was back in time to feed the little guy . . . only to have the delivery guys show up and say SORRY, WE CANNOT FIT THIS DOWN THE STAIRS. I wept and they broke protocol and dismantled the dryer and rebuilt it.

    Hooray for visiting grandbabies. So fun. And, yes, exhausting. Hope you feel increasingly better.

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  4. I hope you are recovering well.

    Appliances, grrr.. Our dryer quit working last week. The repair person came today and determined it is the vent that is dirty, nothing more. He charged me mucho $$ but HE DID NOT FIX IT. Alas, it is up to me, Frau Housewife (allergic to dustmites) who must clean it out.

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  5. I'm glad your surgery went ok and you made it through the after part! I keep hoping some day my baby will move out so I can be an empty nester.

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  6. Happy to hear things went well with your surgery--even if it wasn't QUITE what you'd planned for! I love a new appliance--and I'm with you on bedding and SHOWER curtains for sprucing up a space.
    Parenting is definitely for younger people. I am reminded of that whenever I'm with littles.

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  7. The washer/dryer delivery stuff is ridiculous. More than a decade ago while my husband was deployed I had to get a new washer/dryer, and nobody said anything about extra steps for installation. Nobody. So these guys drop stuff off and started to leave, and there I was pregnant with two kids and no way to do laundry. Those guys didn't even have a suggestion about whom to call and it was so frustrating.

    My last kid is heading into her senior year of high school, and I used to dread the idea of being an empty nester, but not so much at this point. I think it will be good, just a different kind of good.

    I love your updates and am glad to know you are well.

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