You must be lost

The day after my last post about the asshaberdashery of the insurance company we were dealing with, we had everything resolved and Chris and I took a trip out to Gallatin Friday afternoon to get the truck he wanted.



After enjoying the benefits of having a truck all weekend, it's a little easier to ignore the fact that we now have three years of debt because of it (unless we pay it off early, which we probably will).

Jonah had his second soccer game on Saturday morning at the ungodly hour of 8:30am. Sure, that doesn't sound like it's that bad, except that it takes an awful long time to get shin guards and tight knee socks on wobbly little legs that don't know the meaning of the word "still". Jonah's natural rising time is at about 8am, exactly when we should be leaving the house to get to the field in time. But we made it in plenty of time, despite waking a bit late and he was even fed and over his "you woke me up" grumpiness by the time we got there. The promise of a donut after the game probably helped.

The only issue was that we did not account for the blustery wind that was blowing at that hour. At least we weren't the only parents that were ill equipped. Chris and I would kick the ball around with Jonah on the side lines when he wasn't in the game to help keep him (and us) warm. But as we were leaving, I noticed the ball was starting to roll down the slope toward the ditch. Wanting to keep it out of the mud, I ran up to kick it up the slope. But when I planted my left foot next to the ball, my ankle rolled downhill and I went down momentarily. I could tell immediately this was not a "walk it off" injury. I've rolled my ankles before, but I've never had anything I'd call a sprain. This is awful!

( Behind a cut because the bruising and swelling is rather gross. )

I've been trying my best to take it easy and follow the RICE rules (Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation), but I'm not so good at the R part and I've probably not used enough I or E because I'm not doing R. But I do keep it wrapped snuggly in an ace bandage all day and I sleep with it elevated. This morning, after prolonged icing last night and taking it easy yesterday, I've noticed that the swelling looks to have gone down by about half. But now, I'm noticing new bruises on the right side of the ankle as well as a slight discoloration throughout all of the swelled parts. Waking in the morning is the worst time. It gets settled in a relaxed position and I have to bend it back closer to a working angle to wrap it. Once it's wrapped, I'm usually okay for the rest of the day, but that transition between positions is excruciating! The rest of my body is starting to feel the strain of compensating for the ankle as well. I've got to take it easier until I'm healed.

One good thing, since I have to take frequent breaks, it actually looks like I'm going to get my reading done for the book discussion on Friday. We're starting Return of the King. Wow, we've been doing this for a really long time. Fellow smialites, is this year 2 or 3 since we started discussing LOTR?

Despite my crippledness, I still managed to help Chris put up the garden shed we had bought and could finally bring home because YAY TRUCK! I didn't do much but hold panels up so he could hammer them together, but it was something. Then I stocked it with all the tools and supplies that have been rusting out in the elements for years as well as a full shelf worth of stuff out of the garage. I want to outfit it with a loft for storing seedling flats and some pegboard and hooks for tools, but for now, everything is out of the way and accessible and tidy.

I also got the last of the clean up done in the gardens on Sunday. After cleaning out the entire garage the weekend before, my missing shears never turned up. So we bought some new ones and we got all the ornamental grasses clipped back just in time for the new growth to start popping up. The guy came to mow the grass yesterday for the first time, so the yard is starting to wake up out of winter funk.

Apart from that, I have a list of things I've vowed to finish before I start any new projects. I'm slowly crossing things off of it, but I've got some tremendous guilt about some of the things I've procrastinated. Nothing to do but just get them done though. The longer I take to finish them, the worse it gets. I've always said my mantra should be better late than never, but damn it, that's not good enough. I feel like I'm screaming "THIS IS WHY I'LL NEVER BE AN ADULT!" at myself. *sigh*

It's been raved about by pretty much everyone I know who has read it, so I thought it was my turn to read it. I took that $10 for $20 Groupon for Barnes & Noble the other day and loaded up my nook with the trilogy.

I started reading on Friday and it just wasn't gripping me. The characters were okay, but I hadn't reached a hook. I covered about 55 pages the first night and still didn't feel invested. I guess that's not saying much, but the typical query is half that, from what I understand and usually there's something to grab you in the first 20 pages. The first 20 pages was the entire first chapter which I felt was rambling and covered too much ground. The present tense bugged the hell out of me, constantly pulling me out of the story. I set it aside for several days to do some other things (namely declutter the office, which is still undone and play outside over the weekend). As I made my list of goals for the rest of the week yesterday, I put at the top of the reading section "Finish The Hunger Games." So last night when I couldn't sleep, I crept downstairs and set up shop on the couch in the den under a couple of down throws and read from about Chapter 6 to the very end, finishing it at around 5:18am (I know because my nook has a clock on it that I can see at all times).

( My impressions. Cut for SPOILERS and longness. You've been warned on both counts! )

I dosed off at about 5:30am after my brain settled into exhaustion enough to sleep, all the while realizing that in less than two hours I was going to have to jump up and make lunch for Chris and Jonah, make Jonah's breakfast and get him dressed and do Valentine's for his party at school today that I forgot about (not entirely) until 10pm last night. And I stayed up all night reading The Hunger Games instead of doing those last night and perhaps getting to bed at a decent hour. Priorities, I haz dem.

I'll probably give the rest of the week to digest and read some other stuff before I start in with book two.

ETA: I'm sorry if a lot of this doesn't make sense, but with less than 2 hours of sleep, mellymel no function coffee well without. Oh I'm drinking coffee, but it's only getting me up to zombie status of brain function right now. Which is also why I wasn't able to edit this down to something more concise.

ETA2: And I meant to mention something about the fact about why I felt compelled to stay up all night and finish the book. It wasn't necessarily that I couldn't put it down. In fact, most of the time, except perhaps for the second section where the majority of the action is, I felt there were breaks where I could easily turn it off and save it for later. But because I was awake anyway and I knew I wanted to finish it this week, I sort of just plowed through as long as my eyes would stay open. That just happened to be through to the end of the book, or at least until there were so few pages left, I rationalized I should just finish it up. I think I started fighting exhaustion with less than 50 pages left.