Post-Op Day 8: Plateau

Interesting day indeed. Fairly uneventful but completely frustrating. I thought I could keep up my furious rehab progress and see daily improvements. I just couldn't get my knee to bend beyond 95 degrees no matter how much I iced it.

Yesterday... I might have done some things that have contributed to my poor performance. Yesterday morning about 7:30am I heard a strange noise, like that of running water, so I thought was someone taking a shower. After a couple of minutes it suddenly hit me that my sprinkler valve on the side of the house was spraying water all over. I've had SO much trouble with my sprinkling system. I had just put on a new cap on the valve filter on Friday and that cap busted open. Argh! In my anger, I decided that I needed to fix the sprinklers that day or risk having all my plants dying. My knee felt okay to be on my feet for an hour, no big deal.

It was a big deal. It took my 2 hours because I had to fix 3 valves. My knee was KILLING me all night and into the morning. Even big V was struggling to keep the pesky pain away. So, all day my knee has been a little swollen and thus no results. I'm just lucky I haven't digressed.

To make matters worse, I went to the library around 4:30 pm, with Andrew (that adds about 3X the effort) to get 2 books I'd reserved. By the way, our library is so great. I can reserve books across all the libraries in San Diego. They have this self-checkout system that is so slick. You swipe your library card and set the books near this book reading sensor and the system instantly checks out the books and prints your receipt. It takes about 15 seconds. Good to see our tax dollars at work finally. Back to the story. So I found my reserved books and Andrew was screaming for a book for him. I'm not stupid. I'm not new to working with 3 year olds. If I had given in to "finding" Andrew a book, I would have burnt at least 2 hours looking at every book in the library until some inspiration from heaven would barrel down and enlighten Andrew to finally choose a book. But sometimes inspiration doesn't come. Then I must resort to making a decision for him and carry him kicking and screaming to the car. He's 3. What can you do? Reason with him?

On the way, I stopped by Ralphs for some liquid refreshment, aka Gatorade and Vitamin water. Little did I know that Michele had already stocked up some while running errands that morning. My bad. My knee was hurting but I knew I needed to refuel so I dared to run the gauntlet of the supermarket with Andrew. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Ralphs had a nice sale on their drinks. I got PowerAid bottles for 40 cents and Gatorade for 80 cents. Like my sister, I love a good deal. I got some extras and tried to get to the check stand before Andrew latched onto anything that he couldn't live without. I was literally standing in a freshly opened lane (I love it when the checker selects you, the chosen one, out of all the people in line to come over to a new open lane. I am special.) taking out my first Gatorade when Andrew bolted from sight. I knew it was a bad situation due to the speed and ferocity of the little man's sprint. I quickly unloaded a 1/4 of the items and then looked over the magazine hedge to spy on Andrew like a solider looking down at enemy activity from behind a stone wall. Oh NO!!! Andrew had the Hotwheels cars. Mayday, mayday, code blue.... we have an immediate and substantial situation on checkout 4. The next 15 minutes was like a scene from "Black Hawk Down". Mayhem, screaming, crying and pleading with plenty of cat and mouse. I decided to play the very slow disabled cat with my HUGE knee brace. Andrew just wouldn't give up the car. I'd take it away and then he run and find another. Pretty ugly. Finally he came back with a virtually white flag of peace... ironically clad in orange... yes it was a bag of Cheese Puffs. We made a compromise that if Andrew would give up the car, he'd get Cheese Puffs later. Obviously Andrew's negotiation skills are far superior to mine. He'll make a fine future Secretary of State.

I'm back home, swollen knee and all watching Andrew feast on Cheese Puffs and having a fine time playing... you guessed it - Indiana Jones. We only played 2 hours today, our new low. Looks like Andrew maybe sick of the game. I can only hope.