Rainbow Girl 2: 5 Days Post-Surgery

Sporting more and more widely spaced colors. At least nothing hurts, pretty much. The one minor exception is the femoral site. Until today, standing annoyed the bruise. I did forget the prohibition against bending over and wiped up a spill on the kitchen floor. Oops. But necessary. Minor burning feeling periodically afterwards for a couple days.

Driving didn't bother anything. There was Steve's doctor appointment. I stayed in the car. These days that's the norm, not a reaction to the surgery. Even that early in the morning now, the sun pours in the window and heats things up too fast.

I also drove to another doctor office since I needed to make an appointment and found out my voicemail and ringer were both fubar. Then there was the evening trip to take Steve to his favorite grocery store. He announced his need for stocking up about 5 minutes after I'd changed into pajamas, but I figured in the dark of the parking lot, who'd care? I just told him he better not fall or have some other kind of emergency where I'd have to come into the store for him, 'cause I wasn't doing it! Not wanting to be visible to the general population, I chose not to bring along my Kindle which required light in the car, so the big entertainment as I waited was noticing the car opposite had attached huge fake eyelashes along the top of each headlight.

Whatever.

I finally decided it was high time to remove the bandage. I was already over 24 hours from when they told me I could, but I harbored concern that all the pulling and tugging of the adhesive might open something up again, and this time it could be critical. It could be seen as a sign of where my head isn't at yet that it took me that long to figure out that if I had Steve right next to me watching for any ill effects that I'd be OK, in case. So he was, and I was. The bulky gauze pad inside the big adhesive square was black, fully soaked with now very dead blood cells.

Smelled like it too! GAG!

Funny, it never occurred to me before that I might smell one of those things. It's not that I actually tried it this time, it was just inescapable.  A couple of wet-wipes later I was much more approachable, no longer something that might, as a certain ex liked to say, knock a buzzard off the shit wagon.

Next day was, blessedly, shower day. Grin-n-n-n-n-n.

Yesterday a form letter came from our HOA. I don't know why, exactly, they hadn't noticed that the weeds in the front yard were growing nice and tall, but they apparently hadn't. Until now. It's not that we've completely ignored them. But our combined health issues have kept us from addressing them as well as we all would have liked.

Reading the letter, I was tempted to send them an email  along the lines of "Now that I'm beginning to recover from my cardiac surgery I had earlier this week, I can start getting back out and taking care of the weeds. Though still on activity restrictions, I will do what I can, in small chunks. Your 30 day deadline should be doable. We appreciate your concern."

Still thinking about it.

I'd been out with Round Up a few weeks earlier, and pulling weeds a couple times before that. Some weeds were impervious to those little spots of chemical that were all the bottle nozzle emitted, some died and blew away, some were beyond the limits of how much Roundup we had left from last year. New ones have not been shy about popping up as soon as backs were turned. I think it's a gift they have.

Those weeds actually were appreciated in some quarters. Quail scurried around  underneath and reached up to pick off whatever seed or bug might be tasty. Some tiny bird yet unidentified by us would hop up into a branch I'd been sure was incapable of holding even such a tiny bird, also finding edibles.

But....

I waited until early this morning when temperatures had dropped from yesterday's 100 to a very brief 70, filled a different but usable spray bottle, and went out to spray till the bottle was empty. That covered about a quarter of them. Uh... a quarter of that chunk of front yard. I returned to the house to recuperate and grab coffee with my morning news. Steve woke up and took the ice chopper we'd moved down from Minnesota (you ask why?) and chopped down deep into the roots of the tall weeds until they were unattached and horizontal. (With luck they'll blow away before he can get out for the picking-up phase. Anybody got the weather wind report? Any big fronts coming through?) Then my turn again with another refill, covering the next quarter yard. I didn't actually empty the bottle this time, just my energy reserves.

Did I mention a whole lot of the front "lawn" is spurge? Spreads out flat, grows like crazy, shelters tiny biting ants, and takes a lot of Round Up, often multiple sprays. If you have a magnifying glass and a flexible back, you can actually see pretty little flowers scattered across the top, eagerly producing the next million seeds.

I left them. Not exactly by choice. By exhaustion. I didn't think that little bit of work, with about an hour respite in the middle, was that significant. Apparently right now my recovering body disagrees.

There are now several fewer selections in the recorded list in the DVR box. Maybe 20? They weren't all wonderful and got deleted early.

I'm used to bouncing back. Apparently my body stomped on the brakes this time. This post has been my first actual accomplishment since this morning. Such a lot of work....