What Have I Been Doing?

Not stitching, that’s for sure. I haven’t picked up a needle in over a week. Oh wait, that’s a lie. I did put in a very few stitches while at the hospital on Friday.

So, let’s see. I last posted on Wednesday.

Thursday: Bought a sailboat. Sailed said sailboat with the dealer to get a feel for what it can do. Towed said sailboat home. Mangled the swim ladder while backing it down the driveway in the dark because the ladder, which is not supposed to fall down, fell down from the up position and we backed over it, bending it backwards and wrenching it and its brackets sideways. Gouged the driveway a bit, too, but meh, who cares? It’s all fixable and at least we got our first owie to the boat over and done with quickly. Oh yeah, got a really bad sunburn on a few sections of my back that I apparently wasn’t reaching every time I reapplied the sunblock spray. Doh!

Friday: Spent the day at the hospital. The Upper GI with Small Bowel Study that normally takes 1 to 3 hours took me 7 HOURS! I’m not going into details, in case others who read my blog happen to have a need to go through this procecure in the future. Let’s just say that some mistakes were made by the radiologist, I think, and it turns out that my large bowel (large intestines; colon) is longer than most people’s. As such, my appendix actually resides in the middle of my lower abdomen, instead of on the right. Good to know in case of appendicitis pain. Bad when the radiologist keeps looking in the wrong spot for my appendix and the junction between my small and large bowel. For hours upon hours. Until one of the chief radiologists is called in out of sheer desperation (and the fact that it was 4:45 PM on a Friday and the staff wanted to get out of there).

My abdominal muscles feel like they have served as someone’s punching bag. Oh wait, they have! My back hurt like … (insert appropriate simile here) due to laying around in rough cotton hospital gowns on hard metal tables much of the day. Not nice for bad sunburn from day before. My back, neck and shoulder muscles went into spasm from above described laying around. I was unable to stitch during most of my waiting time because I was subjected to laying in different positions in order to try to get the barium to move through my system.

[note] For future reference, my digestive tract doesn’t like barium. [end note]

Saturday: Towed the sailboat over to the house of friends who live on the water. Went to their community’s boat ramp, rigged the boat and tried to launch the boat. Were unable to launch the boat due to poorly engineered boat ramp (it goes down a foot or two, then levels out) and low tide in shallow area. Waited around for an hour or so on the community beach for tide to start coming in. Gave up for a bit, went back to their house, ordered and consumed dinner. Went back to boat ramp once tide had come in and given us a foot or so more water to work with. Finally floated the boat off of the trailer and went motoring and sailing for an hour or so. Got boat back onto trailer, towed to friends’ house and unrigged in the dark. At this point, I had developed a migraine and the bugs were attacking the easily-seen white person (me) with a hunger, so I went inside and left the boys (which ended up pretty much being Terry by himself) to de-rig the boat. Sorry guys! Towed the boat home. Backed it up the driveway without incident (whew!). I immediately took a Maxalt and went to bed.

Sunday: Woke up very late with shoulder muscles in spasm and a bit of a headache. Ate. Watched some TV. Went upstairs to work on OSL accounting and entered a bunch of new inventory into the store. Check it out! Writing this blog entry, then going to bed.

We’re back to work tomorrow and Tuesday, then leaving as early as we can manage to drag ourselves out of bed Wednesday morning to head to Canada. We’re most likely splitting to drive into two days, stopping somewhere in Maine (perhaps around the Old Orchard Beach area) for the night, then continuing on to Saint John Thursday morning. I should get lots of stitching done in the car. At least, I had better, because I have things to do! 🙂