🏷️ love

7/6/2013

a week of vacation (mostly) with my beautiful fiancee... so sad to be heading back to reality, even tho I love my everyday life. this week we did a lot of work toward integrating our space and stuff. unfortunately, there is very little space so it was hard to add much of Dianne's stuff. what she does have is more present and I packed away some stuff. We also went to Canandaigua for Phish and ended the week camping at landrus and a 9am meeting today.

Dianne's first surgery was almost exactly a year ago. We took this leap of faith, a blind jump into each other's lives, because we both wanted and needed each other more than we could imagine being apart for an unknown, unpredictable amount of time. We thought she might be staying with me for a few months, and then in a couple of months, we realized that we wanted to live together. here it is July and we're just now able to implement the plan. We realized we can't get a bigger apartment right now, we're gonna be here a bit and Dianne's starting school in late August. and we have a wedding to plan!

We have a date, an officiant and a location! I love you, beautiful!

We've had the best day! We started with an excellent breakfast cooked by some cute boys, then gathered our gear for a ride to windmill point park in Fort Erie. The peace bridge inclines weren't as bad as I thought they'd be, but the non-path provided for bikers is CRAZY. with as many bikers as we saw crossing the bridge, you'd think we wouldn't feel like the first riders ever. It was incredibly dangerous crossing the traffic lanes. I'm glad we get to skip the lines tho.

however, friendship trail is amazing!!! The ghost park is so neat and I loved the interpretive signage. it's a beautiful, well maintained pathway that if you take it far enough, gets you to British Columbia. well before that, you get to windmill point park, a spring-fed flooded quarry. We swam and dove of the little cliff. so fun! The ride back seemed really quick and easy, even the huge peace bridge incline. my tummy doesn't like the bridge, or maybe seeing the moving water. I almost panicked on the way over, but on the way back I just focused on watching @Dianne's cute ass instead of trying to sightsee.

next, dinner!

I'd also love to be riding bike, but enjoying a healing sunshiny day is about perfect.

I have defeated the ice machine! I made ice last for 24 hours!! The trick is to freeze fairly big blocks of ice - I used some ~20oz plastic food containers. The ice slips out with just a quick run under water. Then I filled the rest of the machine with some smaller blocks made from little soda cans and regular ice cubes. I don't recommend the little soda cans - the edges were too sharp after I cut off the top. The bottoms of half gallon milk jugs would probably work well but I like being able to close and stack the tupperwares.

@Dianne is recovering well from surgery for the most part. She's able to make her own coffee already!

I am so grateful to Tanya, @bluevelvetjack, Mykal, @terry and @YesThatCasey for their visits and hostess gifts of ice, beer and mayonnaise.

I got a better night's sleep last night and I'm not so whiny. D's in a LOT of pain - she just weeps from it. She did one set of exercises yesterday, but she overdid it and tried to achieve what she's supposed to do by next Friday. Today, I wouldn't let her time the exercises, I made her listen to her body to determine what is "too much". She did two sets today. @bluevelvetjack hung out with her today while I went to the office for a while.

@Dianne's surgery went well yesterday. There wasn't a partial rotator cuff tear, so it was a lot of clean up. They used words in this article to describe it to me: and said these words too but the recovery listed in the second article seems incompatible with what the nurses and doctor said after the surgery. So confusing. The staff at the surgical center were super nice and remembered us from the last surgery in July.

Tanya brought two huge bags of ice and sat with D for nearly three hours while I attempted to acquire the critical pain and anti-inflammation meds. I only partially succeeded and I'm very frustrated by that. @terry visited so we could talk about work - we've seen each other in the office two days in the past three weeks. (Really, three weeks??) Our associate @ejtower had a new exciting job fall into his lap and is leaving Monday. We hired a replacement for him and they're hanging in the office transferring knowledge and skills. We're adding a part-time tax person and trying out a part-time admin/data entry person. Crazy growth this year!!

Keeping D's ice machine filled with ice is one of my biggest challenges in this process. The machine has no insulation, which is just idiotic. Very similar to this It needs refilled about every five hours, which means getting up in the middle of the night to fill it with ice and water. (Ones with insulation like a cooler exist, I don't know why we have this one.) I'm glad there's a bit of snow left because the freezer is full of food, so one of the big bags stayed out in a snowbank last night. Luckily this part only lasts three-four days, although she will need ice as she does her physical therapy exercises for the next several weeks.

My brain is fuzzy from worry, anxiety and lack of sleep and my eyes hurt from crying.

having a romantic dinner at coco before the dead show at the tralf.

@Dianne's second shoulder surgery is scheduled for Monday. After a week of being sick and then a blizzard, we're rather behind in our prep work. the apartment is reasonably clean, but we need to do laundry, get the brakes fixed on the truck, go to bloss, go grocery shopping, hit up target, and still have as much fun as possible in the limited time left. if her recovery is like the first surgery, it'll be close to two months before D can drive again, a few weeks before she can shower on her own, and at least a month before she can sleep in bed with me. that's probably the hardest part of it, not sleeping together. I will miss her touch the most. I'm treasuring each time she wraps her arms around me.

the cold and snow will have a significant impact on her independence - she just can't risk falling- and shivering hurts tremendously. hopefully I've prepared her pretty well (new coat, boots, gloves, hats, layers).

it's been a hard month. my beautiful puppy Nisha died, we've had ongoing bad news about D's legal situation, she got into that fight, then a sweet but somewhat lonely Christmas, flu, cancelled new years, blizzard... the wedding was a real joy, as were our couple of game nights (never enough gaming). I cherish our friends and hope that we don't strain those relationships because of our neediness over the coming weeks and months. oh, and for really fun things to look forward to... tax season starts now!

I hope to make the most of the next five days by being present for each precious moment, holding D every chance I get, and dancing wildly Saturday night at the Tralf. join us? :-)