I’m a big girl now
Between tentative first steps on my own two feet and a real big girl bedroom, things are looking up!
We finally got into our new place in the last couple of days after a week of painters, cleaners, and floor people prepped it for us. We’ve been slowly moving our life over and tonight we’ll be sleeping on this side of the wall for the second time!
We haven’t tackled the wall removal yet but we made a hole a couple square feet big so the cats could wander between both suites. Luna - of course - ran right through and hasn’t looked back, having thoroughly moved into the new digs. As expected, Darwin has not warmed quite as quickly.
When we first made the hole early yesterday he ran right up and was very curious, promptly jumping through to the other side. Once there, he took one quick look around from where he stood, freaked out, and ran not only back to the original side but straight to the back of our place and hid in the bedroom. Incidentally this passage into new space shattered the structure and safety of his universe.
Last night we brought him over to the new side and blocked the way into the old house and we were happy to find him on the bed (as opposed to under the bed where he kept hiding) cuddling and purring with us when we woke up. We thought this might mean he’d accepted it and would begin exploring, but the moment we got out of bed he hid back underneath it once more.
Today he’s been back and forth many times - mostly with quick runs from one to the other, only starting to even think about really exploring this evening. Mostly he runs back everytime there is a noise, but he seems to be figuring it out!
I’ve been thinking about design plans mostly. It’s tough because anything we do we have to un-do when we eventually move out at some unknown (likely very far off) point in the future, so you have to calculate literally double the work with any change. If we paint now, we need to paint back to white when we leave, and so on.
We’re probably a little shy of the paint as in the Blue Olive side of the suite we have a very large red wall which took somewhere around 6-8 coats of premium paint. Apparently red and yellow are both like that. Conversely, our turquoise entry was only 2 coats, and that is more indicative of what any regular colour would take, which is fairly manageable.
On the decor side, it’s such an open canvas. I’ve been planning my dining room (!!), and that’s about as far as I’ve gotten. I have a gorgeous huge rustic wood table picked out along with chairs, and a complementary red and orange colour scheme for that. We like to entertain so with our new table we should be able to easily seat 10-12 people for dinner, which is fantastic.
Colours for the bathroom and bedroom have been chosen, and I really just need to go shopping for that. Paint is still up in the air - everything is freshly painted white which is a decent base to even leave as is, but we’ll see.
Business is busy as it is summer of course, although still a little more mellow than the last couple of years - on purpose - which is nice. Things are looking great for the rest of the year as well as next summer, which is good. Plans are slowly in the works for the launch of the new studio as well but that will come in the fall when things slow down here.
Leg wise, things are improving but seemingly endlessly slow. Physio once a week and lots of stretching and excercise on my own. I’m walking without crutches at all at home and for short distances on smooth surfaces, with the limp more or less pronounced depending on how tired I am. I can walk more every day though, so that is good. Of course, more by my standards means that I can make a trip around the grocery store or down the block to Steamworks, but that is about my limit in one trip for now. Baby steps, right?
My knee seems to be gaining stability but still does have a lot of movement so it’s strange to think about it actually getting back to normal at some point. Walking straight is fine, planting my foot and pivoting or putting any force on it other than straight down (ie: pushing something heavy with my foot to either side) is pretty much out of the question. The knee doesn’t hurt too much walking, just aches mostly but does hurt if I’m bending it and putting weight on it. My ankle and foot are still pretty sore, feeling like I’ve been standing on my feet for a very long 12 hour wedding day pretty much at all times.
My foot still swells an extreme amount limiting which shoes I can wear. It’s funny too because there have been a few days - today being one of them - where it’s swollen much less than normal even after being on my feet a lot of the day, and those days have been the ones where it hurts the most. I think I’d rather have the swelling!
Still on the waitlist for an MRI which will give more info on surgery in the future, but as much healing and muscle building as can be done before then is best, so it’s not urgent.
In non-Grandma news, I had a quick story to share. If I were part of the cool kids with an iPhone I would have pictures and it would have been blogged before I was even home, but alas, this will have to do.
We were at Save On buying groceries today and I grabbed a bundle of 5 single orange gerbera daisy stems because they are pretty and were well priced. We got to the till and the lady doing the bagging took my loose daisies, wrapped a grocery bag around the very bottom of the stems (leaving the actual flowers completely uncovered) and dropped them on the pile of other bags, which would have been quickly followed by bags of heavy boxes and cans she was clearly planning to add to the pile.
I grabbed my flowers and asked if she could please have them wrapped so they wouldn’t be damaged. You know, that thing that they are always offering when you get to the till with loose flowers but you normally turn them down? Ya, that.
So she disappears to the flower station for a long time while the rest of our groceries are being rung through and bagged. Finally, as we are ready to leave, she comes back.
The useless grocery bag has been removed, and my loose flowers are handed back with a single thin ribbon wrapped around the stems, the flowers themselves still entirely unprotected, no paper in sight, and needing to be carefully carried on my lap the entire way home so they would get here undamaged.
Humans are awesome!