Emily took a band trip to Hawaii and came back with a Ukulele obcession. |
It has been 4 months since I had my ACL surgery. It went really well. I did all of my physical therapy and
graduated with an A +. (They don’t
really give grades, but Tiffany, my physical therapist, kept telling me I was a
rock star. But she has to say that!)
I do lots of cycling and hiking, and I run on the track at the nearby
school. It feels good to exercise
outside! I wear a super awesome,
gold plated, Donjoy leg brace (which I am already sick of) for all of this
activity. I am so glad the ice is gone. I love snow, but I hate ice. This was a long winter, and I will be
happy if I never have to use an elliptical machine ever again. That pilates reformer thing though, I
could use that forever.
My surgery went really well. Dr. Manion rocks.
I didn’t have a lot of intense pain. The femoral block kept my leg numb for most of 24 hours, and
I took pain meds for 4 days. I
kept my knee in the continuous motion machine pretty much constantly for a
week. I even slept with it
there. It was just more
comfortable than lying in one position all night. My scars will be minimal. Seriously, I was expecting much worse than the inch and a
half incision site. As a matter of
fact, when I finally got to take my bandages off, a week after surgery, I was
shocked. I was expecting a long
line like my sister Becki had. I
remember seriously saying “Did they do anything to me?“ when I saw how small my
incisions are. Thank goodness for
modern technology.
Sorry if I'm showing too much leg. This is my leg on Feb 8 - 3 days post op. |
This is a week later. It was like watching a sunset - the bruises. |
The bruise ended down at my foot after 3 weeks. Notice my calf muscle is pretty flabby by then. (It got better.) |
One of the funny side effects of the anesthesia is that I
forgot the first couple days afterward.
I had complete conversations with people and I don’t remember having
them. I watched all of
season 1 of Downton Abbey, and I vaguely remember it. One of the funniest things is that I sent a text message to
a friend in Texas, and after I pushed send, I realized that I had sent an
almost identical message a week before – the day after my surgery, and I have
no recollection of sending it. I
say I didn’t have a lot of pain, but maybe I did and I just don’t remember.
So, long story made short: My surgery went well.
I feel like I have a normal knee, but I still have to wear a brace and I
can’t do anything “athletic” until September. I am really looking forward to that.
I love summer in Alaska. This one started and stopped several times. We even had a very late snow storm –
one of the latest on record. May
17 we got almost 6 inches! I love
snow, but I was really looking forward to walking on bare pavement at that
point, so everyone got a little mental until it melted. And melt it did. A week later, we had temperatures in
the 70’s. Just to keep that in
perspective, last summer we had maybe 4 days over 70. It has gotten over 70 almost every day in June. It is very warm. I love it. It makes me laugh to see all of us lovely, pasty-white
Alaskans in shorts.
Summer also brings animals. I was sitting in our front room, practicing my cello (I
played with the ward choir on “Love at Home”) when I noticed there was a really
big black dog on the edge of our front yard. Only, it wasn’t a dog.
The black bear lumbered up to our next door neighbor’s house and pushed
over their trash can and ran off with a bag of chips. In the mean time, I called the kids over to see, and Caleb
thought it would be great to let the dog out. So, Smudge did the doggy Mohawk thing (hackles up) and
started barking viscously (she really is a sweet dog, so that is unusual),
which is the same time the bear ran off.
Silly little dog, thinks she can take on a bear!
(She tried taking on a possum (or opossum – whichever you
prefer) in Australia, apparently.
I only know this because I talked to her previous owners, and I saw the claw the vet took out of her
lymph node last week! She kept getting an infection just under
her jaw, which would swell up really big – like a golf ball. We took her in and she had surgery twice
to get it out. Silly dog.)
That was the only bear we have seen this year, but I know
there have been others. I see
their scat – it looks like someone took a shovel and dumped a load of compost
(in the spring) or blueberries (in the fall). And the neighbors tell me about it.
There is also the moose (plural) in our yard. One night the kids decided to sleep out
on the deck. They wanted to sleep
on the grass, but with the bears around, I thought not. They made it to about 1:30 AM, which is
twilight, when a large moose decided to graze in our yard. It was pretty noisy, and they all came
in. Probably good they did,
because they were being eaten by mosquitoes.
Just for the record, every place we have lived has claimed
to have the biggest mosquitoes (that, and they all tell that joke about someone
locking their car at church so people will stop giving them zucchini!) I have heard all of the jokes about
mosquitoes being the state bird, unidentified flying objects, or mosquitoes
hitting you back if you hit them.
Alaska officially has the biggest mosquitoes. Australia officially has the most annoying mosquitoes, and
bugs in general. I suspect that
Louisiana and Texas would have had similar mozzies to Australia, but they spray
for them.
We have had several other moose in our yard. They like the lilac bush, and have
pretty much killed the maple tree.
They eat the tips off the branches, and strip the tree of bark. Yes, moose eat bark and twigs. Yum. When I finally plant a garden, I am going to have to put a
fence around it to keep the moose out.
Speaking of animals, here is Abby and her hamster, Cheddar. I call it Houdini. It has escaped a dozen times from two different cages. |
Things grow really fast here. It is like they are on steroids. Right now, we have 19.5 hours of daylight. Even when the sun goes down, it has
only dipped below the horizon. It
makes it really hard to stay on schedule.
We forget to eat dinner until 8, and then forget to go to bed until
11. Even then, it is hard to
remember to be tired. After
sitting in a dark room for a few minutes, we remember again and go to
sleep. Alaska is manic/depressive,
and this is definitely the “manic” part.
We visited the ice sculpture contest in Fairbanks in March. It was awesome. Here we are with my uncle Greg's family. They are moving to Japan this month. Sniff sniff. |
The kids are all out of school for the summer and we are
having a great time. Bryce got a
job refereeing soccer games.
The other kids have soccer practice. We have a large stack of books to read on those rainy days,
but so far, we have had only sun!
Yeah! Which means, we have
been doing a lot of mountain biking and hiking. We have had volleyball camp and girls camp and EFY are coming. It is nice to have everyone home. Mostly.
Abby and I in an ice house in Fairbanks. Don't let the sun fool you. It was COLD! |
Bryce. Self portrait. |