same as the old year? I hope not.
This is the year that I will get unstuck.

2008 already seems far away, a distant memory. Like a receding shoreline pounded by the waves or a receding hairline.

2008 was the year that the brilliant VESID personnel demanded a return-to-work order after a routine vertigo "attack." Again, I ask, WHAT WORK? Since I don't wish to beat that particular dead horse anymore, I shall leave that one dangling.


2008 was also the year that my dad moved three times. He moved from his home with his almost ex-wife #3 to a pullman apartment to our home in the middle of nowhere and then back to his home with his almost ex-wife #3.

I learned a lot of things when my dad was living here for a couple months. Some of those
things I didn't wish to learn and some I did.

My dad succeeded where no one else had since my accident-- I learned how to maintain a
simple house-cleaning schedule. Now I wish I could have had him visit after my accident.
Earlier after my accident rather. At any rate, the house is slowly rising from the plague of
the dust bunnies.

The other things I learned are more of a private nature and thus I will not record them here.


2008 was the year that I discovered Second Life (tm to Linden Labs). Second Life is total eye candy to someone like me who loves visual effects and animations. Over there I've been learning a bit of simple scripting and some 3D building. That is the part that makes Second Life different from blogging.


My goals for 2009:
to remain abstinent as defined in the program of Narcotics Anonymous.
to complete my book and submit it.
to remain married and faithful.
to increase our financial stability as a couple and mine as me.
to continue to monitor my health proactively.
to blog on any of the blogger blogs twice a week and on the journal blogs once a week.
to address the things that I allow to keep me stuck.

I hope for everyone a well new year. And if not a well one, then at least a weller one.

sapphoq healing tbi

Labels: goals, Peter Kahrmann, t.b.i., tbi, traumatic+brain+injury, vertigo, VESID, VESID sucks

Dear People,

I am sorry I haven't been here once again.
I fell several weeks ago while walking-- landed flat on my back-- and fell again three days after that.  Actually I fainted after a shower.  I fell on my right side but fortunately had protected my head with my arm.

My back, which wasn't great due to the motor vehicle accident I'd been in that also gave me the traumatic brain injury, is now a spasming mess on the right side.  Can't hardly bend to the right, can't move the right arm out to reach all that much, can't get in or out of a chair without extreme pain and difficulty.

Two trips to the doc resulted in a script for physical therapy which I am glad to say I will be starting next week.  The muscle spasms in my back aren't bad as long as I don't breathe, shift positions, or move in any way.  Traction is beginning to look like something desirable.

I will be back when I can.  Meanwhile:

1).  Happy Christmas and happy everything else too,
2).  I hope that the president-elect is able to help the u.s.a. out of the mess we are in but I sorta think we are screwed anyways,
3).  I saw two pileated woodpeckers the other day pecking on a telephone pole while they were hanging upside down.  Very beautiful.

Be well my friends.  And if you can't be well, then be weller.

spike

Dad has come to live with us. He has some dementia and some aphasia. So now there are two brain-damaged people in the house-- me, and Dad.

Now I know that the official words for my brain damage is "t.b.i." or "traumatic brain injury." The reality is that traumatic brain injury equals brain damage. My brain damage was acquired after the age of 21 in a motor vehicle accident. It is brain damage nonetheless. One physical therapist from Sunnyview Hospital in Schenectady tried to tell me that "brain damage" sounds like one is "damaged" somehow. Yes, my brain is damaged. Why not just call it what it is?

Dad has some restlessness and is wanting to do housework and fix up the house when he is not sleeping in front of the television set. Last week, we decided to stain/waterproof the back deck. First we had to locate the two buckets of stain and the brushes. That wasn't any problem as my friend Ed had given us those things and they were sitting by the back door. Then we had to wait for a sunny day. That happened.

It was a very sunny day. And hot, considering that we live next door to Alaska. So Dad insisted that we wear long-sleeved shirts. The stain getting on our skin would ?eat it? stain it? At any rate, on went the hot shirts. Then there are the latex gloves-- same reason. We started working out of one bucket but then that went to, "Here's another bucket spike. You use your own."

There was lots of staining, doing and redoing. I redid some of Dad's area and he redid some of mine. Two half-gallons were left when we got done. Between us, the stained deck was definitely personalized. There are some drips and dots from my work. And some heavier stained areas from Dad's work. With two brain-damaged people staining a deck, the results will be interesting. A guarantee.

Yesterday, Dad decided that we should put together a clothes rack with vinyl bag hooked onto it for the clothes he has that he no longer wears. This particular clothes rack/vinyl bag thing was manufactured in mainland China. And I swear whoever wrote the instructions hit the "from mandarin to english" button on babelfish. To complicate things further, Dad dumped all of the numbered poles out of their respective bags. The first attempt came out with two longer sides and two shorter sides. There was a break then during which I hoped in futility that Dad would forget about this particular tortorous clothes rack/vinyl bag thing. Didn't happen.

After some "Divorce Court" on teevee, we went back upstairs for a second go 'round. This time we managed to get the vinyl bag installed but then the poles kept pulling out of their holes. And so this clothes rack/vinyl bag thing stands loosely in a corner looking more like a modern art structure than anything remotely functional.

Because of my difficulties with multi-tasking, perhaps I would have had a shot at putting the thing together if left alone in a cave far away from human civilization. No chance of success yesterday. Dad kept up a running commentary as we were working. And between my t.b.i.-related perception problems and Dad's dementia-related perception problems, shoving poles into holes at flush 90 degree angles was not a task destined for fantastic results. Husband said he will "look at it" today.

I think there is something to be said for joining a nudist colony and forgetting about clothes and things like that.

sapphoq healing tbi

Dad moved in and things have been busy.  I will update as soon as I can and make the reading rounds too.  spike

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