Holy Saturday, walking, jumping off a bridge, trudging through life, metaphorical marshmallows

Before I share what I wrote, some scene setting.

Originally posted in 2010, Fred Clark is in the habit of reposting his Holy Saturday post on the day before Easter.  If one reads the link address it's "holy-saturday-6" so either he hasn't done it every year, or he's changed up the name at least once.  (The original wouldn't have a number, thus out of eight years he's done it seven.)  But it's consistent enough that it's a bit of a tradition.

The point of the post is that for those of us not coming face to face with miracles and proof and so forth, every day is this Saturday.  Jesus died on Friday, he doesn't rise till Sunday.  This is the point in which any wondrous fantastical things are in the past, any certainty has yet to come, and there is no proof that things will ever get better, that promises will be kept, that . . .

It's a very human part of Christian holy week.  Things fall apart.  The center cannot hold.

We can hope, we can pray, we can have faith, we can believe, but we cannot know.

Or something like that.

Anyway, that's a bit of context.  I posted this in the comments:

~ ~ ~

Monday is the day when Cadbury Eggs are on sale. A truly wonderful day indeed. Unfortunately I don't think I can partake this year.

I may finally be able to move from crutching to crutch assisted walking, but getting to a store and back? That's beyond me, I think.

After working so hard to keep my left foot from so much as grazing up against anything for two months, it's mentally difficult to walk. The first time I intentionally put my weight on my left foot most of the effort was involved in forcing myself to lift my right foot. Yes the X-rays came in and I was told left-foot could take the weight I'd be putting on it, yes I was keeping more than half my weight on the right crutch so the left foot wouldn't have to carry too heavy of a load, but it was . . . like jumping off a bridge.

You stand at the edge of a bridge and tell your body to jump. It doesn't. You look at the water beneath, you remind yourself that you've done it many times before and there's nothing to be afraid of. You close your eyes, gather your resolve, open them, and try to jump. You don't move. You step away from the edge, pace a bit, convince yourself that your ready, go back to the edge. And don't jump. It's like your body isn't listening to you.

Eventually, though, you do jump. Eventually. Maybe it even gets easier with time. It's fun jumping off bridges, after all, and you kind of want to invite all your friends because if you get to jump off a bridge then all your friends should too, right?

But before "eventually" when you're at the edge of the bridge with open air before you and a long drop below you, that's what it was like.

It was like my body wouldn't listen to me. Like I told it, "Right foot, lift up," and it had a mind of its own with which it said, "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!? If I do that the then left foot will take the weight and the pain will defy description. I'm not fucking moving one bit!"

But as of yesterday I am walking. As of yesterday I'm back on my hormones and hopefully this mood-fucked state of pseudo-depression, and every muse refusing to communicate with me, and lacking the motivation to brush my teeth so I end up never getting to bed, and so forth, will lift.

Things, could, perhaps, go back to normal.

And normal is a series of Saturdays.

I never really have reason to believe that things will work out. Because of financial fuckery every time non-monthly expenses come up (e.g. $647 due on the 11th of May) it seems like the end is nigh. A lot of times I have no hope. The police put a gun to my sister and beat up her boyfriend eight months ago when even they say they had no reason (the only charge is resisting arrest when they never said anyone was under arrest, everyone complied with their commands, and they fully admit there was no cause to make an arrest) and the fallout still hasn't fucking ended. Things seem to get worse and not better.

But I always trudge on, not so much literally these days, and the sky seems to persist in not falling.

I wouldn't call it faith, and I'm not sure it qualifies as hope, but from experience I've learned that if you just survive long enough, eventually something good will happen.

Maybe that's what the endless string of Saturdays really teach us: if you endure and try to do the right thing, maybe things won't all turn out horribly all the time. Sure, things might crash and burn, but if you survive and persist maybe you can roast marshmallows on the flames.

- - -

I added a second post to note that the bridge I generally jump off of if I'm jumping off of a bridge is precisely high enough to shout, "Holy Zarquon's singing fish!" between when you leave the bridge and you hit the water.  I feel this is a perfectly good way to evaluate bridge height.

Also, anyone who wants to help my sister right now, vote for her grant proposal.  You can do it once per day.  Anyone who wants to help me, I've talked about how I accept donations so much you've probably got it memorized.  Monthly financial post will be a bit delayed because of a bunny that delivers eggs or some such.

Predawn light (ankle and general health post)

They took new X-rays and all is good.  I'm to start walking with crutches, which is very different from straight up crutching.

Straight up crutching uses one leg and two crutches and has you moving via a series of vaults.  Plant crutches ahead of you, push off good leg, move in crutch-defined arc, land on good leg, repeat.  It's fast, somewhat intensive, and nothing like walking.  The entire point is to never let the bad leg/foot/thing touch anything.

Walking with crutches is entirely different.  As far as your leg movement is concerned you're just walking.  Where the difference comes in is that when your good leg is up the crutch (or crutches, but usually just the one) is down.  This distributes your weight across two or three (again, usually one crutch so just two) ground contacts and keeps your bad leg from taking the full force of your weight.

From walking with a crutch I'm to use my own judgement as to when I just plain walk (there will be a brace involved) and again to when I walk entirely unassisted.

So, today I start walking, by the time of my next check up, which is another six weeks, I should be walking without any outside help.  Obviously the metal crap inside of my foot will be providing inside help.

~ ~ ~

Honestly, I don't give much of a shit about that.  My prognosis was always good.  Someday I'll be back to 100% and yada, yada, yada.  Another week or two before I could try walking wouldn't have bothered me too much.

Here's what I give significant shits about: We've reached the point where surgery related blood-clot risk is no longer enough of a concern to keep me off of my hormones.

It takes time to change a system, things won't get better overnight any more than they got worse.  In fact, in my experience it usually takes a longer for mood to recover than it does for it to degrade.  But at least it can start getting better.

At least this fucking pseudo-depression can start to go away.

At least the fog in my brain can start to lift.

I have no idea how long the change for the better will take, but it begins today.  A new day is coming at some point.  It might not be light yet, but there's a glimmer.

Things I need, things I want

I need more socks and replacement shoes.  I need oil.  I need food.

These four things represent different ways of going about things.

~ ~ ~

Socks can come from anywhere.  I tend to go to some godless chain store that is destroying all good things in the universe, like say a Walmart, and just buy a package with a lot of cheap socks.  On the other hand, when someone gave me a gift certificate to Sock Dreams it meant that I got some fucking fantastic socks with quality I'd never set out to get myself.

So, yeah, wide range of socks.

Wide range of ways people can help with them.

~ ~ ~

For shoes definitely need them a lot (the sole is coming off of my right shoe in a way that could knock me to the ground in a way I can't really afford) but at the same time, I'd like to get good shoes.  Now the good shoes that I used to have, and really liked, are out of production.  I dug them up (I knew I'd never gotten around to disposing of them) and double checked that.

They haven't been replaced with a new model, they're flat out gone.

I think this is as close as I can come.  Men's because the women's ones are offered in crap colors.  Of course this requires me to learn my shoe size again.  The super old shoe I dug up from the era when I had good shoes is a 10 1/2 wide (also men's), but I honestly have no idea if that was the right size or more like "Close enough".

It's also the sort of thing I'd probably never buy for myself because there are other places where the $99 might reasonably go.  At the moment I'm primarily focusing on paying down high interest debt, for example.

I'll probably end up buying cheap shoes when someone is able to take me to a place that has them.

Of course, money grubbing person that I am, I'll point out that it's possible to get me an LL Bean gift card (apparently it'd get sent straight to my email cpw [at] maine [dot] rr [dot] com.)  It's interesting to me that they say "never expires" like that matters.  This is Maine (they're based in Freeport) and it's illegal to have a gift card expire here.  Unless the company goes bankrupt, the gift card will be good.

~ ~ ~

Oil I've already ordered, I should get a price quote within the next 24 hours.  I expect it to be around $300-ish.  Only way to help me with that is a donation.

~ ~ ~

Food is . . . complicated.  Even as I get more and more able to do things, food preparation is still not on the list.  So I've been ordering things delivered.

That's simple and straight-forward enough, I need money just like with the oil.  (Also expensive as all fuck.)

Where it gets complicated is that I don't know what delivers around her, general internet services to hook you up with delivery places don't know much of anywhere either, and . . . yeah.

Anyone know the delivery scene in the greater Portland area in Maine?

* * *

I want various impossible things, like to be able to go back on my hormones now as opposed to waiting until it's safe (because this demi-depressed state fucking sucks.)

But on the possible side of things, I mostly want interactive fiction.  I want to go to other worlds and do other things and make noticeable progress toward clear goals.  I want a vacation from the real because it's kind of sucking.  Hell, it sucked before I broke my ankle.

I want Kingdom Hearts with the two items on the PS4 wishlist representing nine-ish games of content between them (only six playable) and the three on the list for the 3DS (which I theoretically will have) representing the playable versions of the two unplayable games, and one that had different gameplay mechanics after the system switch.  (Thing nine is an original, as in never a game, cinematic thing delivered in the same way as the two non-playable games.)

I want Breath of the Wild, and to a lesser extent Dishonored 2 which is on the same list and apparently on sale.

I want to be able to immerse myself in other places, other times, other worlds, other people, other everything, because I'm stuck one room most of the time with little that I can do.

I do have non-interactive fiction potential getaways too.  There's a reason that Deep Red is the top movie on this list that I'd forgotten existed until Ana asked me if I could put useful stuff on a wishlist.  That reason is that it's been far too long, I barely remember the movie, and I decided to try to sort the damned list.  Is the list sorted?  Only the stuff that comes above the puzzles.

Get beyond that and there's a lot of "Whut?" and fair amount of, "Ok, I'll grant that this seemed like a good idea at the time, but HOW did it seem like a good idea at the time?"  And also no hierarchy whatsoever.

Nostos

I've been out of state.

That might not seems like the best thing to do, but it meant spending time living with other people.  (Broken ankle is much easier to manage when someone can carry stuff from one room to another and actually make food.)  It was also part of a plan (or was it a plot?) to inject something up into this broken ankle time.

See, there was a concert.

Apparently once something has happened all record of it ceases to exist, so I can't link to anything, but it was Dar Williams at the Cabot Theater in Beverley, Mass.

That was one day after I made the journey from home to Massachusetts, and five days after the concert, which was yesterday, it was time to come home.

This is, as you might imagine, a bit of a process.

~ ~ ~

I didn't have to worry about losing my hat on the way home as I'd lost it on the way over.  There was the obligatory forgetting of important things (the two external hard drives on which my computer had been backed up) and all of the usual stuff.

But the thing is . . . I'm fatter and weaker than I used to be, somehow my backpack seemed to weigh as much as a twelve year old, and the T is . . . the T.

Thus I started off absurdly early in hopes of maybe catching my bus.

~ ~ ~

Oak Grove does at least have elevators.  The elevator doors have a habit of only opening half way when they're supposed to open, and getting open the rest of the way sometime in the following week.  This is fucked up, and while it doesn't inconvenience me I have seen it, and could have figured out without the seeing of it, be really fucking unhelpful to a person in a wheelchair.

Also, I spent a good deal of time wishing for a wheelchair.

Anyway, I crutched from drop off to elevator, then from elevator to bench.  Then I rested.  If I were walking this would be absurd.

After a while I made my way to the place where you pay, I'd actually acted like an intelligent person and taken the Charlie Card (an RFID card that you put money on electronically so that you can use the Boston T by holding said card up to a reader which is a lot faster than other means of payment) out before getting off the bench.

Another elevator, much exertion to get to the damned train.  Normally I go to the far end, because that's where my exit is.  I barely made it to the near end in time to catch what was, I think, the second train to leave since I was dropped off.

Also, it was fucking cold, and something about the combination of crutches and my backpack kept making my shirt ride up.

I usually describe the behavior of the Orange Line as it goes outbound.  Inbound is . . . well, stuff.

At Oak Grove, which is the end of the line, it's a ground train.  Next stop is Malden Center.  For that it's a full blown L (elevated) train.  Then it goes back to the ground, crosses the water, comes into the place with the giant Lego Giraffe (actually Duplo, but Duplo is a Lego brand), and really starts to flirt with the idea of being an L again, but comes back down to earth for the stops themselves.

A while later it's underground and we have achieved subway.

Downtown Crossing is my stop.  Downtown Crossing has no elevators.  Downtown Crossing has a sign saying that elevators will be installed.  I was told that they said it would take seven months.  This was said a year ago.

But before we even get to the lack of elevators, remember that I'm on the wrong end of the train.

I think I have to stop and rest two times just to walk from one end of the platform to the other.

When I get to the stairs down to the Red Line I take a third rest.  I am, by now, drenched in sweat.

For most of the way there's a sturdy railing, this is good because going down stairs on crutches sucks.  I'm very slow and get in various peoples ways.

At the end of the stairs, though, something changes.  For the last few steps.  Just three or four of them between a landing and platform level, the railing ceases to be a good railing because it's no longer bolted to the fucking wall.

Thus I have to sit on my ass and slowly butt slide down the final stairs.  There's no one there right then, so I have a sort of mini-break.

It's not enough.  I don't even make it down the hall, drop to my knees at a hall intersection, the intersection makes it wider, so I hope that I won't be too much in the way.

Multiple trains let off people going between the Red Line and Orange Line.  Several of the people wonder if I need help, if I'm dying, if they should call emergency services on my behalf, and so forth.

I eventually reach the Red Line just as a train leaves.

I don't remember if I got there in one trip or not.  It seems unlikely, but I don't remember stopping.

Anyway, I got to the good place to get on the train.

I was only on for one stop, but damn was it nice to be able to sit.  (I'd also been not-up while waiting for the train to come.)

~ ~ ~

Once I got off at South Station I walked to the wall opposite the tracks and collapsed.

I didn't quite stay there until the next train came, but it was close.

I remembered that south station did have elevators and actually used it to get to T-Loby level.

The elevator to ground level, however, is out of service.  Ish.

Now I was drenched in sweat before I even got on the train that brought me here, so as one might imagine I'm not exactly trying to add heat to myself.  My coat is sort of tied around my waist (the sleeves aren't quite long enough to make a decent knot) and definitely not keeping me warm.

Thus we come to the "ish".

I was fully willing to take the escalator.  The up escalator was shut down.  Not just shut down.  The only reason I remembered that South Station has elevators in the first place is because the up escalator from the platform was also shut down.  This one, however, is shut down and blocked off as if it is the scene of a nuclear waste spill.

So, the "ish".  There is an elevator to ground level.  It just isn't inside the station.  It lets you out outside of the building, and then you have to go through the death-cold to get back inside South Station.

Finding the elevator required enough energy that I had to drop to the ground and rest before using it.

Getting from the elevator back into the building required another period of rest.

It's a bit hazy until I sat at one of the tables and took off my bag for rest where I was sitting on an actual chair.

There were clocks.  I had time.  Seriously.  There was over an hour until my bus left.

And I was really fucking thirsty, and (having recovered from the outside's death cold) back to overheating.

When I was sufficiently rested I went over to the place next to the pink berry and got a strawberry banana smoothy, put as much weight on the counter as I could to take it off of my right leg which was, remember, doing all of the work.  Work that's more than normal. even before you take the fact that one leg is doing all of it into account, because you don't walk with crutches, you vault.

Smoothy comes and we have the difficult and strange hopping of someone who's only using one crutch, well using both crutches as if they're a single crutch, because they need a hand free to carry a smoothy.

I'm kind of surprised I actually made it back to the table and chair place.

Some brain freeze troubles, but otherwise the smoothy was very good and something that I needed.

The moment I decide to get up and go to the bus terminal, boarding is announced on track one.

South Station is in three sections.  Below ground, and at the front, is the T.  Red Line and Silver Line.  Above ground, and in the front to front-middle, is the waiting area of the long distance trains.  This is full of food places and . . . um, stuff.

Occupying the entire rest of the middle (which is definitely the biggest section) is an outdoor area where the long distance trains board.

At the back is the second building that makes up South Station: the bus terminal.

So to get from where I was to where I was going I had to go outside, for a fair distance, and here's the annoying part: there is no dedicated way to get from front South Station to back South Station.  Instead you walk down the boarding platform for track one.

If timing is right, that's not too much of a problem, but if you happen to have the misfortune of moving from one end to the other when track one is boarding . . . it's a hassle even when you can walk.

So I waited longer than planned, and even so I got in people's way because I was slow, and I had to take breaks (did I mention that the temperature was death-cold?), and more people enquired as to my well being or lack thereof.

Once I got inside the bus terminal the first thing I did was take another break.  The windows have sills that are perfect for sitting on.

The elevator here did work, so that's what I did once I could.

That only gets you one floor, though, and you need to to go two.

Nice stone bench for a break in between the two elevators.

Up the next one, still haven't missed my bus, go to where the buses are, have a sort of mini standing-break at the entrance, and then get to where my bus is in, I think, one push.  And promptly collapse because that's overdoing it.  I was in fact trying to begin the process of getting to the ground to sit.  But no one who saw could have mistaken what happened for intentional.

It was, however, a clean landing on hands and knees.

I should probably mention something about my right hand at this point though.  Before the concert I slipped on black ice (it hurts pedestrians too) in a Subway (sandwich place) parking lot.  Landed on my hands.  The thumb section of my right palm didn't like this, but it wasn't a big deal.

All of this crutching around, though, put a a lot of pressure on my hands, including the thumb section of my right palm.

It was a very unhappy hand, is the point.

~ ~ ~

The bus ride home was largely uneventful, though Amazon did want me to know that I was running out of time to pre-order Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX (top of the wishlist) which . . . why would you remind someone of something like that?  Oh my god, come the 28th you'll be able to order-order it instead of pre-order it.  Woe is everyone if that should come to pass, buy now so you won't have to order-order!

And this is a source of minor annoyance because I thought that it came out February 28th when I put it on the wishlist.  Though, I would have put it there anyway.  I've always wanted to play Kingdom Hearts and that represents the the first six games worth of content.

I feel like there might have been other things of note on the bus, but none come to mind.

~ ~ ~

I was picked up by my dad.  From him I learned that there may be an animal in the house (beyond mice and such) that wasn't invited (but it could just as plausibly have been his eyes playing tricks on him) and that I had no oil.

As it would turn out, I did have oil.  But the house had been without heat for days.  It was cold.

When I made it down stairs (not an easy task) I discovered that the water was too low for the furnace to run, and the oil gauge was on empty.  I put in enough water, toggled the power on and off, and the thing started running.  The gauge has always been an approximation.

Of course at this point the house was really cold, I had no idea how much oil there was (no idea if it could heat the house or would burn through in a minute or two),  and . . . stuff.  I brought up an electric blanket and a blanket so heavy I haven't needed it since I've been forced by ankle to sleep up stairs, reheated my numb feet with a heating pad while the two blankets worked together to create a warm cocoon.

~ ~ ~

And that was my homecoming.

I think.

Pain

I can move water from the bedroom to the kitchen and back because of conveniently placed counters, chairs, tables, and other such things.  Set it down.  Crutch to midpoint.  Pick it up, move it in front of me, set it down, we're back at the beginning.

I can't move a cup of water from the kitchen to the living room unless I'm willing to forget about standing and crutches, and drop to my knees or crawl.

I can't cook.  I can't clean.  I can't ... I can't ... I can't.

I fucking can't.

I can't wash my clothes.  I can shower, but only just.

I had to have a child carry my laptop into this room because I can't.

I've been feeling so god damned useless and helpless, but it's necessary to heal and all that.

And I was at least succeeding in taking care of my injury.

-

I don't remember what I was getting up to do.  The pain erased any sense of that.  Maybe I didn't even know at the time.  It could have been an impulsive thing.

I got up and took two steps.  One step is fine.  Step, put weight on something else, step, and so forth is how one moves in this condition.

Two steps is very, very bad.

If I'm wearing the air cast, I can put less than half my weight on my left foot.

A second step means I put all of my fucking weight on my left foot. (I wasn't wearing the air cast.)

It's been over half an hour.  Pain still lingers.

I only had one thing to do.  Just take care of the injury.

I just fucked that up.

And it hurts.

Time for another update

As of yesterday I have a foot again.  I've got an air-cast, but I can take my foot out of it, have a look, verify that it exists, and even take a shower.  In theory on that last point.  I'll need to look around for a good waterproof thing to rest a knee on while in the shower.  What I did yesterday wasn't really a shower, but it did make me the cleanest I've been in ages.  (I fail sponge bathing forever.  Apparently that's not uncommon.)

Here's the bad news: It's going to be at least four weeks before I can return to my hormones.  That's also when they said I'd be able to walk again if things went well.  I suspect the two are related.

So that will leave me in this pseudo-depressed state for a while yet to come.

Other good news, the bills I was stressed about: not going to be a problem.  In fact I should be able to make significant progress on paying down my debt and cover those bills.

I lost another hat,  not sure if it was on the bus or the T.  I left one of my shoes in a different state (not lost, there was just complexity and confusion).  I had been hoping to wear it rather than the air cast when lightness was more beneficial than rigidity.

Sticking with shoes, I'm going to need new ones.  A couple of times on the journey my right sole tried to tear itself off of my shoe.

-

My foot still needs elevation, but I'll be returning to the fictional worlds of a more upright nature as well.  It's why I removed Dishonored II from the PS4 list and stuck the PC version on a new list that also has Breath of the Wild* because being able to be upright means both using PC games and that my Wii-U is no longer a non-entity.  Right now my only game for the Wii-U it is Splatoon.

-

I don 't know what to say if someone wants to help.  Donations will always help until I'm totally out of debt, but right now I'm not in immediate need.

The really nice thing about the wishlists, and before that when I got a gift certificate for socks, is that it's about luxuries I'd never get myself.  If one looks at sockdreams.com, which the gift certificate was for, those are better socks than I'd ever buy myself with my money.  I've wanted playstation only games since before anyone was even thinking about the eventual possibility of a PS4, but I'd never have bought myself a playstation console, and the games themselves are more expensive than I'd allow myself to pay even though I really do want to play Kingdom Hearts, for example.

That's the fun thing, about non-monetary gifts I guess.  If you give me money then I'll spend it on something I can justify to myself a reasonable expenditure.  If you get me something then it might be better than I'd ever get myself.  Thus the possibility of Breath of the Wild, or Kingdom Hearts, or a 3DS.

-

I do kind of wish I had some good way to have help buying shoes.  Ideally I tend to want durrable things that are somewhere between hiking shoes and hiking boots.  They're good shoes for all occasions.  How someone could help on that count I know not.

-

* A couple of people on the greater Slacktiverse have played Breath of the Wild and It sounds like the kind of game I've long wanted and would love.  Also I think there's some rule about needing to play Zelda at some point in your life, and I never have (stuck a couple other Zelda things on the new list.)

General Update

Primary computer is home again, I'm writing on it now, but since I'm still supposed to be keeping my left foot above my heart I'm mostly sticking to the gaming console because it's downright hard to use a laptop while supine and with primary computer there's also the fact that it's heavy.  If it slipped and fell on my head it would hurt.

I'll get a better idea of what the future looks like on the coming Thursday.  I won't be able to walk, but if I'm lucky they'll tell me I can stop worrying so much about foot elevation and if I'm very lucky they'll let me back on my hormones so my brain won't be fucky on account of being off of them.

Would be nice to have a clear head, a lack of tired, and an ability to contact my muse.  I could write stuff.  That would be good.

I'm still subsisting on delivery food because . . . you try cooking with your foot above your heart.  Unless you're a figure skater, then you probably do have that kind of flexibility and control.  Delivery food is still expensive.

-

Property insurance is due on the 20th.  *pause while I look around* I seem to misplaced the thing that says how much it is.  Usually around $250 I think.  Or $270?  *does a search* It was $272 once.  That's probably a good bet.

I've kind of been focused on other things.  Sometimes to the point of using money on them that would normally go to bills.  Hell, I think I had to pay more than half that to get primary computer backed up which they didn't fucking do properly, but I'll get back to that.

I haven't been the most on top of things so there have been late fees and a few utility bills that didn't get paid last month and so rolled over into this month.  It works out to $202.58 more than I have.  Sort of.  Maybe.

I've got more than $200 (but definitely not $474.58) from two months of patreon but I haven't been the most on top of things, like I said, and I don't know if I'll be able to get the money to me in a form I can use to pay bills before the bills are due since I basically started the process of getting the money . . . two minutes ago, and the first thing it does when you screw with those settings is put a hold on withdrawals as a security precaution.  The hold isn't excessively long, but neither is the amount of time I have before bills are due.

I think that's all of the money stuff, so we can go back to other stuff.

-

My sister's life is an unending catastrophe these days and given that my parents aren't exactly sympathetic (they excuse their actions based on the stress they've been put under without ever seeming to realize that my sister is under way more stress than they are since she's the one being fucked over) I get hit by the exhaust more than somewhat when our worlds intersect.  She can't keep it all bottled up, I get that, and so I understand that she has to vent, but it isn't pleasant.

Nor is the fact that my parents vent at me about her.

-

I've played Gravity Rush and The Last of Us (including the Left Behind DLC) all the way through, and I'll have stuff to say about that, mostly The Last of Us, as soon as I'm not so fucking tried and mood-screwed.  Which, unfortunately, might mean, "At some point when I've returned to my hormones and they've had time to build up to appropriate levels in my body," whenever the fuck that might be.

With Gravity Rush having been played I think the only thing left on my "I've wanted to play this for years, but haven't been able to because I've never had a console" list is the Kingdom Hearts series, which I've been interested in for so God damned long I don't even remember what kicked off the interest.  I just remember it kept coming up, and I kept thinking I'd like to play it, and I kept finding out, "Nope, not on PC."

Unfortunately, the console that I have it on won't have the early games until March 28th, I honestly thought when I added that to the wishlist that it said Februrary 28th.

Regardless, significant progress on the "Actually play the games I've pined for" front.

-

Regarding this computer, the fucked up story of it's repair is something I'm going to have to spend a whole post on, but the salient point for now is that the drive that the computer is actually supposed to run off of was completely ignored.  So it's working, but it's not working the way it's supposed to be working, and that'll really show up once I actually have more than an email client and internet browser installed on here.

Unfortunately this can't be fixed remotely.  I have to bring it back to the store which is ordinarily no problem but I'm not walking with a broken ankle so I have to get into the logistical nightmare that is my family.

The short version of what happened is that they pretended the fast drive didn't exist and so put the stuff that needs to go fast on the slow drive.

-

I haven't made ficition in I don't even know how long, and that seriously makes me want to cry.  Well, it makes some part of me want to cry because I can feel my body being all "I should cry now" but the truth is that it seldom succeeds when it attempts that and I doubt it will this time.

-

I think my stitches itch but I don't know for sure because I've had two glimpses of my foot (other than the toes, which stick out) in the past three and a half weeks.  I can't even confirm for sure where the stitches are.

-

I feel like existing is exhausting and I should just lay down and let darkness take me.

-

Thursday isn't just when I'll meet with the foot surgeon and get orders going forward which will let me know if I'm still a dual citizen of foot elevation land and no hormone land.

It's also when a brief but important period will start during which I'll have someone, with working feet, helping me do the whole "eat, drink, stay alive" thing.  That'll, hopefully, be a welcome change.

-

I feel like I don't matter anymore.  I'm a storyteller, if I've lost the ability to tell stories (and I have, hopefully only temporarily) what's left?

-

I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff.

Things you can do

Random list of things you can do to help me while I wait six weeks before doctors will let me even attempt walking.

• money
• gifts
• junk
• feedback
• the impossible

~ money ~

In my last post I mentioned how incredibly useful delivery food, the food in question at that time being pizza, is to me right now.  It comes to me and it doesn't require any preparation.  It's basically the only thing that's stopping my leg from making me go hungry.

Would tossing a little money in your Paypal help keep you in Pizza? (Or Chinese food or whatever else can be delivered in your neck of the woods.)

And the answer is most definitely: "Yes."

(Again there's a donate button in the upper right corner, or you can send me money through your PayPal account using my email: cpw [at] maine [dot] rr [dot] com)

With a lot of things there's lag time because I need to shuffle money through accounts until it eventually reaches the right place, but the paypal account does have a debit card that goes with it which means that I can pay for delivery using the money in the account the moment the money actually shows up in the account.

Delivery is expensive (why I've pretty much never done it before) and can't be done using food money, so if you want to do major short term help, and you have money, that's definitely something you can do to help.

Still on the topic of money, in the longer term I do have my ever-festering debt to slowly pay down.  Mind you, you'd have to tell me (you can include notes with a donation) that it was for that purpose because it's not like I have a separate pizza fund.  All paypal comes goes to the same place.

Last thing on the topic of money is that for the enduring long term, I have a Patreon account to accept monthly payments.  Speaking of, I've got to set up to get my money so far out of there so I can use it to pay bills.  I'm going to need it this month.

~ gifts ~

Not long before all this happened, someone gave me a gift certificate for socks based on them appearing on this list, unfortunately I only got to try on one pair before my left foot became unfit for socks, but they're really nice socks (thanks) and I like them and they're more than I'd ever get myself seeing as how I tend to get cheap stuff for me.

Some of the things on that list don't apply anymore (I finally got mason jars) some never made much sense (do I want a donkey?  Sure.  Can I care for one?  Not a chance in Hell) but some still apply (e.g. strong cups with large volume the better to hydrate myself.)  If you're interested in getting me something, contact me using the email above.

I can add things as well, I have an interest in playing cards and tarot cards, I know that proper runic divination uses sticks, but rune-stones are just cool looking. . . It may become apparent that I have an interest in divination.  Don't believe in it, but the interest is there none the less.

A universal remote, or any that works with my Toshiba TV, would be godsend right now.

~

There's this list which is about how I'll be spending a lot of my "supine with my leg above my heart" time.  I didn't have a console when I made it, and I put two possibilities on.  I have since cleaned up the list so it only has stuff that goes with the console (PS4) that I now have. (I dumped the rest onto this list on the off chance someone wants to get me a 3DS.)

So here's the deal with that list:

On the one hand, I think I'm good when it comes to filling time.  On the other hand I realized that playing console games the way I play computer games was a mistake.

Basically, I usually alt-tab out a lot and so even though I'm only playing one game what I'm being exposed to is a much more diverse set of stuff.  After playing Gravity Rush most of the way through I realized that I'd limited myself to one story, one setting, one set of characters, and so forth for way to long.  My creativity dried up.

The solution is simple: I need to switch between things instead of playing all the way through before starting another game like I usually would.  The problem is that for all of the gameplay time the games I have provides, there are [added:] nevermind. Just found some mail that had been set aside, probably when I was in pain post-surgery.  I've got four non-Gravity Rush settings now. [/added] only two settings (other than Gravity Rush, which I've kind of over-saturated on.)

So I don't need more games to keep me from cracking under the boredom that woul otherwise come from having to elevate my foot all the time.  But they would help me in taking proper care of my brain.  Filling the well and all that.

~ junk ~

Or obsolete stuff.  For example, if anyone recently got the latest mono-molecular edge GPU and needs a new home for the one they replaced, that's not junk by any stretch, but it would be useful to me.

So the category is more, "Stuff you don't want," but the title comes from the fact that I am interested in certain types of junk.  Sticking with tech for three paragraphs: While computer parts that work will be useful since I'm putting together a desktop for the first time in . . . ever, I also happen to find circuit board aesthetically pleasing.

Circuit board means not just computers, but calculators, and maybe phones.

I have long wanted to play Dr. Frankenstein to tech stuff, so I'd love to get the chance to make two things that don't work into one thing that does.  (And I once had a plan that involved taking a camera from a cell phone that couldn't phone and a lens-zoom assembly from a camera that couldn't camera and . . .)

Leaving tech stuff, I like fixing things in general.  For example, take broken ceramic duck, add thought and superglue, result: a sense of accomplishment and a fixed ceramic duck.  Despite what others think, broken things aren't junk, not really, they're three dimensional jigsaw puzzles.

~ feedback ~

You know how I make posts with fiction and stuff?  When people comment I treasure it an it reassures me that I'm not writing into the void.

I have never closed comments, so no matter how old something is you can say something about it.

I've been thinking about Ash a bit.  (A children's theater on tape rendition of Cinderella was played the morning I was at my sister's.)  That story is kind of rare in that it did get comments.  (Woo!)  Most stories don't seem to.

~ stuff you can't do ~

My dad did my laundry, I am now wearing clean clothes.  There was no way I could possibly get the laundry downstairs to the dryer, so I was kind of dependent on the kindness of others.

If I could just get someone to wash my dishes.

Or find the damned spiral bound notebook (maroon cover if my memory is to be trusted) that has my notes on everything in it.

post surgery ankle update

(Content note: I'm going to talk about the surgery and other medical things.)

So I mentioned how going off hormones to reduce risk of blodclot has fucked over my mood, right?

Well, that combined with other things kind of had me fairly messed up by the time surgery came around.  I'd barely slept, I was apparently dehydrated, and it had been a lot longer since I'd had a good meal than the required fasting period.

The surgery was actually a day earlier than expected because . . . Jasper?  So on Thursday morning I got dropped of at the hospital, early in the afternoon they had me get ready for surgery, and it was into the night before I got out.

You sleep through it, but waking up involves reconnecting with your body, which involves a lot of pain.  They have, after all, cut into you, fucked with your bones, and made internally vulnerable to attacks from Magneto.

To keep you from accidentally being killed off by the anesthesia they shove a tube down your throat.  My throat was already out of sorts because I'd recovered from being sick in some way or other but, as often happens to me, the cough had lingered.  My voice was kind of gravelly going in.  It was a photo-realistic depiction of gravel coming out. It was also dry beyond belief.

I did manage to get some food and drink before going to "bed" on a couch-like-thing at my sister's house.  (The nurses wouldn't let me go home, because I'd be the only human type person there.)  I didn't sleep.  I'd run out of sleep med in the lead up to the surgery.  Not like I could walk over and get it, maybe when I was stronger and lighter but when you're on the fatter and weaker side of things crutches are downright exhausting.  (I've never really been on the fat and strong or light and weak sides.)

As for getting someone to go and get it for me, phone calls are really hard and my mood being thrown out of whack really messed up any . . . I wouldn't even call them "attempts".  Plans I guess.  It messed up any plans to do that.

I managed to get the sleeping medication picked up for me when I was driven home

That was Friday, which was spent in a lot of pain until I realized that much of the pain wasn't directly caused by the surgery.  I was elevating too much and cutting off circulation to my left foot, and to a lesser extent the rest of the leg on the foot-side of the knee, downright dangerously.

The majority of the pain was because my leg was acting like it was freezing, and I somehow didn't notice that because it had shot straight passed the point where it could feel cold.  In fact, the parts in pain were the only parts that could feel anything, the rest was numb.  My circulation would appear to suck.  At least the way in which it sucks isn't indicative of a blood clot.

Any progress made at this time was, almost certainly, undone by the necessary returning of warmth and circulation to my leg.  Ideally you're supposed to keep things like that away from heat as it makes swelling worse, but oh my fucking god did my leg need to be warmed by the time I realized what was going on.

Then I slept.  One night's sleep isn't enough to get things fixed, and so yesterday is kind of hazy, and it was hazy at the time.

I ordered pizza.  It's way too expensive and I can't use food money to pay for a delivery, but right now I need food that has minimal preparation.  Unfortunately it can't last for long.  Even if I have something else for breakfast, which I didn't today, two large pizzas at two pieces a meal only lasts for four days.

Today I woke up and . . . have basically no idea what happened next.  It didn't stick.  Around noon I woke up again, but in a different place.  That I slept in daylight is indicative of just how little sleep I had leading up to this.

When I sleep at Lonespark's it involves pulling the shade, closing the door, and putting something over the alarm clock because the glow from the clock will keep me up.  Since limited mobility has forced me to abandon my usual sleeping spot, I've been laying something over my eyes while I get to sleep.  Once I am asleep it's easier to stay that way than it was to get that way, so the fact that the makeshift blindfold always falls off isn't too much of a problem.  (Also I don't have a bed to roll around on in new-location and restricting movement makes a blindfold less problematic.)

But to fall back asleep, without even trying, in a room with two unblinded windows connecting me to the sunny outside world, that's kind of absolute proof that I'd really fucked up the whole sleep thing before two nights ago.

And now, here we are.  The story reached the present.

I'm elevating my foot more cautiously, now that I'm in the habit of taking the post operation pain-med (and remembering that it has to be used in combination with acetaminophen) the actual surgery related pain is under control, and I'm still limited in what I can do by the need to elevate my ankle as much as possible without doing the whole "no circulation to my left leg" thing.

It's kind of hard to believe the surgery was just three days ago and I only got home two days ago, it feels like forever,

Ankle Update

Saw the surgeon.  The swelling didn't go down.  Or not enough.  Surgery was going to be tomorrow.  Reschduled to a week from tomorrow if the swelling goes down, which will be checked wednesday next week.

(This is a, "FUCK! Fuck, fuck, fuckity fucking fuck.  Fuck," situation.)

I have not been enough of a couch potato.  I've been ordered, not in these words, to be a constant one with elevated ankle.

This makes the fact that I just got a PS4 in the mail as a gift from my wishlist thing a very good thing.  Laptops are difficult when supine, controllers are just fine.  (Plus computer that can play games well is out for repair with no ETA.)

Here's the thing, as of right now I have one game for it.  A game with a "4" at the end of the title (Uncharted 4).

Help me follow the doctor's orders and be a couch potato with an elevated ankle, by getting me more games for the PS4, I really have wanted Gravity Rush forever (if the fact only electronic thing is a decent price is a problem {not sure how that works with wishlist gifting}, you could tell me, send me the money, and have me buy it myself) and I made sure to put the first three Uncharted games (all packed together in UNCHARTED: The Nathan Drake Collection) near the top.

So, here's what you do, you go to my "Oh My Fucking God, I broke my ankle in THREE places!" wishlist (not actually called that) and you see games I put on there.  If a 3DS is still at the top it means I don't have one, so don't buy a game for that unless the system itself is off the list.

You pick something for PS4 (unless the 3DS is off the list in which case you pick anything) and you get it for me.  Here's what I've been told about the process from a very reliable source:

It works! People need to make sure they have "Chris Witham's Gift Registry Address" checked when they go through the payment process, but it worked like a charm. :)

The reason"It works" is an exclamation is that when I fist set it up it didn't work.

Ways you can help me

Totally not trying to take eyes away from the Kim Possible piece labeled "Massive Anticlimax" or the thing before that about surviving Ragnarok by being dead at the time and sitting out the final battle.  But there are things to say and I'm going to try to get the in depth post about my thrice broken ankle up today anyway so:

If you want to help me there are things you can do.  This is broken into sections so you can completely skip something that isn't of interest to you:

short version:

• my email: cpw [at] maine [dot] rr [dot] com.  If you need my home address, email me.
• One time donation: donate button at upper right side of page, or use my email with paypal
• Monthly donation: my patreon account 
• Amazon wishlist related to me using video games to keep mind off pain, probably best not to get a 3DS game if the 3DS is still on the list
• Want list that has a mix of actual stuff you could get and me being silly.
• If enough people sent me their old gaming PC parts I might be able to Frankenstein something together and That.  Would.  Be.  AWESOME!
• For the love of god if there's something (a march, a demonstration) to make the world/country/thing a better place, please stand up and be counted.  I was going to go to my first march in years and then I broke my ankle two days before.  So I can't stand up and be counted, but someone has to.

* * *

On the straight up money front one time donations are through Paypal.  There's a donate button in the upper right corner or you can use my email: cpw [at] maine [dot] rr [dot] com.

Monthly things, which wouldn't be about me being broken since I plan on healing, are best done through my patreon account because paypal always fucks up every attempt to do monthly things.

You probably already knew that.

* * *

I am very not-mobile.  This means that for the first time since high school a stationary computer is something that's not just "I should probably get one at some point, given the limitations on laptops" but instead, "That really makes more sense than a laptop."

Here's the problem, a gaming PC costs in the range of one to ten thousand dollars.  I'd never expect that of anyone, but one of the key features of gaming PCs is that they can be upgraded, so maybe people have stuff laying around that they don't need because they replaced it during upgrading, like say an old video card, an old this, an old that,  If enough people sent their cast offs I could Frankenstein something together.  If you do have a cast off and are willing to pay shipping, to get my shipping info email me: cpw [at] maine [dot] rr [dot] com.

* * *

Ana Mardoll suggested I create an Amazon wishlist so that people could directly buy things I'm interested in and have Amazon send them to me.  It was at this time that I notice that one can buy about three consoles for the cost of a low end gaming desktop.  I'd never expect someone to get me a gaming desktop because of the price, but consoles are more reasonable than I would have expected.

I've always wanted to play gravity rush, though I note that the decent price on it (well, the HD remaster) is for the electronic version and I'm not sure if it can be gifted in the same way.  Anyway.  That means PS4.  For other reasons a 3DS would be of interest.

I've made a wishlist that includes both the consoles themselves and some games for them, though I don't know much about console games because my usual response to learning something is a console game has been, "It doesn't have a PC version?  Well fuck."

So if you want to buy me stuff, that exists.

* * *

Before I broke myself I made a want list that varied from serious to silly never expecting anyone would do anything in response to it.

Then someone got me a gift certificate for socks.  Not the kind of socks I would buy myself.  Really nice socks.  Really, really nice socks.  I only got a chance to wear one of the pairs I spent the gift certificate on before I broke myself, but they were fucking awesome.

So, yeah, if you see something on the list you think you can help with, by all means. If it's reasonable.  As an example of something not-reasonable: as much as I want a donkey (I really do) there is no way in fucking hell I could care for one at this stage in my life (even before the broken ankle), and South Portland probably has some ordinance against keeping them in the city.

* * *

For the first time in years I was going to go to a demonstration.  A march.  I was going to do it on Saturday.  I broke my ankle two days (though less than 48 full hours) before the march.

The political situation in the US right now is bad, likewise in certain other countries, people need to stand up and be counted and make it known that intolerance, hate, callous disregard for human lives and human rights, and all of the other evils that have taken root in our power structures is not something that can be allowed to continue.

I can't stand for more than a few minutes.  I can't march.  I haven't left the fucking house since I got back from the emergency room (trying to make it down the porch stairs is a very risky endevor.)  I can't stand up and be counted.

Please stand for me.  Whenever you take a stand your doing it not just for yourself, but for others who can't.  Let me be one of those others.  Stand the fuck up, march, demonstrate, tell your city council to let in refugees, welcome the stranger rather than slamming the door, hold a sign with a compassionate slogan, oppose any attempts to take anything (food, healthcare, a place to stay, legal protections, so forth) away from the least of these.

What we are seeing now is a push to undo decades of progress and replace love with fear and hate.  It is an abomination unto morality, it is the worst of humanity being the loudest and most powerful, it is wrong, it is evil.

I can't stand up and be counted as one of those who is against this.  Someone has to.  Please, I beg you, stand against that which is wrong and stand for that which is right.

If you find yourself suddenly unable to walk, don't fuck up like I did

Cue story that I'm not sure if it's embarrassing, degrading, humiliating, disgusting, or something else.

(icky content note: urine)

-

Light makes it really hard for me to sleep.  When I sleep in daylight I'm usually sick or exhausted beyond all reasonable limits.  My anti-depressant, which I cannot stress enough is the only one that works,* makes this so god damned much worse.  In fact I won't sleep at all without a separate sleep med which is no good because sleep deprivation is dangerous and has very similar symptoms to depression anyway.  Even with sleep med I tend to need dark, with exceptions (other than sickness and prior sleep deprivation) following no pattern and thus being entirely unpredictable.

In search of dark I moved down stairs.  The downstairs windows are small since the downstairs is mostly below ground level.  Think the height of a bog standard porch, subtract the distance between a floor and the ceiling below, and you've discovered how far above ground the downstairs ceiling is.  Result: they can be blacked out by a well placed towel.

Downstairs is also largely lacking in electronics so none of those lights from microwaves, stoves, VCRs/DVD players/Blu-Ray players/other shit that insist on telling the time.  (And who in fuck came up with the idea of adding "off" lights to things.  We know it's off because it isn't working.)  No router lights.  So on, so forth.

Plus, for reasons unknown to me, there was a matress there.  Combine this with the fact that boxspring the matress in my room is on happens to be fucked up beyond all recognition, and it was a smart move.

Going down stairs with crutches is Hell.  Upstairs is decent but you have to get them down first and it never really occurred to me to to just toss them from the top of the stairs.  Going downstairs is a butt-sliding expedition.  As much as I dislike butt-sliding myself, I'll have you know that that my mother once (or was it twice? we did it twice, but I'm only convinced once involved butt-sliding) traversed the knife edge at Katahdin via butt-sliding, or I suppose you could call it butt-scooting.  Doing the knife edge is a mark of great . . . um, something.  It's epic is the point.  So clearly butt-sliding/scooting is nothing to be scoffed at.

Around now we come to the point.  At this stage I have five jobs.  I was originally going to say three so . . . No one expects the Spanish Inquisition! I need to eat, hydrate, sleep, not get injured again, and try to keep my broken ankle elevated in spite of not having enough pillows to put in a solid effort.

From the injury to the end of the first day, through into more than an hour of the second day, everything was about getting to the ER, waiting in the ER, having stuff done in the ER, and waiting in the ER.

On the second day I shoved things that might have been easily cleaned into heaps that will be very difficult to clean in order to create crutch safe paths through the points I need to reach in my house.

On the third day, my dad got me some microwavable food, so eat is covered for the moment.

Sleep hasn't really been a problem.

Not injuring myself is a moment to moment thing.  The lack of pillows to stack under my ankle makes elevation more of something I do my meaningless best at.

Hydration is the problem.  I've talked about it before.  My body is badly calibrated.  The amount of water my body will hold is lower than the amount of water it takes for me to be well hydrated.  If I want to be hydrated (and as a rule, I do) I have to put up with going to the bathroom a lot.

Crutches are a mode of transportation with decent speed, it's been annoying more than a real problem.  Until I woke up a bit after midnight this morning with a very powerful need to pee.  I think you can see where this is going.  It isn't exactly sanitary.

By the time I normally would have been done and heading back downstairs, I was still crawling up the stairs.  Good news: totally not a failure and it all comes out at once situation.  Bad news, crawling around (without knee pads) while your ankle yelps in pain and your bladder keeps on causing spurts is the exact opposite of fun.

When I got to the crutches there was no way in hell I could use them.  Do you know how you move on crutches?  Call it a hop, call it a bound, call it a vault, call it what you will, but for our purposes the important thing is you move by fucking bouncing up and down.

So the crawl, which is slower than crutching, continued until I reached the bathroom and my ordeal wasn't over.

See, I don't have one of those shower seats, even if I did I don't have "Use this plastic bag and duct tape to keep your splint and wrappings from getting wet, and a bath was right out.  Try giving yourself a sponge bath when you don't have a sponge and you can't get your left lower leg wet but you do have to clean right up to the edge of it because motherfucking urine.

* * *

So if you should find yourself suddenly unable to walk, make god damned sure you're sleeping on a floor with a bathroom.  Moral of the story.

I somewhat wonder if I just drove away half of my readers.

For those that are sticking with me through the Ankle Chronicles and the disgusting anecdote, I swear I'll try to get something story-like at some point.

* * *

* Since it's so expensive my insurance forced me to try out one that uses almost exactly the same principles on the grounds that given the extreme similarity to the one that works it should have worked too.  It was Hell.  My depression was back in full force rather fast, they made me stay on might-as-well-be-a-placebo (less the placebo effect) for a full month, it was difficult to get out of the depression again both in terms of time and dose.  We had to double my dose which now has me at maximum allowable dose, your doctor will periodically have to write to the state (or maybe insurance company, but for me that is the state) saying, "No my patient is not a drug dealer, yes she really needs that much, fuck off."

Sickness and Wheelchairs

I'm sick today.  Not "I'm gonna die" sick or "Keep away contageous sick" just my digestive system being pissed off sick.  It's actually overdue.

I get sick when my sleep is significantly disrupted and since I rise with dawn on account of the cursed day star flooding the world with too much light for my sleep to endure, I have to go to bed early.  Small children whose age is measured in single digits stay up later than me.

I got out of the ER at about 1:20-1:30 AM, which was naturally on the day after I got in because getting out of the ER isn't something you can do in an hour and a half.  Likely the reason I wasn't sick immediately after was that I was basically empty (remember, it's a digestive system thing) on account of it being very difficult to prepare food with a recently broken ankle.  I'm still trying to get the hang of this.  I still have spectacular failures.

We'll get back to spectacular failures in a paragraph, but first what changed is that yesterday my dad bought and brought me a bunch of microwavable stuff so that I could deal with the food preparation problem the easy way.  No longer -- a few days isn't enough to call it starving, I've been starving and I know what it feels like.  What do you call it?  I'll go with "fasting".  No longer fasting myself, have stuff in me and am eating like someone who can afford microwavable food.

Yesterday I was positioning myself to get on the couch when I lost my balance, dropped at least one of my crutches, and landed pretty much exactly where I'd wanted to end up, but with way too much force.  My ankle was jarred like "OH MY FUCKING GOD!  KILLER DEATH PAIN!  IT GODDAMN HURTS," but the story doesn't end there because the crutch that I know for sure I dropped managed to hit the couch before me, my butt landed right on top of it, leverage and what not made the other end shoot straight up into my broken ankle which was still in all-caps mode from the force with which I'd landed.

Good fucking God is this harder than a sprain.

So that's not fun.  But I said, "and Wheelchairs" so it's time for a topic change.

* * *

The absolutely essential areas of my house are now crutch-safe because of the massive amounts of work I did on Friday.  (After I'd caught a few hours sleep.)  They are not remotely wheelchair accessible.

I want a narrow gauge wheelchair.  I could build a narrow gauge wheelchair if not for the fact that I have a broken ankle.  (I.e. if I didn't need it, I could make it.)  It would be simple.  Take your basic no-nonsense no-frills minimalist dining chair (seat just barely big enough to hold a butt, legs go straight down from there, no arm rests for they add width and everyone puts their elbows on the table anyway) and add a basic swivel wheel to the bottom of each leg.

The lack of connection between wheels and arms makes this a specialty device, but I could power and steer it with my good foot or pole it along using crutches.  The small size would allow it to move in smaller places than a standard wheelchair, and being swivel wheels would give a certain maneuverability.

-

When all this is over and I no longer have use for one, I'm going to build a full size wheelchair to the specifications I've always wanted.

Why not do it now when it would be useful?  I cannot sit cross legged, I cannot get off the ground easily.  I cannot pace.  I cannot wander like someone whose muse is coming and going faster and more often than a cat at an open door.

Also I'm broke until next month (use the donation button, become my patron; wow that was a shameless "give me money" plug) and in no shape to deal with construction materials.  It'll probably involve walking to home depot, buying materials (likely wood because I don't have the equipment to work with metal) and . . . wait.

It'll probably involve walking to Toys Я Us, buying a fucking wagon, walking back, waiting until I have more money, walking to Home Depot (anti-union bastards; did you know they force their employees to watch anti-union indoctrination films?), buying construction materials, putting them in the wagon, and walking home.

A that point there will be sitting, standing, cutting, doubt, despair, despondency, giving up, restarting, and so forth.

Hopefully at the end of it all I get a wheelchair with these properties:

Via the cunning use of gears, the push-pull dynamic is reversed.  Whenever I'm using a wheelchair I want it to be the pull that moves me forward because the pull in question comes more naturally to me (and with more strength and endurance) than the push in question.

Linking - I want to be able to use it one handed.  This requires an axle that can be made to engage and disengage.  When engaged turning either wheel turns both wheels, when disengaged the wheels are independent like normal.

Reversed linking - With the wheels linked as above it is impossible to turn the chair.  The addition of a single gear on one of the wheel's axle engagement point changes this so that when one wheel goes forward the other goes backwards thus turning the chair.

One could expand this to allow speeds of turns by having gears of various sizes be the enagement points (steal them from a bike) thus having gradations between "straight forward" and "turn in place" but that is not something for a prototype and would likely be a luxury item.

That almost entirely covers one handed use.  The last thing for one handed:

Break linking - I'm sure this already exists, but it didn't on one of the chairs I was in at the ER which caused me to wonder why I was moving when the break was supposed to be on.  Turned out that only one of the breaks had engaged properly.

Foot rest angling - This never would have occurred to me, but before my ankle was splinted the only position that didn't cause unendurable pain was with the foot pointed straight down in line with the leg.  You can't tilt the foot rest to accommodate that.  At least not on the chairs they had at the hospital.  The foot rest is 90 degrees or swiveled out of the way.  The solution we had to use was get the thing out of the way (leaving my injury unsupported) and count on the leg rest to keep it elevated.  This seems sub-optimal.

I've probably had other ideas, but they don't come to mind.

-

While I was in the hospital I imagined a tread chair that could climb stairs.  But I want to make a wheel chair so that invitation to disaster isn't going to happen.  Much of what I'm thinking comes from a certain comfort with gears gained as a result of being on the South Portland High School Robotics Team (Riot Crew).

The FIRST Robotics competition in which we participated was founded by Dean Kamen.  He invented a wheelchair that can go up stairs (all terrain in fact) using the same balancing technology to be found on the Segway (the Segway was actually more of an afterthought along the lines of "what else can we do with this tech?"), but it was just way too expensive.  And was only on the market for six years.

The idea is great: Yes, places should be wheelchair accessible by default, but that doesn't change the fact that some aren't yet and (I'm guessing this based on the "all terrain" bit) some can't be.  Those who need chairs shouldn't be limited by the inability (or bigoted refusal) of others to make places accessible.

The problem is that while being able to use stairs, traverse difficult curbs, travel sand, gravel, three foot deep water, and even psuedo-stand (it can make rider 'round about six feet tall, where in that range depends on the distance from the rider's butt to their head; it can't climb stairs in this mode, but it can go anywhere a normal wheelchair can go) it's not worth the price tag given that people are not, on the whole, rich.

On May 21st of last the Toyota announced that it's going to partner with his company to produce a new version of said chair.  One hopes it will be cheaper.  Even if it is, and even if insurance covers it, human powered chairs have a lot of advantages: they don't need a charge, they're not as heavy as a machine, they give you a feeling of control (in my opinion equal to walking), they're much cheaper, they're a lot smaller, so on, so forth.

It's the little things.

I need to water the hanging plants.  This is not negotiable.  I must be done.  I keep on forgetting until I'm out of state for a week to ten days.  They are dying and if I don't want that to become "dead" the plants must be watered.

It quickly became apparent that there was no way in Hell I could get an open container of water . . . anywhere.  Maybe if it were a sprain, thus not a lightning rod for death=pain lightning, and it didn't have the added dead weight of a splint and wrapping.  I'm actually pretty good on crutches n those circumstances, it takes me a bit to get reacclimated, and then all is well.  No sure if I'm carrying liquid in open container good, but I was't actually dong that on crutches.  I was using a chair as a walker.

I have two gallon containers in the fridge that I use for my water.  That way when one is emptied and needs to be refilled the other is already cooled.  My tap water is so good it's spoiled me, and thus the containers don't need anything fancy like built in filters or whatnot.  They're actually old orange juice containers.  Topicana Grove Stand (most pulp, so you know it's the juice of oranges rather than juice that is orange, though orange juice is more yellow.)

It was easiest to take the full one.

I hadn't even left the kitchen when catastrophic failure occurred.  It hit the floor, it stopped being a container, uncontained water went everywhere.  A gallon of it.

At this point it is important to remember what I said earlier about clearing vs. cleaning.  I've cleared paths so I can get around the house.  I have not done that by cleaning.  I've done it by making every mess worse through the process of shoving it out of the way into a nice heterogeneous heap.

I have no idea what got wet, but I know enough to fear mold.

Now, the little things I talked about in the title?  I don't trust myself to make it across a puddle on a smooth kitchen floor using crutches.  Everything I might have used to sop up the puddle was and is on the other side of the puddle.

If I weren't on crutches I could fix the problem that happened because I was on crutches, but since I am on crutches there's a gallon of water spreading across my floor lookng for anything ready to rot or mold.

Crossing a shallow puddle: little thing.

Things, which I'm pretty sure don't exist, that would be useful right now.

I was just starting, as in step one, to clean up my house when I broke my ankle.  House is not crutch accessible.

If I don't want to die, I've got to change that.  Lots of moving around on my butt.

Why my butt?  I can't crawl.  The splint has my ankle locked into a right angle position, needs to be in line with my leg to crawl.

So thing one:

An Ankle Cart

Very small thing with two to four wheels, as necessary for stability and maneuverability, that keeps my broken ankle off the ground and has it roll wherever the leg pulls it thus allowing me to crawl on hands and knee by taking "broken ankle" out of the equation.  If everything is worked out just so then I could even crawl on hands and knees, plural.

The problem with being on the ground, though, is that eventually you need to get off it.  From sitting to standing can be tricky, but from ground to standing is Hell, so thing two:

Floor to sitting elevator

Think of it like a car jack, except probably with a square dolly base.  You start out not high off the ground.  Low enough that one can easily get from the ground onto it even in an injured state.  Then you crank until you're high enough to easily transition to standing.

Why a square dolly base?

Well obviously you want to be able to take it with you, but there's more.  When you've elevated it to the height of a chair/stool/thing then what you've got is a narrow gauge wheel chair.  Down side: you need to find a way to power it when you have no way of contacting the wheels.  (good foot, crutches, whatever)  Up side: it can fit in spaces ordinary wheel chairs never could.

Now with the crawling and chairing there's a question of how you're keeping the crutches with you.  So:

Crutch holding blimp/hover thingy

High enough to be out of your way, low enough to be within reach, programmed to follow you so your crutches are always within grabbing distance.

RC Trash Can and Recycle Bin

When I got broken I was cleaning.  I am no longer.  I'm clearing.  I'm making paths big enough to crutch through, but on the cleaning front I'm probably making everything worse.  Almost certainly, in fact.

Hey, I found my dagger.  Now I can open mail easily again.  Woo!

Back on point, think about it like needing to get stuff off the table so you can eat off the table.  You could clean the table, throw out trash, bin recyclables, put the stuff you keep back where it belongs, so forth.  Or you could just shove everything off of the table and onto the floor (thus quickly clearing off the table, but destroying any organization the stuff on the table might have had, mixing everything into one large heap, and possibly breaking shit.)

Putting stuff where it belongs is a firm no-go, but if I could call the trash can and recycle bin to me (or drive them to me) then I could at least dispose of that stuff.

Emergency backup bed

I sleep downstairs, stairs are death.  Of the three beds that were once upstairs, one is gone I know not where, one is in an addition to the house made by people who didn't believe in insulation (or, indeed, making sure air could not freely flow from inside to outside), and the final one, mine, is atop a broken box spring (I fully intend to destroy that thing that vexed m for so much of my life) in a room that needs way more work than I can afford just to reach the bed.

I need an easy to set up, small, emergency back up bed so I can sleep on the kitchen floor or something.

-

Hey, peanuts.

-

Self preparing, delivering, and cleaning food and drink

I had enough trouble keeping myself fed and watered before, what do I do now when it's an ordeal to make it to the kitchen and I can only have hands free if I'm sitting down?  You wouldn't believe how hard it was just to pour a glass of water today.  Actually, I'm lucky that "glass" is figurative because the attempt saw it crash to the ground with enough force to break some of the plastic that it's actually made of clean off.

People who answer their phones

I had only one job to do today: call the orthopedic surgeon --

Ask and you shall receive. Apparently.  They called back right where the break above is.  Mind you I couldn't make it to the phone in time and had to call them back three or four times before they did answer the phone, but I meet with the suregon in a week.

And I learned why I can't contact my mom, who is the other notable non-answerer.  She's in equador.  Some warning would have been nice, even before I was broken I'd been trying to get in touch with her because I need to give her approximately $650 she spotted me an her Sam's club membership would really help make my food money last.

But on the subject of phones:

Phone Drone

I need it to come from the charging dock to me wherever in the house I may be.  Taking it with me runs down the charge and risks it getting lost.  It needs to be in the charger before the call is made, come to me while things are still ringing, and return after I'm done with it.

Cat Communicator

I need to be able to get across the message: I'm useless right now, act as you would when I'm not in the house because your attempts to command may attention are anti-clearing.

Heli-Watering Can

The hanging plants need to be watered.  The hanging plants needed to be watered last month.  The hanging plants are god damned hard to get to.  Worse with me broken than ever before.

I need a no nonsense plant waterer that flies in, does the job, and flies back out again.

Pain killers that actually kill fucking pain

Kills pain dead.  None of this live kind of killing.

A peg leg that can be worn when you still have the leg

It's easy to see how it would work.  Your knee rests on it like you're kneeling on it, your leg sticks out straight back, supported or not as the need presents itself.  Walking is taken care of.  When you need to not have peg leg and flesh leg at right ankles you release the break and ease the flesh leg down into the peg leg (which is built to accommodate such by being composed of two pegs, on on either side of where flesh leg goes.  Probably a bar across the bottom to keep them aligned.)  Holding the knee in position while walking is done by a strap on the upper shin which is attached to the swivel part of the peg leg.

And so forth

-

[Added:]

A secondary pair of arms

One pair operates the crutches, another picks up, carries, moves, puts down, and otherwise manipulates objects.

That leaves me one pair short.

Stopgap ankle post

Until I write things up proper like, here are some short versions I've posted elsewhere:

• Facebook
• Slacktivist
• Ana Mardoll's Ramblings

* * *

Facebook:

So, in this time of trouble it's important to stand up and be counted rather than being the silent masses. If anyone should wonder why I'm not doing that, yesterday evening I broke my left ankle in three places.

Sorry, you'll all have to save the country without me.

* * *

Slacktivist (Don't know a soul who's not been battered):

Don't have a friend who feels at ease
Don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees

Yesterday I slipped and fell all the way down the entire flight of stairs from ground floor to the basement. It felt like my left foot, specifically the ankle, hit every fucking one.

I broke it in three places. It's splinted now, which is good for making the constant pain bearable, not having it flop around in ways that were frankly disturbing and caused indescribable pain, and such. Also means I can't crawl. It's been a bad six months, and I don't thing it was all that good before then, house cleaning has suffered immensely and things are not really crutch accessible.

So fuck and fuck and fuckity fucking fuck.

But there is another point in here. Why am I not utterly fucked over for all time by this experience? The welfare state. I'm on SSI as permanently disabled (I don't plan to be permanently disabled, I may have hit the depression and related mental illness jackpot, but someday I intended to earn a living anyway*) which means I'm automatically on medicaid (MaineCare in my state) which means the scary sounding surgery that may involve screws and rods and the subsequent rehabilitation will be covered.

I am the leech on good capitalist society. I am every white American thing that people like Trump hate (and that's before we mention that I'm a trans lesbian who has always been a solid democrat.)

Thank you fucking taxpayers.

Also, for the record, I think that we should offer Medicaid to everyone (fuck income and ability, everyone needs access to good healthcare) and I wouldn't have minded if my 6 hour+ journey through the emergency room had taken longer because there were refugees who were higher on the triage list than me.

Certainly I think we should work to reduce wait times (hire more medical type people than are needed so things are faster) but not at the expense of giving refugees refuge and aid.

-

I ain't gonna be marching any time soon. Please, stand up and be counted for me. We'll survive this, but we need to work for it, and I just benched myself.

-

* I've been meaning to mention that I have a patreon account now. Been saving it for a Sunday post post so I wouldn't take away from weightier conversation. I'll probably still do that, but this is part of trying to get off the permanently disabled list (though I don't know what I'll do about health care then) so it kind of fits.

If you would like to give me recurring monthly payments go to my patreon.

If you would like to give me a one time payment, use paypal. cpw [at] maine [dot] rr [dot] com. Donate button available at Stealing Commas.

* * *

Ana Mardoll's Ramblings:

Short version: My ankle is broken in three places, it'll need surgery but first we need to wait for the swelling to go down.

Full version:

Actually, no. I'll make a post on that. (it was getting way too long) Slightly more detailed version:

I was about to start on the complex and difficult project of cleaning up my house. I was in the process of starting in fact. I slipped on the top step, and didn't stop until I was on the basement floor. I think my left foot hit every damned step on the way down. The pain was so great all I could do was scream profanity for a while.

After much pain and crawling I was on crutches ready for my dad to drive me to anywhere medical. Going down stairs on crutches is the hardest fucking thing you can do on crutches. I failed. my left foot just grazed something. The pain was too much, I fell over backwards and broke my porch. (Butt landing, no injury.)

Ambulance. Not exactly high on the triage list and it was a busy night. Results from my over-six hour stay in the emergency room: ankle broken in 3 places. It's splinted now. Good for keeping the pain endurable (the pain never stops) makes it fucking impossible to crawl.

Surgery will probably wait a week for the swelling to go down. May involve rods and screws.

I've never had surgery. As in, the only time I've been intentionally cut into was splinter removal and the result was that I decided I'm never fucking doing that again and have done a lot of research into alternative splinter removal with varying results.

It sounds scary. Is it scary?

My first post on this, which may have less detail than I just gave, is here.

Second Comment:

First time I've ever been inside an ambulance. Now I have as much life experience as the elder weasel.

Third Comment:

Oh, I forgot (I'm going to fill this thread with just me posting repeatedly) I'm not going to be doing much standing up and being counted. So if something is happening, a rally, a march, a whatever, and you think, "Well maybe I could, but it's not like it'll make a difference/other reason for not going," please do try to make the world a better place in my place.

I was seriously going to try to be part of a march, for the first time in years, tomorrow.

I broke myself

Tomorrow, by which I mean later today when one is supposed to start their tomorrow, I'll likely have more to say.  There wasn't much to do as I was waiting there for hours, low on the triage list, so I took a note or two.

For now the short version:

The news is horrible but it could be worse.

The short version:

FUCK!  Fucking fuckity fuck; it hurts!

The short version:

My good ankle is now my bad ankle.

The short version:

"It hit a step?"
"It hit a flight of stairs."

-

I broke my left ankle, my good ankle, in three places.  It'll be a week before the swelling goes down enough for the surgery I'm going to need.  I'll repeat the salient detail: I'm going to need surgery.

Ow: pain.