Summer Respite

These last three weeks have been wonderful. I thought about it the other day, and realized that I haven't had three weeks off work all at once for about 18 years now! It's been great to spend all this time at home. The surgery wasn't too bad. The first three days or so were rough, but after that it was just a matter of some soreness around the incisions. After the first week, I was able to begin to enjoy my time off. 

I've barely spoken to anyone (besides my husband and pets) for the past three weeks and I have to say--I've loved it! My inner introvert has been delighted with the break from other people. I can be outgoing and engaging at work (when I need to be) but I forget how very draining all that contact with other people can be.

The dogs have been in heaven. Marco has suddenly started talking more and seems happy to have so much out-of-cage time. I've cooked, cleaned, organized long neglected parts of our house (closets and such), and got caught up on a lot of odd and end sort of tasks. 

I've read several new books. The most noteworthy have been by an author from the past that I've just recently discovered, Elizabeth von Arnim. She is perhaps best known for writing The Enchanted April, but I discovered her after reading a recommendation for Elizabeth and her German Garden on the NPR books website. I loved this novel. It's loosely autobiographical, and the author's love of her garden (even with all of her mistakes in it and failures), her wry observations of German society and women's place in it (she was an English woman unhappily married to an older German count, humorously referred to in her books as the "Man of Wrath") and her subtle wit all made me feel like I had looked back into the past and discovered a kindred spirit. Elizabeth and her German Garden is available free at project Gutenberg, along with most of her other books. Here is a link to it if anyone is interested:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1327/1327-h/1327-h.htm

(Project Gutenberg is a great site for poor readers like myself! There are thousands of free books to choose from!)

I'm also reading a new (to me) mystery series. The first book is The Novice's Tale, by Margaret Frazier. I don't normally read mysteries, but I like novels about convent and monastery life (goodness knows why, pagan-leaning atheist that I am) and these books look like fun. I downloaded the first on onto my Nook, and will let you all know how it is.

I still have three days off, and plan to spend them reading, idling around, cooking, drinking wine, and generally goofing off. Real life starts back up on Monday, and I plan to make the best of my last few days of freedom. Summer is in full swing outside, and it's just a wonderful time of year to take a rest and remember what it's like to simply enjoy life. I hope you all are having a similarly nice beginning to the summer!

April round up: Scotch eggs, neighborhood mischief, and surgery

The end of April has certainly been eventful around here!

Easter, besides being very late this year, was extremely wet. The trip to the park I had hoped to have was out of the question. I still cooked a big meal, ham and fresh new potatoes, green beans, and strawberries for dessert. And I finally made (and got to taste) Scotch eggs. Somehow I didn't expect them to be as big as they were:

Scotch eggs!

The verdict? I thought they were very tasty. My husband loved them, and finished them off one by one over the next few days. I used a super-mild sausage, and next time will try a spicier one. (I thought they were just a tad bland). They're too much trouble to make very often, and it's really just as well. It's not exactly health food. I only ate one, because I've been having stomach issues for months now and a big chunk of meat and egg like that could really cause me some pain (more about that later).

Easter would have been a fun, cozy day spent at home with good food and movies--except we had and incident in the neighborhood that soured the rest of the afternoon. A sweet lady that lives across the street from us had her house broken into while she was at church Easter morning. Someone kicked open her door, ransacked her house, and stole some valuables. This occurred in broad daylight! If we (or any of the other close neighbors) had happened to look out of a window at the right time, we would have seen it happening. It makes me so angry. The lady is a widow and lives alone, and she's now afraid to stay in her house. She's been staying with one of her adult daughters since it happened, and I don't really blame her. Seeing her house swarming with police cars, and then finding out what had happened, was a real downer on a holiday morning. I surely hope it was only an isolated incident.

Back to the stomach pain I mentioned earlier. In March I had an upper GI endoscopy which revealed a hiatal hernia and acid reflux. I also had an ultrasound of my gallbladder. The ultrasound revealed lots of gallstones and apparently that's responsible for the intense pain I would have from time to time. Both the ultrasound technician and the surgeon noted that I have extreme tenderness on my right side directly under my ribcage. This indicated some inflammation of the gallbladder, due to the stones inside.

So, lucky me. I have to have my gallbladder removed on May 14th. This will be the first surgery of my life, and while I'm not scared, I dread the inconvenience of it all. Not to mention the added medical expenses. But there's one silver lining to the cloud: my work will pay me short-term disability while I'm out, and the surgeon says that even though it will the easier form of the surgery, that he prefers that I stay out of work for 3 to 4 weeks. So I will get a bit of a vacation from work, without having to use up vacation or sick hours.

That's it for April!