Here I am, FUCKING TYPING WITHOUT MY HAND GOING DEAD! Yeah!

I had surgery last Tuesday. The surgeon tunneled into my wrist and cut a tendon.

I am told this is the “good” kind of carpal tunnel surgery since they don’t open you up as wide. All I know is that I walked out of the there and as the preservative-free (corn free) Lidocaine wore off, I could feel my middle finger again. Not so much with my pointer and thumb yet, but I’m told sensation might come back. My tongue didn’t go numb at any point so I knew they weren’t poisoning me.

They did something called a Bier block, which involved wringing some blood out of my arm and then applying a tourniquet. They warned me that would be worse than the surgery, and it was. It’s strange, having your whole arm dead. Mentally I understood it was resting on a little surgery meat display case thing, but it felt like it was higher up on some weird stand. By the time they were stitching me up my back was crawling and I felt like I wanted to get away from my arm. Endorphins kicked in as well and I felt like I did when I was in labor (without the giant abdominal pain).

The first night was the worst. I refused painkillers (corny) and I woke up around 3 with a throbbing wrist. I take Goody’s and basically…beer. At this point I cannot find any liquor that doesn’t give me a corn reaction. My dream item is a little strip that I could dip into things to test for corn.

On Saturday Pete took my bandages off for me. The little tapes underneath, which I think were supposed to stay on(?) came all the way off in the shower.

I didn’t expect the whiskers, but I did say “make it look like a wistful Admiral Ackbar” so there you go.

Maybe you can see that my palm is bruised. It’s turning yellow now. It can’t really bear weight, but I can already push buttons and turn some things. Scissors and writing with a pen are challenging. I’m looking forward to going back to work…I dreamt I was playing D&D with my boss last night (he was the dungeon master).

Sleeping has been a dream since that first night. Since I hurt myself in February (which was apparently the last straw for my hands) I’ve been waking up with pain a lot and have had the deadness. Last Thursday (right after surgery, genius scheduling), I went to the sports medicine guy who diagnosed my right arm for electrical nerve testing on the left. The left is A LOT better than the right (no consistent deadness, and fine if I sleep in a brace) but I’m going to have it done around Xmas when I am done with my current job.

Yesterday I ran the smoker because I was still nervous about dropping a frame. Bee jacket or not, that would be a disaster.

Blowing the bees down so Pete can close up the frames after inspection.

The orange hive is going GANGBUSTERS. The purple hive had a little setback…we think they requeened. We interfered and transferred a frame of babies over to kickstart them, but we suspect they were already fixing their problem. Their population is growing but it a lot smaller. We’re seeing a lot of orange, yellow, and tan pollen legs right now.

The yard is just starting to pop since we’re a little shady under some firs–daisies are opening and our squashes are blooming.

The lettuce bed is paying dividends. HOW is it that I never planted lettuce before??

We’ve flipped tomatoes to the front yard this year but have a bunch of volunteer tomatoes and cilantro in the back from last year. As you can see, Pete is still indifferent to our dandelion situation, for the bees.

Franny made me a succulent pot for Mother’s Day and I got a plant at the Ballard Farmer’s Market which is unlike any I have in the yard yet. I love it.

Also, I got to see Strudel’s middle school promotion the day after surgery. It’s weirdly good timing to be home right now, since they finished school on Friday.

Strudel was very happy. She’s had a really successful last year of grade school and is moving on to middle school at the same school as Franny did. We are having preliminary high school talks now, but we won’t tour for a couple of years.

Her class held a last market day on the last day of school. These last few months they’ve been operating under some kind of Hogwarts theme and the teacher sorted them into houses. She was sorted into Slytherin.

I was very proud!

I made (gluten and dairy free) red velvet cupcakes with a ganache top, and now I realize I forgot to snap them. But I did get a picture of some booth signs Pete wrote to generate sales. He left it on the table before going to work on Friday and she picked the “Granny Voldy” one.

So now we get another week together. We’re going to grocery shop today and hit Math N Stuff tomorrow. I have bought a couple of new Wii U games. It’s nice right now…it kind of feels like the good old days.

I’ve left a lot of stuff out, but I have to go eat something. I’ve been spending a lot of time blogging in my head for the past few months (sad). Now that it’s not literal agony to type, I hope I will be recording more of my life again. It helps. Thanks for reading as always. <3