The first thing to slow my recovery was the God-awful cold that someone brought home from school, which managed to bypass the men of the household and dump its considerable charms (cough, congestion, sneezing, fever) on the ladies. I was well enough by the end of last week to drive myself to my two-week followup appointment, where I was told that things are healing well, and to continue with restricted activity for another month.
This was unexpected (I had assumed that lifting restrictions would be waived after that appointment), but I have been trying to make use of the extra downtime. I didn't feel like doing much, anyway, what with all the coughing and wheezing (the nature of my surgery made coughing a particularly painful experience), so I did a fair amount of reading (The House at Riverton and The Distant Hours, both by Kate Morton, and both quite wonderful ... although if pressed I will admit to liking The Distant Hours more. This Beautiful Life was just o.k.), tv watching and knitting. I don't usually get the time to heal at the doctor-prescribed pace (which is part of the reason this most recent surgery was necessary in the first place), so the cold was sort of a blessing in disguise ... I felt too sick to push my recovery, so I just let go, accepted people's offers of help, and relaxed into a slower pace.
I enjoyed all the reading and tv watching, but my knitting didn't go particularly well. There's a story there, which I was planning to blog about at the end of last week, when my life of leisure was very rudely interrupted.
You may have heard that we had a bit of Weather here on the east coast last Saturday. The storm hit our area pretty hard, leaving trees and power lines down all over town. We didn't lose power during the storm ... oh, no. We were shut off DELIBERATELY, so that the power company could locate and isolate broken lines.
Which means that we were among the last to have our electrical service turned back on.
When all was said and done, we were dark for 51 hours.
It was quite an adventure. We farmed out the guinea pigs on Monday, and sent Duke (who insisted on sleeping on his usual bed in the family room, where the temp was a balmy 42 degrees) to the vet for the day on Tuesday. Thank heaven for our school superintendent, who opened the high school Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings so that those without power could take a hot shower, eat a meal, and charge their phones and computers. We had power back by Wednesday, but ate in the cafeteria both Monday and Tuesday nights.
I usually complain about all the doors in our house (each room has at least two -- the boys' bedroom has four), but as long as we were without power they were a Godsend. When it became clear that getting power back was going to take a while we shut off every room but the living room, and used our fireplace for its original purpose .... heating the house. ("This is the way things were when this house was built," I said Monday afternoon. "Wow," said Young'un. "People were COLD back then.")
Things weren't completely awful -- the kids read books, played board and card games, WB and Young'un spent a lot of time playing a game involving knights, castles, and unicorns, and we all went to bed much earlier than usual. For once, the kids were glad I'm a knitter ... wool socks, hats and mittens for everyone!
By the time the south shore-based utility trucks turned up on our street Tuesday afternoon, we were so grateful to see them we cheered (crews from all over -- even other states -- were pulled in to help with the cleanup effort). I told one of the drivers that if I had a functioning oven, I'd have baked them cookies. We had a moment of panic when they drove off not 30 minutes after their arrival -- WITHOUT restoring electrical service to our street -- but five hours later they were back, having found and fixed the breaks that caused our power to be shut off in the first place. Within the hour, things were back to normal.
So ... that's where I've been. Next week, the saga of WB's purple cardigan.
Oh! And did I mention that we're getting a new roof put on the house? Considering how well our home-improvement projects usually go, there's probably going to be a story or two in that, as well.
You may consider yourself warned.
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