Hopalong and the Posse

The dogs and I are going for our walk in the morning. Yes, I’ll be wearing the knee brace, but leaving the crutches/walker at home as today’s ortho appointment provided the good news that the fractures in my kneecap are basically healed. However, the meniscus is torn again and there are some other issues that may lead to a partial knee replacement surgery at the end of the semester, but the doctor said that if walking the dogs is the only over-extending that I do, go ahead. I can elevate/ice when I get back from our walk and keep off my feet as much as possible the rest of the day.

I’m having a series of 3 injections designed to “lubricate” the knee area and provide more ease of use with less pain, but there’s going to be pain until the meniscus is repaired again. I have to continue to depend on the crutches/walker when I have to be on my feet for extended periods of time, so that’s what I’ll do.

Because these past few months have been stressful and I’m looking forward to more couch time in the near future, I drove to the big box discount store before heading home and bought a 37” flat screen TV. B came over and installed it for me after first removing the 50# dinosaur I’ve had for at least a decade. I was totally excited to have the energy-efficient LED HDTV with wi-fi access and a ratio of 1,000,000:1 (something to do with clarity of picture), but was duped by the sale’s person who told me it came ready for me to do my email on the TV screen. Okay, so he was sorta/kinda telling the truth, but the way he presented it did not include that I can use the TV as a computer monitor IF I plug my computer into the back of the TV screen. I did sign in to Yahoo as prompted on-screen, and that allowed me to download some apps (Yahoo weather and news), but not do my email or anything else remotely resembling “using my computer” from the couch.

I was totally excited about my purchase until … I realized that when I selected the HD channels, the picture suddenly was ½ the size of the big 37” screen. Thus, people who pay the big bucks for the 60” screen probably get a picture the size of my 37” screen, while I’m now getting a picture about the size of the little 19” screen I have in my bedroom! Yeah, I tried using both the “wide” and the “panorama” screen options, but then all the people looked like Sumo wrestlers with pinheads!! I do, however, have a very wide, very black band of nothing all around the mini-screen size, but I’d prefer to have the picture extending from top to bottom and side to side as it did on the dinosaur. Not going to happen, so let it go, right?

I’ve been coping for many months with what is and must continue to cope for at least another 3 months, so I'm doing my life one step at a time, checking carefully to assure that it’s okay to step … there … before I do so. And I always remind myself that this, too, shall pass eventually, so suck it up and move on because once we finally resolve the issues with the right knee, we're probably going to have to resolve the issues with my left hip because it's crashed with all the additional weight-bearing and work it's been doing. No good deed goes unpunished.