Re-engaging

It's starting to feel a lot like normal. Today's plans are in flux; Nick's girls were going to come over and hang out for a few hours in the afternoon, but the bad weather is discouraging the drive, and we also have people coming to see the house early this afternoon.

It's theater season again, and we just got tickets to two plays for October. One is called Aftermath, about Iraq. The other is Cambria/Douglass, at the Irish Repertory Theater. Feels good to start getting tickets again. We're also making plans with friends for the coming weeks. Nick was right when he said we should just consider September to be a lost month. Now that September's winding down I want to make October better, more interesting and more active. And we head to PEI at the end of the month, so we're really psyched about that.

Another sign of the return to reason is that I'm going to bake today. Nothing hard, just some muffins and maybe banana bread, but it signals both the change of season and re-engagement.

Liv starts SAT tutoring today, which she both wants and dreads -- I understand.

We've returned to full-bore Scrabble playing. Nick beat me on Thursday night twice, and in both games I lost badly. He always says that he hates the next game after he wins. And he's right. We've played four since then and I've won all of them.

I feel better. My energy is back, though I'm sleeping longer and later than I have in years. The swelling is still there. It doesn't seem to me to have gone down, but I'm sanguine about giving it more time. What I'm less sanguine about is that this whole mess may have been watershed; that I may just be one of those people with a bad back. I don't like the idea that I'll always have to be careful, or that I'm fragile. I was hoping that after everything I've been through with hip and back I'd be good as new, but that seems unrealistic. Hip ortho said I could expect 70% relief, but that once a labrum is torn it never functions as it used to. And Nick said that back ortho told him (I was either not there or semi-conscious) that I'd always have pain but that it would be easier to control and manage. Hmmm.

Stories in the news that I'm enjoying: Senator Kyl's performance and Senator Stabenow's retort ("your mother probably did"); Rod Blagojevitch on The Daily Show, Eric Cantor at his (only) health care Town Hall (did he really say that poor woman with tumors should rely on charity?), the adventures of Michele Bachmann (really: how was she elected?)

Interesting times.