Arohanui

• I went for my first recreational walk for months during the weekend, my lack of walking resulting from a combination of my being broken and the filthy filthy disgusting weather. Saturday was beautiful; the Boy and I went up to the Town Belt, stood on a hill and looked out over the harbour, and then walked down through Wadestown. And it was glorious, all that fresh air and sunshine and striding... it feels like forever that I strode anywhere.
• And so many beautiful magnolia trees on the walk, venerable old things with twisting branches covered in moss, huge waxy flowers blossoming or beginning to blossom on their tips. The flowers are so gloriously upright and so vivid and bold compared to the sparseness and puritanism of the branches. I love the contrast. They're also the best thing about walking to work.
• Train time; an hour each day to read, write, knit, examine the strange train people, and THINK. Stare into space. Enforced downtime rocks my tiny world.
• My fabulous new culottes, which make me happy, so happy. I feel like both a mighty samurai! and a 1930s glamour girl. Best of all, I feel like I'm channeling an old samurai loving flatmate and the Glorious and Horribly Distant Lizzie.
• Having a tidy, craft-centric bedroom. The inside of my head feels clean, and tidy. I can live there.
• Anticipation: Bill Bailey tomorrow night, Roller Disco next Saturday, Kylie in December!

Before-During-After

I hope the hideousness of my leg doesn't freak anyone out... although Bella had the EXTREME experience of sanding my foot down last night and still likes me enough to wash my towels, so, yeah! Harden up easily freaked-out types and enjoy me as the medical marvel I am... or I'll hit you with my stick.

What I did during The Six Week Convalescence

I write this with great excitement, as I am FINALLY sans-cast, not quite limber, yet strangely nostalgic (already! what a freak) for The Time I Was A Cripple.
So. Let us now take a look back at the last six weeks... and the Varied and Amazing Things I Have Done between waiting for my bones to knit, climbing up the walls and slipping over on the wet mossy concrete on the walkways and stairways of various houses. Mmm, huzzah!

• I made manymany tiny origami stars. They are pretty and pointless and you can find out how to make them here. Oh, and I used this paper for a different lot of them. Pretty pretty pretty.

• Knitting! Squares for the giant and never-ending patchwork blanket in the lounge...

• ... similarly I swathed myself in pink wool...
  
• ... and I made slippers for Shannon on my new fab thing, the Knitting Loom, which I then decorated with red and green pompoms, and gosh golly darn, didn't they look silly. Yes, they did.
  
• I have read manymany books. Mmmm, books. Here are some of them, looking pretty in a pretty pile.

• I listened to manymany Agatha Christie radio plays. I love Poirot and his use of "the Leetle Grey Cells" and I believe that, as a society, what we really need are more pantomime French accents on public broadcasting. Huzzah! 

• Keeping with the multimedia theme is the obsession that I developed with watching entire series of shows in one sitting. I've watched the first series of the Mighty Boosh, learnt parts of all three series of the League of Gentlemen off by heart, obsessed relentlessly about the 2008 series of Time Team (I am so in love with Phil Harding/Wurzel Gummidge) and felt harrowed by the entire series of Band of Brothers, leant to me by the fabulous Nat. 

• I undertook a little editing for Ange, who in turn whisked my dirty washing away and returned it clean and dry, and with my underwear impeccably folded. There is nothing like clean, dry, folded washing when you've obsessed over a growing pile of dirty laundry for a fortnight. I love her.

Mostly however, I lay in bed and demanded tea and coffee from Beatrice and Callum when staying at Shannon's flat, from Bella and Tom since I've been home and from Shannon everywhere I went. And these lovely people (amongst others too numerous too mention) totally humoured me, and checked that I hadn't fallen over whenever I made lots of noise. Lovely lovely people came to my house up fifty-million steps to visit and ended up waiting on me. I have been driven around by manymany lovelies to save me from encroaching and barely resisted insanity. My parents visited me everyday in hospital despite how much of a mission it was to get there, and made me feel I could call on them whenever I needed. I'm so lucky to be surrounded by so many amazing people. I'm so sure that I haven't mentioned all of the incredibly thoughtful things that people have done for me, from lending me magazines and DVDs to plying me with lollies and chocolate to vacuuming my lounge, but rest assured NOTHING is taken for granted.

Arohanui darlings! *mwah*

If you're super keen you can follow my Convalescence Adventures here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here - the famous Caper Caper.

Arohanui - happy things

I've decided to do this Happy Things project weekly. Wish me luck xxx

• My new work; I love all the learning that comes with starting at a new place... new systems, new programmes, new ideas, new people and most of all the chance to make things over and really push myself to work to the best of my abilities. I think that's why I became so frustrated at my previous job - there was no CHALLENGE, challenge to understand or to complete work by a deadline, things came too easy after a while and there wasn't the need to learn and absorb new information after the initial period of starting a new project. So yay, yay, yay for getting this fab job and yay for learning. What a fucking geek.

• Keeping dry while surrounded by torrential downpours. I love watching the thumbnails of rainfall over the country on metvuw and being dry and totally astounded at the amount of water falling out of the sky all over the country. And I'm happy that I can enjoy this exceptional weather safe in the knowledge that I'm not being absolutely thrashed by the weather like other people all over the country. Poor people all over the country. Lucky Sarah.

• Life returning to normality as my ankle becomes stronger and I hurtle towards having my cast removed... Dinner out with Jessica including much gossip; I ate so much I felt cut in half by my waist-belt but also so content at doing something so normal. I'm going to see some of the Drama School Solos at Te Whaea this weekend with Bex, and it's super fab to anticipate going out without feeling super stressed out about getting from point A to point B. Oh, and manymany derby things in the weeks to come...strange how appealing that seems all of a sudden... hm. Odd.

• The ability to knit. How I love to knit! And also fab to know that the skill was taught to me initially by my Nana, a skill that links me to generations of women and men before me. In an age where people are so alienated from these simple acts of providing for oneself creating or remaking through knitting and sewing becomes almost a political act. Simply put, people need to wear clothes so that they don't freeze to death. Ornamentation is an ancient human impulse that is exploited in the current day by "the fashion industry". As an individual, the act of creation in this respect is hugely empowering as it allows a person to ornament without CONSUMING. I feel similarly about having the ability to cook - that it's empowering to make food and I feel that by feeding other people I'm showing people that I give a fuck about them. *End Rant*. Now all I have to do is farm my own sheep and spin my own wool and grow my own organic veges and then I can preach from the rooftops. Heh.

• The Boy. He's fab.

Ein bisschen note before I head to bed

I've started a new job, which I love, but I'm CRAZY tired at the moment - hobbling around work all day and then up and down the mad thousands of stairs at my house. Hopefully my biceps will be the size of watermelons by the time all this broken ankle business is done.

This evening I went out to dinner with Jessica who is heading overseas on Thursday with her Mann, I am too jealous that she will get to see Lizzie (as well as just generally, as she gets to visit fabulous places...) I should save money and go to New York. I want to so badly, especially after reading this post by Culinary Types, through reading Gala Darling's posts about her time in New York and Gilda's general enthusiasm for the city... Similarly I spent part of the time researching images of New York today, and Jessica talked about visiting and other people we knew who had lived there...

SAVE MONEY WOMAN.

I shall go to bed now methinks.

Convalescence Day 17, A Caper Caper

I went on an Adventure today - a Caper Caper, indeed. See me all excited and ready to hit the road below.... I'm smiling because I'm not only wearing my penguin sweater but also my grey nappa leather mini skirt AND a velvet puffed sleeve jacket. Meow.

So yeah, Boy took me out! We borrowed a mobility scooter (Old Woman Electric Blingin') from the Wellington City Council and went on super exciting adventures in the City Where Everyone Walks Everywhere. We went to Nikau for coffee and cake (I had a little tamarillo meringue cake), to Catch Sushi Bar for lunch, to Te Papa to see the Rita Angus exhibition and then to Moore Wilsons where I bought too much specialty food. Like a kilo of salted capers and a 2300gm jar of Kalamata olives. Then while we were arseing about later I drove too fast over a bump near the church on Tory street and one of the shopping backs hanging off the back of the scooter flew off and the jar of salted capers EXPLODED! But in the bag so not so disastrous. I also made Boy go with me to the Salvation Army store on the corner of Ghuznee and Tory where I bought a framed tapestry of poppies and a black shift dress to add to my collection of black dresses - some time ago I thought that it would be awesome to only ever go out in black dresses and started collecting them, almost.

A little later we saw Jessica and Sam wandering the streets and preparing for their impending Europe trip... the only people I knew that we saw the whole day. Although, explaining the Scooter to them was difficult enough...

Convalescence Day 14, Positive Thinking!?

Ok people, just bear with me here... I normally HATE the whole concept of Thinking Positively! and stuff, and normally my mantra is less Be Happy! and more Be Kind to Yourself - that is, if you feel like sulking in bed and having a tanty and not talking to anyone for a day because it'll make you feel better.... by all means, DO IT. Dammit, I paid my Therapist a fortune to tell me that, and I'm going to spread it far and wide (moreover, I enjoy nothing more than a really good sulk).*

So, now for the But: this morning I read Galadarling's "Things I Love Thursday" post and I found her enthusiasm for her life to be infectious. It's a miserable day, and I decided that I would make a list of things that I loved as a project where I could use my glitter pens, stickers, and write in my diary again (haven't done it forever), and the strangest thing happened. I decided to fill one page with Things I Love, (I thought difficult given my house-ridden-ness and broken ankle and general sulkiness/ambivalence of the last week) and by the end I felt really content with my lot. Um, Happy in fact. And excited.

I encourage everyone to try it. On a scrap of paper... I think decorating and using pretty pens or even typing in interesting fonts makes it more fun... I'm going to do it every week from now on. Because it makes me feel good, and I like it.

 

*NB: I maintain my right to continue to do this, irregardless of anything written here.

Convalescence Day 13 (Lucky for Some)

• Laundry
• Dishes
• Clean out fridge
• Boy drops off Shower Stool and I have a Shower (huzzah!)
• A little writing for Derby
• Dealing with ACC -- boring
• More KM
• T-Shirt arrives in post
• Bella to buy manymany lollies for me
• Sunshine and coffee and SOUP

Glory Be for clean hair and reading in the sunshine. I am less afraid of the steps to the Laundry.

Convalescence Day 11

Since my uncontrolled ranting of mid-last-week, I'm feeling only a billion times better. I'm in my nest again, on my hill, up my stairs. This morning I watched a succession of birds (tui, waxeye) leap from the tree in front of my window to bathe themselves on the roof.... I lay in bed and watched them preen.

I've read James Meek's The People's Act of Love, leant to me by Jennifer and Simon during my hospital stay. I'm rating it. Fascinating subject matter and satisfying personality puzzles falling neatly into place before being grossly obvious. Beautifully written.

Keeping in a Russian theme, I've just started reading Katerina: the Russian world of Katherine Mansfield by Joanna Woods.The introduction to the book is written by Vincent O'Sullivan - who also wrote an article about KM in last weeks Listener - which was essentially a preview piece to his release of KM's last volume of letters. Sadly, I only own a copy of the "Selected Letters", very slim given the fact that the collected letters stretch to five volumes.... plenty of time to collect these later, perhaps.

Warmth is achieved by two blankets, a duvet, a sleeping bag, a sheet and two hot water bottles. And a nest created by the manymany pillows. Today I have spent most of the day curled on my armchair, on top of The Bear Fur and wrapped in a crochet Old Ladies' Blanket. There is nothing greater than being curled up warm in a Room of Ones' Own.

Convalescence Day 5: A Trip to the Supermarket in the Rain

What a fucking miserable proposition. It seemed like such a fabulous idea too. But apparently I have no level of fitness anymore and moving anywhere was the biggest effort in the world. Worse still, floors everywhere were slippery and thus my crutches were flying out from underneath me almost constantly (it felt). Shannon was fab and I kind of felt even worse being grumpy and frustrated because he was being so patient with me. He managed to maintain this patience even while being rained on as I hobbled VERY SLOWLY down Blallen Street.

The outside world is out there.

It's just far far away from me.

And more difficult to access than I could have possibly imagined.

It's unbelievably fucking depressing to be so dependent on other people and to be physically STUCK. Did I mention how much more empathy I have for people with a permanent disability now? It is a great deal more empathy. HUGE BAGS more empathy. Imagine coping with immobility for your entire life? I don't even want to. I'm bloody miserable enough as it is.

I'm drinking red wine in bed and I spilt some on Shannon's sheets by accident. I think I wiped it off in time tho. Geeky documentaries and much sulking for me now I think.

Convalescence Day 3: Depression Rising

Last night I suddenly realised how reliant I'm going to be on other people for weeks and weeks and weeks. How fucking depressing. My leg is like an enormous plaster anchor, chaining me to one spot. Today I feel like refusing to get out of Shannon's bed - I'm set up here and I can't think of any reason to get up. Let's face it, having a shower is a mission equivalent to a ten day tramp through the mountains, and takes almost as long. I'm going mad and becoming scary paranoid in my stir craziness.

Convalescence, Day 2: A Perfect Storm

 

The weather is something else - glorious southerly gales and wind whipping sideways and huge swells at Princess Bay and all around the coast... Shannon took me for a drive and I saw the outside world for the first time since the drive back from the hospital on Friday. Getting down the six or seven stairs outside his house was scary as all hell - I was frozen with fear that I might slip and either do more damage to myself or break something else and somehow end up in a full body cast. And the worst part of the above - going back into hospital.

Otherwise I have been fed exceptionally well, drunk a hell of a lot of coffee and taken many many less painkillers. So, pepped up in one department and less so in another. I feel exceptionally smug because I have done lots of difficult looking-after-myself things with NO assistance. Hopefully I'll be able to get up my stairs sometime in the not too distance future. Going back to my own home is beginning to seem like a fabulous dream.

Convalescing a la @ the Boy's

I am on the couch, and I suspect that maybe my butt is growing into the couch... doesn't look like I'm going to be much more than part of the furniture for some time yet. Merryn sent me a link to a site called mybrokenleg.com which is a site for people with broken legs. As the name might suggest.

The Boy is EXTREMELY VIGILANT in his looking after me, extra fab it must be said. My abilities on crutches are slowly improving... not only making trips to the bathroom and back but also up and down the hallway, just when the whim takes me.

In other news, New Zealand is sending another especially liberated young woman to the Miss Universe pageant in Vietnam. And by "liberated" I mean she has big tits:

Horowhenua hottie. A genius turn of phrase there... alliteration is everything.

The Cultural Costume, of which Beatrice was especially scathing: "The most obscene bastardisation of a Maori costume ever." "She looks like some kind of angry goth manga chick." "She looks like someone from the Tribe who grew up." Heh. Too accurate with that last one, methinks.

And: The glamour shot."It's like the cover of a porn DVD... I love it." This quote could have only come from Shannon, lets face it.

My leg aches... possibly need more drugs from my exceptional pharmacopia. Having a broken ankle sucks arse more than I can possibly express in more words. Lots of gesturing and gurning needed to fully describe the horror.

Feeling sleepy. Went to bed at half nine nearly every night at the hospital... Feeling vaguely nostalgic about my experience now. Ugh, too weird.

Kansas City Bomber

BACK STORY: I broke my ankle at skating the other night. In three places. I jumped up and landed badly; my foot folded underneath me. I don't believe I heard it snap... Anyhow, I need surgery: a pin and a plate but they won't operate until the swelling goes down. Maybe tomorrow... which means that tonight will be my third night here. My ankle hurts. Morphine helps.

So, watching hilariously bad B-Grade Movie called Kansas City Bomber. It stars Raquel Welch as a sexy (yet easily bamboozled) '70s Roller Derby star. Her introduction into the Portland Loggers heralds a team destroying over haul of the team. At the moment I'm watching a scene with hilariously obvious stunt doubles... Impossible to see their faces as they all do this Cousin It thing where their hair hangs down over their faces while they're fighting. Also, this movies has some of the most awful kissing ever caught on camera - a bit TOO visceral for the movies, catching a glimpse of the tongues in the process of grappling with one another. Ewww.