poof

It's that time of year when we're keeping plenty busy, but nothing is particularly exciting or interesting. I feel like every post I've made in months has included my feet or birding. This post will be no different.

The knitting class is wearing on my nerves. Knitting is much more difficult to learn than I could have imagined. Kaylin is having an extremely hard time with it so I am having an extremely hard time. She is at a high level of frustration. I'm trying to keep it together and not wring her little neck. I think there is some possibility that once you get it, knitting may be a mindless activity you can do while watching tv, but when you're teaching yourself, it requires a huge amount of effort and concentration. Kaylin just wants to pop out a scarf. Last week. Yesterday, after wasting the class whining and dripping tears and using the word "impossible", she finally sat down and actually TRIED for the first time. She knit several rows on her own before making an unfixable (by me anyway) mistake. I explained (once again) how many attempts I made doing exactly the same thing and starting over and over and over until I got it right.

Knitting isn't something I'm forcing Kaylin to do! She WANTS to learn! She just doesn't want it to be complicated and require as much effort as it does. I'm not making her practice XX minutes a night or expecting her to complete a project. My project for the class is going to be a small dish cloth and then I very well may never knit again. Kaylin may or may not end up loving it. I don't care much either way.

Logan is signed up for flag football and he can't wait. It starts next weekend with a clinic with a semi-pro Peoria team I've never heard of. I'm sure he'll love every moment. He's also loving every moment of his winter baseball clinic and is learning to pitch. Logan has gotten really into watching Bulls basketball and loves playing at home by himself or with Gene, but has no desire to play basketball on a team. He wants to concentrate on baseball and football.

On to my foot that prevented me from birding this weekend. Hey, at least there will be nothing about birds. :) Anyway, I was having terrible muscle tightness in my left calf that was either caused by my bad foot or else causing my foot to hurt MUCH worse than usual. I was stretching and massaging and doing everything else I could think of, but nothing helped. I finally made a doctor appointment, hoping for some temporary muscle relaxers or stronger pain meds. The doc poked around on my foot and when I practically jumped out of the chair, he said "Shot." My appointment was in the morning of a work day, with work the following day so I questioned if that would "work"? He thought I'd be fine. He was wrong.

I'm not afraid of needles. I've had several cortisone shots in my feet. They've never been painful at the time of injection. This time was special. The doc put on the numbing stuff and I felt the usual minor prick. No big deal. Then, when he tried to inject the cortisone, there was terrible counter-pressure (?) and he had to really fight to get it in. It was incredibly painful! I went back to work and the dull pressure just got worse and worse. It was like having a migraine in my foot. I talked to my boss and told her I thought I could finish out the day, but since the pain is usually worse the day after the shot, I wouldn't be coming in Thursday. Fortunately, we were well staffed and that worked out fine. By 4pm Wednesday, I couldn't take the pain anymore and finished locking up and left. I spent my "3 day weekend" doing next to nothing, because my foot hurt too much. I didn't even get dressed on Thursday. It's Sunday morning and my foot still hurts more than it did before the shot. I'm going to work, but have no idea if I'll be fine or in agony. At least my calf tightness is 95% gone.

I've really had it with the foot pain. For the first time, I'm considering surgery. I really can't take much more. It's been three years of constant pain. I've been forced to stop exercising, have gained close to 40 pounds and have had every aspect of my life ruled by pain. It's depressing. I have one last thing I'm going to try and if/when that doesn't work, I'm having the surgery.