Things to do When on Bedrest #1: Reminisce

Following the hallux valgus operation, I was rather surprised at the lack of pain. Everyone who knew someone who had done it told me to expect a lengthy, painful period. Well, the first day back at my apartment, I was hobbling around just fine, doing laundry even. The second day was not too bad either and I scoffed at the wimps who could not tolerate this minimum level of inconvenience.

Then the third day my foot started to hurt. So I quickly buried my misplaced premature pride of being a tough cookie and stuck to staying in bed as much as possible.

Though I surrounded my bed with all the necessities I could think of (medicine, water, snacks, diet cokes, pens, paper, origami paper, books, magazines, etc), I find that I cannot stay long without opening my laptop.

My new thing is the Huffington Post. I'd stumbled upon that site before, but never really spent any quality time on it. Yesterday I must have spent a good 2-hour period on that site. One of the big topics they are currently focusing on in the lifestyle section is the need to get a good night's sleep. They had people write in their worst experience when dealing with too little sleep and it made a good read.

It didn't take me long to come up with a few of my own - when lack of sleep contributed to some embarrassing moments...

1. Was away at some country hotel preparing for an early morning presentation. Must have gotten maybe 4 hours sleep at most. I put both contact lenses in one eye in a haze. I looked for the left eye contact in the case and panicked that there was just solution, no lens in there. Peered through the sink and the bathroom with one eye open, completely convinced that I dropped the lens somewhere. Then a cloudy thought - gee why don't I see well with the right eye which does have a lens in it? Looked in the mirror and saw the two lenses one on top of the other...

2. Used to get up before 6 to be at the office before 7 - had to get dressed in the dark so not to disturb my roommate. One day I came into the office and realized I had two different shoes on. Not only that, one was 1" taller than the other. I'm not sure how I justified/rationalized to myself walking funny on the way to the office.

3. The night before an early Spring Break trip I had set my alarm to make sure I don't miss the plane. As these things go, of course, I woke up with a jolt, saw the time on the alarm clock, and cursed out loud that either the alarm didn't go off or I didn't hear it. I rushed through to get ready, all the while cursing profusely. I headed to the lobby in the dorm where I was supposed to meet a friend to share a cab. Not seeing her there, I feared that she left without me. I asked the lobby guy to call up her room - it was one of those speaker-style intercoms. She groggily answered the call - I yelled at top volume, what the f*ck are you doing, get your butt down here! She drowsily said, why now? I yelled emphatically "it's 6am!!" - the lobby person and the security guy looked at me, then both looked at the clock overhead. It said 4:15am.... I realized somewhat later that in setting the alarm, I had somehow reset the time as well...

4. I had a friend visit during college and we danced through the night at various clubs. The day after she had a bus back at Port Authority at 6pm, but much to our collective horror by the time we both got up we had only an hour to make the bus. We dashed and dashed, though the streets, through the subway, through the corridors of the station - till we stopped to see at which gate the bus was due to leave. We were puzzled that her bus was not on the screen yet - then we looked at the clock overhead which showed 4:55 instead of 5:55. After making sure that all clocks around us showed the same time, we got some coffee, still scratching our heads - then I spotted a NYT and on the front page was a tiny reminder: Daylight Savings!


Was fun thinking back to these old stories...

Hallux Vargus

I only just recently learned these two words but I must say, I do love saying "Hallux Vargus".

I'd never heard the term before, but here everyone seems to know what it is. Such an elaborate larger-than-life term, It's simply what they call the operation to correct bunions.

And I've just had it done!

So I'm housebound for the foreseeable future. My bed is surrounded with bottles of diet coke, snacks, laptop, books, origami papers, etc etc. I thought I would feel claustrophobic, but so far, on my second full day in bed, I feel really happy! Last night, without the everyday duties of having to cook dinner, feed kids and clean up afterwards, I felt like such the model mom patiently doing homework with Hanaya and gracefully assisting Manolee with her numbers workbook - all very calmly, no rush, no panicked thoughts inside my head yelling "gotta wash up the dishes! gotta clean up the kitchen! gotta get these boogers to bed!"

Thank you Hallux Vargus!

Below: a picture from Hanaya...