what not to do

 Thursday I felt pretty good.  And so I did the inevitable -  I overdid.  The morning was my usual schedule - removing myself from the couch to get something to eat or use the necessary room.   I puttered around the house off and on, just to get some exercise.

"There's a lot of white ink in the lines." Rick informed me after lunch, as he referred to my digital garment printer in my workroom. "I'm concerned about it."

I had intentionally stayed away from that part of our house.  I knew the draw to stay in there would be too strong for me to resist. The thought of a problem with a piece of my business equipment was enough to lay my resolve aside and roll to my workroom.  Weeks earlier I had finished my final order minutes before I left for the hospital for the "Bye, Bye, Bunions" surgery.  Before I left I replaced the ink cartridges with cleaning fluid and flushed the lines.  I noticed there was a bit of white in the lines so I left it on for auto cleaning to finish the job.

When I was able I checked on it and noticed several cleaning fluid lines needed a refill.  I quickly replaced them and hurried back to my perch on the couch.  "That should keep the Diva in line until I am better" I thought to myself as I plopped in my permanent spot.

Anna, the Diva

Rick's concern about the Diva brought me back to reality.  I perched my bum leg on a chair as I began the process of a thorough cleaning.  After an hour of frustrated exploring I discovered the problem.  In my haste to refill the fluid I had grabbed the wrong thing, white ink!  So instead of cleaning, Anna, as I call my machine, had white ink pulsing every eight hours through her veins. I immediately put in the correct solution, and flushed the lines. It was a quick solution to an avoidable problem, but I had been up for over an hour and a half.

As soon as I was satisfied with Anna's condition, Rick and I left to attend a visitation at a funeral home.  By the time my exhausted bones melted into the plaid of the couch, the big hand had passed twelve on the clock four times.

The doctor's words of warning resonated in my mind, "One day you will feel well and you may go shopping or something.  You'll feel great while you are out and will be up too long.  Later your foot will swell and you will realize it was too much.  Don't do it."  Oh, Doc, I wished I would have listened!  Sleep was hard to get that night with a throbbing foot.  Words spoken during that appointment were tattooed in my memory.

Friday was spent in apology to Lucie.   I retreated  to the behavior I exhibited the first week after surgery, glued to the couch.  I dozed periodically through out the day in an effort to reclaim the lost sleep.   Ice packs became my closest friends once again. Late in the afternoon I propped my foot on a stack of pillows  positioned with care on the floor and charted the A-Z photo books on my 'to do' list.
Self worth returned again as I accomplished one thing on Friday.