Updates and Links

Hello again. It's been a while. How have you been?  I've been busy busy busy.  Well, as busy as my back will let me.  Not getting nearly enough sleep  and it's taking longer and longer each morning for the pain to go away.  Some nights it doesn't wake me completely but I spend the night in a light nap stage and in pain.  I finally found a neurosurgeon in Kansas City.  My first appointment is on Feb 3rd. According to the radiology report, I have a large bone spur on L5-S1 that is pressing on the nerve. There's another spur on the right side but it's not a large. I am hoping they can do a minimally invasive surgery to shave off both spurs and have me back to work at the library and at home right away better than before.

I have an appointment with my primary doctor this Monday and I'm going to ask for a referral to one of the orthopedic doctors at the clinic. My knees are getting worse and worse. They grind and grind when I walk up or down the ramps leading up to the house or when I walk the stairs at work (just a few into the library).  If we can get my back to stop hurting and get my knees to stop grinding and hurting, I can start exercising and doing more around the yard and maybe lose this extra weight I'm carrying around.  I could stand to lose 80 lbs or so.  I started packing on the weight while recovering from bi-lateral carpal tunnel surgery back around 1998 or so.

The only good thing about the pinched nerve pain is that it won't let me go back to bed in the morning. I work at the library part time and most days I don't start work until the afternoon. I'm used to sleeping in, especially on days I'm not working. I'm NOT a morning person by any stretch of the imagination. I never have been. Everyone says "Oh, you'll get used to it" and "It'll get easier before you know it". Yeah, right. Bull crap, I say.  Everyone morning I had to get up for school starting with kindergarten, it was a fight to get me up. I would get up early for Saturday morning cartoons but within 15 minutes, I'd be sound asleep in front of the TV and would miss all the cartoons. Nearly every job I've ever had required me to get up early for work. And it's always next to impossible for me to get up and get moving. I'd continue fighting to stay awake until close to lunch time every work day.  Come the weekend, I wouldn't get out of bed until lunch time or later. Then struggle to get my errands and housework done. Then the struggle would start again that next Monday.  Forget going out with friends, going to movies, concerts, etc etc etc. It's still like that but now I can sleep in to a point every day except Saturday.  I'm getting lots done every day now that I can't go back to bed but I usually end up taking a nap (on my days off) or start yawning and fighting to stay awake starting around 5 PM at work.  It's just freakin' crazy.

I want to give you some links to other (much better) homestead blogs.  I'll try to share one each time I get online.  If you visit them, please provide them the link to my blog and let them know I directed you.  I'd love to get more followers and more comments.

http://blueyurtfarms.com/12-homesteads-to-follow-explore-and-learn-with-them/

This is a link within a link. More like 12 links within a link. Blue Yurt Farms is providing links and information about homesteads with blogs they like and follow. Lots of information here, folks.