Timelines

Today I found myself in discussions regarding the timelines of when things happened when I was in the hospital.

When I was in the ICU, time became a big ball of timey-whimey goo, a string of images and half-remembered events. There are certain things that I remember with some clarity. At one point after I got the traych, I got a mucus plug stuck in my airway. This made it extremely hard to breath. Emily called the doctors in, as I tried (unsuccessfully) to remain calm and breath slowly. Eventually, as my breathing became more and more labored, I lost consciousness. I'm not exactly sure how much time passed, but when I came to, the doctors had successfully removed the plug. Another time that I remember is one of the nights soon after I was put on the liquids restriction. I seemed like the longest night ever, as I tried to satiate my thirst with ice chips. Memories like this are there, but I really can't piece them together into a coherent timeline.

I began to think about when I was able to actually stand without a number of people helping. I believe it was sometime in early March that we started to work on standing with a lift in physical therapy. This was nice in that it was a way to get me upright, but was a hindrance in that it wasn't tall enough to allow me to stand up completely. When I went to the University Hospital in Iowa City for surgery in April, the PTs there worked with me using another method to help me stand. That was the first time I actually stood since before all of this had happened, albeit with the assistance of 3 PTs. It was soon after this that I started to head in the right direction as far as standing and, eventually, walking.

I've wondered why it took that long to get to that point. I've tried to pick other memories out from that time to tell if there was any discernible change in how I was feeling, or how I was working on things, and I haven't been able to come up with anything. It is somewhat of an unknown part of my hospital timeline, but one that was a major milestone.

Please stop putting knots in my timeline... I'm going to need that later.

Cat-tastrophy

Hello all you kitties on the Internets. This is Mocha. Marcus and Emily are my humans. I hacked into Marcus' blog thingy in order to tell all you kitties about the disaster that has happened at our house.

Hershey and I were just fine, living our lives with our humans. Everything was great. But then, a few days ago, Marcus and Emily brought her home. She was a little ball of fur that they decided to call "Twix." What kind of a name is Twix, anyway? I mean, Mocha is sophisticated, and Hershey, well Hershey is cute. But Twix? Please...

Anyway, both Hershey and I explained to them in no uncertain terms that they were to take the fur-ball back to the pet store or Wal-Mart or the dump or wherever they got her immediately. Unfortunately, they did not listen to us. They put her into a big box with cagey stuff on it that they called a kennel. The whine bot made noise all the time. It was so annoying. I even made the hiss noises at her, and she wouldn't shut up! So, to punish our humans, we made ourselves scarce.

The next day they took Ms. Smelly Poop away in a small cage. We thought that they were finally getting rid of the thing, but a little later they came back, and she was still with them. How disappointing.

A couple of days later, again they put her in the little cage and took away. We figured since she had spent a couple more days in the big kennel that they weren't happy with all the noise she made. Finally, we were going to get the house back to ourselves. But, once again we were fooled. She came back with them a little bit later. Why don't they listen to us?

So, now the little home-wrecker is out and about with Hershey and me. We make the hiss sound whenever she gets too close, and we make sure that she doesn't take our favorite spots in the house. We will bide our time until our humans decide that there should only be two cats in this house...

Writer's Block: together we can find a cure

I really hate writer's block. It's the bane of every writer. Everyone has experienced it it at one point in their life (or more). Whether it was a college paper, a short story for class, an article for a magazine, or the great American novel, writer's block affects the best of us. It seems to sneak up on you at the most inopportune times. Sometimes it lasts for a couple of hours, or a day. Sometimes it sticks around for days on end, completely wearing out its welcome.

So, how does one overcome writer's block? Ask any number of writers, and you'll get a different answer from each of them. Some start working on other projects waiting for it to clear. Some take a break from writing completely in order to regain focus. I heard about one author who took up cooking in order to get over writer's block. As for me, I'm of the ilk that will work on another project in the meantime, waiting for the inspiration to hit me again. There are a number of websites and applications to help writers overcome the debilitating mental condition, and I have found some help there, as well.

One thing that I used to do was switch on a television show, usually some sort of science fiction program. I soon realized that when I did this, I would come up with a number of ideas. But, when I got them down on paper, I realized that they were more often that not complete rip-offs of what I had just seen on TV! I stopped doing that.

For short periods of mental rest time, I will take on a good game of Solitaire or Bejeweled to give my brain a rest. This seems to get the juices flowing again, and gives me the strength to get through that one last paragraph.

While I was in the hospital, I found it difficult to concentrate on any one thing for a length of time, whether it was writing, video gaming, sudoku solving, etc. I never got the chance to get writer's block, because the minute I got a good rhythm going someone would be coming into the room to poke me, prod me, or give me a pill of some sort. So, when I experienced writer's block a few days ago, it seemed like a new feeling; I wasn't quite sure how to deal with it. I think I've gotten myself to a better mental place, and the writing can continue (mostly) uninterrupted.

This blog post was brought to you by the letter... uhhh... can't think of a letter right now, so I'll use 42.