Natural Attachment

May 16, 2011

our stories – part 5 – where did i go?

Filed under: Life — Tags: , , , , , — michele james-parham @ 12:56 am

In case you have not noticed, I have not uploaded a post in over a month. No, I did not forget about blogging or lose interest in blogging. I broke my leg.

Come again? I said, I boke my leg.

To make an interesting story short, I was walking down the sidewalk and tripped. I ate the cold concrete with the left side of my face and my left knee – did not even get my hands out to break my fall. After dialing 911, the lovely paramedics took me to the ER at Alleghney General Hospital on Saturday, April 16th. While my father was 1200 miles away celebrating his forty-some-odd birthday, I was in the ER waiting to be admitted.

I had x-rays, a CT scan and an MRI. Those all confirmed that I did indeed shatter the top of my left tibia, which then led me to have an open reduction and internal fixation surgery on Monday, April 18th. I was discharged and sent home on Wednesday, April 20th. In my farewell goodie bag was a prescription for Percocet and 28 pre filled syringes of Lovenox (for me to inject into my soft fatty tummy every morning). Oh, and instructions not to put any weight on my brace bound leg for four weeks.

When I went for my two week post-op follow up doctor visit on Thursday, May 5th, I was x-rayed again (told those looked great), had my stitches removed and was outfitted with a fancy new leg brace that allows me to bend my knee some. I was told that I might actually see 20 years out of my knee before I needed a total knee replacement, instead of the ten years that I was threatened with after surgery. I was also given a prescription for physical therapy for six weeks (2 to 3 times a week).

Last week, on Wednesday the 11th, I went to my first PT appointment. I go to my next appointment this Thursday. I have no idea when I will get to try walking… but, it seems as though that is still a ways out.

What do I do all day? PT exercises, play on my new iPad (that my in-laws bought me), play games on my Nintendo DS, hang out with the kiddo and be taken care of by my Dear Other Half. I have lived in the front room of our house on a spare bed for a month now and will remain there awhile longer.

I am going to try to pick up where I left off with my weekly blogging schedule, but it may get drastically cut down. Here is a reminder of what I had been doing:

Monday
Wednesday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
And the rest of “our stories” can be found here.

I am not completely sure how much of that I will keep up with, but I will make an effort to blog at least a couple times a week. Typing on an iPad is quite infuriating and blogging with links and doing the whole cut and paste routine is proving to be quite cumbersome. We shall see what comes of this. However, once I am mobile again and can use my regular computer, I plan on being back in the blogging game, full swing.

That is all for tonight.

Clip to Evernote

February 27, 2011

unconscious mutterings 02.27.11

Filed under: Entertainment,Life — Tags: , , , , — michele james-parham @ 8:26 pm

unconscious mutterings 02.27.11

  1. Leaning :: made me think of my friend’s giant Great Dane, Sasha! He likes to lean on people.
  2. Projects :: my husband – he is always thinking about or engaging in a ‘project’.
  3. 404 :: MSWindows – and how much Microsoft is the devil. I’m just fine with my Linux.
  4. Page :: book – self explanatory.
  5. Twitter :: twitterpate – and that’s what I call ‘tweeting’ on Twitter (I’m twitterpating as I type this blog post).
  6. Renaissance :: rich colours and gold…
  7. Webinar :: BORING – I’m damn near bored just to see the word ‘webinar’!
  8. Community :: something that I need more of and now.
  9. Illustrate :: something you do with books to give more detail or to enhance certain details already explained in the text.
  10. Clean slate :: starting anew – getting a second chance.
Clip to Evernote

February 25, 2011

maps, they’re awesome & friday fill-in 02.25.11

Filed under: Craftiness,Life — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — michele james-parham @ 3:15 pm

this is friday’s post… it’s appearing a day late, but magically has friday’s date attached to it. magic.

*************

maps. maps are nice. i have developed a secret fetish for maps i think. it’s more the looking at them; maps from various different cities and countries and thinking about how they came to look the way that they do. for instance, if you look at a map of the mid/southwest, you will find that almost all of it is a perfect grid-like design. however, if you look at a map of say, Pittsburgh, you will see that it is clearly a plateful of spaghetti or rather that’s what its design influence appears to be. i know a lot of street layout has to do with topography, but sometimes, just sometimes, i think developers want to have fun with aerial photographers and people in planes.

maps are also awesome for wallpaper, wrapping paper, scratch paper, notebook covers, drawer liners and a whole host of other creative ideas.

**************

Flying Cars

**************

Friday Fill-In 02.25.11

1. Ooooh, I totally see what you did there!

2. I’m wishing that the weather would make up it’s mind; this hot one day and cold the next - I can’t stand it!

3. How the heck did I end up with so many books, boxes of tea and skeins of synthetic yarn?

4. The beach/ocean, hands down, is one of my favorite places to visit.

5. I’m not a trouble maker, I’m not!

6. It’s really hard for me to get into a fiction book; it has to be good.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to going out to see friends, tomorrow my plans include laundry (!) and Sunday, I want to catch up on sleep, but I can’t because I’m kidsitting!

**************

i’m in the process of getting today’s (saturday’s) post done. it’s the weekly gratitude post and i’ve got lots to be grateful for!

Clip to Evernote

February 24, 2011

curious as a cat 02.24.11

Filed under: Life,Photographs — Tags: , , — michele james-parham @ 1:12 am

Curious As A Cat

1) How many dictionaries do you own? OMG! How many do just *I* personally own – three and those are basic dictionaries. However, if you were to count up all the dictionaries in our house (including the foreign language, kid’s & specialized ones like, Dictionary of Theories), I’d guesstimate that we have somewhere around three dozen! Yes, that’s 36 or more dictionaries in our house!

2) Are you a touchy person or do you prefer not to be touched by others?
I am a touchy or physically affectionate person. I like to hug, snuggle and give massages. However, I am kind of sensitive about my face; I really don’t like people close to me face or doing things to my face – I know, how have I lasted as a mother?!!

3) Describe a dream you had that was prophetic in nature.
Oh, where to begin? In the most recent one, which may be rather morbid for some, it was late at night, Dear Other Half and I were having an argument and I was having severe pain in my uterine region. I went to the bathroom to pee and realized I was miscarrying my baby. This dream happened three days before I miscarried in real life, after a day of having very light to mild contractions, which became really intense after a late evening of uber emo-tastic-ness & arguing with my Dear Other Half.

4) Show and Tell. What comes to mind first when you see this picture? Or, tell a story if it reminds you of one.
Well, first, I think about her eyes and how they look both sad and beautiful at the same time. Beautifully sad. I imagine it is Halloween where she is or something similar (Samhain, Dia de los Muertos, etc.). She might be part of a parade, as it seems she’s surrounded by other people/parts of a parade float – usually parades are in the daytime and there is sun shining on her head…

Public Domain Photo

Clip to Evernote

February 22, 2011

hair cut & weekly blog schedule

Filed under: Life,Parental — Tags: , , , , , , , — michele james-parham @ 4:56 pm

So, I cut Elijah’s hair last night. Some of you know how crazy that is. See, Elijah doesn’t like his hair touched AT ALL and will only give me permission to cut it about once ever six or eight months. He’ll usually let me tend to it more frequently than that to split apart dreadlocks and find missing Legos (totally kidding!!!!). However, it’s been about a year since I’ve been allowed to touch his head. It’s been a little hard for me, but I respect my kiddo and his body – it’s not MY hair after all, you know.

We’ve been talking about cutting it for the last six months. I had envisioned it short, but not as short as it is. I had envisioned that he’d still have dreadlocks and everything, but that we’d just cut it short and separate everything out. The last three months had lots of talk of mohawks. Elijah has decided that he wanted to cut it, but that he wanted a mohawk down the middle and his two favorite dreadlocks in the front left uncut.

Apparently last night was the night. We sat down and started to cut. First, I got rid of the solid locked matting on the back of his neck, which had been giving him some pain – I think this is what finally led him to allow me to cut his hair. We talked about the mohawk and I sectioned his hair in such a away to make it happen. Once I got to the top of his head and was cutting the locks down for the mohawk, Elijah said, “I don’t want a mohawk anymore; just cut it all off except for Brother and Sister”. ‘Brother and Sister’ are what he named his two dreadlocks in the front – those are special to him and I doubt that they will ever be cut by anyone.

So, it all got cut off and then I went back over his head and cut the remaining stubs really short. He’s happy, looks about a year older and according to his ‘Uncle’ Taz, he looks like a Hebrew Lakota. I think he’s beautiful regardless of what’s going on, on his head :-)

Pictures of before and after can be found here.

**************

I wanted to make a note about how my week for blogging is shaping up. I think it’s going to look something like this:

Sunday – free association with ten words. it’s fun and gets my brain working. you should play along.
Monday – I’ll be posting 100 random things about myself for the next ten weeks and then after that we’ll see what happens…
Tuesday – Regular blogging about Life, the Universe and Everything.
Wednesday – Wordless Wednesdays has always intrigued me and will force me to use my camera at least once a week. Play along, please.
Thursday – Regular blogging about Life, the Universe and Everything.
Friday – Friday Fill-In.
Saturday – Is my day of gratitude blogging and I invite you to share what you are grateful for as well.

On days when there is a meme/meme-like thing planned, I might double post, as Life, the Universe and Everything does happen on those days as well. But, I’m employing the help of memes for the time being to aid in my desire to blog something every day.

***************

<3

Clip to Evernote

February 15, 2011

weather, quotations & writing

Filed under: Entertainment,Life — Tags: , , , , , , , — michele james-parham @ 7:10 pm

I’m loving the weather right now; it’s so manic. We’re expecting 60 degrees here in Pittsburgh on Thursday and the last few days have been around 50 degrees! In February, in Pittsburgh, insane.

******************

While researching a quotation yesterday, I stumbled unto this awesome website/blog called Street Anatomy. I was kind of struck by this post.

******************

I said this today:

“Life ain’t easy and sometimes, it just feels like swimming upstream in a river of molasses – rich, sticky and sweet, but it’s still thick and hard to tread through.”

******************

I finished rereading Opening Up on Sunday. I still think there are some bits in the book that are fairly invalidating for both those seeking to open up their relationship and those whose partner is seeking to open up their relationship. Overall, though, it’s a good book for a person to read who is curious or contemplating opening up their monogamous relationship. It’s nice that it covers all kinds of different relationship structures AND explains that it’s not just about getting more sex and in fact, you can open up a relationship purely for emotional intimacy with many partners and not have sex with any of them – this might clear up the misconception that a lot of people have about sex being the reason for nonmonogamy.

******************

I’ve started writing again. In little bits and fusses, but writing just the same. Some of it is poetry and some of it is just stream of consciousness scrawling. I’ll share things as I finish them. Writing lately has been extremely therapeutic in general – even this blog (which I have kept going forĀ  25 days straight – that’s almost a month of blogging and that’s a first for me!).

******************

Hopefully, Networked Blogs won’t forget about this post like it forgot about yesterday’s post.

******************

A Facebook friend posted this blog link tonight – beautiful concept and artwork.

Clip to Evernote
Older Posts »

"Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it." ~ Brene Brown