Chicken

I love chicken.  It is a universal meat prepared in thousands of different ways.  My cooking repertoire is far more limited with basic frying, baking and the infrequent soup.  Pre-roasted chickens from Costco are a huge buy—it is cheaper to buy a cooked chicken than it is to buy an uncooked one—and theirs are always delicious, moist and tender.

Boneless chicken thighs are my favorite chicken piece to cook.  Take out some frozen thighs, rinse the frozen brine of them that prevents freezer burn, season, and cook at will. 

Tonight I hoped to make chicken with peanut sauce on spinach with phad Thai noodles.  The spinach was too old so I threw it out and made garlic chicken with refried beans, cheese, sliced olives and salsa.   It was delicious and nutritious.

Chicken, beef and pork are my favorite meats.  I like fish and shellfish, but they are more delicate to handle and cook making them more of a hassle and sometimes too smelly when cooking/cooked.

I am grateful for red junglefowl, Gallus gallus, from SE Asia and its many permutations.  It is delicious.

My Deck Garden

I lived her for a decade with started out as a nice collection of house plants.  Then I got two cats.  They were plant killing cats.   I was down to my last two sorry plants and a short lemon cypress tree (cats hate citrus smells).  Then Lea got motivated to grow some plants on the deck.   It was a good year for the deck plants. 

She lost interest in the deck plants last summer and I took over.  We added more pots and plants and used a hose to water the plants since carrying water in a bucket was not going to work for me.  It worked pretty well until I got blocked from getting on the deck due to a bunch of stuff being stacked in the way.  I did not try that hard to get past the barricade and the plants suffered from a lack of water.

Last fall I bought a box of bulbs from Costco that could/should have been planted in the fall.  I finally got around to planting the budding bulbs today.  Most of the bulbs were in good shape, one type of bulb was not in such good shape out of ten different kinds.

I could rearrange the deck in a better way by myself.  It would be a lot easier to get help.  I will get Lea or a friend to help me later this week

I connected the hose to the kitchen sink faucet, watered the plants, stored ten gallons in a tub and watering buckets and put it away.

I am grateful for my deck garden.  One annual plant in a hanging basket started blooming two weeks ago.   I look forward to spending time puttering around in my deck garden this summer.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Varilite Pneumatic Cushions

I sit on a Varilite pneumatic cushion to protect from getting pressure sores (aka bedsores) on my backside while sitting in my wheelchair.  They work great being a sophisticated design of some foam padding for shape and air pressure for weight distribution.  The downside is that the can go flat which leads to near failure of purpose.

My current cushion is flat right now since the finger valve popped-up when I was starting my Gratitude blog post.   I will keep the post short and go fix the cushion.  It just takes a little glue and some time to dry.

I am grateful for my Varilite pneumatic cushions.  They are the best seat cushions I have had in my 33+ years in a chair.

Insurance

My car insurance renews itself every six months on my credit card. That charge cycled again yesterday.  I have not had cause to use my auto insurance for years.

Getting paralyzed while working resulted in my getting a disability pension via industrial insurance aka workmen’s compensation.   With the exception of a few large employers like Boeing and Weyerhaeuser , workmen’s comp in Washington State is run by the state’s Department of Labor and Industries.  A nice feature of that is I don’t have to worry about somebody bundling off my pension with a collection of other liabilities to a company that is headed for bankruptcy in yet another version of white collar fraud.

I am grateful for the benefits derived from well run insurance companies.

Continuity of Care

After burning my ankle in mid-January, I came home from the hospital at the end of January.  Since then my wound care has been done by the same nurse working every day but for eight days.  Five days missed when a nurse practitioner changed the orders to a stupid dressing that ripped part of the graft off during a dressing change and three clinic appointments. 

Today the nurse had to skip a day for having the flu.  She was going to come in the afternoon and rescheduled for tonight.  Then she called to check my willingness to trade off a dressing change for potentially getting sick.   We will meet again tomorrow.

The graft that is still there is doing great.  The lost part is doing fairly well on a relative basis.  There is still at least a week or two to go before it will be a closed wound.

I think some of her days are reasonably short working for 3 to 6 hours.  I know other days are quite long while doing complicated IV drug infusions for homebound patients. 

I appreciate continuity of care.  I don’t want to see her work herself into the ground though.  I had sensed from our first meeting that moderation was not her strong point.

I am grateful for high quality medical care at home that also brings supplies to treat my burn.  

A Warm Day in March

The temperature cracked 70°on a gorgeous day in Seattle yesterday for the first time since October 19^th with a whopping 72°.  That broke a 46 year old record set in 1969 of 70°.  That one day heat wave drops back into the 60s and 50s over the next 10 days.

I am grateful for warmer weather, the warmest winter on record in Seattle and for not having the snowiest winter on record like they did in Boston.

Now I just need to get cracking on deck gardening…

Future Tech

After having gone over four years without participating in a focus group, I did my second group of the month today and will be doing a third one tomorrow night. 

The first “group” was only me surfing MSN for Microsoft.  Today’s focus group was paid for by for by the University of Washington.  It might have been a preliminary study for cyborg bioethics.

Today’s topic was on implanting chips in the brain to control prosthetic or paralyzed limbs or other external devices.  There were 4 other guys with spinal cord injuries and the facilitator was a women with a spinal cord injury.  It was the woman’s regular job to facilitate focus groups, this one just so happened to be on man/machine interface with respect to spinal cord injuries.

Is it really a robot as in a robotic arm if it is guided by human controls?  Sounds more like a cyborg to me.  Either way, it is another quantum leap forward in human-machine interactions. 

The first focus group was held a mile from my apartment for which I got a copy of MS Office Professional worth maybe $200.  Today’s was in downtown Seattle and I got $75 and a nice discussion about technology.  Tomorrow’s will a freebie discussion about pain management.

My friends hardly listen to me! Hah!  It was nice to get paid for my “expert” opinion.   The other guy were either a lot less technically literate than I was or choose to cite a lot less anecdotal evidence.  They were surprised by the very idea that a wifi device should have secure communications.

I am grateful for my technical literacy, a good education, a fast web connection and a chance to maybe help steer future tech research.

Electronic Transactions

Lea and I shopped at Crossroads Mall today.  I always use my credit card to pay for purchases whether online or in real life.  Paying by credit card is usually faster and slightly cheaper—I get a 1% reward on cc purchases.  Plus, I don’t have to write checks, carry a lot of cash or end up with several pounds of change in my backpack.

I also pay my household bills online either by sending payment through my bank’s online system or by debiting my bank account when paying rent each month. 

Much like how a horse used to be primary transportation and are now for rich equestrian hobbyists; stamps on envelopes used to the primary way of paying bills, now stamps are used for mail greeting cards to friends.  The post office has conceded that by selling universal stamps that never expire no matter what the current first class postage rate is.  A booklet of 100 stamps is easily last through years of mailing cards and the occasional letter.

Home Depot has a deal where they email receipts to accounts associated with a given credit card.  It is a little creepy on the privacy invasion side, but actually works really well for finding the receipt for old purchases.  It is near infinitely faster for me to search an email folder than hope to find a receipt that I almost undoubtedly through away.

I am grateful for the convenience of electronic transactions.  They make my life easier, better and speed up bill paying chores.

A Crappy Lunch

After years of weekly dining together Sandy and I don’t spend a lot of effort on trying new places, we tend to repeat at the usual suspects.   She loves pho, so we eat Vietnamese a lot and I have chicken & veggies.

I had a Groupon that was expiring at the end of the month and so we went to Bushnell’s in Redmond.  They do “craft” beers (microbrews), burgers, and a few other things.  We had burgers and fries.  For an $11 burger it was a wussy untoasted whitebread bun with way too much sauce and wilted greens instead of lettuce on mine.  Sandy’s fries were too cooked for her taste.  This was one of the worst meals we have had in a while.  It was such a poor effort that we just said the food was fine and left it at that.  The presentation looked okay, it was a burger and fries with a toothpick in a tall burger, what could go wrong.

The good news is that even a place with crappy food it felt safe to eat there.  It would be a lot worse if we got food poisoning.

I am grateful even the Redmond places with crappy food are going to be safe to eat—at least for a burger and fries.

Grateful for Things

Ideally I would write about people in my life that I am grateful for.  After the first couple of hundred posts that got tough with at most a few score people in my life.  After 1100 posts, it is more nearly repetitive, onerous and grinding.  That is a proven method to put out the writing fire.  That is not what I want.  I know that writing is good for me and serves as a way of staying in contact with my sister in Australia letting her know that am doing at least well enough to write.

Opening up my choice of topics and tangents will help continue to make writing these Gratitude blog posts a positive experience.

While grateful for many many things today, tonight’s honorable mentions are modern batteries and electronics.  I charged up my Kindle and my droid 4G smartphone today.  They are both incredibly reliable pieces of sophisticated portable electronics although my Kindle never gets far from my nightstand.

DIY Home Projects

I stopped doing hobby projects last Fall  when the sun went away. The sun has returned.  I am already behind on plant work on my deck and it is only the second day of spring on the astronomical calendar.  We had an early spring based on the nice weather earlier this month.

I look forward to spending time nurturing plants to grow lush and flourish over spring and summer. It is also time to get back to metalsmithing jewelry.

I am grateful for the joy that I am learning to get from active home hobbies and for having the resources to make it happen.

The Difference Between an Intention and a Decision

Sandy talked about listening to a speaker tape discussing the difference between intentions and decisions—decisions require ensuing action.

The topic from today’s Daily Reflections was the 10^th step in which when we are wrong we promptly admit it.  I got to chair the meeting and read the two pages from the big book on the 10^th step.  It was all about taking action.

An old-timer with 40+ years of sobriety and going to meetings at the prison in Monroe would always introduce himself with “My name is L and I am an alcoholic.  AA is for those that want it, not those that need it, and you better believe I want it.”  The more I heard it, the more I would hear a tiny clang of cognitive dissonance.  I know now that AA is for those that do it, not those that want it or need it.

Gave Michelle a ride to the Alano Club today.  It was a short silent sad ride.  I knew that it would be the last ride I give her to the Alano Club from here since I am getting a protection order kicking her out on Monday morning.  She looked out the passenger window the entire way there.  After the meeting, she walked off presumably headed home.  Lea went with me to my Doctor’s office.  When we got home, Michelle was not here and has not come home.  Typically this means she has gone back out.  That is even sadder.   I did not want her to drink or use again, I just wanted her to not live here with her delusional and/or toxic BS.

I am grateful to be able to make decisions today.  That is a lot better having intentions that resulted in living life as a series of uncompleted New Year’s resolutions akin to the movie Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day.

e-words and e-paper — was Bupkis

I am struggling for a Gratitude blog topic and don’t feel like writing now beyond putting some e-words on e-paper.

As a kid in school, I got poor grades on my reports.  A huge part of that was my pretty poor penmanship that bothers me to this day.  Hindsight reveals early issues with a lack of mindfulness and being focused on the finishing instead of the process.

I am grateful for e-words and e-paper.   It allows me to focus on the words I use for writing instead of being embarrassed by my penmanship.

Being A Licensed Driver With A Car

Went to Seattle today.  Drove south on 1^st Avenue trying to take a left on Spokane Street under the viaduct/West Seattle Freeway.  The left turn light failed to turn green during three complete light cycles so I went straight and took a left in a couple of blocks to drop off a pneumatic cushion for my wheelchair that needed to be repaired.

On the way back towards downtown Seattle, I took an illegal left turn to be able to head north on 4^th Avenue.  A half-mile down the road, I got a traffic ticket.  I will strive to do a better job of obeying traffic laws.  I tend to think of traffic laws more like guidelines to be applied with attentive common sense with safety in mind than rules.  That does not always work so well, but I have not been in an accident in 20+ years.   It is good to have not-corrupt cops watching out for all of us.

I am grateful to be able to afford to drive, have decent roads to drive on, traffic rules that are generally obeyed by most motorists with the exceptions of drunks and texters, a very reliable car that works well for me, and being able to afford gas.

Finishing Some Chores

I volunteer at local juvenile and adult correctional facilities.  There is a Federal effort to reduce rape in jails and prisons called “PREA” (Prison Rape and Elimination Act).  That means we have to do training every year to learn how to not sexually abuse the inmates, signs they have been abused and how to deal with it.

Hopefully I have successfully completed this year’s training requirement.  I have used many online training resources over the years.  Most places stopped using Adobe Flash years ago.   For the Washington State DOC, it is the latest in online education or proof that nepotism gets contracts.  It is uncertain whether I got everything done that needed doing.  I have well over 150 course credits and a degree in using computers.  It is easy to imagine others being even more frustrated with this process than I am.  /rant

Today was a good day.  I made it to a meeting, got a dressing change, lunch with Sandy, got Lea to the medical appointment, went Costco shopping and finished my online courses.

I am grateful to be getting more done these days.

Back to Bell Square and other Routines

I used to walk at Bell Square every Sunday night with Leslee.  Missed the last two months due to health care issues and scheduling conflicts.  Tonight we made it to the mall.  Leslee brought Ginny with her on the way to the meeting.

It was good to see Leslee and make it to my home group tonight.  This was the third or fourth time I have been to our Sunday night meeting this year.  I missed the comfort of having a safe routine with lots of recovery amongst people I have known for years.  I am not hang-out buddies with most of the people at the meeting, but several of them are the best friends I have ever had in my life.

It has been two months since I burned my ankle.  All too much of that time has been spent at home lying in bed with my foot slightly elevated.  I was lucky to not get cabin fever in a bad way.  I am now compelled to get out and about more.

I am grateful to be getting better and for being able to get back to some of my best habits of daily and weekly routines.  I am blessed to have kept up with my Gratitude blog writing.

A Blah Rainy Day

Had a slow Saturday of doing very little today.  Due to an already low baseline, very little means close to nothing for me.  Read a book, a couple of phone calls, watched a movie and mma action on UFC 185, puttered around the apartment and got my greaft dressing changed.

I am grateful that even the slow blah days are reasonably pleasant.

My New Food Processor

My sister got me a 9-cup food processor for my birthday.   It came early last month.  I finally got to using it today by shredding half of the veggies in the refrigerator. 

It was interesting in that everything I made were foods my grandmother made for me.  Corned beef hash, cole slaw and sliced cukes & onions in vinegar.  Granma never came close to having a food processor.   I remember being a kid with a clamp-on hand-cranked grinder prepping roast beef for the hash.  It was good to think of my granma.  She was the one calm sane adult in a childhood filled with too much anxious drama.  I like my new food processor.  It was surprisingly quiet which I greatly appreciated.

I am grateful for all the people that have provided me with food, tools & skills to make food and for being able to afford way more food than I should be eating.  Thanks Karen.

1111 Posts

This is my 1111^th post on my Gratitude blog.  That is the equivalent of three years and 16 days of daily posting.  Amazing! 

I had started another blog around 2007 getting up to maybe a dozen posts.  When I started this one I was hoping to maybe post a few times a week for a year.  It has morphed into an optimistic recap of my day that I am strongly compelled to post on every day.  On the nights I miss a post, I will usually write in the morning as a make-up post.  I even posted once while in the hospital healing my ankle burn graft.

I am extremely grateful for all the positive changes I have experienced in the last five years as a result of writing, reading and thinking about gratitude and other elements of positive psychology.  Finding myself to be a diligent writer is also another pleasant surprise.

A Nice Birthday Day

It was my birthday today and I once again have a year of sobriety.  It was a good day.  Went to my meeting, shared a cake with the group and they sang Happy Birthday to me.  After that I did a focus group for a local software company and got a voucher for free software that I will give to a friend that needs software.  After lunch, I went to see my psychotherapist for the first time in five years, it was great to see her again.  The visiting nurse changed my burn dressing.  Lea and I watched a couple TV shows.  We shopped online buying some shoes for Lea to celebrate her year of sobriety. It was a pleasant birthday with an appropriate level of activity.

I am grateful to be getting older, wiser and happier.  It sure beats all the other alternatives.



PS: This was supposed to have posted on 3/6/15.  I found it in the drafts folder and posted it on 3/12.

The Most Important Learning Lessons

In his study of self-actualizers, the paragons of mental wellness, the famed humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow noted that “the most important learning lessons... were tragedies, deaths, and trauma... which forced change in the life-outlook of the person and consequently in everything that he did.””

Had another small setback with the graft healing yesterday.  A small wound opened at the top of the graft.  Hopefully that will heal relatively soon.  It was presumably caused by rubbing on my shoe or by placing my ankle on my knee while dressing.

I am grateful for all the obstacles to force change in my life.  I am a better person than I used to be.

A Trip To Rehab

Lea’s son called this afternoon needing a ride from Everett to Chehalis to get into a substance abuse treatment program.   We left before 5 and got home by 10:30 after successfully dropping him off at ABHS in Chehalis. 

He is supposed to be in a long term program lasting at least three months.  He was happy to get a chance at rehab as opposed to incarceration.  That was a really progressive opportunity by the Snohomish County criminal justice system on the order of being pretty darned close to winning the golden ticket to see the Willie Wonka Chocalate Factory.

It was really nice to be able to help Lea help her son get into rehab.  She was really happy to be in a position to be of service to her son in a time of need.  Had he not made it there tonight, he would not have got to go at all.

I am grateful to get to be of service to others these days and not the one that can’t manage my own life like how it used to be.

The Return of the Sun

Spent part of the afternoon in a park with my car window down checking out the buds on the trees.  There is a small wetlands to the northeast of my apartment building, I can hear the frogs ribbetting away in the search for love.  It is a welcome sound.

I am grateful for warmer longer sunnier days with signs of spring bursting out all over.

Happy Birthday Sandy

Tomorrow is Sandy’s birthday.  We will do the usual Monday thing by going out for conversation and lunch.  Later this month we will go antique shopping for a different outing and perhaps a house warming gift for their new condo.

I am grateful to have great friends to share those milestones in our lives with.

[Lunch did not happen today.Had to meet with, ironically, a nutritionist and then tried to get a Protective Order to get Michelle out of here.]

A Nice Memorial

Went to Jeanie’s memorial service in Kirkland yesterday with Carol.  There were a bunch of people I knew and had not seen for a long time in attendance.  It was nice to see them. 

Jeanie was a remarkable woman having adopted five children and had one of her own.  She got a degree in computer science from Seattle University when she was in her early 40s.  She lived for longer than 90% of the people with stage 4 cancer by being tough, positive, happy and fighting for her life.  In the end, it was the brain cancer that got her.

The memorial was nice. My favorite part was a slide show of 270 pictures of Jeanie from a baby to dying of cancer set to four songs starting with a ukulele stylized version of Somewhere over the Rainbow.  Jeanie became a prolific artist in her later years creating landscapes and still lifes with colored pencils.

I am grateful for my friends in recovery and for knowing such kind, loving and talented people that have changed the lives of so many others greatly for the better.

Chapter 7 Working With Others

Page 89 from the AA Big Book starts chapter 7 with “Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail.”  

Worked with a live alcoholic last night.   Michelle’s pastor brought her back here.   She was in classic highly manipulative alcoholic form.  Lea was sleeping, I was surfing the web and Michelle was back and screaming my inventory at me.  Lea went in the other room.  Michelle made her cry and Lea relented allowing Michelle to spend the night.

My teen years were rough with a angry drunken screaming alcoholic mother and a stern father that had no idea how to deal with a crazy woman.  The difference between last night and teen years is that Michelle was being manipulative and mom was just angry screaming drunk.

We are not going to let Michelle stay here long term anymore.  She can stay for a couple of weeks if she goes to a long term rehab place such as SeaDruNar in SW Seattle.  Otherwise she can’t stay here.  She is simply too parasitic and disruptive.  There is a relatively nice women’s shelter here in Bellevue.  Or she can go back to living on the streets.

When we rescued Michelle five months ago, she agreed to two meetings a day, getting a sponsor and working the steps.  She ended up at four meetings last week, no sponsor and doing the steps on her own.  (There are many ways of characterizing self-guided step work, none positive.  One is working the steps as they are written on the wall and getting off the wall results!)

Lea and I had a great day yesterday.  Later last night, it took a turn for the worse.  But we were okay.

I went to the burn clinic only to find I was scheduled to meet with a Nurse Practitioner (NP) that had done the wound treatment change orders that resulted in my infection and return to the hospital.  I refused to see him and fortunately got to see the Attending Professor that is in charge of the burn ward.  It wasn’t so bad that the NP wrote a dysfunctional treatment change, that happens.  What sucked was that he did not listen to what I was saying about another issue or perhaps more nearly could not hear me and made poor medical choices based on his limited cookie cutter approach to issues beyond his scope of expertise.  I need health care professionals that can listen hear what I am saying and respond appropriately to what I am saying.

I am grateful to be sober today, a really nice day yesterday, that my wound is healing albeit slowly, for fantastic medical insurance and good health care.

A Partner In Recovery

Lea and I will have a year of sobriety tomorrow.  I always wanted a friend with similar time in recovery to hang out with.  Now I have one in spades.  We spend a large part of every day together.  Today we went to her clinic, a meeting, her errand, lunch together at a fancy place to celebrate our time and my belly button birthday tomorrow and then home.

Tonight we are making a birthday cake to take to the morning meeting as a way of celebrating our year of sobriety.  Most meeting people at the meeting are in early sobriety and they really enjoy having treats at the meeting.  That certainly makes the room a more welcoming and friendly place for those new to AA.

I am grateful to have a close friend with similar time in recovery and for us to have a year of sobriety tomorrow.  It is a big achievement for any alcoholic even if it is my third time and a huge accomplishment for Lea.  

Stories of Spiritual Awakenings

For several years, a group of us has been meeting on Tuesday mornings in the food court of a local mall.  My attendance plummeted during the last two months due to health issues.  I made it last week and today.  We chat, catch up on our week and read several pages from recovery literature.  

Our current read is titled Spiritual Awakenings: Journeys of the Spirit from the pages of the AA Grapevine which is a compendium of short stories from The Grapevine that were submitted by AA members.  It is a nice set of stories about how members came to be more spiritual. 

Here is an excerpt from today’s reading:

The story in a recent issue (February 1960) of the Grapevine about AA life on an Indian reservation called to mind a true story that has almost become a legend out here in the Southwest. At a meeting in southern Arizona, three Papago Indians were in attendance one night. Two were very young, and one was very old. After the meeting, both of the younger men pumped the speaker's hand and thanked him very profusely. The old Indian also said something in his native tongue, and one of the younger men interpreted it to the speaker as follows: "He say he don't know what you say, but he like where the words come from."

We have learned the art of listening in this Fellowship, and how wonderful has been the result! It is one of the great dividends that many of us overlook. Have you ever sat in an easy, pleasant conversation with another of our Fellowship when things took a sudden turn? You each listen avidly to the other; then you found yourself saying things that astonished even you. Something seemed to emerge from it all, and there was a simple naturalness in the long pause that followed.

If this has happened to you, then you know that you come out of it with a feeling of rapture, a feeling that, for a minute, you have been very close to a higher power. Have you ever been writing a letter to an old friend in the Fellowship, when your thoughts and meditation about him to came into focus and your writing took an exciting new turn? You have actually listened to memories; you have been listened to and heard; and your whole message is recast as a result.

It was good to be with my friends this morning.  Michelle has presumably relapsed and it felt good to be listened to by my friends as I vented on annoying behaviors while feeling loved and supported.

I am grateful to be a much better listener than how I used to be and to have friends that listen to me.  There is certainly plenty of room for me to have improved listening skills but at least now I am mostly mindfulling listening to others instead of habitually trying to escape from all conversations.

Five Months And MIA

Michelle had five months of sobriety this morning.  Then she went to apply for a job on Rainier Avenue South in SE Seattle.  We have not seen her since then.  There is a high probability she is using—like something north of 99% chance—but we don’t know that for sure.

On Thursday, Lea and I will have a year of sobriety and I will be 56.  I have simplified my life by amalgamating my belly button and recovery birthday to being the same day.  That is not recommended!

Experience has proven me that I can’t plan on staying sober forever.  I can stay sober one day at time by going to meetings, meeting with my sponsor, working the steps, reading 12-step literature and working with others.

I have learned a LOT from others in recovery such as what they did to stay sober and what others did not do that lead to relapse.  If I do relapse again, I sure hope that I am able to get sober immediately thereafter, learn where the holes are in my program and strengthen those vulnerabilities.  I know it would be good to spend more time working with other alcoholics, especially those in early sobriety.

I am grateful to be sober today and am looking forward to a sober birthday with a year of sobriety—for the third time in my life.  That is a lot better than how it used to be.

Lots of Health Care This Week

I have health care appointments four days this week.  I will have cleaner teeth, better mental health from my first visit with a favorite psychologist from several years ago, urology and the burn clinic.

It has been a month since I was released from the burn ward.  Due to losing part of the graft due a poor choice of wound dressings, I am further away from healing then I was when I left the ward.  That sucks.  It was not completely unexpected, I have problems with healing in my legs.  It is starting to wear on my.  I had a little timeline (expectation) in my head to be mostly healed in a month.

In the lingo of 12-step slogans, an expectation is a premeditated resentment.   It is best I let go of that expectation ASAP.  Ruminating over it will only make my life and mental health much worse.

I am grateful to have access to all these healthcare resources and really appreciate the quality of care I receive from these people and institutions.