An early morning, six thirty or so the sun was bright enough to stir me. After checking my Fitbit for the time, I quickly rolled back over to tuck my head under the pillow. Yet before I could drift back off to sleep I thought better of it and and rolled over again, reaching for my phone.
I’m sure I’m not the only person with this start of day ritual. Though, I really have no idea how I would compare I’m also sure someone out there has done a study or two. Lets see, probably an hour for sure, maybe two before I’ll get out of bed ‘for good’ for the day?
Makes me think back to just a week or two ago and this wasn’t the case. Sure, I’d check the time on my phone and maybe some days I’d give it a scroll or two, yet I was always out of sleeping tent within minutes. Of course, after that the routine changed site by site- by the end I found it correlated mostly with bathroom availability. Odd, even now as before when think about it, that apart from food and water, I never considered plumbing (or some substitute for it,) as a necessity of life- and it’s not, you’ll live without it- it is a part of ‘daily’ life though.
Ha. You don’t have to plan to shit properly if you don’t want to.. yet it will change the rest of your day if you don’t. Anyway, that and to a much lesser extent garbage, that is the “pack out” aspect of providing your own garbage service, looking for dumpsters. There were more than a few things that I didn’t really plan for at all, yet the necessity of those two to have skipped my mind completely kind of astounds me. Things taken for granted in a modern world.
So the morning. One thing I’ve found to hurry the day along is to take my morning pills on my first trip to the bathroom. It doesn’t seem to take long for the Vyvanse to kick in and that is also something I should probably start to watch. I’ll usually wake up hungry and eat with an hour or so of taking my pills. Yet the last two mornings I think it’s taken me longer than that to get downstairs, so even though I woke hungry, I skipped breakfast both days. Considering the plethora of food storage and preparation options available to me here, I should be eating better.
Moving about the house today and over the last week (yeah, a whole week I’ve been at this Jackson site already,) I realized how nice my house has been for my recovery. So many places, the first stair, the counters in the kitchen and bath, that have found themselves the perfect size height and shape for me to lean against to stretch one muscle or another. The small size of the place in general is what makes it nice I think.
An eighteen by twenty four foot footprint, three stories tall (if you counted the basement,) with an eight by eight add on to the ground level floor (actually about three and a half feet about ground level)(or about twelve thousand, if you measure by cost of ramp to ascend in a wheelchair.) So all together, is it thirteen hundred and sixty feet of space. Yet, skipping the basement there is only nine hundred and twenty eight feet of living space. The point, especially with the layout of the downstairs, is if I stumble, there is always a wall within three or four feet of me no matter where I go, well maybe five. Whichever way I’m falling, it just takes one quick step in that direction until I can reach a wall for a third point of support.
The downstairs is now completely re-arranged. Somehow I found a furniture layout not yet used in this house and I think it works pretty well. More now as a single large room designed for use by one person, rather than subdivided spaces meant for two. It really seems a lot more open and spacious now, which is perhaps why I’m noticing how much I liked the small size of it, as I’m just giving some of that up. Also nice, just to have a wide open carpet to do my stretches on in the morning. To be sure, a tarp is also nice- if you can get a spot with no rocks- as it lets you slide around a bit.
I wouldn’t call the place clean yet, although it really is getting close. It’s now to a normal amount of cluttered a person might expect considering I just unpacked from a four month road trip a day ago. A lot of items I’ve been moving over closer to the door. It’s a sorting process again, some things I really just don’t need. Yet I really need to sell these items this time, rather than send them out with the trash. Which is why they are being neatly stacked in that corner, it’s the for sale corner. Only one item has been listed so far, yet I decided I wanted to prioritize the cleaning.
Prioritize, to have only one priority. Right now it’s cleaning. That plus the ADL’s of course. And walking, this has got to get back on my list every day. I tried to make up for it tonight and did one of my old routes, a two mile loop up the river trail and back down Cooper. I was a bit late though, as Frosty Boy had already closed. Conveniently I had a pint of Butter Pecan at home. Had. Will have to restock that item in better quantity next time.
A week behind me, let’s call it a recovery week. Now, it’s time to get some stuff done. At the very least, it’s time to decide what work I want to get done. I need some goals. It’s no longer about getting through the day or the week. How am I going to make it to the end of the month? Or to the end of the next one? Will I be here, in this house, in Jackson by next Christmas? What do I want, what do I want to be doing next year? Or the year after.
I didn’t die. I am recovering from my incident, yet it’s plateaued in its progress- or really, it’s plateaued and diminished in its necessity to be a priority. I don’t have to put life on hold so that I can recover. Yet, I’m more out of shape than I’ve ever been and my body doesn’t work the same as it used to, yet I’m also past the point that I expect it to. Getting stronger and more fit should have always been a lifetime goal, and being ‘down in the hole’ on the measure is certainly a good reason to make it a goal now- yet maybe not a priority any longer.
What will the next week bring..
Time to rest.