One-car family, for now

Saturday nite, I was going to finish up a big batch of chili for the freezer but needed a couple poblanos. I got into our little Chevy Prizm, started toward the Vietnamese grocery, and was promptly (as in 50' from our driveway) smacked in the passenger side by something big, red, and heavy. It turned out to be a kid driving a red Impala who may or may not have blown the stop sign on the corner.

It's pretty ugly, body-wise, and there's some off-green goo (not engine oil, not antifreeze, so transmission or brake fluid?) dripping under the engine, so I'm pretty sure it's totaled. So the question is what we'll get from the kid's insurer and what we can buy in a market where reliable, fuel-efficient econoboxes like the Prizm are much more in demand than they were when we bought the Prizm a couple years back.

I'm still feeling a little out of sorts, neurologically speaking. Carmen and I went to my neurologist on Friday, but he didn't think I was having a flare. My theory is that it's a consequence of wasting too much time at work playing Super Bounce-Outor too much THC (I'd been increasingly foregoing brownies in favor of a more immediate intake apparatus). This week, brownies only, and we'll see how it goes.

My anxieties about unfinished projects have diminished substantially. Carmen's been getting a lot of the staining done on the porch, and we've done some nice landscaping. If any good came of our recent flooding, it was the certainty that even if we had put down grass seed it would certainly have washed out in the weekend we got 7" of rainfall. I think it has also helped that I've not been out fishing for 5 or 6 weeks, what with the no-wake restriction and the vast quantities of raw sewage that ended up in the lake.

Dizzy + foggy + tippy = dizzippoggy?

For the last couple days, I've been feeling a little dizzy, especially in the morning. Both yesterday and today, it hit me when I got to the office and sat down at my desk. I had some trouble reading stuff on my monitor--my eyes didn't seem to want to follow text in an orderly left-to-right fashion--and when I'd get up to walk down to the bathroom, I seemed incapable of walking in a relatively straight line. By mid-afternoon, it passed for the most part, but I haven't really gotten anything done this week. This is partly because I haven't got much to do, just some ongoing summer projects, but it's made for interminably long, boring work days punctuated by occasional spasms of self-consciousness and worry.

I'm not sure what, if anything, to do about it. The timing's kinda bad: Carmen just found out she was not accepted to the nursing program she wanted to start in the fall, and I'm still a year away from qualifying for my employer's long-term disability benefit, so I'm worried about our long-term finances and was planning to ask my boss for a raise. Now I'm afraid to sit down with my boss lest he notice my somewhat addled state.

I wonder if it's something ear-related, at least the balance stuff. I've had moderate tinnitus for the last few years and lately have noticed a few times that my left ear has faded out briefly.

Interstim after two months, and other stuff

Two months after getting hooked up to the device, I'm still trying to decide whether I made the right call. I'm pretty sure it has improved my frequency/urgency situation, but it's an incremental improvement, say 25% or so. It seems to give me a few extra seconds to get to the bathroom, but I'll still be purchasing Depends by the case from Amazon (fellow cheapskates take note: Amazon will cut 15% off the price if you sign up for regular shipments, which you can always delay or decline). I still feel the device causing my right foot to flex slightly, which can be annoying when I'm stuck behind a desk at work. The incision has healed nicely into a rather bad-ass-appearing scar, but it remains somewhat sensitive to pressure.

On the down-side, though, I feel like I still haven't recovered the level of strength and stamina I had before the procedure. Which I guess shouldn't surprise me, seeing as how I went about a month before I could get into the pool. I'm trying to be pretty aggressive about getting back into shape, but I still feel wobblier on my feet, more prone to a stiff Frankenstein gait after sitting for a while. I've got some knee pain when I flex my right leg or when I try to get up off the floor. And it's starting to get too hot outside for a 15-minute walk around the block.

Bad timing, too: we've had a really nice new porch built that needs to be stained before the wood suffers water damage. We've also got several new windows that need at least 2 coats of polyurethane, and a muddy back yard that needs landscaping. On top of it all, last weekend we got 6" of rain, so the basement is wet (again). Since finishing classes a few weeks ago, Carmen has gotten heaps of stuff done around the house, but I wish we had the money (we spent our stimulus rebate on veterinarian bills last winter) to have somebody else do a big chunk of stuff.