.jeri.

Twenty-two days later, a post!

Well, I will try to be more on top of things from now on, but I'm not promising anything.

I just wanted to thank you all for your thoughts and prayers and to let you know I am still recovering nicely. I can move around very comfortably now, drive, and even started painting the condo again (the endless quest). I kept myself very busy in the past few weeks. I started going to a slew of doctor appointments. I know you all know about my back, but I also have left hip and shoulder problems, and I'm determined to work on those while my back is healing so that I can get jogging sometime in the next year. I need it! All that lying around with no exercise doesn't help one's physique. I am now going to physical therapy for all three body parts. My shoulder has some sort of impingement, and my hip seems like a muscle strain and inflammation combo. I am going twice a week to work on everything, which is not the funnest in the world, but it's got to be done.

Meanwhile, we had a contractor come to our house to help us out with the projects that would have taken to much time and knowledge for us to do well. He moved around our electrical wiring so that we don't have to rely on lamps plugged into walls for light anymore in the bedrooms. We now have light boxes in the center of both bedroom ceilings (and one has a nice, new ceiling fan that Ric installed), and one in our closet underneath the stairs. He also installed our upstairs bathroom fan and did a lot of door and baseboard work for us. We liked him well enough that we hired him on for another job - to update our kitchen with new counters and a new sink. While we were at it, we had him cut out the bar and just ordered a longer counter, so now we have more kitchen surface and a place where people could actually eat or maybe even get some projects done! He also pulled off the rock paneling from the wall where the bar was and evened everything out and retextured it for us. I spent all of yesterday priming and painting it. I don't like that you can still tell where the rock wall was, but it's nice to have things look a little more clean and spacious. Now all I need is a few bar stools.

We also decided to dump our cable company and go back to satellite, which involved four visits from service men, and I even had the piano tuner come over and help out my sad piano. There has been so much traffic in the house and I've had so many appointments that when I stepped back and looked at it all, I realized I was probably okay to go back to work. :)

So here I am, back at my desk, thankful for the wonderful people who covered for me while I was gone. I'm not all that into being back here, but I know they need me around here. Things are definitely stressful with our software conversion still going on. And on top of that, the VP over our department is resigning as of July, and our boss is retiring as of August. Yikes. With all the stress and all the changes going on around here, it's an uncomfortable climate, even if we work with nice people. I'm also still convinced that the program I work for will be eliminated in the next year or two due to low enrollment. But no worries - even if they do eliminate it, it would be a gradual thing, and my office would probably still find a place for me. And by then I'll probably go get pregnant and leave anyway.

Like I said, I'm still doing physical therapy. And I am still using the growth stimulator for my back every day. It will take several more months for the vertebrae to fuse. But I'm doing very well, and so much better than expected. I'm very grateful for that.

Many movie reviews to come!