Knees, Washers, and Cats.

 Yesterday was the worst day for my knee since surgery. I need to add that my worst day after surgery bore no comparison to my worst day before surgery, so there is that. 

On Wednesday, PT had me working with light resistance bands, and when I was done with that, I felt it. Strangely enough when it affected me most was when I was not up and moving around. If I was walking, it felt okay, normal pain. But as soon as I sat down, I could feel the muscles tightening up behind my knee and along the lateral side of my shin. And those muscles stayed tight the whole day. It was rainy and cold, so I imagine that my wet feet played into that. I came home last night and used a heating pad to loosen things up. 

PT came today and and we discussed it. He said that this is normal, that the muscles had been moved and manipulated during the surgery, and it would take awhile for that soreness to go away completely. But we did a workout and skipped the resistance bands this time around. He was impressed to see that I can go up stairs alternating legs again. 

So. It is progress. I just need to take more ibuprofen, and keep on pushing.

Allison asked for a picture of my red washtower: Here you are, sistah. We went with the washtower because the controls for the washer AND the dryer are in the middle of the machine. For the stacking units, you had to access the dryer controls at the top of the machine. I'm short. I couldn't reach them without a stool. We knew that, spacewise, we needed to go with a stacking unit. As soon as I saw this, I knew that it would work very nicely.

Yesterday, I used it for the first time, and I must say, we both like it quite a bit. For one thing, compared to a traditional top loading washer, it uses  about 7-12  gallons of water for a wash cycle compared to 17-25 gallons for a top loader with an agitator. That's significant when you're dealing with wellwater, and we haven't quite figured out whether or not the well will be adequate for our needs. We hope so. We sure don't want to have to drill a new water well. 

We are doing the window sills and interior frames. There are only 12 windows, including the sliders in the livingroom, so it's not a lot of work, but it really does make a lot of difference standing in the middle the house and looking around. Coming together. Coming together. 

I've had a new cat hanging around the house in town. It is a long haired gray cat. He has two collars, a flea collar and a collar with a red tag on it. This cat is very wary, hissing and displaying teeth if you get too near him, but it bothered me a lot. With the collars, I knew that he had to belong somewhere. I posted pictures of him over and over on local lost pet sites. I didn't try to approach because 1) I was worried about getting myself bitten and winding up with some sort of infection that would jeopardize the knee surgery and 2), I did not want to scare him away. So we kind of peacefully coexisted for a couple months and no one claimed him. I kept him fed. 

After surgery, I raised my expectations of him a bit, and finally got close enough to see the name on his tag: Freddie. Once again, I put word out with the new information. The mystery has finally been solved. Freddie belonged to a woman down the street who, like me, took care of any feral that showed up at her door. That is how she wound up with Freddie. She had him neutered and made him an indoor cat along with the rest of her 'innies'. However, she lived in a big house and health problems made it too difficult for her. She made the decision to sell out here and move to AZ where her family is. Her new home permitted two cats and so she chose to take the cats she'd had forever. Another neighbor offered to take Freddie, and she gave him to her. 

That particular neighbor lives across the street. It was a strange situation, but she wound up getting evicted. Poor Freddie was, once again, on the street. One can only guess what happened in the interim, because Freddie is a very wary cat. He went ballistic the first time that I walked out the door with a cane. I am going to guess that left to his own devices, he went to his old home where the new residents did not appreciate him hanging around, and treated him badly. 

So. 

What do you do? 

He comes when I call him, and he does not get his dinner unless he allows me to pet him. He and Houdi tolerate each other, touching noses when they pass. I think he can be re-tamed, but I think that it will take a while for him to trust people again. I just cannot bring myself to abandon him once more.

I need to get out of town before I end up with forty-eleven cats. Honest to pete. 

Other news on the cat front: There is something called the Fix'n Wag'n. This is a portable non profit spay/neuter operation that goes from site to site. The fee is $90, and it includes the neuter, vacinations, and topical flea treatment. (Compare this to the vet clinic who gave me an estimate of $700 for the same. The vet also recommended that people stop feeding ferals, something that while it seems practical, anyone with a heart would not ignore something starving or sick on their doorstep.) Anyways, that nonprofit came to our local shelter and spayed a total of 89 animals in a day. It has already agreed to come back. This will make a huge difference for the cat population here, and I am thrilled by this development.