Nope, not dead...

I've received several emails asking about the blog, and my lack of posts this past week. Rather than answer each one of them individually (which I would love to be able to do, really!) I'll try to explain here.

The car crash I was involved in was over a month ago. Since then, thanks to three-times-weekly doctor appointments & adjustments, my neck, lower back, and ankle are well on the way to recovery, and feeling pretty good--right on schedule. I'm really pleased with how well it's going in that department.

My wrists, unfortunately, are a different story. I sprained both of them badly, but had hoped that it would be a 2- to 4-week recovery. In two days it will be five weeks, and instead of getting better, if anything they are worse. The swelling is gone and I have more mobility, but both are still pretty painful. I'm still wearing splints on both arms, and am not supposed to type, drive, or really do much of anything else with them. Jeff is doing a TON of work being both dad and mom, and the older kids have really pitched in, but there isn't really any day where I can just give them a rest; even if I magically didn't have to do anything for anyone else, I still have to brush my teeth, take a shower, wash my hair, eat, etc. (Well, I guess I don't HAVE to shower or wash my hair, but the alternative isn't pretty!)

I used to take anywhere from 25-200 pictures every day. Now, it's hard to hold the camera, and using the buttons & controls is difficult, so I've pretty much stopped. I have to balance how much I want the shot with how long it's going to hurt if I use the camera, and my kids and my LEGOs are the only subjects that are really worth the effort. Since I can't type, I have to use Dragon and Windows Speech Recognition to do everything on the computer, and while I am very grateful to have those options to give my hands a rest, it's much more time-consuming than typing 60-70wpm. (And I did actually time myself at that a while back. Makes me want to go visit my high school typing teacher! I was doing awesome if I hit 25 or 30 back then.) A simple email to one of my professors to ask about a grade takes about fifteen minutes.

And there is the other problem: my school. I have four classes, three of which are online. The quizzes, labs, and papers that normally take me 2-4 hours now take 10 to 12, if I don't have any big assignments. Between that and my family, most nights I fall asleep on the couch with my computer in my lap and a textbook next to me. It's kind of funny to wake up, look at the quiz or Word document on the screen, and have absolutely no memory of answering those last four or five questions!

I'm still taking my pictures. Right now, at this very moment, are six brand-new LEGO shots just waiting to get off my camera and onto my computer. I'm going to start working on them tonight, right after I submit a paper for my phys ed course that's due at 11:55pm tonight (so, in 35 minutes. But I'm almost done with it.). My hope is to get all of them up tonight and be back on schedule, but I don't know if I'll be able to before I crash. (Note to self: must find a better word than 'crash,' since that's what started this whole problem in the first place.) In any case, I'm still here, and I feel terrible that I've not been able to keep up with getting pictures posted. Yes, I'm taking them every day, but it's not quite the same if they stay on the camera.

My doctor is sending me in for an MRI and further tests to see if we can figure out why my wrists aren't recovering. With any luck, we can pinpoint a cause and thus begin to work on the solution. My immense thanks go out to all of you for sticking around.