desperate times call for desperate measures...

this is how bored i am... i drew a picture of my childhood home. perfect, right? RIGHT???

i'm DONE

well, with this semester anyway. soon, once my brain recovers from the trauma of those two papers, i will start to do interesting things with my life again. this means, lucky readers, that instead of being bombarded with posts about papers and stress and exhaustion, you'll soon get exciting stories of grand adventures. or something close to that, anyway. like today, for example, i plan on making banana bread. BANANA BREAD! woah.

motivation

i need it. price negotiable.

slightly overwhelmed

in the next 8 days, i have two assignments due:
3/26 - global political economy final paper (18-20 pages)
3/27 - culture, peace, and conflict resolution final paper (15 pages)

as i look at the list above, it doesn't seem like much. BUT, when you consider the fact that i got surgery a week and a half ago, i think it seems a bit more impressive...

regardless, i can't wait to be done. with this semester, and with this whole MA program. i feel like i am burning out and that i just have too much on my plate right now. i'm glad that i'm in grad school, but going to school while working has been seriously draining. sometimes i have been so stressed out that it's really a wonder than granger still wants to date me. hopefully, in the end, when i see how much less i owe in school loans, i will realize it was all worth it. still, when i think about all the other stress in my life, i have no idea how i'm going to get through it all.

sheesh, just writing about this is stressing me out. well, if getting all this out isn't helping, i guess i should just stop procrastinating on the papers by complaining and just get back to them. UGGHHHH

WARNING: post-surgery knee pictures

i thought that perhaps my doctor was going to be able to go in through my old scars, but instead, i have three new X-shaped scars just below my kneecap (you're just going to have to trust me on that, since my kneecap is mostly MIA in the first picture...) and another small hole above the kneecap on the left (waaaay on the right side of this picture).

also note the arrow pointing to the correct knee. my doctor did that just before i was taken to the OR. personally, i would have been fine if he'd drawn 50 arrows pointing to that knee!!!!

this picture is from yesterday (April 9):


poor knee!! it looks like it's bent, but only because it's so swollen. it was actually pretty straight when i took this picture.

this one's from today (April 10):


look! the kneecap reappears!!! the swelling has gone down, and you can see the arrow more clearly in this picture. oh, and i've got bandaids over the wounds, so you don't have to look at those again... you're welcome.

knee surgery, part 2

so yesterday i had knee surgery... the deal was that my doctor was going to try to repair a tear in my meniscus. unfortunately, however, he was not able to repair it, so he just had to remove the torn part. according to what he told my dad post-surgery, i have about 60% of my left meniscus remaining. apparently this enough to do most things that i enjoy doing, like hiking for example, and other things that i should do, like running or exercising in general. playing sports that require cutting and quick changes of direction, like soccer, are out.

i'm bummed that this is how the surgery turned out. i have every confidence that my doctor, who is the same one who did the ACL reconstruction in 2003, did everything he could to try to repair the meniscus. it was simply irreparable. the good news is that the recovery time is shorter now. repairing the meniscus would have meant that i was on crutches for a month and a half to protect it as it healed. by just removing the torn part, i could be walking as soon as a few days from now. i plan to take it easy, though... there's no rush, and i don't want to do too much too soon and hurt myself again.

another silver lining in this whole deal is that my doctor says that the ACL that he put in in 2003 looks really good. yay!

knee surgery

tomorrow. 9:30am. torn meniscus, to be repaired or removed.

fortunately, several of my coworkers brought movies for me to watch as i recover, so i now have 16 different movie options... hopefully these movies, the discovery channel, and netflix instant can keep me entertained. lindsay also gave me the first book in the twilight series to read, so if i get desperate, i might finally cave and read it! we'll see...