Holy shit, this is me!!!!!

A friend shared this on FB (where else would we find anything these days if it weren't for FB or Pinterest???) and it makes total sense to me!!  Absolute, 100% total sense.  I feel like someone captured me on paper and wrote me up in a nice, neat little list.  Clearly there are more facets to me - please - like I'm just that easy to write up.  But, seriously, this is me!

This… this is my soul song, people.

1.  You're not anti-social, you're selectively social.  

2. At any given point, you have one (maybe two) best friends who are your entire life. You’re not a “group of friends” person. You can’t keep up with all that.
(this part isn't completely true.  I do have groups of friends but not all that I see on the regular.  But maybe this isn't what they are saying??  Maybe they are talking about a person or a couple of people that I stick with day in and day out?  If that is the case  - YUP, STILL ME!)

3. Social gatherings that are supposed to be “rites of passage” like prom and dances and other such typical nonsense is just… not for you. You don’t understand it. You want nothing to do with it.

4. When you do choose to grace a party with your presence, you are the life of it. You’re dancing on the table and doing body shots until 3 a.m.

5. … You then retreat into three days of complete solitude to recover.

6. You go out of your way to avoid people, but when you inevitably have to interact with them, you make it seem like there’s nothing in the world you’d rather be doing.

7. Dating is weird, because you’re smiling and laughing and talkative at dinner, and then you don’t want to answer their texts for four days, because like, you just want to be left alone…

8. You’re accused of being flirty with everybody, which is hilarious, because in reality, you can only tolerate like four people.

9. You retain an air of mysteriousness about you, completely unintentionally. (There’s no mystery. You just feel no need to update the social sphere on what’s going on in your life every two hours.)

10. Not to mention the fact that you either have days in which you’re tweeting and status updating every five minutes… or you delete your accounts for a month.
(Hello, blog much? I'll go weeks at a time keeping up and then you won't hear from me for a month!  LOL)

11. You become unintentionally awkward because you at once feel the need to be a social life jacket for other people, though you’re just as uncomfortable yourself.

12. You’ve never really understood the whole “introvert vs. extrovert” dichotomy (can we call it that?) Because you’re… both…

13. You’re always thrown into the ringer because people think you’re best suited to be the one who gives the presentation, confronts the boss, gives the speech, etc. Meanwhile, you’re practically throwing up over the thought of it.

14. You ebb and flow between wanting to be noticed for your hard work, reveling in the attention and achievement you receive, to sinking and panicking over the thought of somebody else paying more than 30 seconds of attention to you.

15. The entirety of your being is a conundrum, so needless to say, indecisiveness is your Achilles’ Heel.

16. You’re at your happiest in places like coffee shops and cafés: surrounded by people, but still closed off and keeping to yourself.

17. You prefer to travel alone, but meet up with people once you’re there.

18. It’s taken you years to figure out that you’re shy. Literal years. And when you tell people, even your closest family members, that you’re “actually just shy” they pause, and then their eyes go big, and they go: “Oh my god you so are.”

Falling apart and a fabulous new accessory

It's official.

I'm falling apart.  Or snapping, tearing, stretching, whatever.  It's all the same isn't it?  I refuse to say I'm getting old because you are only as old as you feel and I don't feel old most days.  

Until last weekend.  (well, a week and a half almost)

I'm tickling my middle......Ryan.  Yes people, I said tickling.  Who knew that laughing and tickling your son could be such a dangerous thing to do!!  Watch out people!   So, I'm tickling, he's trying to escape, he slides over juuuuust ride and BAM!   My knee pops out.  But it doesn't pop back in.  Oh no, it's not going to be that easy.  I pick him up, lightly toss him over to my left and I start yelling.  Not at the top of my lungs but my voice is most definitely raised.  I'm yelling for my husband and I'm telling him that my knee is out.  I am absolutely in agonizing pain.  I look down and you can quite clearly see, through my jeans, that my knee is out to the side of my left leg to the point that my jeans are completely distorted.  John is telling me he's calling 911.   Now, not my finest moment but I yell NO!  We can't afford the $600 ambulance bill!   He says what do you want me to do???   I tell him I'm going to try and fix it.   No, not because I'm a badass.  But because this isn't my first rodeo.   This is the 5th time I've dislocated this particular knee.  To be fair, it's been 8 years since the last time.   Also, I might as well say the last time I landed in the ER and I came out with a hip to thigh immobilizer along with Physical Therapy for 8 weeks.  But I'm keeping it honest here.   So, as I said, I've been down this road before.  So I bend my knee (screaming) and I kick my leg out.   Damnit.   This knee isn't going ANYWHERE and it now feels like someone is jabbing a white hot poker through my kneecap.   Shitshitshit.   I try to shimmy myself down off the couch.  Agony.  Yup, we're calling the ambulance.  

It literally takes them about 4 min to get there.  They assess the situation.  I'm sobbing, although trying to keep it together because I don't want to scare my kids.  They don't see me cry.  Ryan is crying and holding on to his teddy bear for dear life because of course he feels responsible.   EMT's have to cut off my jeans.  (this is noteworthy b/c of course they are my "skinny" days jeans and my favorite pair to boot.  Effers.)   They strap my knee into an immobilizer, put me on a body board to get me out the door and then they put me on a stretcher.  Into the ambulance and off to the ER I go.

At the ER they load me up with Morphine and get me comfortable.   My knee gets put back in place.  I get xrays.  Nothing is broken.   Well, thank God for that - imagine the strength of my son's booty if he BROKE a bone?  Oh my.   I'm given the immobilizer, two prescriptions and the number for an Orthopedic surgeon to follow up with on Monday because the Dr that saw me in the ER listened to my history and told me that, unfortunately, he thinks I'm going to have to have surgery.   Super.

Fast forward to Ortho on Thursday.  He examines my knee, is poking, prodding, pulling at it.  He looks at my knees side by side and tells me that my left knee isn't even located where it should be on my leg anymore.   Me, being the wiseass that I am, look down and tell him it looks okay to me.   He laughs.  I say but, then again, I'm not the one who went to school for this.  He laughs again.   He said I like your style.  I said hey, if you can't laugh it's a pretty sad life.   He starts manipulating my knee again and I started to tense up.  He asked if it hurt and I said it does but you're freaking me out right now because I'm feeling like it's going to dislocate again.  He said oh yeah, I could pull it out right now if I wanted to.   I said please don't!!   He said he thinks I've torn my PCL but the MRI will confirm.  He said I don't want to ruin your day.  I said I'm a straightshooter, just tell me.  He's 99.9% sure that I'm going to need surgery.   I said look, I'm 37 years old and I have 3 young children.  I want and need to be able to play with them.  I'm not 90, I have a long life in front of me.  Let's just do this.   He said I love it!   Let's get you  your MRI, get the results to confirm what I already know and get this done.  I said great - laproscopic, right?    Then he crushed my world to shit.  Ohhhhhhh.....no.   Um, say what now?   No, no laproscopic for you.   With this kind of injury and the placement of your patella there is just too much to do.  We're going to need to make a 3-4 in incision "here," we're going to drill two holes into your bones "here," and we're going to cut the muscles on the other side of your patella "here" that are pulling too tightly and causing your patella to dislocate so easily.   Well alrighty then.   

So, there you have it.  When everything is all said and done though I'm going to have some kick ass battle scars to show and a knee that will never pop out again!   There's something to be said for chicks with scars.   They're hardcore!!  ;-)

Annnnnd - my new fabulous accessory!   I'll have this bad boy until the end of the summer.   My kids think I look like a robot or a bionic woman.  I'll take it!  (silver linings here people, it's all about perspective - right?)