The Ultimate Test: Putting Together an Ikea Shoe Cabinet
Finding New Ways of Torture
Ponce Update
Ikea Challenge
Last weekend, my fiancé participated in this intimidating bike-packing event, the CFITT 2018. I dropped him off at New Smyrna beach (east coast of Florida) on Saturday, where he (along with a large group of other brave souls) started the race to the other side: Chrystal River/Inglis on the west coast of Florida – via mountain bike, mostly off-road,about 280 miles! He made it in 2 ½ days, which is an amazing accomplishment.Did I ever mention that Ralf has two metal hips? Yes, we are the bionic couple!
Since we still have to prepare for my mom to arrive next week from Germany, and me being off a day and a half by myself, I decided to take on the Ikea challenge. We purchased a sectional couch, which we put together, but we also got a tall shoe cabinet waiting to be assembled. So,I repurposed the batteries from my electric toothbrush to get the powered screwdriver going, sorted, grouped, and spread-out all the parts, and went to work. If you ever put together anything from Ikea, you know that this can be a pretty agonizing experience.
I crawled on the floor, assembling this sucker one screw, hinge, and wooden connector at a time, and put it up against the wall, where it had to be mounted. I couldn’t even tie my own shoes prior to surgery, so this was a proud and liberating moment. I am still amazed what I can do again, and I won’t ever take this for granted.
Before...
After!
Finding New Ways of Torture
I guess, since I didn’t have to deal with back pain anymore, I decided to get creative to re-introduce pain into my life: I let a little Chinese lady rip my face off! I really dislike all that peach fuzz on my face and was thinking about ways to get rid of that. One by-product of being disabled was the discovery of pedicures. So, when I had my toes done last Sunday, the lady offered to wax my face. Adventurous me, I decided to give it a try. What’s the worst think that could happen, right? Weeeeelll, let me just say, having your little hairs brutally ripped off your face is anything but pleasant, as evidenced by involuntary tears streaming down my face! My face also looked (and felt) kind of sunburned for three days, but now it is smooth as a baby’s bottom, lol. Would I do it again? I am not so sure…
Ponce Update
Our Ponce-bear is doing better, but the echocardiogram revealed that his heart disease is now severe, which has been causing the recent events of respiratory distress and fainting episodes. He is now on an enhanced medication regiment, which seems to be helping a lot. In fact, he is so happy still, it melts my heart. He is so oblivious of his grim condition, and I hope it will stay that way for as long as possible.
