Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I saw the occupational therapist this afternoon, and told her that I want to stop, or at least pause, those appointments. She gave me instructions on which exercises and stretches to continue for how long, after I told her that I didn't think "do these for the next three months" was unreasonably long. We canceled my one remaining appointment, which had been for for two weeks from today, and her office will call me to check in about a month from now if they don't hear from me before then.

The therapist wrote those instructions on a post-it note. When I got home, I copied them into an Evernote file, and I'm pasting them here for easier reference:


Continue squeezing the ball, 1-2 sets per day

Wrist strengthening exercises with the weights, do once per day, and then reduce that to 3x/week. "over time, can fade out"

Keep doing the stretches she taught me first, indefinitely.

They will call me in mid-January to check in; if I don't hear from them by 1/15, call them.

From there, I went to Penzey's for spices (roasted garlic powder, cinnamon sticks, and oregano) and then stopped at Lizzy's for more ice cream on my way home. It was feeling quite cold (which I think was partly wind, and partly me not being used to winter yet, since my phone told me the temperature was right around freezing and I was wearing my winter coat, but there's quite a bit of rain in the forecast on the only days that are likely to be much warmer, and stopping off briefly while I was out seemed more prudent than making an extra trip just for ice cream. (Penzey's is significantly handier from my OT's office than from our home, or from my other medical providers.)

Deciding to get ice cream had the unexpected advantage that I passed Girl Scouts selling cookies in the Harvard Square subway station, near the fare vending machines, where a lot of people will pass them. So I called Andy and asked if I should buy him some cookies; he said yes, so I told the girl behind the table that I wanted one box of the ones with coconut and one box of the lemon cookies, and that was sufficient for her to know what I wanted. I handed her a $10 bill, and told her I didn't need a bag because I had one; while I was getting the bag out, I overheard someone asking if they had a card reader, which they did not. Once again, I was glad to still be carrying some cash with me.