Living the dream, day 1

It's Day 1 of my 6-week disability leave.  I'm not counting yesterday (surgery day), since today is the first of the long stretch of days that I get to stay home, be here in this place I always long to be in.  It's kind of crazy that it took a life-altering injury and then surgery to put me in the spot I dream of being in, but now that I'm here I'm not thinking so much about how or why I got here, as much as hot damn, what am I gonna do with all this time? 

According to the instructions given to me yesterday at discharge, there are a lot of things I am supposed to do during my recovery, along with other things that are forbidden:

1. Rest when you feel tired.  Generally, this is something I am horrible at, so using these 6 weeks to develop more aptitude in that area.

2. Try to walk each day. This is something I actually do manage to do every single day, though right now I'm not walking Mr Burns as he's still a pully little puppy (just had his 1st birthday yesterday, party to follow.)

3. Avoid lifting anything that might make you strain. Yep, this is how I got here in the first place, lifting Burns in and out of the car.

4. Avoid strenuous activities, such as bicycling, jogging, weight lifting, aerobic exercise until your doctor says it's ok.  No worries there.

5. Ask your doctor when you can drive again. Elsewhere in my paperwork it says no driving for 6 weeks. Nice! 

6. Avoid riding in a car for more than 30 minutes at a time for 2 to 4 weeks after surgery.

7. Try to change your position every 30 minutes when you sit or stand.

8. You may have sex as soon as you feel able, but avoid positions that put stress on your back or cause pain.

What's most amazing to me is that I woke up this morning sore as hell from the surgery itself, at the incision site really, but without the nerve pain that has robbed me of joy for the past 5 months.  That is so amazing!  Right now I'm standing at the kitchen counter typing this and feeling remarkably better than I have for ages, sore like I said, but so much better than in ages. On the counter all around the laptop are books I'm planning on reading while I'm off, my notebook, calendar, phone and discharge instructions, a cup of coffee gone cold and a big bottle of bubbly water. I am alone in my house during a weekday, something I dream of all the time.

It is not revolutions and upheavals that clear the road to... better days, but revelations, and lavishness... of someone's soul, inspired and ablaze.  

- Boris Pasternak, courtesy of Danielle LaPorte's The Fire Starter Sessions

I'm trying not to make a ton of plans or set a ton of goals for this period that I'm off work.  I want to be good about resting and listening and recovering really, really well.  I never want to be injured like that again.  So trying not to schedule or over-schedule.  But I am going to read Danielle's Fire Starter Sessions above, along with a stack of other titles I've been saving up.  It would be really great if I could use this time to really examine my life, what landed me right there into that injured place, and figure out how to live so well that I never go there again.

The injury, the surgery, came at the half-way point in my life, I figure.  

How can I make the next half the most awesome, the strongest, the most true?

That's where my mind is this morning: thinking about the 49 days off I've been given, one day for each year I've lived so far.  How may each one of these gifted days help me be the best Me?  

I really feel like I've been given the chance to live the dream, so I'm in it fully, quietly right now, slowly right now in my bathrobe, taking it all in, not making too many plans, but just savoring what's all around me.  Living the dream, for real.