What I Did On My Summer Of Hysterectomy Vacation

I started to get the feeling that my recovery time was just about up when The Husband Dude came home from work at four o’clock in the afternoon and suggested I take a walk around the block.

The Husband Dude: Have you been wearing your pajamas all day?

Me: No. I’ve been wearing my pajamas for five weeks. Well, not THESE pajamas. I’ve been bathing and putting on clean pajamas after every shower. But, yeah, other than a few brief outings I’ve been wearing pajamas for more than a month.

THD: Maybe you should try taking a walk up the block? Get a little exercise?

Me: I’ve been active. I even have calluses.

THD: Calluses on your fingers from coloring in your adult coloring books doesn’t count as being active.

Touché.

That’s when I realized that my six week doctor visit is coming up and I’ll find out when I’m going to be released back to work.

Work.

So many other things I’d rather do.

Like have another hysterectomy.

Or have a tabasco enema.

I did start feeling guilty for not doing more while I’ve been off. I mean, I wasn’t supposed to do much but I’m female so the guilt gene is a given. To make myself feel better, I tried to take stock of what I have actually accomplished on my time off.

Remember when we were kids starting school on the first day and sometimes our teacher would assign us to write an essay about what we did on our summer vacation? I decided to write my own essay:

What I Did On My Summer Hysterectomy Vacation

I started my vacation with a brief stay at the hospital. I don’t really recommend it. First, they remove parts from your body, then you get to lay in bed for a day, peeing through a tube into a bag. The dye they used that turned my pee blue was kind of cool, though, because it gave everyone something to look at besides my bedhead.

Coming home was great. I got to take a shower and then I took a three hour nap! Three hour naps are great, except for the part where you wake up at 4:00 p.m. and don’t know what year it is.

After my nap, I embarked on a two week cycle of waking up, sitting on the couch, watching TV, coloring in my adult coloring books, eating a couple of meals, then retiring to my bed only to start over again the next day. Exciting stuff.

Speaking of coloring books, I managed to complete two whole books and start a third one! I also had to get a second box of pencils as I had finally ground my other ones to the point they were too short for my needs. I will say, though, that the first few days of coloring were a challenge. Who knew that pain meds would make it so hard to stay inside the lines?

My television watching was quite fruitful. I managed to binge watch the latest seasons of The Ranch,  Goliath, Wild Wild Country, Orange is The New Black, I Am A Killer, Cold Justice and Bar Rescue. I’m currently on Season Three of Cold Case Files.

All of my crime shows have The Husband Dude worried that I might be plotting a murder. Although I feel like at this point, I have enough knowledge to commit the perfect crime, I have no plans to actually use this knowledge in real life.

Kind of like my Bachelor of Arts Degree.

I did, however, put together all of my Bar Rescue knowledge and came up with a plan for a bar. If anybody knows John Taffer, tell him I’d love to go into business with him!

As for my “side” business of blogging and writing, I did manage to keep producing two blog posts a week and used the phrase “Lady Parts” at least a thousand times. I got my creative juices flowing by creating some Oxy-induced hysterectomy gifts in my Zazzle shop. I also somehow managed to increase my Twitter following by about thirty followers after months of being pretty stagnant.

I realize having thirty more followers is not Kim Kardashian type numbers, but I prefer to think of myself as a slow-spreading virus who will soon infect the world with sarcasm and F-bombs.

The Husband Dude is right. I need to take a walk.

But that would require putting on clothes because I doubt the neighbors want to see me in my “Too Sleepy To Care” pajamas. It’s bad enough that the feral cats in the neighborhood have to see it when I go out to put food in their bowls.

(Please don’t lecture me about feeding feral cats. I am a cat lover and I have a heart, misguided though it may be sometimes. I leave out food and water and have a shelter for them on the front porch for the bad weather in the winter. I can’t help it. I’m a sucker for a cute feline.)

Also, I’m kind of terrified to go out my front door right now because there’s a YUUUUUUGE spider on a web on our front porch. I have not been able to figure out what kind of spider it is, so I have no idea if it’s venomous or not, but I did see it eating a smaller spider the other day so clearly he’s the Jeffrey Dahmer of Spiders.

Some of you are probably wondering why I’m so terrified of a spider when we actually kept one in our kitchen and fed it for a while until his untimely demise at the hands of Mr. Luna. That would be because he was a tiny, harmless grass spider. The MoFo outside my door looks prehistoric and I’m pretty sure he could eat one of the feral cats if he chose to.

Now you’re probably asking yourself why we don’t just spray it with something and kill it.

Well, first of all, I don’t like to kill spiders in their homes and I expect the same courtesy from them. Outdoors is THEIR home. Indoors is MY home.

My problem is, Spiderzilla’s web keeps getting bigger and bigger and no longer just covers the corner by the eave. It’s starting to drape down directly over the area where I have to access the porch to feed my ferals. I’m not a squeamish person, but I still have nightmares about the time I was four years old and my brother goaded me into climbing and walking along our four foot rock wall in the backyard of our home. As I did, my foot got entangled in a spider web, and I did the Spider Web Dance.

Can you imagine walking headfirst into a web???

I’ve learned from experience that knocking down the web does no good. He’ll have it rebuilt overnight. So now I’m thinking my only options are going to be Arachnicide or Catch and Release.

Arachnicide would require me spraying something that’s toxic to the spider, the ferals, me and the environment. Not a choice I like.

Catch and Release means I have to get really close to Spiderzilla, catch him and then find a place to release him so he’ll maybe go elsewhere to build a web. Again, if he was a little dude, I might not mind it but I’m afraid I might have to get into a wrestling match with him and it would end with me burning down the whole house.

I guess the truth is that real life is starting to intrude on me again, and I will soon be forced to go back out and join it on a full time basis rather than in spurts like the last six weeks.

I can’t just throw myself out there, though. I’ve got to work up to it. So, today, it’s stretchy pants and a T-shirt.

No bra, though. Baby steps, people. Baby steps.