Which is to say my follow-up appointment with the surgeon is tomorrow. Hopefully news will be good, but I will deal with it whatever the news may be.
Today I sneezed several times, and they are close to being nothing more than just annoying regular sneezes now.
And I went for a walk and took some photos at the river. Here’s one of them.
For some reason I felt off yesterday. I was tired, maybe it was nothing more than that.
But then I slept surprisingly well. When I pull a shirt over my head today (to take it off, not because I have some “pulling shirts over my head” kink) I no longer do it slowly because the fabric feels weird going over my surgery zone. I can sneeze, and it only flares for a moment, and not much at that.
I can turn and stretch, and I don’t immediately get reminded I had surgery.
I’m healing. I am impatient, and I just want to be better, as I said yesterday, but I think there is an actual end in sight now.
Hopefully, the surgeon won’t tell me otherwise when I meet him in two days.
Here is a very nimble cat. I will be this cat soon.
Where: Campbell Valley Regional Park (Langley), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam)
Weather: Sunny, 26-32°C
This was my second time birding since surgery and I may have been a bit overly ambitious on setting out an extravagantly long route around Campbell Valley as the temperature eventually climbed to 32C.
We parked at the South Valley entrance, where the car seats would get set to “broiling” while we wandered the many trails of the park. We eventually began questing for a water fountain and settled for a bathroom sink by an old red barn.
Our first visit here was in March 2023 and did not yield too many birds. This time there was a lot of activity and a surprisingly large variety of birds–but many proved elusive, either appearing fleetingly, or only taunting us from somewhere in the dense foliage.
One of the reasons I suggested Campbell Valley on this day was the forecast–I remembered it had a lot of shade. And the shade is maxed out in the summer. It was quite nice to stroll under the relative cool of the canopy, but the sections where it opened up were Africa Hot and I regretted not having a camera bag large enough to hold a big ol’ water bottle.
We also saw the Historic Langley Speedway, which is now just a curious paved oval in the middle of the forest.
Toward the end I was further regretting the long, elaborate route I’d suggested. Then we got to the Shaggy Mane Trail and encountered about a dozen horse (with riders) split into a few groups. Most of the rest of the way out from here was navigating around horse poop–big fresh piles of tapestry (I had opined earlier about the tapestry of nature)–and passing a disturbingly large number of EMERGENCY CALL 911 signs because apparently horses or horse riders apparently have lots of accidents or something.
In an ironic twist, we came across a flooded part and had to navigate across on a plank, while simultaneously parched and desperate for water.
By the end we had managed a few decent shots, more than a few foiled attempts and a desire to return either in the spring or fall, when there are fewer places for the birds to hide and temperatures will be cooler.
Still, a welcome trip back, if a wee bit more than was perhaps sensible given conditions.
We went hunting for a bunting here, but the hunt was unsuccessful. I shot more kitsch than birds in the community garden, but it was 32C by now, so the sensible birds were hiding in the shade. Nic managed a shot of an American Goldfinch. Had it stayed put for another second, I would have gotten a shot, too, but it finched right off just as I lifted my camera. I had better luck with some House Finches in a tree.
We opted to not venture to the big pond, but did see a single scruffy Wood Duck in one of the increasingly swampy waterways.
A few high clouds blotted out some of the sun, which provided a little relief in the late going.
In all, not a bad day of birding at all, even if it was silly hot and the birds were largely (and wisely) absent.
Shot with a Canon EOS R7 with 18-150 mm kit lens and 100-400 mm telephoto. Some scenery captured on a Samsung Galaxy S26. The light and shadows were especially harsh. And my camera may have started melting.
Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:
Waterfowl and shorebirds:
Common:
Raptors:
Non-birds:
I am tired of not feeling normal. I want to feel normal again, to sleep like I used to, to not feel sore if I turn a certain way.
That’s all.
I know it the recovery will be complete soon, I’m just cranky and impatient now. The heat is not helping.
I want to be this cat.
I only wish I’d thought of this first.
Best comments on Mastodon, where I nicked this from:
“I want to believe.”
“Udderly ridiculous.”
Today I went birding and the temperature rose from 26C in the morning to 32C in the afternoon. We ventured on a long loop around Campbell Valley Regional Park.
Good: A lot of the park is forested and provides nice shade.
Bad: all the other parts where the sun beats down on you mercilessly.
I felt by the end of the afternoon I had maybe miscalculated how ready I was for something so taxing. I’m OK as I type this, but tired and aware that I probably won’t sleep great again tonight.
And I also realize that unless something starts changing significantly in my rate of recovery, I may not sleep great for weeks to come. I don’t sleep terribly, but I never really feel rested. Somewhat surprisingly, I also never feel like I’m dragging through the day as a result. Why, I don’t know. But today was the closest I’ve come to wanting to just lay down in a nice shady spot and stay there for a while.
I did get a few nice bird shots, though (coming soon).
In the meantime, here are some of the trees that provided welcome shade:
Specifically, last night I found I could sleep OK if I laid on my back, with the covers pulled away from my chest, like if I was an Egyptian mummy, except not ancient, mummified and in a sarcophagus. On my side was still uncomfortable. The covers on my chest were uncomfortable. But on my back, like a mummy, was OK.
While my energy and general wellness continue to improve, sleep has been, by far, the most vexing part of my recovery. I don’t know if this is typical, abnormal or somewhere in-between. I suspect it’s pretty normal. After 22 days it’s also now pretty annoying.
At least in a few more days I should be able to roll onto the side that got cut up without risk of opening anything up.
I make this sound kind of terrible, but it’s not, it’s just what it is. I think writing about it helps me to manage the bother. Also knowing the surgery may have staved off something much worse down the line helps, too!
In the meantime, I took a walk to Sapperton Landing today to get some exercise in. I’m up to 103 intensity minutes for the week, woo. Next week I could theoretically hit the minimum, 150.
The weather was quite nice. Here are a few shots I took on my Galaxy S26.
And an internet pal has informed me that in Portugal this means I have money coming my way. I kind of doubt that, but would welcome it!
The spider is hanging just above the soap tray. We’re leaving it be for now, since it’s not in the way or anything. I do wonder what sort of meals it gets from the tub, though.
Three weeks ago I would have been typing this from a hospital bed, pumped full of painkillers and oblivious of what was to come, existing in a weird daze, both aware and unaware, occasionally looking out the window to my left and noting the sky changing colour.
Today, 21 days later, I am feeling mostly normal.
Mostly.
The area of surgery is still sore, but every day now it feels…tighter. This is both good, because it means it’s healing, but also in a way bad because at certain points it’s made sleeping somewhat uncomfortable again.
The Big Stitch–the incision where the surgical instruments would have gone in–is starting to become noticeably less puffy, though it still feels weird. I could look up what it is I’m feeling (folded muscle, fat, etc.) on the internet, but those kinds of searches always seem to lead to a page saying IT’S PROBABLY BLACK DEATH. Plus, I see the surgeon in six days, I’ll just ask him then.
No cat again, instead this photo I took by the hospital lane way this afternoon:
Last night was an anomaly, my sleep was bad, due to stress, but not related to the surgery! And I think the watch made it sound worse than it was.
Regardless, yesterday was a slothful, stressful day and potato chips and pie were involved. The pie was yummy, though.
Today, I went for a long walk in pleasant late spring weather and as I type this mid-afternoon, I’m around 13.3 km total, which is already more than I’ve walked any day since going under the knife. And the more I walked, the less I felt the little aches and soreness from the surgery and incisions.
I begin to entertain the idea that I actually could try running in a week. We’ll see.
I also successfully stopped two sneezes by plugging my nose. Sneezing probably still hurts, so I’ll keep doing this.
In all, today is probably the first day that has a real whiff of normality to it. Things still aren’t normal, but it’s starting to feel tangible, possible. Yay for that.
No cat today. Instead, here’s a wild hydrant I saw on my walk:
First, she’d probably get torn apart and eaten for dinner, because with that many bears, someone’s bound to be around and cranky.
But apart from that, let’s say she enters the bear dining room hall. There are 20 steaming bowls of porridge. She samples a few that are too obviously hot or cold, but then finds a dozen or more that are very close to being perfect, but not quite. They’re so similar that she can’t choose one and just finish the bowl. She regrets not eating before breaking into the bear house and leaves, somewhat sated, but unsatisfied. She is later arrested and sentenced to jail by the forest gnome police and courts.
This is a post about Linux distros.
I have tried the following:
Maybe more! Some I’ve dismissed fairly quickly because of the too hot/cold thing (Debian) or never even tried because I’m not interested in making things more difficult just for the sake of challenge (Arch), but most of the ones above have something to recommend them:
But in almost every case, there’s some kind of downside:
In the end, I rotate through a half dozen or so distros, forever dabbling, but never committing, save for Mint, which I kept as my alternate OS on my old PC.
I guess I need to decide why I want to run Linux:
Here’s the final irony to this post. I recently tried Fedora, then, due to a weird issue with Grub2Win that requires periodically running a script to keep it working with Fedora, I installed CachyOS.
After not using it for a few days, I went to login and realized I’d forgotten the password. Whoops. I wanted to try the KDE version, anyway (I tell myself).
Stay tuned for more Goldilocks and the 20 Distros, right here.
Three things:
To celebrate my intensity minutes, here is an intense cat:
