um….. My foot hurts.
It hurts a lot.

Me, someone who has lived with some sort of physical pain for the past forty or so years, have learned to ignore it, departmentalize pain, and accept it. It’s more of a constant companion than a bother. It reminds me that I’m alive, providing I acknowledge its existence at all. The pain lets me know that I’m alive as the dead don’t feel pain.

But.. yeah… I am seriously feeling the stitches or whatever he used. The swelling. The tightness. I can’t stand how the toes rub and feels inside the wrapping.

The body is becoming very stiff. I walk funny to try to compensate for the surgical boot and wrapper. The weather is changing. I’m finding it very cold and it’s rained profusely. The body is naturally tightening and, along with the whole foot pain, arthritis, and scoliosis, I um….

I’m just one big OWIE waiting to pop.

Mentally…. somehow… I’m hanging in there. It’s been a while since I’ve fallen into a prolonged dark day. I feel that the anxiety is there. If eel that it’s in the back of my head and, when I wobble, it’s there to catch me. To envelope me into deep, dark, razor velvet that inflicts tiny bleeding cuts. Each drop was ooze of self-hate daggers that caused pain.

Unlike physical pain, I can’t ignore the mental type.

But, by some grace of God… that hasn’t been an issue. Yet. I have to add the yet. I know it’s still there. Please, by all that’s holy, I don’t want to go back there.

Anyway….
Class has ended.
See the previous blog about how I shut one of them down.

I guess I could have gave her another extension on top of the … oh… I don’t know…. dozens she’s had over the term and additional extension after class ended.

Honestly, most of the time, I would have. I could have extended it out to midnight without much impact on my end since I’m holed up here anyway and could complete the grading well before the due date.

But the student’s constant disregard for basic grammar just… irritated me. She’s asking for yet again another favor and can’t spell “you” correctly. I mean… come on….

She’s enrolled in ENG202. This isn’t her first go around with college classes. Where’s the basic decorum?

I don’t know… it’s like wearing a Goodwill hoodie to ask a president for a billion dollars.
— Where’s the respect? How does that address the audience (it doesn’t.) That’s just a poor representation of himself and the people who he is supposedly supposed to represent.

So… um…. no. No extension.
She fails as she can’t demonstrate basic concepts and I have been called a white sup…. btch… But that happens at least twice per term any more. I apparently have some sort of standard to uphold which makes that tired tagline worthy of me.

Although it is kind of funny. I never post a picture of myself. Students just assume that I’m white — which I don’t identify as. I identify as freckled, not white.

Course, with my luck, I’ll see these people again next term.

The only student who failed I was * really * hoping to pull out of it was Mikey. He was from a previous term – single dad – PTSD from the army – trying to become a computer programmer. I was hoping he’d come through – but he didn’t.

———- Several hours has passed.
I just woke from a nap. * Very unusual for me to take a nap in the middle of the morning with the wounded leg propped up on Jason’s living room desk. It’s * really * not comfortable. That’s for sure.

What can I do but sleep?
For a change, I’m trying to stay off the foot and follow doctor’s orders. I * actually ** feel the pain so I know there’s something bad going on. If I can feel it this intensely and sharp, I know there has to be some bad mojo.

It’s kind of frightening, actually. Enough to scare me semi-straight.

But what can I do?

Yes…. I know…. read…. color…. um… write in my blog… but that just makes me feel like I’m festering in my own skin. Simmering in a fleshy pot… marinating in my own muscle spasms….

Maybe I should take the pain killers.
I’m just not that patient or forgiving with myself.

I knew this was going to happen. This situation is far worse than the operation itself. Damn it.