Stir Crazy?

It has been 13 days since my spinal surgery.  All things considered, I am doing just fine.  Unfortunately, it is the 'all things' that is making me crazy.

I cannot bend, lift or twist for at least another four weeks.  In other words, 'no BLTs'.  Today, I can be on my feet for 27 minutes, adding one minute each day.  Really?  I confess to cheating on the 'upright' position.

I've been plowing through so many books, I haven't even entered them all on my list of what I am reading.  Same goes for DVDs.

I have managed to figure out how to do laundry.  And I can load the top shelf of the dishwasher.  But my idea of leaving out large pots so that I could use them fell flat when I realized that I could not fill one with water for boiling pasta and carry it to the stove.  And if I filled it two cups at a time, I still had the problem of emptying it.  So, I am relegated to cooking only a few ounces of pasta at a time, like one serving.

And that is another thing.  Since I am limited on what I can cook easily (the oven is off limits as are my cast iron pans), I am getting rather bored with my choices.  Frozen meals were OK for the first few days.  Now that I feel like I want to cook, but can't really, I do not want to eat them. 

I did manage to bake some muffins in my Advantium oven.  I used this oven much more when I was working and had little time to prepare foods.  In seven minutes my muffins were made.  No BLTs involved, either.

The definition of 'stir crazy' is a mental condition experienced by prisoners.  I told my doctor yesterday that in another four weeks I will need a mental doctor.  I do feel like a prisoner here.  I can drive to the mall, as I did on Sunday, but you cannot get much done in 25 minutes.  Especially when you are moving rather slowly.

There were broken branches laying all over the shrubs and lawn after the high winds moved through last weekend.  I tried to 'flip' them up into the air and grab them until a neighbor yelled that I wasn't supposed to be outside doing that.  He was right, of course, but I am trying to avoid rooting myself to a chair.

I see all this stuff I want to do outside and can't do it.  The weather this week is supposed to be great.  I'll be out there reading my book in the sun.  Make that books.  Oh how I look forward to next spring.