Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

After several days in a row of being able to walk more than is now typical for me, and also doing PT, yesterday my ankle hurt enough that I stayed put as much as possible. I took a naproxen around lunchtime, which made no descernible difference.

I'm doing significantly better today, in terms of ankle and other joint pain. I didn't go for a walk, but did go outside to take out trash and spend a few minutes outdoors during daylight, and then started on what has turned out to be a lot of PT exercises. We're back on standard time as of this morning, meaning the sun set in Boston at 4:35 (we're near the eastern edge of this time zone).

I had my quarterly appointment with Carmen so she can continue to prescribe the Ritalin. I spent part of the time talking about Mom's death, including how the trip had affected me physically, and specifically that my joints hurt much less than I expected given the amount of walking.

A bit later, the three of us went for a walk, and my knees started to hurt a little almost immediately, despite the precautionary naproxen. At that point, I realized that I walked a lot almost every day of the trip, but almost all of it was basically flat, long hospital and airport corridors.

After a stretch of a couple of weeks where I couldn't walk very far (or fast) without pain, I was feeling somewhat better yesterday, so walking to the Whole Foods and back was OK.

This morning I was, again, feeling better/a bit closer to what I think of as my normal. I went to Whole Foods to get a couple of things, hoping to be back before it started to rain.

It still wasn't raining at a quarter after 1, so I went out again, this time by trolley, to shop for socks at the nearest Target. They have only a small selection of clothing, but I was able to get two packages of cheap non-wool socks in different styles. Plain black for both, because the packages with colors and patterns were things like eight pairs in eight different solid colors, less than half of which I liked, or a three-pack of one pair with a black-and-white leaf pattern, one in black and yellow, and in plain black with a yellow toe.

When I got home my phone said I'd walked about 1.2 miles (which means it was probably about 8/10 of a mile) and I was feeling fine. I then took out the trash (which means a choice of two different sets of stairs, neither of which is great for my hips and knees), and that was OK, but after dinner I noticed some pain in my right foot and then hip. So, another naproxen (I had one before going out this morning), and maybe I won't go anywhere tomorrow.