Virginia Real : An Idle Mind…

For the past three weeks I’ve divided my time between sitting in my recliner in the living room and sleeping in the bedroom. If I sit too long in the recliner, my left shoulder-blade starts to ache. Sleeping in bed presents its own problems as well because I do not sleep well on my back so I awkwardly shift from one side to the other many times during the night. The side shifting is necessary because the weight and size of this honking-big foot cast makes it necessary for one leg to be positioned away from the other, in scissor-like fashion. This causes my hips to ache, so sleep is elusive for the most part. However, looking on the bright side, I only have three more weeks to go with the cast. On my next doctor visit on the 28^th, I should get a “walking cast”. I’m hoping it will be the kind that I can remove while I’m sitting and sleeping. I shouldn’t whine, though, because I know life could be much worse. I’m thankful that I did not have a lot of pain from the surgery. I don’t work, so there was no need to take time off from work. AND…I should have better balance and no (or substantially less) foot pain after this is all over.

I do have to admit that the surgery has allowed me plenty of time for knitting and crocheting. I’ve completed several projects already and when I’m not knitting or crocheting, I keep occupied with designing new patterns. Before surgery, I loaded up a box with a fair amount of yarn and brought it up from my basement craft room because I didn’t want Charming to have to root through my stash to bring me what I needed. (I think Charming’s sense of “manliness” would definitely have taken a hit if he had to sort through my yarn on a daily basis.)

In addition, I have managed to fix a basic supper a couple of times…really just spaghetti and meatballs that I had made pre-surgery with store-bought sauce. With Charming putting the pot of water on the stove and draining the spaghetti after it was cooked, we managed to have some semblance of a regular meal.

I’ve also spent quite a bit of time surfing the internet. It was on the internet that I found instructions to make “energy balls”. These are protein-rich, bite-sized pieces of goodness that taste a lot like candy. There are many different recipes, using many different ingredients to make these. They are great when you feel that you need just a little something to eat, but you don’t necessarily want a full meal. I don’t like to take any medicine on an empty stomach, so I find that a couple of these are just the thing to prevent any associated stomach discomfort. I don’t really even measure the ingredients when I make these. The objective is to end up with a really thick mixture that you can fashion into small mounds. So I combine: peanut butter, oatmeal, finely chopped raisins and prunes, honey, cocoa powder, vanilla, a little flax meal, and a little protein powder (Charming buys protein powder in big containers from Costco and uses the Nutri-Bullet given to us by my sister, Joyce, to whip up a shake on days when we do not eat meat). After I make these, I store them in a lidded Pyrex container in the freezer so they keep their shape. I stack them within the Pyrex container in layers, separated by parchment paper. (Oddly enough, they don’t seem to freeze into hard chunks…they are soft and chewy, which makes them simply scrumptious!) You could also add other nut butters, chopped nuts, other dried fruits, coconut, etc. and/or roll them in confectioner’s sugar or cocoa powder. Depending on the protein and fiber content of the ingredients that you use, these could be especially helpful to the elderly or those who are “sickly”, as my Momma would say. A few of these are much tastier than those expensive pre-packaged liquid protein shakes that you buy in the store. Try whipping them up sometime…you might never be tempted to buy store-bought candy again!