I am now sporting a ‘lovely’ brace on my right hand and wrist, because after several weeks of progressively worsening tingling in my hand, I finally broke down and went to the doctor. The verdict – carpal tunnel. Considering I spend a majority of my time at work (and a not insignificant time at home) on the computer, this came as not remotely a surprise. The good news – she says I caught it early. The bad news – I have to wear this thing for 6 to 8 weeks, and it is very, very annoying. I spent the first week or so sucking down huge quantities of ibuprofin in order to relax the muscles around the nerve (not, mind you, that I noticed one bit of difference, so…whatever). Supposedly if I wear this thing long enough, eventually my hand will stop feeling as if it is continually asleep, and my arm will stop with the sudden massive jolt of tingling racing down from the shoulder and driving me crazy. Considering it has been two weeks and I haven’t noticed much of a change, I am starting to get a bit grumpy about the whole thing, but I am wearing the damn thing anyway, day and night, because if this doesn’t work, Step Two is injections into the wrist, and if that wasn’t enough to make me shudder in horror, Step Three is surgery. I think I’ll stick with the brace, thank you, even if the velcro does hae a tendency to stick to EVERYTHING.

In response to the diagnosis and the brace, I’ve now switched to mousing (yes mom, it really is now a verb) with my left hand, and I’ve procured a track ball mouse to use at work. I’m also trying to become ever so slightly more ambidextrous, but this is not as easy as one might think. I’ve spent nearly 40 years being quite decidedly right-handed, and my brain is fiercely resistant to change in that department.

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We put in veggies again this year, although this time we got them in a few weeks earlier. Also, having learned from last year’s mistake of planting all the tomatoes too close together, we have given all eight (four regular, four cherry again) plants twice as much space as the book says they need. Everyone’s response to that number of tomato plants has been to gasp and say ‘you’ll be swimming in tomatoes’, to which I respond “yes, that’s what I’m *hoping* for.” Here’s hoping we have a wee bit more success in that than last year.

In addition to the small army of tomatoes, we’re giving bell peppers a try again – one red and one green. We’ve also put in one small cucumber plant, which I am hoping I can train to climb, so that it does not try to take over the garden bed, and we also bought two spindly berry bushes and stuck them into large pots at the back of the yard. One of the bushes keeps falling over and is looking a little sickly, but the other seems to be grimly holding on, so I’m hopeful that at least that one will survive. Assuming, of course, that we do not get more freak hailstorms and freezing rain in between now and when the poor things can finally establish a decent root base, but…I have learned never to be too optimistic when it comes to my ability to garden.

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And now, please excuse me while I slide into a little nerd-speak here. Battlestar Galactica is, sadly, now finally over. We watched the series finale and I have decided to be happy with how it ended. I know that there are a lot of people who have worked themselves into a frothy lather of self righteous indignation about the role of gods and religion destiny in the series, and there are those who are all worked up about how the writers did (or did not, as the case may be) explain some of the character arcs, but I really just cannot see the point in expending that kind of energy. It was an amazing show, and I enjoyed watching it more than I can possibly say, and I can think of a lot more important things to get all worked up about, if I really felt the need. Which I don’t, actually, because first of all, who *cares*, and more importantly, there are so many other things to focus on, like finding ways to keep an elderly, slightly senile cat happy and warm for as long as I am still lucky to have him, or going outside in the mornings and hand-watering baby vegetable plants and looking forward to the day that they start to bear fruit, or challenging myself to find ways to use up all the stuff in our veggie box, even when it is things that we don’t normally like (yellow apples, fennel, collard greens).