what I’ve been up to since I’ve been home

I’ve been back in Texas for a little over a month now, so I can safely say I am getting settled in

for the most part my time is divided between therapy, resting, and handling all of the various medical/life admin stuff (ie: going to a bunch of new doctors, getting my TX driver’s license, setting up medical leave from work, getting an MRI, updating my address/billing info for 583,342 different services, banks, subscriptions, etc, getting my mail forwarded, suffering through a 3hr long EEG (brain study in which you’re hooked up to dozens of nodes all over your head and can’t move a muscle :D) – all of the super fun stuff you have to do when you move across the country in the midst of a health crisis!)

then the couple of hours left I have every day to myself, I spend reading books and/or watching movies and/or doing puzzles (always with Emmy and one or more cats nearby). Bear really enjoys helping with puzzles as you can see below –

time for a quick game of iSpy – can you find Pipes in the image below?

(side note, I keep telling my mom that I enjoy living at home again because it feels like I am in a comfy, cosy home iSpy puzzle full of cats (and I mean that in the nicest way possible). I love all of the various knick knacks and unique, eclectic, colorful, artistic, fun things around my parents’ house)

I have been getting settled in and I’ve been really leaning into my deep love of puzzles (not that it’s ever waned). I unfortunately had to leave behind my entire puzzle collection in New Hampshire. I didn’t have enough room for them so unfortunately we had to part and ever since, it’s felt like there’s been a massive hole in my heart I needed to fill. I’ve been working through my mom’s puzzles (she has just as many if not more than I did lol), but it just wasn’t the same. I wanted to start building up a collection again – but this time I wanted a collection much more portable. And when I tell you I found the BEST puzzles – Boardwalk Puzzles has these cool National Park Advent Calendar puzzle sets so I bought the first one which comes with 15 mini puzzles and one puzzle can be done entirely on one lunch tray/cookie sheet which makes it so easy to move around – and easy to keep away from the cats (Marty has already tried to run off with puzzle pieces, they think they’re toys lol) Here’s one of the mini advent calendar puzzles –

They also have these really pretty mini wooden puzzles which they sell in bundles that come with their own wooden trays. I ended up getting a few because they were on sale (and they are pricey so I was taking FULL advantage of the sale). but look how pretty this Acadia one is –

I really love the artist of the wooden ones, Eric Dowdle – a real, human artist that creates these designs with his own two hands and not AI 🙂 🙂 🙂

More pics of my besties the last few weeks…

My stack of current books (the physical books anyways, I have 16 other books I’m reading/listening to digitally. gotta keep my options open, I always need a million different topics to choose from… lol) and my wheel of colored pens & highlighters my parents make fun of me for. but I need every single color so I can annotate and highlight my books to be as colorful and convoluted as I am! and the super fun, exciting C-PTSD workbook that I can only do a couple of pages at a time right now 😀 😀 😀

oh yeah, and my roller skates! I custom built these Malibu Barbie skates several years ago as a gift to myself when I had weight loss surgery. I haven’t really skated since being in NH but now I am determined to make these a regular part of my life because I love the feeling of flying in my skates so much (and I need to move my body in more ways than just in and out of bed)

anyways, that’s pretty much been my life since I’ve been back home: life administration, medical crap, and attempting to rest/relax in the most colorful, me ways I can!