Death to the Stairs

Today...our heroine finds freedom.

It is moving day, and she will finally be freed from her Rapunzel-esque lifestyle, for which her pixie hair cut is totally useless.

While her triceps have benefited immensely from scooting on her butt up and down the stairs to her front door, she would have traded the splinters, wetness and ice for some nice weight training any day.

adios stairs.

Thank you Ellen

Many people and things have been of great assistance to the Amazing One-Legged Girl during her saga:

her Mysterious Bearded Companion
her mother
her friends
her couch
pain meds

but some have been more unexpected than others, so unexpected, they qualify as secret weapons.

Her list of secret weapons amounts to something like an Oscar speech, always keeping it in the back of her mind, maybe ranking them, in the event that she can't get to someone before the music runs out.

The power players in battling the evil malaise that can come from the chaos of 2010 include:

Big # 1: NETFLIX

followed by:
Ellen DeGeneres saving daytime TV
Toyota 4Runners
Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (the biggest F you to hospital food there is)
Hot Chocolate
Greek Yogurt + Honey
Mircobrewed soda (no alcohol is the pain med trade off)
Biographies of bad ass female historical figures.
Knitting (though this might be on its way to becoming an element that drives her to madness)

Take that world...bet you didn't see those coming. Who knew they could bring such joy!

Be kind to one another...Or else.

Franklin Strutting his Stuff

Franklin is like an onion, just keep pealing and revealing. Turns out, he has struts...for those of you who do not participate in roller derby or build robots/submarines, a "strut is a structural component designed to resist longitudinal compression."

In other words, it is one of these:


After a visit with Dr. Screenwriter, our heroine learned that Franklin can indeed become even more high maintance. She was told to turn his 6 color coded & numbered struts, 2 at a time, every other day, for two weeks. Over time this will gradually lengthen her bones which currently look like this:

This of course provides an immediate challenge for the Amazing One-Legged Girl's flexibility. Having to reach completely around to crank a strut at the back of her ankle requires her to perform some sort of inverted triangle pose.


(or is the the dead bug? Probably more like the dead bug).

In other news, she has returned to Crazytown, (her place of gainful employment) twice a week. Navigating its stark white hallways in a wheelchair, graciously keeping her emotions in check, communicating with far more people than she has been used to during the day, all offer completely different ways to pass the time. Thanks to Franklin she must throw fashion to the wind and proudly venture into a business causal world in over-sized, black stretch pants & one shoe.

Struts or no struts, she's got this under control.

Franklin, Cookies & Cold

This past week was tough. Franklin appears to approach his relationship with our heroine as a frenemy, constantly hanging around, being heavy and all high maintenance. His ridiculous size forced the Amazing One-Legged Girl and her Mysterious Bearded Companion to venture out to their local Salvation Army in search of over sized drawstring pants.

This was quite a feat, considering that prior to the shopping trip, our heroine was unable to wear pants at all. The logistics of shopping in an actual store, pants-less, so to speak, involves a wheelchair and a prayer (and some pj shorts). All this would have been totally acceptable had the Bayou City not been experiencing its version of Snow-pacolypse 2011.

Besides wearing pants, the best way to fight the cold is to bake. Cage or no cage those legs were going to help make cookies, and Betty Crocker would be their guide.

While the dangers of wet tile have already been mentioned. Other kitchen "difficulties" such as reaching up high for flour, or the shuffle, twist and stretch involved in a one-legged pivot for the brown sugar, have not been mentioned.

She approached her kitchen like a dangerous dance floor, ready to hop, skip and slide for the sake of a meal or a snack, always wary of the hard, cold (and at time treacherous) tile beneath her foot.

So far so good.

The Amazing One-Legged Girl survived her time in the kitchen and got to enjoy a few warm, fresh cookies before her Mysterious Bearded Companion devoured the entire plate in a fitful sugar binge.

Much has happened in the past week. Franklin has made the whole apartment shrink. What was once a cozy space is now just a small room for disaster. The 12 stairs to the front door have transformed into a mountain. Since Franklin will be around a while it may indeed be time to find a new dwelling. Perhaps something on the ground floor? With an open plan?

Tomorrow also marks a big change. Our heroine will return to her place of employment after more than 2 months away, starting back at just two days a week, until Franklin becomes more of friend than an enemy.

How will she manage away from the couch? Can she stay awake for a full 7 hour work day or has this ability been obliterated by weeks for 4pm naps? Will her job seem easier with pain medication?

Answers to all this and more to come.