a weekend of note. day 1.

there have been some momentous days.  let us discuss. 

on friday i was in the slumps of self-pity.  walking was too hard.  it hurt and it was supposed to be this super happy milestone.  but i felt sad and discouraged. i felt like crying.  i was trying so hard.  i was doing all the things.  you get it.  

so i took a little break.  friday was the day of our work outing.  we were meeting at a pub for some eats and drinks and then going bowling.  i had imagined that i'd be walking and super mobile by then.  i thought all i'd need was a ride.  but things were 'differnt'.  i decided the most important thing was to have fun. so while i did walk up and down the stairs myself, i brought scoot along too and didn't worry about walking any distances.  

j9 picked me up.  she had to wrestle scoot into the hatchback of her nissan leaf electric car with her famous noodle arms.  while she had her battle i gingerly walked my way around the hood of her car, one cautious hand on the car at all times and taking tiny steps.

we went to  the canadian brewhouse and grill which is in the same complex as walmart.  the parking is craycray there but thanks to my eagle eye we caught a lady who was leaving and nabbed her spot.  it was maybe 10 cars down from the door.  nbd (no big deal). i waited with the car door open.  j9 was like you don't want the scooter here do you? and i was like um yah, i do! you think i can walk that far?? so she noodle armed it out for me. 

it wasn't until we were on our way that i realized she did made the classic newbie mistake and put the handlebars on backwards so that the brakes were on the inside, poking me in the stomach.  haha.  evelyn did the same thing her first time when she took me to get my 2nd vax. 

anyway some other staff caught up to us on our way in and when we got inside there was a loooong table full of my work family.  they saved a spot for me at the end.  it was so nice to see everyone and to talk and laugh and eat together and be silly.  it was exactly the kind of cheering up i needed.

i got a crispy buffalo chicken burger with fries and drank copious tall glasses of water.  dave ordered everyone appys as well so i had an odd chicken wing and cheesy garlic bread slice. after a couple of hours we left the brewhouse and went to the bowling alley.  tall lanky david needed a ride and so j9 took pity on him.  he had to fold his lanky limbs into a very very narrow space in the back seat.  we all found it very funny for some reason.  he said this was a one star uber.  we were all hilarity talks on the way to bowling.

once we got there the back door way that we always have used was locked but i insisted that it wasn't and so david kept knocking on the door and this girl, another bowler opened it.  i only needed one bowling shoe because i bowled on scoot.  it was our last quality time together.  

my team was dave macdonald, chris rohr, mireya and lynn.  but lynn was stuck in traffic and so we all took turns (not me) to bowl for lynn and lynn was winning.  we kept trying to take 'lynn' down a notch but when bowling for lynn they would inadvertently get a spare or a strike without trying.  it was our big joke of the night.  when it was my turn to bowl, i would roll up to the line and dave would bring me a ball.  i just took whatever he gave me so i was bowling lighter than i usually go for and maybe that's not a bad thing.  i didn't do too badly.  i even got one strike and one spare i think.  my score was 94.  in the end mireya squeaked by and beat lynn who showed up at the end and actually bowled one round herself.

sometime during bowling i started getting stomach cramps.  you know the kind that tell you you are in for some fun times in the bathroom.  but when i would grimace people believed it was because of my foot haha.  foot was just fine this whole time because foot was getting a break. 

after we were done bowling we decided to go to the little resto/pub attached to the bowling alley.  it is called monkey nine or something like that.  hope was very perturbed that all the 'monkeys' pictured around the resto were in fact all chimps.  i was crazy to stay longer when i had explosive diarrhea brewing but i was having such a fun restorative time.  the cramps ramped it up a notch during this time.  but i just grimaced and rocked and sweat and ignored it as best i could.  me and hope and andi all ordered ice cream sandwiches.  it was so good.  warm homemade chocolate chip cookies sandwiching some melting vanila ice cream.  

but i reached a point that i knew i needed to get home fast.  so i took my leg off the chair it was propped up on and j9 took my cue as did some others.  i got home, walked up the stairs and into the house by seven ten pm.  i'd been out for 6 hours.  what a day for me.  what an outing.

then bad things happened in the bathroom.

i survived and lived to join the sisters for an esl mentoring session on  zoom. we were stood up. but we had a nice time talking mission stories and by we i mean i.