elbow stretches

Guess what? No more robo-arm!

I went to the doctor again Wednesday, and he told me to stop wearing that ridiculous arm brace and that I needed to start physical therapy. Holla!

I was so excited for physical therapy because that means my arm will start working again and it would also give me something to do until my job starts. Oh and don't worry, I have officially been hired by Jefferson County Public Schools. But I still don't know when I start. It's fine.

Anyway, so I'm getting all pumped for PT until I get a call yesterday, which led to numerous other calls trying to figure out how to get my insurance to cover physical therapy. It's a long story I won't get into here. It was frustrating and still not completely solved, but I don't even care because I got to learn how to stretch my arm yesterday! It's the little things guys, okay?

These arm stretches feel good and painful, but I think I'm finally on the road to recovery. Six weeks later. Sweet.

Here's me and my new BFF Angie Wysocki.

She's a delight, and I'm glad I've had her to hang out with ever since the accident. And just in general. There just aren't enough girls here. And Angie is leaving Sunday morning. Crap. Oh well, I'll survive without her. I think.

Last night we went out for her and Amanda's (my boss) birthday.

There we all are. We went to this place called Sing Sing, which is basically a bar with dueling pianists. They were pretty good, but things got a little raunchy at times. Or very raunchy. But it was still fun. At one point Mark leaned over to me and said, "Did you ever think a year ago that this is where you'd be now?" To which my response was, "Nope, not at all."

One thing right now and a year ago do have in common: me agonizing over life decisions I have to me. It never gets any easier apparently. Dang. I'll figure it out. I always do.

That's about it for things in common.

I know I say this like all the time, but I just need you Kansas people to know one more time how I miss you lots. I think I'm going through withdrawl. And somehow I will figure out how to visit you in the near future.

I'm gonna continue on with my day of nothing, which I have learned to accept and deal with lately. Because once subbing starts, waking up really early everyday also starts. I'm gonna enjoy my days of sleeping until ten now while they last.

i feel a little venting is in order

The other day I watched the episode of The Office where they read all the complaints the employees have had against each other. Right now, I'm gonna list off a few of my complaints against life, and then I'm gonna get over it.

1. My arm doesn't work. I physically cannot straighten it or bend it very much, and I feel like I've made almost zero progress (in terms of bending mobility) since I got my cast off a week and a half ago. I'm starting to get pretty frustrated, especially when I want to do things like put my hair up or wash my face or eat with both hands. Or when I wonder if I'll ever snowboard again.

Or when one of my girls tells me tonight that her family knew this kid who dislocated his elbow pretty bad and had permanent damage--as in he couldn't fully straighten his arm. Cool.

But let's put it in perspective Tate. At least it's not your right arm. At least you're not paralyzed. At least you didn't have to have surgery. At least you can still perform almost all everyday normal functions.

As a side note, I forgot about my brokenness today when a 3-year-old little boy ran at me and I accidentally reached down and picked him up, and the woman I was talking to was like, "Ah don't do that!" But I successfully picked up the child with minor soreness. It was probably good for my arm anyway, plus Darian is seriously hands-down the coolest little kid I've ever met.

2. It's freezing cold (currently 6 degrees) and constantly snowing in Denver. And because of the brace I wear as a result of complaint #1, I can't really even wear a coat. Now remind me again why I, the girl who would always prefer 90 degree humid weather, moved to this wretched state in the first place? And this place was growing on me too when I was loving snowboarding and the weather wasn't too bad. But then the mountains broke me and the infamous blizzard of 2006 hit.

And never left. That Angie Wysocki. She is a woman. The good thing about complaint #1 is that I always get out of shoveling duties and heavy lifting duties and what not.

But at least I have a nice heated house to live in and a nice heated car that drives pretty well in the snow.

3. I'm unemployed and bored. I haven't worked for over a month now and I'm just kind-of at a loss as to what to do with myself. Well, there's plenty of things I could do, like sleep in and spend hours watching TV and play Super Nintendo. But I can't stand life when it doesn't feel like it has any purpose. This may seem like a direct slam against Justin Hume, but it really isn't. But seriously, I don't know how you do it man.

Although I have decided in the past couple days to love the show Scrubs, so I rented a couple of the DVDs last night and have watched eight episodes already. Hey, what else was I supposed to do with my weekend when 75% of my friends (including the entire Wysocki residence) went on the high school ski retreat? Oh, and by the way, the youth group is currently still stuck there because of complaint #2.

I found out at orientation on Wednesday that I won't be officially employed by the school district to substitute until the beginning of February. Which leads me to complaint #...

4. I feel like I'm constantly anxious about what to do with my days from now until the summer. Because summer is when those two people that left me come back and there's all those fun trips and it's warm. But that's a long time from now. I found myself looking at my planner today and being pretty satisfied that this week should be filled pretty well. Then I turned the page and starting freaking out a little because there is almost nothing written for the next week. Or the next week.

That was when I had to give myself a little smack and remember that I'm being ridiculous. Because Philippians 2:13 says...

"for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose."

I learned that verse in the first year of Chile, when I sometimes had no idea what to do with my time. I realized that as long as we give each day to God, we DO have purpose. Even now it eases the soul to type that. Hallelujah amen.

5. My boos don't live close enough to me. Enough said.

And due to complaint #2 and the fact that I'm running low on cash flow because of complaint #3, I didn't end up getting to visit those lovely ladies this weekend.

So to sum up, I'm bored and cold and disabled and slightly lonely. That's it. Life could be much worse. And I'm sick of all my whining, so this is the part where I get over it.

My life is good. I laugh every day. A lot. I have good friends, even if most of them are hundreds of miles away. I live with an awesome family. I work with a great staff. I hang out with the best middle school kids I know (besides my cousins of course).

Plus today I listened to a Bill Vogler sermon, and that can make anyone rejoice. Or maybe just people like me and Emjo.

In closing, I just have to note that it was almost exactly a year ago that I arrived in New Orleans for the craziest experience of my life. I do like my life now, but if I had to pick between living this life right now or living my life of one year ago, I would definitely choose to travel back in time to January of 2006 and relive the moments like this.

NOLA love. It always comes back to that.

ever since the accident...

After countless requests for a new tateblog, and because I can type again, and because I don't have a job and therefore have nothing to do, I am finally delivering. But because of the length of time that has past, I am warning you that this will be a long one. And I'm not even covering half the stuff I'd like to. So I hope that you can stay entertained, and if not, deal with it.

And so we begin our story...

It's December 15, 2006. I had just returned home from an awesome trip to New Orleans the day before with the wonderful Caitlin Murphy and Danielle Firsching.


Now since I had recently become a pretty bad-a snowboarder (yeah right), I of course had to get back to the mountains as soon as possible. So Jake and I head to Keystone early that Friday morning and meet up with Seth to "shred the gnar" as they say.

We made one run down and it was awesome. I was loving it. Jake and Seth were being goofy and fell like 2 minutes in, but I didn't fall at all. I felt like I was finally getting good at this stupid little sport.

So we get on the gondola to ride up for our second run. I get a call from the lovely Jen Wilson on the way up, so I talk to her for a few minutes, and she says to me, "Ok go have fun and don't get hurt." Foreshadowing? I think so.

I was just going down as normal and being really proud of my skillz when all of a sudden I just bite it. I hit and rolled a little while yelling out, "OW OW OW OW OW OW." At first I thought maybe I could just walk this off, but I quickly realized something had gone terribly wrong in my arm. Jake and Seth came over and also realized quickly that I was not laughing, but was actually in excruciating pain. I tried to laugh some of it off though, because no one wants to be in that awkward "someone is really hurt and crying" situation.

Ski Patrol showed up pretty quick. He asked me where I was from, and I just stared blankly at him for a minute, and then said, "D-Denver?" Then he asked if I had hit my head. Nope, I'm just confused as to what to call home apparently.

They took me down the mountain in what most call a little tobagen thing, but I call the body bag. Because they seriously like put me in a big yellow bag. That ride down the mountain was the most terrifying part I think.

Besides x-rays.

When they took me in for x-rays and the guy was trying to move my arm around, I let out a loud scream. And then I was sort-or hysterical. It was intense.

I actually screamed three separate times in the emergency room, shocking most everyone in there including myself.

I tried to never look at my arm from the time I hit until the time we left that Keystone Medical Center, but the boys tell me there was a huge ball of swollenness on my arm. At one point they uncovered my arm and Jake made this awful terrified face and I was like, "Jake you can't make faces like that!"

There were about ten or 15 minutes in that room that I remember as some of the most pain-filled of my life. I sat there and just told Seth and Jake all the stories I could think of from New Orleans--like about how tough we were for building and then moving those freaking planter boxes--just to attempt to distract me from the pain. Seriously, it HURT. And man does that picture make me miss the days of having a fully-functioning left arm.

When we entered the medical center, one of the first things I told the boys was, "If they try to give me an iv I'm leaving." I had also been hoping the whole time that it wasn't dislocated.

So you can imagine why I started crying when the doctor told me they were gonna put an iv in me and put my elbow back into place.

I was TERRIFIED.

But they gave me some excellent drugs so I don't even remember all of that happening. After the little procedure they sent Seth and Jake in one at a time, which I vaguely remember, but don't remember what I said to them. Jake claims that when he asked me if I wanted my wallet (they had gone to the car to get it for me) I replied, "I don't know what good it would do I can't even feel my fingers." Interesting...

It was an exciting day, that's for sure. But not a very exciting past three weeks. Because five days after the accident, just when I was getting pumped to hang out with people in town like Maggles and Cait, there was a blizzard and we were all trapped inside.

It was a crazy amount of snow. And it happened on Sophie's birthday, so me and her hung out and watched the Lizzie McGuire movie and Holiday in the Sun (the classic Mary-Kate and Ashley movie).

So then check it. I was supposed to fly home on the 22nd, but long story short I missed my flight because the Denver airport had turned into the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina. So I spent Christmas in Denver, which was actually way fun. We hung out with the Wysocki's (Angie Wysocki is one of my new best friends), and I spent the night at Mark's and we watched a bunch of episodes of the Office to celebrate the birth of Christ. I never realized how weird that is until just now.

I finally got to St. Louis at 12:30am on the 26th. I had a nice Christmas dinner at Panda Express in the Denver airport. With all my luggage. And my arm in a huge cast.

Of course they were predicted snow again for the 29th, the day I was supposed to fly back to Denver. I was so scared I would miss my flight because that obnoxious cast that had been preventing from taking normal showers for 11 days was supposed to come out. The good news was that they didn't cancel my flight. The bad news was they closed the doctor's office. Those sissies. Too afraid to drive in the snow.

Therefore, that stupid cast was a part of me until this past Wednesday. The doctor originally told me I only had to wear it one week. I wore it for 16 days.

That doctor appointment was pretty entertaining though. From Seth taking pictures in the lobby to them weirdly sawing my cast off to the nurse walking in the room after we had taken the cast back out of the trash and I was smelling it, it was interesting. I'm glad I can shower again.

I'm not glad that they gave me like a robo-arm. I have this huge brace to wear that looks like it belongs on a leg. I constantly get people asking if it can do anything cool like shoot lasers or telling me, "Well at least you're probably pretty good at the robot." Ha.

When we left the doctor's office, I was pretty much hating life because I could all of a sudden feel every movement in my arm and everything hurt a little. And in a moment of weakness and some tears in the car I said, "I'm never snowboarding again!" To which Seth replied, "NO! Don't say that!" I had to assure him I wasn't serious. I feel like a crazy person, but I'll for sure be out there on the slopes again this season. I love it too much.

Oh yeah, and I still have a big bruise on my elbow, although it's fading now.

But you can sort of see the discolorment in this picture. No wonder it still hurts.

I owe a lot to these lovely people...

...for being good friends and hanging out with me at my house and driving me places when I was broken. One night the four of us played the High School Musical board game. It was awesome.

I'm now working on bending and unbending my arm, but it's still pretty stiff and sore and awkward. It'll just take time I guess. I'm getting better at some things, but last night I tried to push a girl's car out of the snow and that was not happening at all. I don't know what I was thinking.

This week was DCC, as well as the last week of hanging out with Jake and Seth. I went to a few sessions of DCC and was reunited with some really awesome peeps.

But I went to KU's campus time on the last night, and it's just weird because I feel so far separated from it now, even though I've only been out of CRU for like six or seven months. But I miss it.

Then I had to say bye to my boys, which was sad, but we'll be okay. And despite this really creepy picture of them...

...they are pretty much awesome, as I've said before. I don't even know if I'll know how to snowboard without them accompanying me. But I'll figure it out.

And now for our sponsored number of the day: The number 2.

Two days ago was Jub Jub's birthday.

Two weeks ago was Christmas day.

Two months ago I returned to the world of snowboarding after a six-year break in my first day of riding of the season.

Two years ago...well, you can figure it out. But it was a pretty notable and infamous day in my life. And I can't believe it's been two years. I just had to reflect on that for a moment.

Oh, and just as an update, I've stopped freaking out about what I'm doing with my life, so that's good. I mean, I still don't know what I'm doing, but at least I'm not having panic attacks on a weekly basis, right?

I miss Kansas. I'm sick of snow. But mostly I miss my boos, obviously. But hopefully I'm coming to visit real soon!

Thanks for reading about my bizarre life.