I Count 3030

SUMMARY: I've blogged how many times?!

Backfill: date

Yesterday, blogger friend Dawn posted on her Change Is Hard site: Time Warp. In it, she muses on her history in blogging, and how in July of 2014 she had already posted 1500 times. Which got me thinking, which is always dangerous.

Like her, I have met many people through their blogs across the continent--reading, commenting, conversing, reading their comments on mine--and eventually meeting three of them in person, including Dawn. Seems so recent, yet that was 10 (ten!) years past. I need to jump into my Winnebago and start driving for more visits!

If only I had a Winnebago.

A friend's equivalent, when I visited in 2018

But I digress (as is my wont).

This makes my 3,030th Taj MuttHall post. Is it cheating to get to that number with a post about the number? I claim Not Cheating: All's fair in love and blogging.

3030 is a lot of blogging.  From my first post on August 5, 2002, when Remington earned his NATCH (his only championship), to the next post on August 26 in which Tika has her first-ever competition run and Remington exhibits sickness for the first time (won't know it's cancer for a couple more months), and I was off and running as a blogger of dogs and dog agility.

Not being one to miss an opportunity, I started rescuing text about my dogs and dog agility from old emails and Backfilling them into the blog-- for example, this post dated May 5, 1994, which looks like the first post, but I actually posted it on October 20, 2004  from an email from 5/5/94.   (Once upon a time I created the tag #backfilled for all posts that I've done like this--but I've never applied it to all the really old ones! Another blogger project for my imminent retirement.)

I don't know whether there is a way to count back to find my 1000th or 2000th posts, but I can count back using my fingers and toes and my fingers again to my 3000th back in April, discussing divesting myself of agility equipment, which dovetails nicely with the first posts in 2002, as it's where I'm really realizing that I'm transitioning out of agility. ...Probably.

Along the way, I also started posting about my past, my photography, my travel, my food (!so cliché), my family, health, hiking, happiness, my rewritten lyrics to songs or poems, and so much more. Invented my alias Human Mom (first occurrence in June, 2006). Created around a thousand tags (see sidebar). A real olio.

I'm not sure where this blog will head from here on out. Will I find a better way to tag or organize things? Will I start a different blog for travel, for photography, for humor...?

Unknown. But I hope to see you all here, there, or anywhere.

Knee Status 6 Weeks Out

SUMMARY: The new one is very good. But the technology isn't perfect.

From a Facebook post March 9.

!!! TO DO: UPLOAD PHOTOS !!!

Went in for my 6 1/2 week check-up today (March 9) with the surgery department. I'm happy happy happy with my new knee!

Per them: X-rays look perfect. Surgery scar looks perfect. Pain is very minor today. 

Side note: About 3 days ago, the knee started into constant low-level pain.
Icing didn't help, even though it always did til now.
(Multiple tries.) Acetaminophen and NSAID didn't help.
After a day and a half, finally gave up after bedtime and took
one remaining reserved heavy-duty pain pill. Knee has been pretty good since.
That has been the first time in all these weeks that I've had a problem with pain.

Takeaways:

• Walk as much as I want, let pain be my guide. 
• Don’t expect to ever do much running on it. (As in: dog agility..., hmm, we'll see... . Certainly not jogging. But I didn't anyway, so that's OK.)
• Don’t expect to ever be getting down on my knee; maybe briefly if it’s absolutely necessary, but not on a regular basis and not for very long.
  (As in: Gardening. Pulling weeds. Laying brick pathways for which I  have bricks stored up. Getting under desk to where wiring for everything goes. Scrubbing textured kitchen/hallway floors. Cleaning spots on the carpet. Many varieties of household tasks (e.g., I replaced the slide-out drawer in a kitchen cabinet last year. HAD to be on my knees.) Cleaning dog vomit from the back of a large soft crate. So many things I'm used to doing on my knees!)
• Expect that everything should be about as healed and healthy as it’s going to get after a year or so. (A *YEAR* or so?!)

Front of knee. They replaced the ends of my bones with surfaces made of chrome, titanium, and something, cemented in place, then put a pad in between to replace the cartilage that hasn’t been there for a very long time.
Some kind of plasticky stuff.

Side: and, yes, that’s my original patella hanging out at the front of my knee.

And I’m apparently in good hands: Team physicians of the San Jose Sharks? Here at this facility or at a different Kaiser? Those men take a beating, so if they can fix them, they can fix me, is the message.

A Woman, A Plan, A Dog--god an alp an amowa!

SUMMARY: I'm not so good at clever palindromes; am I better with plans?

So here's what I started thinking about last week:

Tika has (to be exact) 402 Qs in USDAA Masters/Perf 3. She needs 500 for her Lifetime Platinum, the highest one can go. She's averaged just under 4 per day of competition this last year. So she needs 26 days of competition.

By this time next year, if I keep up at my same pace and Tika and I both stay healthy, we'll have done about 13 weekends of trials, 2 days each on average--so, voila, a year from now, dog willing, Tika will be at Platinum LAA.

Tika will also be 11 and a half.

If Boost can't get 2 snooker super-Qs and 2 jumpers Qs by then for her ADCH, really, there'd be no more point in competing with her in USDAA.

Here is the plan that's forming--a year from now, take a break from agility for a year, or two, or three. Spend all the money and weekends and vacation time that I'm now spending on agility doing some of the vacations and traveling that I used to do and that I want to do.

The plan is still forming. And, so far, it relies on an assumption of continued Tika health and enthusiasm. And on an assumption that I won't continue losing my head and doing stupid things like leaving her collar on.

More, as I mull it over.