A few days ago marked one month since the surgery. The new temporary normal has kicked in, which is like the old normal but with some key differences. More peanut butter, vitamin water, and pills. More time thinking about body functions and bathrooms. Less caffeinated coffee, more half-caff. Less lifting. No work travel, no gym, no yoga. If I had to put a percentage on it, I’d say that things are 82% regular normal.

The regular normal was spike up into the mid-80s to low-90s percentile with the return this weekend of our dog from his time at Lisa’s parents place in Wilmington, DE. Frank is at least 16 human years old – blind, mostly deaf (mos def!), senile, and prone to walking in circles and bumping into things. Sweet and shaky on his feet. Lisa jokes that he’s more like a crotchety uncle looking for his copy of Racing Form and a stogy than a dog. He can’t do stairs very well and weighs 17 pounds, which made him staying here with my lifting limitation problematic.

Travel to Chicago and Michigan is in the works, which I’m increasingly less nervous about as my comfort with the bag and its wily ways grows. As always, I am of mixed minds about traveling back to Chicago. I do miss my co-workers and being on the ground at the office and looking people in the eye versus trying to read their voices. But my life is here in Baltimore. I guess I’m lucky to be able to pull off the telecommute. One thing that I’ve learned in these past few months is that I’m lucky on a lot of fronts.