It’s been three days since The Operation.

How do I know I’m getting better?

1. I made lasagna today: 3 big ones, two little ones—with sausage, full-fat ricotta, the whole deal. Okay, so I couldn’t lift them (not even the little ones) because the stitches still pinch, but cooking them was a pleasure;
2. Obviously, my appetite is back. It was gone for about, oh, an hour and a half. That was while I was unconscious. The moment I returned to consciousness, I had ginger ale and a muffin. By the way, I from what I recall, which is nothing, the anesthesia worked like a charm.
3. I could talk on the phone, although the conversations were shorter than usual. I suppose I should reverse the thrust of the statement: I knew I WASN’T okay until this morning because I’d been unwilling to talk even to my girlfriends except to tell them I was alive and they could slow down on the sending of good wishes, chanting, lighting candles, burning incense, or trying to locate a priest who would indeed administer confession via email (see my previous post). Today I got on the phone and talked about real stuff: the British guy on wife swap who was such a jerk, whether Jung’s essays on the occult really count as woo-woo, the terribly odd chimp lady, the Oscars, what Vera Wang really meant when she told the WSJ she was listening to her customers who wanted more wearable clothes (should I send her that even earlier post, do you think?), and whether or not I was remiss in canceling my classes on this coming Tuesday when maybe I could have taught them, giving that I’m not feeling as much pain as I thought I would;
4. And, yes, those are selections of topics covered in brief conversations—you probably wouldn’t believe what the long conversations encompass;
5. I am no longer planning the details of my extended recuperation (I made sure there were books piled up next to me in anticipation of days spent unable to move from the sofa—I figured I’d brush up on my Russian literature, learn about early modern author May Sinclair’s personal life, and teach myself something about women’s convict ships leaving Ireland for New south Wales in the 1790s);
6. I’m thinking that I should get my hair dyed (not something I planned to do when I thought I was doing the dying);
7. I’m not relying on Percocet to get me through the day or through the night. I’d also like to point out that I’m entirely baffled concerning the attraction other people feel for this drug—it helped blunt the pain on the first day, true, but by the second day all it did was make me feel like I was walking around in an oversized snow suit, wearing big stuffed mittens, and earmuffs; I was Charlie Brown when he can’t move in his winter clothes and not some desperately bohemian creature from an East Village party;
8. I no longer believe I will have time to organize all our photographs from the last six years while sipping delicately from a cup of tepid tea as I “mend”;
9. I put on actual shoes even though I didn’t leave the house, which is a sign of great emotional maturity as well as increasing physical stability (I tied the laces myself);
10. I laughed out loud today when I listened to this song, sent to me as a “get well” message—and that’s got to be the best sign of all: http://www.heylisa.com/music-71.html

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Tags: anxiety, burning incense, comfort, conversations, cooking, drugs, food, friendship, ginger ale, healing, hour and a half, jerk, lighting candles, little ones, muffin, occult, oscars, percocet, real stuff, recovery, recuperation, sausage, sleep, stitches, surgery, vera wang, wearable clothes, wellness, wife swap, wsj