“Oh hey Steph did cooking today,” you might say. “Been a while since I’ve seen that.”
Yes it has. Reason for that.
Back in October, things started hurting. More than the usual hurting. Then by November, things started tingling. And by December, it progressed to a mixture of tingling, burning, numbing, and constant throbbing.
So I did the thing I can do as a person with excellent benefits and onsite services: I got physical therapy. And the PT person prescribed a lot of exercises, some ergonomic adjustments, and general advice to eliminate some repetitive stress motions. Which, it turns out, were coming from work, play, and cooking (aka “work-play”).
I reluctantly stopped playing Overwatch for about a month (which was fine because OWL was coming online then so I just sat back and watched people way better than me play), and I really reluctantly stopped cooking almost entirely except very simple dump-and-done recipes. I signed us back up for Gobble, and Mike volunteered to cook again. I replaced my old home desk with something lower and more friendly to my height (I’m so, so short).
And so now here we are, in March. Things don’t throb anymore. My hands aren’t going numb when I cook anymore. We’re probably still going to keep Gobble because as a working lady it’s cleared up time during my weeknights and weekends; meal planning is and always has been a chunk of time out of my schedule, alas. And it’s not perfect. But nothing is at this age. Especially when you’ve got one kid who still needs to be picked up on the regular and hauled out of bathtubs, or onto changing tables, or nestled into cribs, and he’s built like a tank.
I’ve still got a story due (in — gulp — May) so not a bunch of cooking between now and then, but maybe after then I’ll go back to some projects. Stella from BraveTart gave some insight on how to convert my Lentz cookie dough to an all-butter recipe, so I may give that a try. We’ll see. And there are other things I miss that I used to make on the regular. Also last night the Daughterbot informed us she wanted rice with roast beef. Where that came from I don’t know, but no problem, kid. You’re basically asking for pot roast with rice, and I can dig it.
It’s good to have my hands back.
