Learning my limits

So.
Empty house.
Okaasan frollicking in Saitama
Yujiro gone to work.
Cats out in the garden.
All day Home Alone finally after living the public life in a hospital.
YEAH!!!!!!

So.
What do I do with my freedom?

You guesed it: tidied Okaasan's room.
Yes. I need my head examining. The surgeon should go back in and search for a brain. Cos I am not sure I have one.

It started so simply.
Oh - I'll just go in and clear up those old newspapers and put them out for recycling. If I kneel down gently I can reach.
40 minutes later...... I am doing old newspapers, throwing out food wrappers, sorting the pile of 25 plus odd socks (all brown and pink), gathering up soiled underwear (15 pairs thrown out as beyond rescue/40 pairs in the washing machine)....supermarket flyers, rotting food in plastic bags etc etc etc etc.

And my stomach muscles start feeling VERY tender.
It's not that I am doing big bending down and carrying heavy objects. But even sitting/kneeling on the carpet and reaching for pants and socks is actually using stomach muscles.

I stop. Finally. Creep back upstairs and lay down on the sofa for the next 4 hours.
HOW stupid am I?
Very.

Spent the rest of the afternoon stretched out or sitting to recover.

Late afternoon....here we go again...I go downtown by subway to meet Yujiro for dinner at a Fall Food Festival in the park.
Yes, you heard right.
11 days after an operation I am walking 10 minutes to the subway station, sitting on the train,  and then walking 3 city blocks to look at and eat festival food.

No brain obviously.
And this was my idea: a date for us because there is no Okaasan to feed at home.

It was okay-ish...the food festival was actually lovely. A beautiful autumn evening in the park, just the two of us and some food/drink.. But the whole trip out: TOO MUCH!

Came home very tired.
I have to learn my limits of phyiscal ability. And all of this was too much.
Stupid.

My brain is beginning to fill up with the reality of England and what I will be doing there: sorting through my childhood/young adult bric-a-brac and deciding what to bring back to Japan, what to throw away, what to try and sell, what to cry over.
Airtickets, shipping companies and stuff....piles and piles of stuff. Soon I will no longer have a family home in England where it can all just sit for years. I can't expect my oldest schoolfriend to take it all into her home....I am dreading the whole thing.
Last night waiting for Yujiro in a downtown hotel lobby I started getting tearful about what is ahead in England. About my step-mum. About the doors closing on my childhood.
I guess going into hospital 2 days after I heard about Jane's death and then having to focus on my body and what the doctor and nurses were doing to it - it all pushed the grieving to one side. And now it's all bubbling up again.

But. I can't start rushing to England now.
If I can't lift Okaasan's dirty underwear without straining my stomach - I certainly can't sort through my childhood possessions and pack a shipping crate. While crying.

Bugger it all.

But thankfully, THANKFULLY...I have no work this week. Originally the hospital said 2 weeks stay, so I cancelled 3 weeks of work (my bank balance is going to plummet because I am paid for when I teach, no teaching means no pay), and this week I really need off.


Aghhh....Yujiro's gone off to the airport now to fetch Okaasan home...and I'd better telephone ANA and ask them how on earth I can use all these airmiles to have some kind of benefit for a trip to England.

Bugger it all.