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Exercise

 It won’t be comfortable to jog, or even walk fast for the next few weeks.  My exercise is reduced to a casual walk through the house for 20 or 30 minutes each day.  That doesn’t really feel like enough though so I had to come up with something else.  Luckily I have this long latent talent for juggling.  Giving my upper body something to do while I’m wandering the house seems like a positive addition to my slow-moving routine. I find that, in a way, walking through the house while juggling is a lot like flying the little remote control helicopter.  Master forward and reverse.  Navigate from room-to-room through doorways and pinch-points without glancing off a wall and careening out of control.  Don’t trip over the dogs.  Make a 180 and retrace a route.  It’s a challenge. I remember doing jumping jacks when I was younger.  They were so easy it was laughable that jumping jacks could be considered exercise.  Now I find that walking around the house while holding my arms up and moving them in any way is challenge enough.  I don’t need any weights; the weight of my arms is plenty.  My arms must be a lot heavier now.  I think about it this way: muscle is more dense than fat, and with the difficulty I encounter now compared to then, I can only conclude that I must be a lot more muscular now.  
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Let’s talk about something.

 …other than kidney stones.  If I don’t lighten up, everybody is going to think I have an unnatural obsession with them.  We don’t need to talk about kidney stones anyway.  I’m feeling much better.  The pain level from my kidney stent has fallen back to a discomfort level; easily managed with Aleve.  What a disappointing development.  Now I no longer have an excuse to sit in a hot bath enjoying narcotics and a beer, playing Sudoku on the iPad.  I didn’t even get the chance for it to become a habit. There is something about kidney stones I don’t understand though.  All this time I’ve been telling people that kidney stone pain is caused by the sharp-edged stone moving through the kidney and ureter.  The pain starts and stops; the stone starts and stops; it all makes sense.  The urologist tells me I’m wrong though.  He says it doesn’t hurt when the stone moves; the acute pain is caused by the stone blocking flow from the kidney.  The increased pressure on the kidney is what causes the pain. He must be right, after all he’s the urologist, but it just doesn’t seem like a complete explanation.  Kidney stone pain comes on suddenly, then goes away suddenly.  It can last for just a few minutes at a time or it can last for hours.  It cycles on and off as many times as it wants.  Why does the pain suddenly start?  Pressure on the kidney.  Why does it suddenly stop?  The kidney gets desensitized and stops hurting.  But after the pain has started, then stopped, and the kidney is desensitized, why does the pain start again?  Then my kidney was totally blocked for weeks and the pain never started again.  It just doesn’t quite work for me. 
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These

 These are the flowers I got Judy for Mother’s day. These are the flowers the kids got Judy for Mother’s day.  The kids win.