Three Beautiful Things 07-06-2024: No Covid Drama, Things Can Loosen Up, Wait! What Day Is Today?

1. Ah! Another day free of Covid drama. I continue to feel better. I'll take a home test on Sunday so I can tell Christie, when she draws my blood Monday morning, what the result was. 

2. Today, it's been eight weeks since I received a new kidney. 

Looking over the binder from the transplant program, I see that if I were working, I could return -- especially since I was not doing manual labor. Hard physical work would have to wait. 

I can most likely now lift up to twenty pounds safely. I'll be cautious about this, but I certainly can feel that my surgery site is stronger and has become more intact. 

I've read online that after eight weeks, a transplant recipient can exercise lightly. I'm going to double check with the transplant team about this, but it's sounding to me like I just might be able to return to non-strenuous exercise at the Fitness Center. I wonder: is my favorite machine, Nu Step, too strenuous? How about a stationary bike? I don't have much question about walking at a slow pace without much slant on the treadmill. 

I know I can be out in uncrowded, unpacked public places. I haven't done this yet, especially since contracting Covid, but I think the time is drawing near to make trips to the store and things like that. 

Slowly, surely I am moving out of the period of restrictions following my surgery and getting closer and closer to doing stuff I did before the transplant. 

3.  I have to chuckle at myself. The NYTimes offers, as a help to solvers working on the difficult Friday puzzle, an alternate list of easier clues. When I do the Friday puzzle, I put the difficult clues in one tab and the easy mode clues in another. I do my best not to refer to the easy mode clues, but inevitably I need their help to get unstuck. Well, today I thought I was working the Friday puzzle and not once did I refer to the easy mode clues. 

Turns out, I was actually working the Saturday puzzle. 

I'm really glad I solved it, but I'm kind of embarrassed that I'd lost track of what puzzle I was working and had easy mode clues ready to refer to for a puzzle I wasn't working.

Oh, well. I'll go back to the Friday puzzle on Sunday and see how I do. I've already started the Sunday puzzle. I'll return to it eventually.