Casting Call

I have a feeling that Tobias Fünke would respond to this blog based upon it's title. I may be drawing in would be actors but then they will begin reading and be a little sad about the actual topic of my blog today. I am venting about a little something that probably is getting old among my friends and family. Alas, it is growing to be quite the annoyance for me with every passing day and I apologize for the all of the status updates, tweets, and random outbursts that I have been making about this monstrosity on the end of my leg. It is easier for me to communicate how I feel by writing rather than actually talking. This may sound strange to people who have heard me speak for hours and hours and then found themselves wondering if I would ever stop. Regardless of how I deliver the news, the message should be clear, this cast has got to go.

I think that it is time, but my doctor has other plans for my leg. The fateful day that I will be cut free from this burden is Monday, December 28th. Although it will be a hollow victory as I will immediately go into cast number three of three. The first in my series of casts was with me only a short time but it offered the comfort of ice cold water cycling through it whenever I wanted. It was soothing and wonderful although did keep me confined to my basement, so it was not the most practical of devices.

My current cast, the second one I have been placed into, was slated to be of the non-weight bearing variety. Luckily, on the day of my surgery when poking around in my ankle it was discovered that somehow, despite all of the damage my ankle joint and soft tissue over the last year, my tendon was not torn anymore! It was now only inflamed. Huzzah! My body actually did something right and healed an injury. I now was allowed to have a weight bearing cast. This change in plans cut out three of the four weeks of crutches and is allowing me to walk. I should probably be happy about it, and as I am writing this blog it is making me feel a little better about my baby blue fiber glass beauty. Only a little though, it is still really annoying not being able to take myself places or stand up in the shower. Yesterday marked the halfway point for the entire cast process. I look forward to the third and final cast.

My final device is a boot cast that is removable. I can take it off to sleep, drive and shower! Oh sweet freedom you are so close and yet so far. I long for this phase of the healing process. I desire to be in control of the where and of the when I travel around this fantastic city. If you don't think your hometown is that interesting, try not going anywhere for a couple months except to work and your couch/bed and you will learn that pretty much everywhere else is like an exotic wonderland. I wish I could sleep without bruising my other leg or accidentally getting pulled of the bed by the weight that has been added to my right leg. Sleep is not something I get enough of even at the best of times. Throw any additional kinks into the mix and I am left with a maybe a couple of hours each night. I want to be able to stand in the shower and finish in less than 25 minutes. If I am feeling saucy, maybe even take a bath. Using a shower bench and propping my leg up on a bar stool outside of the shower is a great way to really remind myself just how awkward this cast makes me. I am given this reminder everyday when I take my extremely slow shower and my foot falls off the stool and then water gets all over the bathroom floor because the curtain can not close all the way. For a fairly low maintenance girl, who normally can get ready in 30 minutes or less, this time frame for a shower is very frustrating.

Overall, cast number two is "nawesome". I look forward to becoming a bootlegger in a couple weeks. I know that eventually my leg will be free from all things cast related but that day seems too far away to think about and will also bring with it the pain of physical therapy. For now, I am just longing to drive my car, sleep and shower. Well, this has been the best lunch break of all time. Yet another little thing I miss, lunches out of the office. Two weeks to go, I think I can handle it and I am feeling a little better now. Onward to the rest of the day!

Oh everyone send my friend Esther a care bear stare full of good luck wishes.

She is taking her last final for her first semester of law school tomorrow. Tonight I am attempting to inspire her with a little film she has never seen before.

I wanted to say thank you to all of my friends and family for putting up with me and my whining, I promise that I will do my best to listen to and help you if this ever happens to you! Thank you to Mr. Bones for all of the rides, hanging out with me, and putting up my Christmas tree. Thank you to Sarah for taking me out to see New Moon aka Full Moon. Thank you to Jen for the yummy muffins, all of the lunch and coffee runs, and making me not worry about the office burning down in my absence. Thank you to Jan & Chris for hanging out with me and preparing me food while I was stuck on the couch. Thank you to my Aunt Kelli for bringing me a home cooked Thanksgiving dinner since I was unable to go to my grandma's house thins year. Thank you to Orion, Lizbon, Clayton, Esther, Amy, Kyle, Larry, and my Mom for keeping me company and distracting me from the pain while I was stuck at home after surgery. Thank you to everyone who called and emailed to check on me. It is nice to know that so many people care. I love you all.

Also, Brento if you read this I will do my best to help you not feel so trapped and frustrated by this whole process when it is your turn to have almost the exact same procedure and recovery in a month or so. All the tricks and devices I have discovered have been noted and are ready for you to use. Thank you so much for taking such good care of me! I love you.

Ninja Monkey vs Exploding Glass

I started my quest to have completely unique jewelry creations today by taking my very first warm glass class at Glass Axis. It was great, I really enjoyed the class. The torch was a little intimidating but fire is always fun so I quickly got over it and started playing with the glass.

The instructor shows us the first bead demo and gives us pretty simple instructions to follow. We all move back to our own stations and begin. I make a gigantic bead which I think looks alright. I go to add dots to it and it explodes. Well, I guess that can happen. I move on to round two. I work up a pretty good sized bead that looks really nice. It is deep blue and tear drop shaped. The instructor tells me I need to heat it up so I can add the detail and again it explodes. I decided maybe I should not be attempting such lofty goals on my first day and shoot for just creating some good old fashioned beads.

I ended up with eight beads total, I worked out how to make some cool shapes. I also figured out how you can use different temperatures change with the coloring of some glass. I ended up making one bead that looks like gray flourite so that was pretty cool. I have a long way to go before I will feel comfortable using of my handmade beads in pieces for sale in my store but I am really excited to learn and practice!

The instructor gave me the bead that he made during the first demo, one day I think I will be able to make one that won't explode and shoot glass shards all over the studio. Until then...this ninja monkey is going to be playing with way more fire.

Ninja Monkey vs. Busy Times

I am sorry to my poor blog and to my friends who keep yelling at me to blog. Illness, cute new family members, work, drifting between residences, job changes, house hunting with my boyfriend and wedding planning for my best friend have been occupying all of my time. I will get more of the good old fashioned Ninja Monkey humor rolling again soon.

My desk will be set up again soon with my own computer and everything so watch out Internet cause this ninja's about to go crazy on you. You won't even know what happened, don't believe me? Ask Orion...one day you will be relaxing in front of the television or hanging out with a good book and then you will be all like hey what was that? By the time you feel the throwing stars in your back or the punch to the top of the head it will be much to late. You will have been ninja owned, ninja owned indeed my friend. As one of my favorite ninjas, Robin of Loxley, would say Ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaa! You love me, no really you do.

Now to go get my coffee on! Ninjas are useless without caffeine.

Ninja Monkey vs. Alzheimer's

Please help me to raise money for the Alzheimer's Foundation. I will be participating in the 2009 Memory Walk. There is no minimum donation, give what you can and help me raise money for a great cause!

Go to this address: https://www.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=300005&supId=257312968

Participant Name: Brandi Eckelberry

If you are interested in walking or joining our team let me know and I will send you the information.

Thank you for your support!

:) Brandi

Ninja Monkey vs. Funny Doctors

I have managed to injure myself again. While walking last Thursday I managed to tear a few ligaments and stretch my nerves in my right foot/ankle. Immediately after this happened my foot went numb and felt like it was chilling in a bucket of ice. I went to the ER where I met a nice older doctor who decided that my foot was too weird to diagnose and sent me home with crutches and said go see your foot specialist as soon as possible.

I saw my foot specialist this morning. He helped me with a previous injury to my FHL tendon. If anything is ever wrong with my foot I will only see him. I was bounced from specialist to specialist a few years ago and no one could figure out what was causing all of the pain I was experiencing. Within minutes he diagnosed my problem and worked with me to eventually fix my FHL tendon. I did have to cut the other doctors some slack though, since the injury I somehow developed is only seen in ballerinas and I am no ballerina. I promise.

My foot doctor checked me out today and said no more crutches but put me in a very sexy boot that I must wear for an undetermined amount of time. I wish that it was more of a cowboy boot but c'est la vie.
I was thinking about a few of the things that doctors have been saying to me lately and decided to jot them down.

"Your foot looks weird"

"Your foot is puzzling"

"In 31 years I have never seen or heard of that injury before"

and my favorite from today's appointment...

"Your foot is a wonderful mystery to me"

I guess that if anything I keep these guys on their toes. I just wish I did not leave every doctor visit lately feeling like no one knows what is wrong or what to do with me. My ear nose and throat doctor said "you are the exception to the rule I'm afraid" a few weeks ago after trying to treat my migraines and failing miserably and I am still waiting to see the next specialist for that problem.

My foot man said today that he is writing down that I have a severe sprain and nerve damage but said that it was a cop out because that is probably not what is going on in my foot but he needs more information before he can try to figure it out.

I guess I will keep on trucking and hope that they get me sorted out. I hope to one day go for at least one whole week without seeing a doctor. It would also be nice to get a diagnosis from a single physician. I am tired of being bounced from specialist to specialist.

Good night gentle readers. I am off to my bedroom.

Please send me your favorite books and movies to keep me occupied at night when I am stuck in bed with my foot up for the next couple weeks. Tonight I plan on watching one of these...

I have not decided which one yet. I will also be working on some song writing, they might be a bit rough since I am stuck in bed and on pain meds but maybe, just maybe, I will produce some musical gold.

With great boredom comes a great amount of blogging...stay tuned :)

Ninja Monkey vs School

So after many, many, many, years I have finally decided what i want to be when I grow up or at least what I want to study.

A little over ten years ago I started up at Capital University with a double major in Music Education and Performance. After a couple quarters, passing out randomly, being verbally abused by certain teachers, and dropping to an all time low weight of 90 pounds I decided that this was not the program for me. I transferred to Ohio State to study Archaeology.

Overall, things greatly improved. I gained back all the weight, stopped passing out I lost which my doctor blames on stress and I was enjoying my classes. I missed the smaller sized classes at Capital. I enjoyed the large campus and student population of OSU, at Capital it seemed like I was still in high school. One of my professors even called my mom once because I missed class. It was funny though because I was having a 8 hour blood sugar test done which I informed all of my teachers of beforehand and brought home assignments from some of them to work on while I was off campus. I guess he did not believe me. Things were going alright until I was so sick with sinus infections that I could not leave a dark, quite room without suffering terrible migraines. My doctor decided to put me on some narcotics, steroids and antibiotics for about a year. This made me feel absolutely awful and I had to take a leave of absence from school.

After all of that calmed down and started up again, and calmed down and flared up, I had sinus surgery. Somehow all of these medical bills piled up and those pesky student loan deferment periods ended and suddenly I had a small fortune to pay back, and was forced to go to work full time and keep school on hold. Ten years later I realized how much I regretted putting school on hold for so long. I have also decided that I would like to start a whole new avenue of learning.

I was browsing the course offerings of some of my area colleges and found ironically that Capital's Conservatory of Music has what I am looking for, a BA in Music Technology! I am excited to get this rolling. Wish me luck in my new endeavor!

And the Winner Is....

Meredith B is our lucky ducky. Her favorite item was Purple Cowgirl!

Congrats Meredith! Hopefully, Meredith will send me some photos modeling her See Monkey Bead jewelry so I can post them for everyone to see! You can also check out Meredith's blog at http://allofmypurplelife.blogspot.com

Thank you to everyone for participating and for the birthday wishes!