I’m a little tea pot, short and stout. Here is my handle, here is my spout. Oh, sorry about that, didn‘t realize I was humming out loud. Forgot what I was doing there for a moment. Lately I have been very busy, working hard to heal from this partial knee replacement.

It seems the doctor decided at the last moment in surgery that I still had a lot of good parts so he just got rid of the useless parts. I ended up with a new knee cap and part of the cannon bone (sorry, been around animals too long, I know their bones better than my own) cut off and a new end put on. So, I have this long cut on the front of the knee and down the leg where they had hacked and sawed and twisted and used what looked like carpenter tools to put me back together again.

So, in trying to heal from this extremely painful surgery, a physical therapist has been coming to the house to show me how to do exercises to bend and strengthen the leg and maybe in three months be able to be a goat farmer again. My walker and my Ice Man, to keep my knee iced, are my best friends at the moment. I’m debating about the physical therapist. Lee is still being a real trooper in caring for the goats and caring for me and working full time. He is amazing.

My days are spent a lot with my leg propped up being iced, walking with my walker in the house, making the rounds inside the house, practicing walking, going to all the windows, checking on what the goats are doing, and doing leg exercises three times a day. The physical therapist comes a couple of times a week and encouragingly and gently makes me work and stretch that leg even more than it got worked a couple of days ago.

Usually after these sessions, it takes me the rest of the afternoon and the next day to recover. I feel like I’d been whooped on. The doctors realize the pain that comes from cutting bone and the physical therapist’s work and they dole out a few pills a week for the bad times. Fortunately, I can also take ibuprofen to help with the break over pain, so along with the ice you feel like you just might live after all.

The other day I had finished my leg exercises and the leg was protesting worse than usual, it was time to take two pills to ease out the pain. The leg was wrapped up being iced and as the physical therapist said, you look for something to do to try and keep your mind away from the pain.

Lee had asked me earlier to use the lap top and sign him up for a $4000 shopping spree at Sears. He had bought a pair of shoes and the sales lady gave him the receipt to go on line and fill out a survey and win this chance at the shopping spree.

Sitting the lap top on my lap for any length of time can cause the leg to hurt more but I thought I could work a little bit at a time to finish the survey. As I sat there, slowly working through that very long survey, I suddenly noticed something, I was singing.

And, of all things, I was singing I’m A Little Tea Pot. Just happy as a lark, filling out that terribly long survey, singing I’m a Little Tea Pot. Then I realized I was just barely hurting. Which made me sing even happier, I’m A Little Tea Pot. Well, for ever more, those pills must have kicked in. I’m not a pill popper, but whatever those few pills were that the doctor barely doled out, evidently were something special to make a grown hurting goat farmer start singing that they are a little tea pot.

I can see why these pills were sparingly being given out because it doesn’t seem like you could make very rational decisions while thinking you are a little tea pot. And, I really hate to think how I answered that Sears survey. Well, at least I had put it in Lee’s name.

Now, look at the time. It’s time to exercise the leg again and then take a tour around the house with the trusty ol‘ walker, looking out the windows to see what the goats are doing. I’m not feeling like a short and stout tea pot at the moment, those few special pills are being saved for when the physical therapist is through with me, but ice and the ibuprofen will help me later.

Thus continues the saga of the goat farmer with the partially replaced knee who sometimes thinks she’s a tea pot.