My desk chair died today in the worst possible way.

This morning, while messaging Golden Knight, I mentioned how I needed to go shopping for a new desk chair since I felt the one I had was on the verge of collapse. I got the feeling that it was no longer stable for some reason when I sat in it first thing this morning. I didn’t take it as a red flag to immediately switch it out with a different chair until we could go shopping for a new one when I should have.

Later this afternoon, during Little Bear’s OT over Zoom, my desk chair did in fact collapse out from under me. The support bolts holding it together underneath snapped and fell out while I was sitting in it. So in that moment, the entire chair folded back. I landed on my right shoulder, banged my head on the floor, and wrenched my back. The stand of the chair where the wheels are attached remained upright. I had to have Little Bear fetch Scholar Owl to help me up since I couldn’t feel my arm and didn’t trust it enough to push myself back up.

So needless to say, Golden Knight helped me buy and assemble a new chair while Scholar Owl helped me dispose the bent up old one.

The feeling in my arm has returned, but I suspect I’m going to need to make an appointment here soon to get a realignment done on my body. I have been avoiding making appointments with my OMT since Covid hit our state, but I think after this I’m not going to be able to anymore.

I don’t talk about Elhers-Danlos Syndrome much since it’s a fairly new diagnosis for me. Honestly I don’t think it was a serious fall or spill. I know most people my age would be able to walk it off. My back and hips hate me right now. I’m just glad I have use of my hands. My biggest fear was that I either subluxed or dislocated the shoulder of my dominate hand. Shifting a disk in my back, or a rib, is pretty normal. I keep saying I’m going to try a compression vest to see if that helps, but I don’t know how it will if I do it the most often in my sleep.

In brighter news, now that the holidays are over, I have been able to gather up the funds to order The Gillingham Manual to use for homeschooling. It’s a teacher’s manual explaining a multisensory method of teaching someone to read. This method was developed back in the 1930’s I think when Dyslexia and ADHD were believed to be one disorder. The beauty of this method is that it has proven to be effective over the years for all kinds of students. This manual is now in its eighth edition. So I’m hoping that this helps me teach Little Bear since it hasn’t been used for him yet and the other methods that have been used hasn’t gotten him far.

Since we’ve been working on getting Little Bear on a fixed sleep cycle for so long now – since he was six-years-old and he’s eleven-years-old now – I’m now being told I should get his PCP to put in a referral to have a sleep study done on him to find out what’s going on. While I’m on board with this, in retrospect I kind of wish we had done this sooner because I’ve been dealing with this since he was only a year old even though he’s only been a patient of theirs since he was six. So to them it’s been a five year problem, but for me it’s been ten years. Either way, I honestly hope this study finds a solution.

Even as I write this, Little Bear is wide awake after three days of normal sleep. It makes planning for and doing anything difficult.

As for work on the blog, I’ve gotten all of the Chaos Pen Challenge posts assembled and scheduled for this year. I’ve begun creating the reusable blocks I need for the Chaos Set posts, which I have no doubt I’ll find more uses for later down the road. While I do wish making these blocks wasn’t so time consuming, it does save me time when I assemble the prompts and I don’t see the point in making the same images over and over again anymore when all that does is eat up space.

I’m hoping to get ahead on the writing prompt posts now so I can pour the majority of my energy into homeschooling and fiction writing without stress, shame, or guilt. Oh… who am I kidding? I’m sure the parent brain will find a reason to feel that way anyhow. I just don’t want to give it an excuse.