Day: February 4, 2023

It’s Adjustable

Fandango23 Comments

Today marks three weeks since I busted my hip and had partial hip replacement surgery. It’s also been a week and a day since I was discharged to home from inpatient rehabilitation. I’ve been back home for just over a week and my rehab is progressing, albeit slowly and rather painfully.

When I was in the hospital, I was in what seemed like an infinitely ajustable bed. You know the kind. It had a bunch of different positions it could be adjusted to. The mattress wasn’t terribly comfy, but I managed, sometimes with the aid of a helpful nurse, to find a relatively comfortable position for sleeping.

Upon returning home last Friday, my wife and I agreed that, for the duration of my recovery, I’d sleep in the guest room. Our 70 pound dog shares our bed, and the last thing I needed was to have her jump or roll over on me in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, our guest bedroom mattress is about 15 years old and my first night sleeping on it was not very pleasant.

So on Saturday I called a local mattress store, asked them about bed frames that adjust and hybrid memory foam and coil spring mattresses with cushion top to go on the adjustable frame. And I said I needed it fast!

This past Tuesday afternoon, my new mattress and adjustable frame were delivered and set up and my old guest room mattress and box springs hauled off. It took me a few nights to get used to it, but with a handy dandy remote control device that offers a variety of positions, including massage options, I’ve fallen in love with my new bed.

Now I have to figure out how to tell my wife that I may never return to our conjugal bed even after I’m fully recovered!

SoCS — The Perfectionist

Fandango27 Comments

Wesley was a perfectionist. He took pride in making sure everything he did was done to the highest standard. Whether it was his work, his hobbies, or even his relationships, he wanted everything to meet his expectations perfectly.

In all of his activities, Wesley put in everything he had, always striving to do better. People who met him were always impressed by the level of dedication he had towards perfectionism.

Despite his endless drive and motivation, he often felt overwhelmed by the pressure he put on himself to do everything to perfection. This caused most of his interpersonal relationships to suffer. When his girlfriend told him she could no longer take his obsession with perfectionism and left him, Wesley decided that the price he was paying for perfection was too high.

He accepted that he could let go of his need to always be perfect in every facet of his life, and made a conscious decision to accept his own imperfections, and equally as important, those in others.

Wesley soon discovered that, as he allowed himself to be more forgiving and understanding of his mistakes, he was able to enjoy life more and to focus on the positive aspects of his accomplishments. He was also able to build better and more meaningful relationships as he learned to accept himself, flaws and all.

He learned that perfection doesn’t have to be the goal. He accepted that it is okay to make mistakes and that we all have our own unique strengths and weaknesses. The important thing, Wesley realized, is to find a balance between striving for perfection and recognizing our own human imperfections.

Written for Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, where Linda has given us the word “perfection.”

I have a confession to make. I am still struggling in my recovery from a fractured hip to maintain the energy to write posts in response to prompts. So I opened up an app on my iPhone called ChatAI. It leverages an artificial intelligence technology called ChatGPT. I instructed the ChatAI app to “Write a story about a perfectionist.” This post is the result. Could you tell as you were reading it that it was written by a chatbot?

FOWC with Fandango — Least

Fandango25 Comments
FOWC

It’s February 4, 2023. Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “least.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.