Shopping Marathon

I followed up hydro today with a pretty big shopping trip. I am looking for a birthday gift for an eight year old girl and having trouble finding something cool and appropriate.  I started in the city but the two stores that I wanted to go to weren't there anymore.  A lot has happened in the few months that I have been out of action.  This was my first trip into the city since the op and I was pretty confident going in that I could handle the crowds.  There were people everywhere and I was almost run over by various people swarming in all different directions without really looking what was right in front of them.  There was also a man in a wheelchair who seemed to target me in his sights at a fair distance.  I moved in front of a sign to get out of the way and he cleared it and me by about two centimetres.  I felt like I was moving against the traffic most of the time I was there and spent a fair bit of time standing still as to brace myself in case the person barrelling in my direction makes contact.  They seemed to move out of the way  at the last second after figuring out that the person that they were walking towards that was making their way quite slowly with crutches wasn't going to be the one to walk around.  I wasn't intentionally trying to get in other people's way and I tried to stick close to walls and railings as to avoid that situation but it didn't help.

I survived the city and having not found anything in the stores near where I was parked, I decided that I needed a break from walking and decided to head out.  By the time I got on the freeway, I figured that I still had enough energy to hit one section of Garden City.  I had about as much luck there and went home without anything.  It wasn't really a marathon by most people's standards but it was for me.  I am quite pleased by how my body handled that amount of walking.  My lower back is a little bit tight, as are my calf muscles but aside from that everything feels pretty good.  I don't think that I will continue to get lower back tightness once I'm no longer using crutches.

The day wasn't a complete write off.  I did get to go to MBF to finalise my claim for the anaesthesiologist, so at least something is checked of the to do list today.