Land of the Lost and Found

Where the heck have I been?

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

I last left off freshly divorced, with a leg I couldn’t walk on, living in my son’s basement, and getting ready to start training for a new job. That was in mid September. Now we’re at the end of January. What’s happened between then and now?

Let’s talk about the leg first. For those who don’t know or haven’t followed my tales, I shattered my shin bones on June 28th playing red light green light with my grandchildren a week after I arrived in Nebraska following a divorce. The result was surgery to insert a metal rod in my leg, fixed by two screws in my ankle and two in my knee.

I was meant to stay with my son just long enough to get a job and an apartment, but instead spent six months with him nursing me back to health. He and his wife served me food, did my laundry, helped me shower, carried me up and down the basement stairs. I was on crutches until mid November, and then on a cane until mid-December. I was walking by Christmas. I can walk now, but with a severe limp. Doc says that should go away within a year of the injury, so I have six months of healing yet to do. The cold weather has me in significant pain, and the doc said it always would because metal reacts differently than bone to cold. I’ve ordered all kinds of leg massagers, heated socks, heated knee braces, and everything I can think of to ease the pain. But I’m walking and that’s what matters.

Now, let’s address that job training. I attended seven weeks of on-site training learning how to be a credit card specialist for a major bank. I cannot believe the amount of information that got stuffed into my brain. I started working from home (my son’s basement) on November 14th answering calls from credit card holders. Because the opportunity was there to be had, I’ve been working 12 hour shifts 6 days a week to prep for my new lifestyle once I was well enough to self-sustain.

Since working for a credit card company, I’ve raised my credit score by 100 points. I’ve learned how to use credit cards for their rewards points, paying the balance off each month to avoid interest. I use a Walmart Capital One card with 5% cash back to order my groceries. I use a Capital One Savor card to get 10% off Uber and a free membership to Uber 1. I use my bank credit card for 1.5% cash back on all other…