Be the change you want to see.

I woke naturally and feeling well rested at 7. Dressed for the gym already (normal alarm just went off), read Facebook and Tumblr, and I'm not hurting this morning. The young lady who did my pedicure (I love the massage part, clearly!) Helped release a lot of the OW THAT HURTS that SIXTEEN HOURS OF STANDING on election day did to my body.

Made some new friends, more about that when I get back from the gym. Probably.

This morning I wake up and at least my hand isn't swollen and I can basically close my fingers into a fist. The last two joints of the pinky are still swollen and sore and my ring finger is sore and doesn't want to curl up completely. Shoulders are tight, glad I've been spending the time with the theracane under my shoulder blade and the back of my arm... consistently tight muscles back there, hurt. Have trouble putting my arms behind my back or doing any much back there especially anything that needs strength or precision. Today's Thursday and is better than earlier this week. Monday dance I made a point of trying to extend my arms out and back from the shoulder sockets and explore flexibility in dance context. My shit is still sore but a little bit better. It keeps swinging between fuck this hurts and well that almost doesn't hurt.
*Sigh* tired o all the PT I've been doing. Looking forward to seeing the chiropractor tomorrow, as he usually manages to release a ton of musculoskeletal tension for me and usually the pain is significant ly better for awhile. Pain sucks and I've been cracking my neck a couple of times per day. Shoulder has been hitching up and forward and it just throws me back into the cycle of pain.

tomorrow will be the fourth day in a row, in a row, that I have willingly gone to the gym and gotten my ass kicked worked out.

 

my thighs and shoulders are so sore.
but I was able to do it.
not dead,
not discouraged.

 

and today was over two hours of yoga, the second hour teaching my old friend some yoga basics. so, go me.

 

still, ow.

 

*grinning*
I might be a *little* bit of a masochist.

my body REALLY does not like that I have been moving not-much for the last six days.

 

muscles are sore, joints are stiff. digestion and appetite aren't as robust as usual.

 

I Do Not Like This. Long walk tomorrow, yoga tomorrow afternoon. Resume workout on Wednesday.

 

...
damn.
Body be holding me accountable for the workouts.   ...not what I expected.

 

(why I not expected it, I dunno, I should have)

Second meeting with Tal, who'll be my trainer for the next little bit.

...she totally kicked my ass. In half an hour, dudes.

What we worked on went well with the work Danniel did yesterday in the massage-therapy department; we did free weights, which worked my pectorals, top of the shoulders, that triangular muscle at the point of the shoulders, and those sad sore little tender neck muscles. Plus did a tiny bit of cardio (I got winded easily by what were my standards in the long-ago) and some work on adductor-abductor, abs/glutes.

My homework is to a) eat breakfast every day *hangs head in shame*
b) take one cardio class at the gym in the upcoming week before I see her again on Wednesday.

I think I will also try to repeat a few of the exercises she had me do today, tomorrow if I can, to help with kinesthetic memory.

Now today will be a Git-er-done kind of day, lots of little household tasks I can work on.

Yay, and go, me! I finally made it back to a yoga class!

...after three months of not-going. *embarrassed*

And I tell you what, I'm gonna be sore again tomorrow. I have much less strength and less endurance than I did in December, which was the last time I was doing yoga and dancing regularly once a week...

the yoga class has a new instructor. I'm definitely going to miss Chihiro's meditative openings and closings, this lady is much more, I dunno, businesslike. While she does seem to have enough knowledge to get us through a pretty good class, (and she's injured, herself, which I give her kudos for being 20 years older than me, injured (too), AND kicking my ass to boot) I think I will explore the other yoga timeslots at the gym and maybe give tiger_spot's YMCA class a try.

AND there are Zumba classes! At my gym! Which I'm not going to attempt until my knee stops twinging, thank you very MUCH, but whee! (someday soon I hope.)

and okay, NEVER AGAIN that long between proper workouts!

*ow*

Drove "up to the snow" (which is what we call it around here where the flat sea level plains get snow so rarely that it makes the news when we do) to meet my husband Jeff this weekend. Wow.

Squaw Valley is really a beautiful part of the world. And the Resort at Squaw Creek is well-architected for visual interest, buildings and grounds alike. Really nice. Really REALLY nice. (Enjoy poking around the website and checking out all the pretty slideshows.)
Also a really high altitude (~7000'?), which means that breathing can be surprisingly difficult at times, for those of us raised at sea level, and physical exertion is... exertion!

So of course I decided to try cross country skiing. =)
My second time trying cross country, though. The first time was in the middle of the 1980's somewhere. Um.

and it was effortful!
(my triceps are very sore from where I kept catching myself from falling by gripping hard and spiking the poles into the snow. VERY sore.)
Need to work on core strength some more, leg and calf and ankle strength, and then I REALLY want to go up and do that AGAIN before the snow season ends. Because it was the GOOD kind of challenge: enough new kinds of movement, new fun environment, an INCREDIBLY supportive partner (who helped me get up from the snow both times I fell, and cheered me on to try a little bit more each time), and lots of happy memories buttressing this new attempt. I love the snow. We used to go once or twice a year when I was a kid, my great-aunt Ethel had a place in Tahoe (she was a former mayor of Lake Tahoe, and so was her husband Don) and their back picture window had a view up-slope of one of the Heavenly Valley ski-slopes. While we did a lot of sledding and stomping and breaking off icicles and snowball fights, I never got to ski till I went on a trip in ... high school? with my scout troop? I think.

Skiing is fun, and now that I've successfully braved this new skill once, and my knee didn't even complain, I'm willing to go back and work on it some more. And next time I will probably even try going to ski DOWNHILL. Though I admit to a slight frisson of fear around the idea, the excitement of learning how to make me go fast(ish) down a snowy hill, is even greater.

Thanks again to cortneyofeden for the loan of ski-gear. The pants, jacket, and silk thermals were a HUGE contribution to my comfort and decreased my apprehension about my ability to cope with the elements. =D

I get by, with a little help, from my friends.

Hokay.

the plantar fasciitis is being a pain in my ...foot on too regular a basis.

So I go to look up causes and treatment. My doc had given me some basic information, and I've dealt with this before on the right-foot pre-knee-surgery.

One thing the online encyclopedias don't really mention is that overall muscle tension causes tension in the tendons/ligaments, the plantar fascia and the Achilles tendon. Particularly, dense-tense calves and tight hamstrings tighten up and cause pain in the tendons. Nor do they point out that the #1 way to loosen tight muscles that are otherwise healthy is to exercise them to warm them up and then to stretch in slow, gentle, gradual ways. Argh.

The upside is that since I do know that, I am now heading to the gym to spend some time warming up and stretching my body. I want to keep going to Friday Night Waltz and I don't want to hurt when I dance, ergo, other exercise, other preparation is needed.

I can still reach much farther over my head than I have in years, and can touch my upper arm to my head. The last therapeutic massage has saved that in my body, I haven't regressed, thank $Deity. (I can reach the top pantry shelf without the stepstool!)

Didn't get to the gym this week, and again, body is hurting for that.

I'm going, I'm GOING!!

So that thing I just posted about feeling my feelings, and it feeling weird because I wasn't like, judging myself for feeling them?

Naamah_darling took a similar headspace several notches further. (and more completely explored, and better written than I did, but then she always does. Go read it, please.)

I *get this*. What she's saying? I get this. This makes sense. It wasn't safe to feel-feelings in my house, and especially not in front of my dad. (it's not to say we were ever physically abused... but verbally? and did we get our emotional needs met?... that'd be "yes" and "no", in order.)

that's as much as I can handle talking about tonight. Just some shit I am gonna have to think more about.

Hi LJ!

Been offline for two days. It's been surprisingly good; rewarding and productive. My house looks better than it has since we moved in, I cleared almost all the surfaces (including the floors, I could actually sweep in here and probably will in honor of Samhain before I leave for class tonight...) I threw a bunch of stuff away, recycled a bunch of stuff, and took at least 40 pounds to goodwill (my mom's trivet collection was HEAVY... *g*)

Saw the podiatrist yesterday for the pain I've been feeling in my right foot. It's been on the top of my foot and making me limp a bit, enough that I was worried about doing my back an injury or insult again. (it's happened before when I have been gimpy!) We looked at my x-rays and nothing was broken. *whew* and wow, what they can do with x-rays now! they were sent directly to his computer, like 15 minutes after they were taken, and he could tweak the resolution to clear up the picture in case the tech only took a mediocre picture... measure my bones in their real sizes, right there on the screen, it was pretty wow.

he manipulated my Rt. foot a bit before we looked at the x-rays, and a bit more afterward... he also checked out my calf and shin for a bit, and then he explained what he could see on the x-rays.

The places I was feeling more pain were metatarsals 2 and 3, though all 4 of the smaller metatarsals were sore! (as I discovered once he was pressing firmly on each one and I was yelping! And this is true on BOTH FEET!) On the x-rays he measured and showed me how 2 and 3 (the bones just next to the big-toe bone) were measurably thicker in the dense, structural bone, than 4 and 5.

Then he explained why that is: my calves (and I assume by extension, my hamstrings) are SO TIGHT that they are putting stress on the arch-bones of my foot! (No shit, there I was!) Mind-blowing...! He also explained that the reason I love my Chakos (and by extension the mules from Keen) is the slight heel (on top of the arch support); calf muscles like that make the body want to walk on its toes all the time (hum, that explains why I sit with my heels up on the chairlegs all the time when I'm on the computer!) The stress from the muscle constantly pulling works to strengthen the bones, but taken too far, you can get stress fractures... and DO. NOT. WANT.

The PT for this crazy tension, is to do those calf-lengthening stretches, hanging your heels off the kerb, sort of thing, but this morning I've been exploring my body's flexibility and it feels like, well, EVERYTHING is tight - hams, obliques, quads, the IT band, adductors, abductors, and the little trapezoid-shape over my lower back... (let's not even BRING my shoulders and neck into it right now...) Had a lovely massage from a new guy at Massage Envy Wed night, but you couldn't prove it by me today. (Ow.)

So yesterday after coming back from my appt, I did some more housework and organization, put some Rush on (Snakes and Arrows, for those who know) and was trying to dance and move around the place. Yeah, all kinds of muscular tension, ALL OVER.

I've been saying for a long time that I wanted to get fit, get strong, inhabit my body more, but now I have literally SEEN what it does. WOW. Sitting on my ass for too long is double-PLUS-ungood!

You'll see me moving a lot more in the upcoming years, and for the rest of my life. Thank goodness I'm in the Waldorf program, it's really about learning BALANCE between the realms of your life - artistic, physical/kinesthetic, mind, spirit, social...

My habits are changing. Which means folk won't find me here QUITE as often, but _I_ will DEFINITELY be healthier for it.

And now I think I will get dressed and go for a walk to the grocery store.