Postcard of the Day

Soon my clock will be right again.

Never dialed it back in the fall.  Was thinking the other day that I really ought, next year.  To try to be in synch with winter more.  This has been the second winter in a row that kicked my ass in its second half.  Maybe it's my not climbing up to fix the clock.  Long shot, sure, but one in which I have some influence, and you know how we like to have influence on what happens with us.

PT started yesterday.  Now I recall the novelty of going to a space a little like a school gym and being glad of it.  Got my same PT person as years ago, when my talk of her made someone I was involved with jealous---I assumed play-jealous, but then wondered, as time went on & it didn't seem to be matching the fun-faux-envy schtick.  It was a modest but optimism-prompting start this time, and I totally get how I'd have been glowing enough, back then, to prompt such a response when talking about her.  It was even good that one knee was swollen and more sore yesterday, as that led to her showing me an exercise pair I can do (and am doing, and will be, 10 reps each side 3X a day, along with icing, for the next several days) to encourage the fluid to move out of there, helping (among other things) everything stay where it's good to have it--- like the slippery menisci, whose connections are looser than I'd have imagined they would be.  No doubt for good reasons.

The knee is weird and confusing and kind of (to me) off-putting or uncomfortable to behold, in model form, with the skin and flesh and blood and nerves not there.  Some rubber tendon-type things and I guess hard plastic bone-cum-cartilage.  Shades of the skull beneath the skin?  Dunno.  A tad squicky.

But ankles and knees are frighteningly complex.  Hips are no doubt their own custom weirdness too.  Wrists.  Nice to have medical professionals who can think about these things, and then we only have to when we have to, or want to, cuz what the heck is a meniscus anyhow?  Finally I wanted to know, and how I could've torn it, and how not to exacerbate it, and how to help it heal.  Turning is a prime suspect.  One typical context Pat pointed out: getting out of a car.  Turning while doing dishes: another.   I'm all focused on turning my feet as part of turns now.

Told T how good it feels to have this sort of (informative and) empowering help.  I should join---or found and join, if it doesn't exist---the Fans of Physical Therapists.  FOPT?  I guess that's an okay acronym.

The day before, I made my first trip to the grocery store in a month.  That, too, was empowering, or the result of some sense of empowerment, with its own booster power.  I tried to keep it small but went a tad overboard.  Still, it was great.  As was getting clean laundry, thanks to the mercurial-seeming oddity who is my sometimes-friend, or I guess always friend but confusing relationship, and distinct personality, among my acquaintanceship.  Gratitude to her, and to the Fates for connecting us again, sorta outta nowhere.  Trying to feel simply glad of it, and not somehow beholden to the ol' imperative for self-recrimination.

There's snow out there again to deal with.  It's up to 35F, which is as up as it's going.  Might be good to sweep the stoop & steps, at least.  Slowly and deliberately, with very careful turns.

Some years back I took a meditation course at the Zen temple up the road.  Once our homework between classes was to do household things with our nondominant hands.  Tooth brushing, hair combing, etc.  The idea was that it prompts mindfulness.  And boy does it.  So has this mobility stuff.  I'm mindful of a whole fuckin' lot that I hadn't been being mindful of.  So, like, there's that.