August 23, 2008
I used to be an hourglass. You know how they label people as pears or apples or hourglasses.
Pears if you've got no boobs and a big butt.
Apple if you have no discernable waist, and hourglass if you've got a waist and butt and boobs.
So I used to be an hourglass.
Now I'm an apple.
With boobs.
On steroids.
Don't do drugs kids. Even the legal ones can screw your body up. Turned me into a friggin' apple with boobs.
A Bapple. That's me.
My steroid mound is of such proportion that I call it The Triplets. Prednisone, Cortisone, and SoluMedrol. Only medical people get it, but that's funny right there, people. A Bapple with triplets.
On cankles. You know. When your ankles are swollen so that your calf just sort of runs into it. Cankles
I'm a Bapple with Cankles. And the Triplets.
But I used to be an hourglass.
Ah well you know what they say.....Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days Of Our Lives.
August 21, 2008
As the Olympics draw to a close, I cannot help but rather pathetically compare my own personal training thru physical therapy.
Firstly, Jim, my PT extraordinaire has been using kinesiotape on me for two years. To see it on the shoulder of the gold medal beach volleyball team member made me sit up and take notice. Then suddenly it was everywhere. I wanted to laugh with joy...my PT had been using it for years on me and I knew it worked.
Then there was the *incredible* Michael Phelps who hooked himself up to his ipod before a race to 'get in the zone'. I had begun taking my ipod before I noticed what Phelps was doing. I just found that it helped me to block out all the distractions. I still get interrupted as the ever careful PT techs watch me, but I can get in a zone, a place where it's all counting to the beat, breathing with the phrasing of the music and becoming one with the meditative state that allows for the most useful of exercise routines. I even take my old lady sunglasses to block out the light. I become my own world.
Yes, to a normal person it may seem quite pathetic that I rode fifteen minutes on level five on the bike today, but it was a personal best and on an inflamed foot. It's my victory. I barely made it on the long walking path in the building, but I *did* make it.
I heard a doctor on tv say that the ipod thing definitely could produce endorphins that would be helpful. If that's the case, I need to bump up the work.
Perhaps if Jim is there tomorrow, I will make that extra trip.
Today, it was worth it. Tomorrow, we shall see.
August 6, 2008
My boy is home. Oldest Son is home for five weeks between semesters from Japan. Tomorrow is his birthday. 19. I totally can't believe it.
But more surreal is the fact that Oldest Son was climbing Mount Fuji at this time last week. He climbed all night long with his friends. Straight up. At one point they ran into a rock and couldn't find the path. Then one of them saw a spray painted arrow on a big rock pointing up. The path was up. They had to climb.
Thru altitude sickness, shortness of breath, he climbed through the clouds to the top of the volcano in time to watch the sun rise. The photos are breathtaking and cannot begin to touch the reality. He brought me a buddhist health charm from the temple on top of the mountain and I am so incredibly touched.
But the young man who has come back to us is not the boy who left here four months ago. There is a change. It is one I wish to go away, but yet am extremely proud of at the same time. After all, this is why we raise them. To be independent, productive members of society. And as even Youngest Son observed, Oldest Son's brain needs the stimulation of all that goes on in learning to be fluent in a foreign language and studying, seeing a new country, a new culture.
23, 19 tomorrow, and soon to be 15. My children's ages. I'm rapidly becoming less necessary to each. I see wings growing and already look forward to when they come back to visit the nest.