Right On: Random Updates

I survived my first week back solely through the power of sugar. At work we had cupcakes on Monday (that I brought cause I knew I would need them), ice cream cake on Tuesday and Wednesday, and my coworker bought me cookies on Thursday and Friday, because she loves me and knows me. Today there was no superfluous sugar, and it was pretty rough. Who me, emotional eater???

I had like the best massage EVER last week. My first massage was when I was 18, with a short, completely square male masseuse named Clayton. Clayton had bulging muscles covered in ugly tattoos, and kept asking me random inappropriate questions and invariably responding to my muffled, face-down answers with the phrase "Right on." As you might expect, this was a scarring experience, and I stayed away from massages for years. In many ways, you might think massages would be a perfect storm of hell for me. I mean, I'm MOSTLY perfect, but I do have some control issues. And some body-image issues. And some relaxation issues--my attempts at meditation always end with me fidgeting and thinking the mantra "I'm not meditating i''m not meditating why the hell can't i be meditating". So lying naked and perfectly still on a table allowing a virtual stranger to control my body doesn't sound like something I'd do well with. But I've found it to be therapeutic, actually, because I take all those issues and just GET OVER them, for an hour at a time. Think how much saner I'd be if I was getting massages all the time!! And how much less tense--I know it's so cliche, but I carry all my stress in my shoulders, and my back is always tight from lifting at work. Anyway, I bring this up because I actually let them give me a male masseuse this time. And he was AMAZING! He looked like an extra in Avril Lavigne's Sk8tor Boi music video, and we never managed an actual conversation without it being stilted and awkward, but he had hands of gold. Strong gold. No funny punchline to this story, just wanted to share my Clayon story.

I had a moment of serious self-doubt this morning. I picked up a patient last week named Mr. V. Smith. Sweet as pie, African-American man with a mustache and a slow, Virginia drawl. I nearly killed myself trying to get him out of bed, but he is super nice. This morning I got to work and found we had a new patient, Mr. J Smith. I made some joke about how I'd have to think of nicknames to keep them straight and picked him up too. When I went into his room, guess what I found: a sweet as pie, African-American man with a mustache and a slow, Virginia drawl. My first thought was, "Damn, how am I going to tell them apart?" Then my second thought, "Oh damn, was that racist???" Seriously. Isn't that the racist trope, that everyone of (insert race) looks alike? I had a few seconds of serious self-recrimination at my lack of perception and sensitivity, and then, I was saved by fate and the fact that I'm an eavesdropper and remembered a conversation I'd overheard last week--J Smith and V Smith are BROTHERS. Genetically predisposed to look alike!! He confirmed the fact and I'm like, "oh that's great!!" and had to backtrack. Cause it's obviously not great that they are having a family reunion in a rehab hospital. On the other hand, since they apparently have to have one, it's fantastic that I am not racist but instead OBSERVANT, observant enough to see the family resemblance. Phew.

Ok, so that is all for right now. I will try to get back on the horse with updating more often; it would just help if there was more stuff in my life worthy of an update. Hope all is well!!

Lulu vs the Stinkbug, kitchen cabinet version. Guess who won.

we'll never feel bad anymore...

Island in the sun lyric, if you're wondering.

I would very much like to take my cuddle buddy, my cats, and a suitcase full of chocolate, tea, romance novels, and notebooks/pens, and hibernate in a beach house for a full two weeks.

Ready to go....oh, right now.

The Well and the Duck.

I need therapy to deal with retail therapy. It gives me such guilt.

Anyway, had a very deep "life" thoughts to put out here. These two weeks, I'm taking a course on Neuro-Developmental Theory, which basically translates to learning how to handle and facilitate hemiplegic muscles in order to recreate normal movement patterns. Pretty darn cool when it works. In some ways it's been back to school, since we have at least one lecture a day and multiple labs. In one of the lectures, there was a picture and concept that struck me. It was called "The Well." Here's a (probably illegally reproduced, don't tell) picture of it:

Basically, the idea is that the ball that perches on the edge of the well is more unstable than the one inside the well. This makes the outside ball more easily moved. In NDT terms, it demonstrates the concept that people with hemiplegia have muscles that are unstable, and can be swayed either way, back down the hill into normal movement patterns or into the well with compensatory, incorrect patterns that will take much more momentum to correct. As therapists we have to make sure our treatment is continually finding that edge of the well, so that we can help our patients roll and progress.

I know, kind of cheesy. But, speaking of cheesy, isn't this an interesting way to view the world???? Maybe it's just me, but I find the concept of striving to be unstable as somewhat counterintuitive. Maybe it's cause in a lot of ways, I'm a well-dweller. Bona fide, certified, nester-at-heart well dweller. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. There is a lot to be said for stability. I don't think I am alone in finding the concepts of keeping a job for a significant time, living in a house long enough to unpack, and maintaining long relationships (friends, siblings, marriages, pets) appealing and highly preferable to chaos and constant change. Especially if you have something good, what is wrong in appreciating it and kind of just, letting it be?

On the other hand, stability isn't always the answer. As you might remember from my haircut post a few weeks ago, or, you know, know from elsewhere besides this blog, constancy can be boring. Complacency is certainly not something I endorse; becoming rigid in your thinking and views is one of the biggest reasons the human race produces so much suckiness. And what happens if something happens to your well? Maybe it floods, or gets surrounded by wildfires. Or maybe the people or things making up the walls of your well change or get taken away (or go away). I think the crucial thing is not that you need to necessarily SEEK instability, just that you need to be able to deal with it when it happens? I guess what I take from the picture is that you need to know how to live on the edge of the well, and accept that sometimes the right answer is to roll away.

I have a somewhat related story from the course as well. As I mentioned, NDT involves a lot of manual handling, and we spend a considerable amount of time practicing our techniques on each other. Yesterday our job was to get our partner to walk just by managing the pressure of our hands on the back of their rib cage. Takashi, one of our instructors, volunteered me to facilitate him. He had to give me a few hints to get me/us going, but then once I figured it out, we were on a roll. Halfway across the gym, he says, without looking around, "Your hands are wonderful. You do a nice job of keeping the pressure light. But you need to relax your shoulders."

I had to laugh. Without turning around, he could tell that, despite the fact that my hands were barely touching him, my shoulders were practically rigid in my determination to facilitate correctly (and, in my defense, from holding up my arms to his rib cage, since he's really tall). I tried to loosen them, and when we got to the end of the gym, he turned and said to me, "You know, Ann, you just do so much better when you let go. I feel the tension in your arms and I know you're thinking so much, but when you just let yourself stop worrying and just do it, you do a fantastic job."

Lesson one, never argue with an NDT instructor about the state of your muscles. Lesson Two, Takashi is very nice. Lesson Three...to be determined.

I don't know about most of you, but a lot of times I feel like a duck. You know, calm on the surface, paddling like mad underneath. And it's always important to me that no one knows about the paddling. I'm not sure if it's keeping up an image or self-protection or insecurity or what, but I don't tend to like it if people understand how much goes on underneath the surface. But I guess sometimes people can tell; probably more often than I think. Especially when I have my hands on their rib cages. And that isn't such a bad thing. But I can't decide if the takeaway from my facilitation compliment is to let my paddling show or to stop paddling so hard and just enjoy the lake I'm already on, trusting my little duck self to be just fine. Or maybe both? Or maybe to stop looking for takeaways everywhere?

But where would be the fun in that last option?

So those are my deep thoughts. Hope you all are enjoying your wells or edges, wherever you may be!!

xoxo

HodgePodge

• Dear Government Officials: We elected you to run the country, not act like preschoolers fighting over a playground ball. Grow up and do your jobs. Thank you, Concerned Citizen.
• I started this course at 8 AM last Sunday, and we have class at 8 AM tomorrow morning too. Tonight feels like my third consecutive Thursday night. I am normally much more tired on Fridays/Thursdays…guess that goes to show how exhausting the normal job is.
• Songs I Hate, Volume Two: Since I am in DC, my radio stations aren’t set, and since I have to drive winding roads that make manual scanning a potentially lethal event, I am pretty much stuck listening to songs I can’t stand. These are the ones I just heard today on the hour-long commute.
o “Your Body is a Wonderland” AND “Daughters,” by John Mayer. Ugh, talk about torture. As I understand it, Daughters is basically saying, “men of America, be nice to your girls so that when they are older and I want to sleep with them, they won’t be crazy.” Excuse me? And I can’t listen to the other song without thinking about all the diseases playing around in Mayer’s personal wonderland. I hope he issues all his riders full-body ponchos. Ewww.
o “Fireflies.” Who likes this song??? I will risk driving off the road to turn it down. So inane. So annoying!! And didn’t it come out like two years ago? Fireflies live like 30 days, why can’t the song share that lifespan?
o “Tonight I’m Loving You,” Enrique Iglesias. I actually kind of find this song fun to bop to at 7:30 in the morning, but I was very sad to learn the actual un-edited title is “Tonight I’m Fucking You.” Oh, Enrique. The Latin Lover who could be my Hero, baby, has gone all perve-y.
• I get basic cable but apparently not the channels I truly need to be happy, because there are some TV shows I am going crazy without:
o Food Network—I didn’t get to see the Chopped All-Stars season finale!! Or the premiere of Food Network Challenge Last Cake Standing. Gotta love your elaborate, pointless cakes!
o Travel Channel. A few episodes of Man Vs Food would really make me feel better about the fact that I have to either eat out or microwave my dinner every night. And my Friday nights are very sad without Ghost Adventures. Did you know the lead investigator (the guy with the large cross tattoo on his back) is a wedding DJ in his other life? A WEDDING DJ?!?!?!? Makes watching him compensate for his shortcomings by out-macho-ing a bunch of invisible, possibly non-existent entities just THAT much more entertaining.
o Discovery. Mythbusters is back, and I can’t watch it!!!! I’ve decided I’m related to Adam Savage, and even if it’s not biologically true, he’s my soul brother. I reject this reality of not having my favorite channels, and substitute my own.
• Finally, I have discovered a new term. From here on out, I would like to be referred to as a “control enthusiast” rather than a “Control freak.” New favorite title!! Credit goes to http://www.crazyauntpurl.com. If you’re not reading this blog, you should. Well, if you’re a girl who loves cats.


Ok, that is all. Happy weekend!!

Packing as Psychology

On Saturday morning I packed for two weeks. As you might imagine, this led to some navel-gazing (and wouldn't you be disappointed if it didn't?) ;) I am, therefore I pack as I do. Or something like that.

One thing anyone who has ever traveled with me anywhere knows for sure is that I am an overpacker. I am the girl who hauled a thirty-pound suitcase up and down hostel stairs all over Europe because the idea of reducing my necessities to a backpack gave me the shudders--and really, who wants to be so cliche? Other than people who don't like back pain and heavy lifting? My carry-on suitcase will rarely hold me for a weekend. I now consistently budget the fifty-effing-dollars it costs to check a bag on a plane because my case is always so heavy I can't stand the idea of hauling it around an airport. And if I'm driving somewhere? Forget it. My car has 3 jackets, two reading books, and three extra pairs of shoes in it on a day when I'm just going to work and back, much less when I'm taking a trip!

Ok, I can hear you judging. I swear I'm not that materialistic. I wish that was the problem. The real problem is that I absolutely cannot STAND the thought of not having something I need when I need it simply because I wasn't psychic enough to bring it. I carry around a massive purse for the exact same reason--if I don't feel I have everything I could possibly need, I am very very uncomfortable.

"That's very...anal...of you," you might say. And I don't disagree. After all, I come from a long line of control freaks. For example, my friend who had met me and not my sister always gave me a really hard time about how I needed to have everything planned. I always said, "You know, if you knew my sister you'd realize how laid-back I am in comparison!" and she always said, "yeah yeah yeah." (or "yada yada yada"...this was back in the day.) Then one day she accompanied me and my sister to the zoo. The Washington DC Zoo, which only has one road that goes straight down a hill and then straight back up. And my friend watched my sister beeline for the free maps, gather us around her, and start coming up with a "plan of attack" to find the most strategic method to see each animal during this straight path. My friend looked at me, patted me on the back, and said, "I see what you mean. I'm sorry I doubted you."

So I come by my control issues very honestly. And I really don't think I'm half as bad as some of those people who share my genetic material. But boy do those issues raise their head when it comes time to pack. Don't get me wrong, I don't give two hoots about what my travel buddy packs. I don't waste my time trying to control other people. They do not need me to do that. And in fact, I'm often quite jealous of them and their laid-back, oh-who-cares-if-I-have-socks attitudes. They trust themselves to be ok if they find themselves with nothing to put on their feet: without even thinking about it, they know that whatever such obstacle comes up, they will just deal with it, and move on.

I am not so secure. And so I drove to Leesburg yesterday with a gigantic LL Bean rolling duffel, two Harris Teeter recyclable bags, my two purse-like bags, and my giant SLP conference tote. All totally full. You should have seen the alarm on the front desk person's face when I came staggering up under all that weight--"uh oh guys, we've got a squatter!"

Too bad I was never an Eagle Scout; I am ALWAYS prepared.

The other thing that I realized when I packed was the inequality of my clothing. The place I'm staying theoretically has laundry but, as we said, I like to be prepared, so I decided to bring enough so that I wouldn't necessarily HAVE to do laundry while I'm gone. Two weeks worth of work shirts? No problemo. Two weeks worth of the tank tops I wear under the work shirts (I try very hard not to be too boob-y at work)? Hell, I probably have three weeks worth. But two weeks worth of work-underwear? Not even close!

Ok, so back to the control freak thing--yes, I am anal about my underwear (har har har). I wear one kind to go out in public, and another kind for workingout/sleeping. And while I have tons of leisure options, I have a pathetically small amount of work ones. Which is not so bad except that I spent a heck of a lot more time at work then I do working out Or sleeping, it feels like. And yet when it comes time to purchase, I am drawn to the leisure kind! Hmm, I think I am trying to tell myself something....

The good news is, I'm staying in close proximity to some awesome lingerie stores. So I will be able to do shopping to resolve the problem. Which of course means that, yes, I will leave Leesburg with even MORE than I brought into it.

At least there are no doormen to scare at home.

Hoping you all have more functional packing lives!!!!