Coming up: Work it! Work it! The cry of the proletariat drowned out under lumpen kerplunks of demi-debacles and screeching screws. Will our hero complete his opus in overtime or die trying? The steely bonds of marriage constrict against evolving digits. Will knuckles be wrapped? What dexterity may be lost with surgical amputation? The callipygian erosity of Ms. (W)right's stately haunches bear down upon aching arches under the strict scrutiny of physiotherapy, and she is sent a flittering to the tenebrous woods of weighty pulleys. Will the twinkle in her toes fend of the giants and their ghastly grunts?
Charge up the diadems and bring your powertools to plunge deeper into the heart of mysteries...
Whirrrrrrrrrking Away Roller Screw Derby and Temporary Tomoholic DTs!
Yesterday the unthinkable happened: I left my book at work! Oh the pain! Oh the agony! Oh the ten minute drive it would have taken to retrieve it. There were, of course, some serious withdrawal spasms. I have apparently regressed from my methadone internet-addiction back to books in a big way. I'm taking it one evening at a time. Somehow, somehow, I managed to hang in there like a baby kitty on an 80's motivational poster. This was despite Andrew's work schedule finally heating up as promised to the point that his hours actually became relevant to my schedule. Those precious hours I could have spent semi-comatose on the couch while my boyfrianceband toiled away with giant metal machines! Andrew got home around 7:30, which isn't horrible considering the doomsday proclamations attendant to this week. But I think there were some internally waged battles about leaving that "early" when there was still more work to do.
After some intense ructions with our spotty internet and my even spottier HP Pavilion (there are things I love about this laptop for dj-ing and multimedia usage, but I doubt I'd recommend HP computers to anyone after the perpetual picayune irritations of this baby's sporadic inutility), I turned my jivin' jonesin' for story to the LED screen. House of Cards season 2 started off strongly anyways. Then again, anything in which Kevin Spacey speaks to me - the viewer - directly, no matter how menacingly, is going to draw me in like a moth to open flame.
In our little legal corner, "we" settled a case that was slated for trial in May. As this was scheduled to begin a day and a half after my Mother-in-law's blow-out 60th birthday gala in Inverness (and our time-crunched almost-as-much-time-travelling-as-celebrating schedule), I am beyond relieved to hear this. Most of the trial prep happens in the days leading up to the trial, so I would likely have done most of my part before heading out on Friday, but I would have been even less coherent and suitable for human interaction than normal! I tend to do better in big party situations if I've actually rested up a fair bit in the days preceding. And when I get to bring my ear plugs. And have frequent vanishing breaks for solitary recharging. And... maybe a taser. The taser is more of a last resort!
Anyways, I'm feeling 100% less strung out just to have my book in sight (although it didn't get any juice at all last night, so it's probably severely dehydrated, and the charger is at home). I made the bike-and-chain promise not to drop any heavy metal things on anything I cared about. He's allowed to get some light scars that enhance his features, but in a very delineated fashion. Nothing painful either. Hopefully he'll make it home at some point this evening unscathed. I've got to survive my PT appointment (due for some more humiliating and impossible balance exercises!), and then the night is mine.
It's All in the Hips They don't necessarily lie, but perhaps prevaricate...
Going to a PT is a bit like taking the ol' heap to an auto mechanic: oily and loud. No, wait. No, I was going elsewhere with that. Expensive and mysteriously covered by insurance sometimes? Perhaps, but really, what I meant to say is that you often come in for one issue and this leads to the discovery of an entire string of causalities bringing you to an entirely different issue than you ever imagined! Or can.
So far, the arch/ankle area certainly had its own share of weaknesses and whatnot (much of that possibly due to being babied after the injury), but I'd often suspected there was some connection between my latest arch strain and various other quirks. My right hamstring seems to get tight pretty quickly, for instance. My massage assassin has commented on unevenness in my hips at times. So, I was not hugely surprised when my PT decided - after making me do various circus seal tricks and flails - to test those hips a bit. "Testing" largely involves making me do other weird physical motions while pushing or pulling simultaneously against me.
I have noticeably stronger abduction on my left side (i.e. "my butt is uneven!") This is all magically connected to a tendency to rotate my right knee inwards, which in turn may be straining my arch! Anyone who does partner dancer probably is unsurprised at the revelation of an unevenness between right and left sides. We dance in a clamshell, often favoring sides exclusively. My right and left arms, shoulders, lats, have all been a touch askew as well., although I've managed to stretch and strengthen that out with proper advanced warning. My right quads are a lot stronger than my left from being parked in mid-lunge (corte) position while my lead elaborates a bit in an attempt to test my breaking point. When I'm dancing tango a whole lot, I may even be prone to breaking out more on the side of my forehead that makes contact with my partner's.
Of course this inward rotation of the knees (rotation from the hips! I even instruct) is par for the course in standard dance technique, so I'm again not totally surprised. When The Sheep Man told me I had to dance, dance, dance, he might have neglected to remind me that cross-training would also be helpful. But I probably also neglected to remember this obvious truth, myself, when I shrugged off whatever pilates/stretching/weight training I kinda knew I probably should be doing the whole time I was building my dance technique into intractable habit.
Of course this revelation comes with a whole new slew of impossible exercises. These involve the weighted pulleys at the gym, and guarantee optimal public humiliation. A blend of strength, balance, and stabilization that will inevitably lead to flailing failure right in the parturiently constipated testosterone junkie section of the YMCA (where it is fun to visit, but I'm not sure I'd want to stay too long). Since today is gym day anyways, it's my first run (har har) at this. Thinking I'll try it before the running to give extra time for the paramedics to make it on the scene.
The other additional exercise was a gimme, though: since I want to start dancing again, she told me just to start walking around the house on my tippee toes.
How timely!
Happy Tippee Toe Thursday!!
Fairy Princess in the Brobdignagian's Birthing ChamberA quick chorus line rehearsal in the not-so-free weight section, and other musical outbursts.
As I had determined to do, I set off to the gym with physio-dreams and cavorting ambitions. Unfortunately, my wand was at home and the tiara was charging (low battery capacity, these spritely diadems), but I still managed with the twinkle-toe socks and the looby-lurgy grinmace of a girl erumpent with artificial estrogens in her system (magical, sparkly pink estrogens, of course). Turns out that balancing on one leg, using the other one to move a weighted pulley and trying to keep the knee on the first leg in proper alignment all the while ignoring Nacissus' plangent palaver from an adjoining mirror: hard. And we needn't go on too much about all the people who needed to use the exact same space (albeit different adjunct apparati) associated with the universal trainer. Regardless, concussions were forestalled (not sure anyone would tell the difference in cognitive functioning this late in the game).
And I'm back up to running four minute intervals at a time. This was about where I got overly ambitious last time and started accidentally programming the treadmill to run faster, with shorter and fewer intervals until a concerted cavil of my sore lower body required a break and reset. So I'm taking great pains (har har, but better the mental pains of restraint than the physical pains of overreach) to gradually graduate back upwards from this point on. Of course, I give lip-service to such level-headedness frequently before abandoning it as soon as the first try at restrained hair goes by the wayside (some day I will have enough heavy equipment to keep my hair out of my face when I'm running... it will probably involve saran wrap and duct tape).
In uxorial news, my bike-and-chain continues to survive his very busy week of minor debacles inherent in the "final build" portion of a project long overdue. Having given up on his training schedule for the week (working on the shop floor all day hefting gargantuan objects for ten hours at a time apparently tires one out), he's actually home most nights around the same time he would be getting back from a ride. But it does make me very grateful that neither of us follows this kind of schedule or work-life-imbalance perpetually. It's just nicer when he gets in his recreational time, breaks, and less stressful uncertainty about the next day's disaster. For him and for us. But sacrifices must be made from time to time. Especially when gigantic satellite fixtures are involved! And so far, nothing huge has fallen on him, so I'm happy.
Cobalt Finger Traps of Connubial Rapture and other hazards of DINK derring-do-be-do-be-doo
There are several obvious upsides to being employed and having a husband who is also employed. I shan't torment exanimate equines by enumerating these virtues; nor shall I attempt to overly burden you with flipsides to the positives. I will raise only one downside of having a career: sometimes things get very busy very quickly, requiring the ever-ambivalent overtime and related crunch-time stressors. And, having tapped out our available trials here in Ms. (W)rightlandia, it has been Andrew's turn for the proverbial waste matter to hit the flapping flabellum.
The insanity began this week and has continued into the weekend. Andrew was out quite late last night and left again this morning to put together a rather monstrous little beauty that looks like public art to me, but apparently also serves some kind of complicated engineering function. Or should, anyways. It isn't entirely assembled, and has yet to be thoroughly tested. Knock on wood and/or stainless steel.
Since the thing is roughly the size of small house, even simple tasks require herculean might, ulyssean cunning, and the favor of at least four out of five greek gods. Naturally there have been "little" glitches that take hours to fix, as a result. I'm somewhat glad that Andrew didn't foresee yesterday's glitch before going into work, as he may not have indulged in a full weekend-morning with me before heading out the door; and missing a Saturday morning would have been thoroughly disappointing (it is all about me!)
Since no hint of the late night ahead had been lain, Andrew did stay at home until about ten yesterday, plenty of time for a Saturnine stirring, a desultory coffee, and a maunder through one of the various catalogs of hideous clothing that I steal from my mother's mailbox. It was also sufficient time for us to touch on the subject of ring-sizes.
Andrew has moved ahead in the race towards our mutual "ideal goal weight." Mostly because I got lazy and decided I felt fine where I was, and could let myself drift upwards instead of slamming the requisite thousands of calories to surge upwards. But also because Andrew has been losing weight at a pretty steady clip these last six months. This is an effect of both his increasing training schedule and my having taken command of his meals (by which I mean that I seize all of his food and devour it myself in front of him as he goes hungry, and/or I use him as my human guinea pig for latent culinary impulses I had never anticipated). At any rate, while I have stayed roughly in weight-stasis, the concomitant artificially induced hormonal vicissitudes of late have their own side effects. Apparently one of these is occasionally finding my fingers tumid enough to chafe and bulge over once-large rings.
That particular morning, I had remarked to Andrew that - as a result of this latest tumescence - I had removed my engagement ring to my pinkie finger and was relieved to have gotten our cobalt wedding bands a half-size up in anticipation of gaining weight. He - feeling quite cocky at 1 pound away from his ultimate goal weight - demonstrated that his ring had become quite loose recently. So loose, he thought, that it would likely fit even on his middle finger (wedding ring on the middle finger bears symbolism I daren't plow too closely).
We both, of course, knew exactly what would happen when he scrunched the ring past his middle knuck. We even chuckled it and the familiar rom-com/sit-com trope evolving in front of us. Despite this knowledge, the runes had been cast and there was no turning back. We understood this. The ring sat comfortably about Andrew's middle digit for a triumphant showcase of slenderness. It remained there, proudly athrone the beleaguered middle finger, despite any efforts to deport it to its finger of origin. Several tugs later, the knuckle began to swell in protest, exacerbating the misfit. Andrew attempted to soap the ring off. I mentioned something I'd read about string on Lifehacker, but neither of us had any of that. Andrew continued tugging with ice reserves, while I contemplated that the indestructibility of cobalt could perhaps pose a problem, should the finger continue swelling and pondered surgical extraction and/or a starvation diet a la Winnie the Pooh as our only options. A good ten minutes later, the knuckle was quite cherry and mounting an increasingly effective resistance. Given the obscene entendres inherent in Andrew's ring-removing gestures and his various (always entendre filled) allusions to machine parts sticking, I suggested in earnest that we apply a bit of lube. Which eventually did work. The errant cobalt band roosted comfortably on Andrew's proper finger, and his middle knuckle let out a plangent sigh and throb.
The "minor issues" at work turned out to also have something to do with incompatibilities between holes and the objects intended to fill those holes. In that case, they took a slightly more aggressive approach involving power tools. I'm relieved that it did not come to this at home.
No knuckles were harmed in the making of this morning's abbreviated weekend rising. Andrew left around 8 with hardly sufficient time to fall into such temptation. I have no sure idea when/if my husband will return home, although it could be a simple morning if nothing goes wrong (which is kind of like saying "if a magical unicorn flies down from the sky, touches its pure sparkling horn of fire to the tip of BTAP and croons Perry Como).
The whole overtime week and weekend has again reminded me how lucky I am to have a stable job that allows me plenty of breathing room, and to have a husband who manages mostly to enjoy the same. Both Andrew and I are having flashbacks to our more erratic employments of factories and stage sets past. I recall working a few very murderous weeks at Hot Mama's (where things went wrong always at the busiest seasons) of ten to twelve hours for fourteen consecutive days. There was an apocalyptic camaraderie about the situation I do fondly recall, but I cannot say I ever regret losing the possibility of a repeat. It also reminds me that several relationships routinely involve one partner with a perpetually workaholic schedule, and I am doubly pleased that this is an abnormality in our marital life.
In other words I hope the mechanical bacchanal will die down before it takes Andrew with it, because I'm kind of digging having him around. Wish us luck!
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