Coming Up: Tipsy top go the respective limbs, as imbalances weigh lightly and avocado daubs the walls. Will union 'twixt the adroit and the sinister ere be achieved or will we all hobble on, entrenched in our imbalances? Truculent tulip traffic tangles the way home from fairy land. Will Puck relent from his impish pirouettes and clear the pullulating pollen of love's sweetest and most insidious of blossoms, delirium? Pandora pries at the Diagnostic Box. Will her solicitous curiosity unleash new matroyshkas of endless infinite waiting rooms besot with hungry hydras haranguing the mind with their endless inconclusives? Will Andrew's liver avoid another stabbing? Will arms be lost in the investment fray?
Hop aboard your dominant leg, strap on your pointe shoes, and tie those patient smocks tightly to delve the depths of answerless de-onioning below!
Life and the Grand Imbalancing Act -
I've been remarking on the dissonances between expected strengths and weaknesses of my not-100%-right side since this recent arch injury and recovery. I'm naturally right-dominant. This dominance is something that can be encouraged/entrenched in partner dancing. While the central hinging connection is at the follow's left side, most weight-bearing dips and tricks rely heavily on the right leg. I spent a lot of time in some kind of wiggle tango corte of eternal damnation with amateur leads who thought that perching one's follow in a single legged squat and then steering her through a series of back bends constituted blues dancing. All in all I figured that my rights leg is stronger and more deft than my left, as is true with my right arm.
Turns out that my right leg is the finicky collicky leg, while my left is the workhorse. Put me on one of those balancing torture devices for a few seconds and this becomes shockingly apparently. Of course, that had me re-thinking my initial assumptions. Come to think of it, since there's a hinge at the left and I step with my right foot, I did spend a decent amount of time balancing on my left foot.
As Andrew reflected in his own experience, I tend to reserve my right side for tasks that require dexterity and fine-tuning. This often leaves my left side holding the (heavy and unwieldy) bag.
It's fascinating to realize how thoroughly unbalanced the human body becomes over time. Discounting specialized training, we are mostly side-dominant (pity the left-side dominant person in elementary school). For various reasons, that ennate dominance may be futzed with or diminished. My mom speaks of a sudden childhood panic that she might someday break her right arm, prompting her to dablle in ambidexterity. I went through a phase of travel-journalling in Morocco, where - after much of what I had to say was covered - I simply practiced my left-handed penmanship (an unsophisticated script for my more naif moments, I suppose). By the end of that trip, my journal resembled Jack's very dull boy opus in The Shining, but I did grasp some limited fluency. Very limited.
In our distracted world, I often eat with my left hand. This is actually because it enables me to keep my right hand free for crosswords, single handed swyping, and page turning on the kindle. Since the advance-forward motion requires tapping on the right side of the screen, I've found that one handed kindling only works in the right hand. I can handle chopsticks as masterfully in my left as with my right hand. Still for the initial stirrings and final scooping of a dish, I may switch utensils to my right (and still more agile) hand. Being aware of it now, I've noticed in the kitchen that I almost universally hold with the left hand and chop/stir/spread/slice/etc. with my right. Naturally, I'm now attempting the mirror image to high hijinks and a new kitchen redecoration scheme ("avocado" walls are even more fun when they're literally so!). I do hold with my right and pour with my left, when it comes to coffee, which I suspect was developed in reaction to the relationship of the coffee pot and the sink over which I prefer to pour.
Several years ago, my mother switched her computer mouse to the left side. She did so for a variety of reasons only sometimes having to do with a mix of self-challenge and remaining primal terror of being monodextrous. I picked up that habit. While I switch back and forth from time to time I'm now more comfortable using my left hand to mouse.
I could go on. It is somewhat baffling to realize the myriad internal preferences and physical specializations. My right quad is brobdignagian, and my strength is typically a bit higher, but - as I mentioned before - the muscles on the outer right glute are significantly weaker. Same for the internal muscles supporting the right ankle. My right hamstring always gets tighter. Further North, my right shoulder is prone to more clicking. My body - in deference to dance - seems offset just a bit and twisted on its line. The lower hips twist slightly left, while the upper body twists slightly right, as if I'm trying to unscrew myself at the torso.
There's a benefit and an eventual cost to specialization in most cases, as in here. Efficiency is a double edged sword, as it can lead to imbalances that eventually lead to injuries. But it's also... efficient. Damned efficient. Speedy, accident reducing, and just far less of a huge mess. Regardless, there may be some more spilled milk and mis-spread toast for a while as I inevitably play with balance. Anything to avoid the actual balancing exercises for my PT and that darned spikey circus ball!
Trudging Through the Tulips with Petulant Pixies An Ariose Date Afternoon in the Big City
Before I weave my silver tapestry of lovely Sundays past, I should note that something or somebody doesn't really want me at work today. The latter "-body" may simply be me, but I stolidly asseverate that greater forces are at play. I woke up late this morning and have been just that extra bit gravitationally challenged for the experience. While the drive only hinted at blazing automobile crashes, the old Towers heaved a sigh to see me, steeled its framework and clamped its locks.
My key would not work in the side door lock at all, which I suspect may be related to the fact that the lock orientation had shifted to downward dog. As such, I had to go to the glass doors of the main entrance. These require a sort of kneeling prayer stance to unclasp. The first prayer fell on deaf ears. I eventually jiggered my jangles through on the third lock I had tried and fell forward into the building. I can't say why the building was so reticent at the thought of my company. Nothing was awry inside, and the keys worked fine internally.
My office rejoined the chorus of "go away go away," the office light going super nova on me before receding to a blank vapidity. It's light enough outside to accommodate, but I still maintain this is a positive sign that I am not destined to be here today.
Perhaps I am destined to take a hop, jump and skip back into the heady reverie of a nostalgic retelling instead: Yesterday the boyfrianceband and I had tickets to the PNB's Midsummer Night's Dream. Feeling the frisky adventurousness of spring, I bought us tickets to the Experience Music Project as well, so that we might take advantage of a gorgeous day in Seattle by being indoors as many places as possible.
We started with a splendid drive. Perhaps to rev myself up for the fairyland ballet, I read Peter Pan and Wendy on the way down. Do note, I was the passenger so this wasn't a hugely perilous undertaking on my account. We had lunch at Bamboo Gardens, as is our wont. Then off we went to the throbbing bass and bluster of the Experience Music Project's amorphous acoustical walls. I admit we actually spent far more time in the Sci Fi and Horror sections - seeing several pretty spectacular props from any imaginable movie including a full scale alien and a face hugger from Aliens, several items I had assumed were CG from the Matrix (including Neo's jacket which emphasizes that Keanu Reeves is actually a fairly tall guy), your ubiquitous Star Trek/Wars and Dr. Who detritus, and (my personal favorite) Shawn of the Dead's shirt.
From one fantasy land to another, we were blasted with the sauna of McCaw Hall in short shrift. I really do not recall McCaw hall being so uncomfortably stuffy when I go to the opera there, but the last three ballets have been double-tylenol headaching affairs. I think when I attend Giselle in June, I shall be bringing a pocket fan and an ice pack. The lady seated next to me and I had a tacit arrangement of alternating program-fanning during most of the first act. But infernal torment granted a vision of Edenic bliss on the stage itself.
Midsummer Night's dream is a Balanchine conception. He took Mendelssohn's incidental music, added some more Mendelssohn and worked the entire contents of the play quite handily into an hour and ten minutes of Act I. It's lightly peppered with the pantomime of traditional story ballet, but at an exuberant pace. While the plot is lucent, it never stumbles into the way of the dancing itself. Balanchine particularly used several pas de deux to showcase his choreography. Hermia and Demetrius are codependently clasping and collapsing in to each other in caricature when they first dance. Followed by the violent clinging of Helena against the rejection of Lysander - a common tension as various love petals throw various suitors towards the wrong women. Titania dances amorously only with Donkey-headed Bottom, who is more interested in the pile of grass she uses to lure him.
Only in the second Act, where love wins - admittedly through dodgy and questionable fairy intervention - that the traditional pas de deux really lets loose (and most of that is from a nameless couple providing the divertissement). The other obviously shining choreographic and performance role is that of Puck, the impish lacky and major driver of the protean love triangles created in the first act. The sets and stages were splendid - utterly glittering and blazing at times with just the right twilight euphoria.
And most blessedly of all, it was a tidy two hour affair. Much shorter if not for the ubiquitous intermission after the heavy weight of the first act left us waiting for the narrative free dance extravaganza of "every one is happy and married and we'll get ourselves to that 'If we shadows have offended...' part"
The traffic on the way home was less blessedly tidy. Apparently tulips are a huge deal in Skagit County, which is having its annual Tulip festival field viewing nonsense. While I think the tulip fields are lovely, I'm not sure they are worth the anomie wreaked on the freeway between King and Whatcom County for everyone else. What is typically a ten minute drive took about 45 in stop and go conditions due to the damned bulbs. I'm used to that sort of traffic in Everett (accursed land), but this far north is a surreality usually reserved for gruesome accidents and collapsing bridges.
Regardless, the fairies flew us home in Andrew's screeching little mouse of a Pathfinder (it's about time for him to take it in and discover the source of its stringent cavils - that or turn the radio up another twenty decibels).
And now I'm back. To a dingy office that doesn't want me, but shall have me by gosh and golly!
Monday, you may not be ready for me, but I'm here and I'm ready to take you by storm! Or by chocolate and coffee and dried fruits...
Medico-a-go-go - Following the follow-up of the follow-up The Aesculapian snake devours its own tale
This morning I had a(nother) doctor's appointment! I know. You're all quite jealous. Being a lush DINK lady, I have several "doctors" and attendant medical professionals. This one, my OB-GYN, talks ten times normal speed, and gives me as much advice about my running/training athletic plan as my PT. My PCP is chatty in a desultory and baffling way, usually hitting the themes that my chosen profession is a mongrel-dog and various cavils about the average patient. I could go on. My nutritionist is a nice lady with a lovely house who thinks I should eat several thousand calories a day. My dentist is a gentle fellow whose first passion is photography followed by proper flossing. I have a few medical professionals to spare. I guess they're community doctors now, but in reality I have all the doctors and my husband has none.
The boyfrianceband and I recently discussed his doctorless status. This arose in relation to our HSA, particularly how it can also be considered a retirement/saving account and whether or not to tap that sweet fund until it can't walk straight. Being the person who uses medical preventative care, I was against paying medical costs out of pocket when we had an HSA regardless of savings potential. Eventually, Andrew encountered a tale of the armless man who wished he had his arms back instead of the 8 million dollar settlement the city paid to him for the loss (that's a Kipling one, right?). That settled that conversation.
While we agreed that it was best to leave our HSA for health savings lest we someday lose our metaphorical arms, that discussion meandered us back to the occasional topic of seeing a doctor and whatnot with the characteristic quarterly declaration of "I should find a doctor". He has a very ambivalent attitude about resuming preventative medical care. The fella had some weird liver tests several years back, which were initially interpreted as hepatitis-something-awful. It's been diagnosed in all kinds of interesting and tentative ways since, with several prickly pointy interventions in the interim. All for a conclusory shrug of the shoulders and indeterminate answers. A whirlwind tour through begrudging vegetarianism, a liver biopsy (they stabbed me in the liver! as he druggedly decried in full Shakespearian eclat), and a phase of taking zinc pills that made him nauseous. He's somewhat burned out on medical stuff.
Since he made the move to EI(e-i-e-i-ooooo), and thus new insurance, he hasn't seen a doctor. Which is mostly his business. But of course in the quarterly conversation about how he "*should* get a doctor" (in a tone implying that he need never actually do so) I may occasionally kibbitz. If for no other reason than I must compulsively point out "the other side" to any statement in that psittacistic way we sharks and minnows of the legal profession do with no regard for conversational concinnity.
But I kibbitz also because I am blazing through our HSA account on my own account, and sometimes feel a little guilty. Not that my expenses are particularly excessive, but the physical therapy for my arch combined with the ongoing question marks surrounding my lack of long walks on white beaches (we call them "lady problems" or lack thereof in euphemistic condescension to spare all you squeamish sorts) certainly add up quickly. Add to that the fact that I do see the dentist and probably am due for yet another check up and regular blood work...
While I tend to argue for the medical profession and regular preventative care, I must admit that I understand the fear of cracking ajar Pandora's Diagnostic Box. Like Andrew and his liver, I think the tenebrous uncertainty about my loobyless lady issues is both baffling and non-plussing. It seems like having a child would change absolutely everything in a number of key life-planning arenas (like in basically throwing any plans straight into the garbage bin and leaping without a parachute into the abyss of parenthood). Knowing that it just wasn't going to happen or that I had some control over whether it did would deeply satisfy my inner life planner and fill out a thousand variables.
I'm willing to be patient on that one, despite my equally shark-and-minnow desire to control everything with scads of contingency plans and pretty calendars. The additional uncertainty of an idiopathic absence of something expected has the usual "what ifs" attendant. Let us not forget that the minor competitive streak in me feels quite indignant that several rather unhealthy people are not only capable but prone to a physical state that remains elusive for me. As my nephew Ian would be quick to decry: it's just not fair! (then he would change the rules, sprout lasers from his feet, award himself ten extra invincibility points and probably hit his little brother with gamma rays to steal his powers too)
But those more existential anxieties aside, the medical hokey pokey involved is pretty exhausting. I have stunned sympathy for those with fibro, debilitating migraines, clinic depression, etc. I don't know how you/they do it! This is an issue that really doesn't impact my day to day functioning, except that it requires a whole lot of patience and a bit of medical experimentation that may ultimately lead to just another huge "huh".
I am a fan of induced patience in that I know human nature would jump to have every available test and intervention piled on at once in an extraordinarily inefficient manner. But I'm also not a fan of the frequent losses of mornings or afternoons for one little snippet of information that usually serves to cross off one of a billion issues that get us statistically no closer to an answer, but yet another fifty steps to go in some further inquiry. Shuffling from one waiting room to the next like nesting dolls in a grand medical matryoshka.
Just a year after seeing my PCP for amenorrhea, I've reached the point of my first physical tests being ordered. Simple ones. In many regards we're still waiting to see the effects of the weight and dietary changes, and the hormones. But to rule out a few more concerns. I may eventually be travelling down to Seattle for a super-specialist. Road trip! I've already been down that way to meet with my (extremely helpful) nutritionist. I'm also ok with that. Regardless of fertility, I can't imagine that the lack of a fairly definitive aspect of life as a young adult female is completely free of related concerns.
Accepting as I begrudgingly am, I can see how I might have been wary to start this process if I fully grocked how involved it might be. Well, no that's a lie. I think since I over-anticipate, I likely did (and hence was anxious to start the conversation long before the actual decision of "do we want children" but delayed so as not to throw too many life-changing issues in the way of the fella), but still. I do actually completely get why the husband still hasn't made a definitive step towards another frolic on the ferris wheel of sanitized rooms and endless waiting rooms.
Then again, he's taken his Pathfinder in to be checked out twice since we married (another instance of puzzles within puzzles and grand reveal of magnificent ecosystem). He argues that the problems with the Pathfinder are readily apparent, while he feels physically fine. I respond that this is because he is hyper aware of the little rattles and complaints of his car, while he discounts several physical things as any variety of "normal effects of ___xyz". I think I'd probably rather take myself to the doctor than take my car in, although I can't say why.
But back to my medical menagerie. One appointment leads to another like a hydra's de-lopped heads, so I'll be back in the medical area to get an ultrasound (oh boy!) and a bone density test on Friday. Followed by a follow up to the follow up some time in a few months. In the meantime, I'll be keeping it orange with my looby lady pills, which do at least make me sleep like an infant on days 15-30 of the month!
And getting back to work! Our pilates instructor was merciless yesterday, but I'm feeling very little latent muscle soreness today, so I suppose it's time to flex my attorney muscle and test those sinews a touch.
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