Settling In in Everyday Ramblings

Every once in awhile lately the diary actually works like it used to and one can actually zip around and leave notes and then…

Thanks for all your wonderful notes both here and on OD. Your thoughts have brought me much comfort as Sammy and I settle in to a life without our Stella.

She was sick for months. At least six. I had no idea how much trying to make her comfortable and take care of her appropriately had preyed on my capacity to focus and my energy level until yesterday as I was puttering around cleaning and communing with Sam.

I vacuumed.

Stella hated the vacuum. She was always on high alert and hid when I used it so the last few weeks in deference to her I didn’t use it. Sammy is a bit annoyed by it but stays put and gets a long suffering look.

Stella also was not a big fan of the Nordic Track. And with the gym right across the street I haven’t needed it for the almost 5 years I have lived here. But now the gym is closed while the owners and the operators duke it out in court. And the weather is turning colder and wet.

The main piece of the Nordic Track has been upended in my closet all this time and Sammy built a fort back there. It was pretty unassailable and I wanted him to have that safe place to hide when he has bad kidney or arthritis days.

So yesterday moving and reassembling all the component parts I committed myself to building him a new fort too. I am a human and so what makes a good old guy man cave of the feline variety is only a guess; I think what I came up with using boxes and old towels and just stuff is pretty cool though.

Of course I haven’t seen him anywhere near the closet since I built the new defensive habitat.

He did supervise the reassembly of the exercise equipment with a bemused look. I think he liked watching me get dusty as I cleaned it up. But right now he is snoring next to me on his polar tech blanket that is wrapped around the heated cat bed he spends most of his time on.

It will take me a week or so to get reconditioned for the Nordic Track. There is a lot more arm movement than even on the elliptical and it has been five years…

I also need to train my activity monitor to recognize it as high intensity activity.

Maybe three months ago as we all started wearing open toed shoes again Kes was talking about her bunions. I admit I had no idea what they were as I thought they only affected say women who wear high heels all the time, which is not me. But she has them on both feet and one day when I was teaching I looked down at my right foot and realized I was starting to get the telltale shape (Or misshape) of one.

So I have been using mole skin and a toe spacer and taping my foot like ballet dancers who wear toe shoes do to avoid bunions when I work out since then. I am seeing subtle improvement. It took forever to develop so if I can get it not to get worse and cause pain I’ll be doing good.

I think though, the taping might subtly be throwing my whole right leg out of the adaptive alignment it learned with a slightly too tight shoe on that foot.

Yesterday I did a very targeted yoga practice to release and stretch my quadriceps where I thought I was having the discomfort. It felt great and my legs are all happy now as well as my hips but I am still having this weird intermittent pain sometimes when I am in the act of standing up.

I am learning fascinating things about the tendons and the nerves in one’s thighs. It is all for the good as the more body awareness I have, the more I’ll be able to help my students develop theirs.

I knew there was a big old artery in there but apparently there is a nerve too. And mine is talking to me. Not sure if it is from the bunion corrective action or not.

Personally I’d rather blame it on the bad chairs I have been trying hard not to sit in too much in the office. :) I love blaming things on the office.

It is a habit I need to break.

Kind of like binge watching SMASH. I don’t appear to be able to just watch one episode. I stick the DVD into my computer and… 3/12 hours later I am dancing around the place like a much younger version of myself singing “Let Me Be Your Star” completely off key.

I have many talents but singing, sadly, is not one of them.