Happy Not-The-End-Of-The-World-Day

Did anyone actually know people who believed the world would end today?

And why is it that I strongly suspect that the only people who honestly believed the Mayans correctly predicted the end of the world for today were the people least likely to know who the Mayans actually were?

Well, I Know Where I Stand....

I still get some of Get-Well Kitty's time, but mostly he's waiting for Santa....

Progress!

I spend most my days knitting right now.  This would be a more enjoyable state of affairs if it wasn't because my back is fried, but as weird as it sounds (considering I've spent most of the day laying flat), I think I'm finally on the mend.

What I have is called "sacroiliac joint dysfunction."  I'd provide a link to something helpful if I could, but while it is the first thing I've ever looked up on Web MD that didn't say death was likely or even eminent, I don't recognize anything they describe.  In layman's terms (and thank heavens I was referred to a specialist who speaks Layman fluently), this is the most common cause of back pain for women.  If you look at your pelvic bones (which is sort of impossible, I realize, so maybe visualizing the bones would be better) there's not really anything to hold them in place except muscle.  Because women often have children, our pelvic bones are designed to be more prone to movement.  It makes sense for childbirth, but doesn't always work for the rest of life.  They think that my problem probably dates back to my surgery 3 years ago, because it would be the best chance to have lost my core muscles, which would be the only thing holding my hips where they were supposed to be (which is contrary to the general female opinion that hips are SO wide that NOTHING could change them).  What happens is your pelvic bone (the big plate looking one that you can sort of feel) moves a bit, and your muscles very nicely compensate.  "Want to be here?  Fine!  We'll adjust accordingly," they cry.  Then it moves a bit more, and again--because they are just out to please--your muscles adjust again.  "More turning?  Even better!  We'll make it happen!"  This little routine goes on for a while, until either the turning is caught and stopped (smarter folks than me) or it goes all the way to the point where it can't go any farther, it has now made one leg shorter than the other, the little tiny gap that is supposed to be in your back has been squashed, and you take up fainting (the option I chose) and landing in the ER in crossword puzzle pjs.  For mild cases, there seems to be a belt that can hold your hip in place.  For severe cases, there are scary surgeries.  For people like me in the middle, there is physical therapy.

I landed back in physical therapy this fall because I got my hip twisted back out of place this summer, then with all the stuff with my father and work, I didn't get back to the doctor for help until October.  By then I had managed to irritate the daylights out of my back muscles by exercising them while I was all out of whack.  One of the things the therapist I saw this time has tried to do (besides teach me "moderation"--I love her optimism) is to change some of the exercises to blend them in to real life a bit more for me.  This all makes sense, of course, but at least some of the new exercises seem dependent on me actually practicing moderation.  This of the woman who WALKS so aggressively that I threw out my darn hip walking to my car in the PT office's parking lot.  I try.  I really, honestly try, but if I truly understood "moderation" I wouldn't have 46,000 yards of lace weight yarn in the house.  I think the change she made to one of the exercises would work for most of the population, but my back has been getting more and more sore, which is worrying since there is technically nothing wrong with my back.  It's not my back's fault that it hurts when it gets squashed by my wonky hip.  I think the rest of me would hurt if squashed as well.  But it seems to have reached the end of it's rope last week, when I had done all my other exercises then decided to try the hard one again.  OH MY.  If you haven't experienced it, a back that has finally reached it's limit can swell quite substantially for a spot that looks completely devoid of muscle in the first place.  I'd have almost be impressed if it hadn't hurt so much.

I've been icing my back as much as I can stand, have been resting for several days--and REALLY resting, not just the sort of "not-really-doing-anything-of-the-kind" resting one would expect from me, and the muscles have calmed down a great deal.  In the mean time, I have gone back to the versions of the exercises from last year--just the ones at the very beginning--and have been building up muscle strength slowly and gently.  While it may sound daft to announce that I'm making anything even remotely resembling progress while I'm spending days flat on my back with regular icing events, I really feel like I finally am rebuilding the muscle strength to stabilize my hip and put an end to this once and for all.  And, how could I possibly not be getting better with my get-well kitty in constant attendance?

He makes it a bit hard to knit (or play on the computer but he's very firm about REST.  He's ambivalent about knitting unless he gets to play with the yarn, but there's even been some amazing sock progress:

I had hoped to try pool walking again today, but Theo found my lack of "moderation" completely appalling:

so I decided to wait a few days.  Who am I to question Get Well Kitty?

The Language of Flowers

My book club is currently reading The Language of Flowers.  I've always found it interesting that Victorians used flowers and plants to convey secret messages--or maybe not so secret, depending on who saw your flowers, I suppose.  I'm not very far along in the book because I keep falling asleep while listening to it, but so far I have discovered:

*  Right now one is greeted at our front door by "refusal" and "resentment."  And there I was, just thrilled that some flowers were still alive

* "Innocence" is really prone to aphids

*  We have been overrun by "wisdom" and have been pawning it off on anyone who has come to our house recently

*  I felt stupid enough when I killed off an arborvitae shrub at my old house because they're so low-maintenance. Now that I know it stands for "everlasting friendship," I feel guilty as well

*  I lost "conviction" a few years ago because I forgot to dig it up at the end of summer

*  Our herb bed has been overrun by "suspicion."

*  Bringing someone a green salad might mean you're contributing to dinner OR it can mean "cold hearted." 

*  One probably had to hope that the object of one's message had the same flower dictionary you did.  Basil means "hate" in one, "love" in another--possibly depending on one's personal feelings regarding pesto........

Random Update Thursday

*  When advice differs between last year's physical therapist and this year's, follow the advice that doesn't result in muscle inflammation.

*  It's a bad moment when your cat has been playing with a dead mouse by flinging it up in the air and catching it, and you turn around to find him looking up at the kitchen table.  Even when you know you're about to find a dead mouse on the kitchen table, that still doesn't mean you're prepared for it.

*  Just in case it takes me a while, I have started the January book for book club, The Language of Flowers. Victorians assigned every flower a "message," which is a cool idea, though knowing MY gardening luck, I'm probably about to find out that my front flower bed is shouting obscenities to the neighborhood......

*  Normally, I would be getting stressed about getting gifts mailed off on time right about now, but between knowing most people will understand, some of the gifts won't even generate a thank you note, and the rest are as far behind as I am really takes the pressure off.  

*  Recovering from an injury gives one lots of time to catch up on reading--often making one unable to do much else--but it doesn't work for all types of reading.  I had intended to listen to Little Women, which is one of the classics of literature I've never read, but it's really hard to be in pain, read about a bunch of girls sitting around complaining about not getting Christmas gifts, and thinking of them as anything but annoying whiners.  

The King's Speech

I don't usually do book reviews, but this one I thought was special.

We saw the movie, of course, and I was rather doubtful about the book because
     1. it was written after the movie
     2. it was written by the grandson of the speech coach
     3. it has the idiotic subtitle of "How one man saved the British Monarchy."

Nevertheless, it was a wonderful book.  I borrowed the audio book from the library so I got to hear King George VI's actual speeches, and knowing everything he went through just to give them made them especially touching.  Personally, I think everyone should read this book--not necessarily because it is great literature or that everyone should care about the British Monarchy--but because it is a great portrayal of a man struggling with the most public speech impediment of all time.

Perhaps I identify with him more than most, because I have a slight speech impediment involving the letter "s," and could readily identify with the humiliation he experienced.  I can only imagine what the future king went through before finding Logue because one is always surrounded by the well-meaning but horrible "helpful" people just waiting to correct your speech, showing you how to to it "right" without caring at all if it embarrassed you at all.  Imagine trying to just talk and having people constantly interrupting and pointing out what you're doing wrong--one of the reasons I never correct anyone's grammar or spelling unless they ask.  Nagging might boost the ego of the person doing it, but it doesn't help anyone else, and only makes them self-conscious/angry/hurt or rebellious.  In my case, out of self defense I started avoiding any words likely to be problematic--a habit I continue to this day.  I was fascinated to discover that one of the ways the King and Logue dealt with the speeches and radio broadcasts was to scan the speech ahead of time for similar "problem" areas.  It  reinforced to me that no one ever "cures" a speech problem--one just learns to work with it or around it.   For me, any string of words with too many "s" sounds can be hard, especially if I am tired.  It got better when I got braces because it was partly a tooth alignment issue, but has never truly gone away.  When I worked for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, we were actually supposed to answer the phone as "Cystic Fibrosis Foundation," which I could do early in the day or if there weren't too many phone calls or if I wasn't tired or if I hadn't been speaking a lot already.  But I often resorted to just "CF Foundation," for which I was always yelled at by my supervisor, but since she was pretty much just a viper anyway and would have had something to be mad at, I just let her yell than explain.  One is hardly likely to admit something that makes one self-conscious to someone like that.

One of the reasons I've been thinking about this book since listening to it last month is the "War on Christmas" rhetoric that we go through every year.  Besides there being more than one religion in the world, lots of holidays this time of year, and even the most extreme "Christian" must recognize that there are THREE federal holidays in the span of 6 weeks and that makes "Happy Holidays" far more appropriate simply for the fact of it being plural, "Merry Christmas" is fairly hard for some of us to say.  Not quite as horrific as "Season's Greetings," but the girl going through speech therapy with me who had a MUCH bigger problem than I do, couldn't pronounce the letter "r."  As her family moved away, I have no idea how far she got with her speech therapy, but if she did get it under control, it was with a LOT of hard work, and things like "Happy Holidays" would be a good cover-up for her as well.  So in addition to being just pompous and bigoted, the arrogant souls going around insisting that "Merry Christmas" could be making a lot of people even more self-conscious about what they're already self-conscious about to begin with.

So, with all that said, if I could have my own personal Christmas wishes this year, they would be:

1.  Don't nag anyone about anything.  Nag them to exercise and they won't.  Nag them about their weight and you'll make the problem worse.  Nag them about their speech and you'll make something humiliating even worse.  No one is on this earth to go around "correcting" everyone else, and no one will ever thank you for it.  Just give them kindness.

2.  Don't make assumptions.  People may not be doing things for the reason you think they are doing them.

3.  Be joyous.  If anyone wishes you a happy or merry ANYTHING, take it in good spirit.  I may struggle with "Merry Christmas" at times, but I could say "F--- you" without difficulty.  Accept kindness as it is offered and let it go at that. 
A kind wish in any wording is still a kind wish...........

And Today............

In today's spam filter: 
       a senior citizen dating site
       a viagra ad
       and a life insurance come-on. 

 I think my spam folder has been taken over by the ghost of Anna Nicole Smith.........................