Posts Tagged ‘status report’
Sad Reality
Yesterday, when I did the laundry, I was presented with a vivid depiction of a brutal reality I am currently facing. Happily, it wasn’t a decline of my mental balance that was bringing this to my attention.
If you research the word addiction, you can find that it isn’t automatically framed as a negative affliction. For many years I have been playing indoor soccer early in the morning, three days a week. It provides a combination of physical exercise and social camaraderie to which I can admit being addicted. It happens to be one of the primary activities that I undertake to manage ongoing depression without medication. And when I play three times a week, it creates a lot of laundry that needs to be washed on a regular basis. When I picked up the basket of dirty clothes, there was hardly anything within. It being a day of rest from the normal day-job work week, I had enough free time to pick up around the house. One area that was long overdue for attention was my mystery pile of clothes that have collected from the returning clean laundry and the things I’ve worn recently, but don’t require washing. There I found stacks of the shirts, socks and shorts that I wear for morning soccer. With a heavy heart, I put it all away for now, wondering how long it might be until I can return to my favorite pastime.
In two more days, it will be two weeks since I injured my hamstring. The first weekend after the injury was really promising and I had high hopes that the damage was minor and that I might not have far to go to rehabilitate it. But for the last week, I have suffered a confusing series of signals leaving me unclear about what’s going on. Part of what happens is I detect discomfort from other areas that are either referred pain, or irritation from ways I move in compensation, or a result of my icing and compression regimen. I’ve done some research and am encouraged over recommendations for massage to speed recovery and allow correct fibre realignment and minimize scar tissue. I was under the impression that massage should wait until later, but I would like to begin as soon as is safe. I will now set my mind to working a routine of stretching and strength building within the limits of pain-free range.
Unfortunately, it is a far cry from the fun and fellowship of which I am being deprived.
Speaking of Punishment
Well, well, well. I’m enduring ongoing punishment here. It seems that for some strange reason, one of the muscles in my leg wasn’t up to full speed soccer yesterday morning, after 5 days straight of the intense stress of shoveling. Looks like I’m out of athletic activity for about 6 weeks. Could the fatigue from shoveling, and my injury playing soccer, be related?
I take it as a sign of progress that neither of my calf muscles failed me. No, this time it was a hamstring. Or, more precisely, the biceps femoris long head. I felt the “pop” on the back of my leg, just above the knee, the same as it feels to get hit by a raquetball. I have never injured a hamstring to this degree before, and never down near the knee. I didn’t know what to think. I hopped off the court, afraid to put any weight on it, and began to assess what the heck I had just done. It felt like, if I moved at all, it would cramp up. Eventually, with the encouragement of my soccer mates, I determined I could move the knee joint fully and stand to put weight on the leg without specific pain. The pain is when I try to move in any way that requires strength from that muscle. It is a soft-tissue injury that will get ice, rest, compression, and elevation for treatment. And long term, it will get massage to break up any scar tissue that forms. I learned about the benefits of that the hard way, with my calf.
All I needed to do was drive home from the club. Then I remembered I drive a manual transmission vehicle. Working that clutch is a real treat with a muscle injury. I figured I could take it slow and do as little shifting as possible. As if the driving situations are going to be sensitive to my plight. I felt like such an invalid, trying to maneuver this car with my injury, and I wanted everyone in the vicinity to realize that I was injured and might need an allowance to navigate home safely. From outside my vehicle, I looked perfectly capable to others. It struck me that the normal reaction I have to other vehicles I see every day is that the drivers would be fully prepared and equipped to drive. Why would I consider it to be any other way?
Well, now I’m here to report that I have a new insight. Even though a vehicle might look just fine, the driver could be on their way home from injuring themselves while playing sports and deserve a little extra patience. For every car we have to deal with in the rush hour on the way to or from work, which we assume is being driven by someone just as capable and aware as ourselves, we could actually have someone who just learned some terrible news, or were just involved in an intense argument with someone they love, causing them to experience a psychological injury, or even recently suffered a physical injury, and now they must try to get themselves home or somewhere safe or where they can get help. Don’t just assume people driving around you aren’t dealing with some dramatic problem of their own, just because you can’t see it.
Of course, it is still equally possible that they are driving erratically because they are eating while texting as they read the paper and fiddle with the radio. You may still be inclined to curse them, but keep in mind that other possibility as you lay on the horn to let them know of your dissatisfaction with their driving performance.
Getting Closer
photo by Mike Wilkus
Favorite Place
It has been a long time since we visited my favorite place. Last night’s drive up was highlighted by a stop at The Old Log Cabin Restaurant & Bar just outside Forest Lake, a hoppin’ place that we have driven past for decades and never stopped. It always enticed us as a place we would like to stop, but it is located at just the wrong distance between our departure and our destination. Usually, on the way out of town we had just gotten started and didn’t want to stop, or on the way home, we were getting close enough that we just want to get there. Since it always appeared to be busy, we figured it was a worth a visit, but it would likely involve a wait and that was a big problem related to the above ‘wrong distance’ reasons. Last night it was just the right time to finally try and we lucked out finding a spot to eat in the bar so, no waiting! It lived up to all our visions of what we anticipated it might be like.
There is plenty of snow up here, but it appears to be mostly old snow with maybe a small coating to keep it looking white. We’ll get out and investigate after breakfast and of course, I’ll let you know what we find…
photo by Mike Wilkus
Plans Afoot
How about a little status report? There are a variety of plans in the works. The closest one to happening is a little weekend trip to Chicago in a couple of days for Cyndie and me and 4 friends. We purchased tickets to Second City comedy theater and may connect with Julian on Sunday to watch the Vikings game at a sports bar. That adventure will come and go in a blink. But there’s more.
February brings the return of a winter tradition for the extended Hays family where we gather for a weekend at the wonderful vacation getaway of Cyndie’s family in Hayward, Wisconsin. It just may be my first opportunity to test the new mechanism I received to help in building an igloo. It will also be a weekend of eating, laughing and gaming in the warmth of a wood fire with siblings and cousins, both young and old. But the best is yet to come.
Many people have been asking me what my next big travel adventure is going to be since the trek in the Himalayas is behind me. I haven’t had any plans to answer with, until now. Cyndie and I have decided to take some time off work and travel to Portugal next fall to visit a friend and his family on their farm. This is someone I have not met in person before. We are both members of the same online virtual community and first discovered each other in a discussion about trees. We both have a passion for planting trees. Over the years we have communicated often and developed a bond that computer communication allows people to achieve, regardless the thousands of miles that separate them.
Prior to that, I intend to participate in my usual June event that I’ve done most of the past 16 years, the annual Jaunt with Jim week of biking along with my sister and about 150 of our closest friends.
All of it becomes fodder for stories to be told and pictures to share, so there is hope for new and interesting posts here that I expect might fit the pattern of being relative to something for you loyal readers. I’ll see what I can do to capture it for you. Thanks for tuning in!
Status Report
This new blog venture, Relative Something, is 10 days old now and beginning to become a bit more organized. I’ve yet to master all the settings and customizations available to me, but it is far enough along that I have begun to invite a wide range of people who I hope will appreciate discovering this place to read about the things they hear in passing of my various adventures and stories.
In update to some of the previous posts, I will report that my concern over medication side effects proved to be unnecessary and, in fact, that a fair amount may well have been psychosomatic. However, the cold appears to be the real deal. Maybe I’ll be lucky and build up antibodies right before my trip. And regarding one item I haven’t written about here yet, I continue to seek therapeutic sports massage to break up scar tissue in my calf muscles. It appears to be making gains, and if it weren’t for the pending trek, I would have returned to playing soccer a week or two ago already. Just playin’ it real safe right now.
Departure for the trek in the Himalayas is set for April 2nd. So, I have one weekend left before I go. I’m debating in my mind about the best way to use this last weekend. Part of me really wants to linger long in my bed and power-lounge the time away while I still can, but there is plenty to tend to and time should probably not be wasted in such a way.
Speaking of ‘time’, which appears to be on my mind lately –if you’ve read the previous posts– I am wondering about bringing a watch on the trek. For most of my adult life, I have worn a wrist watch. I’ve found myself re-examining some of my former habits and patterns, ever since my life was tossed into turmoil by a break-in to my car where my briefcase containing pretty much everything that you don’t want stolen, in terms of finance, personal identity, and iPods, was taken and fraudulently used and abused back in January of 2008. One of those patterns that has changed was the wrist watch. First, I practiced going without it during vacation time. Eventually, I quit wearing it altogether. However, I have had a cell phone to rely on if I really need to know the time. I will not be bringing my cell phone on the trek. I’m thinking I may tuck a watch into my pack somewhere, just to have the option.
And since this is a status report, I will take advantage of this venue to report that regarding the aforementioned criminal activity of which I was victim, one of the persons identified as attempting to use a stolen credit card of mine has been arrested, tried, and convicted of that crime, among many other related counts. He is serving time and is technically now working for me as one of the judgments passed was that he needed to pay his victims back from his prison wages. I’m not holding my breath (I can’t afford to be cavalier with my breath at this point) to see any payment; I am a ways down the list of his victims.
Relative Something 