"F" Words...

I'm dogsitting my favorite 12 year old mellow beagle, Rosie, this weekend! She's the best and I love it whenever I can bring her to the Shoebox!

So...it appears that I haven't blogged all week again...week #2 of school hit and it was the usual busy week. I kept thinking, "Was I really BORED 2 weeks ago?!" It's been a week of various "F Words" since Monday...

After Sunday's stellar bike ride, I thought I'd try to repeat the experience on Monday. It was sunny at the Shoebox at 11:00 a.m. when I went out...but by the time I got down to Lake Washington Blvd., I was in cold, socked-in (first "F") fog and was wishing I'd worn my uber-cold weather gear. My extremities were numb/painful and I was having fantasies about hot chocolate, hot coffee, just about anything hot by mile 7. The next F words for this day were frostbite (as in, "I am sure I'm getting it") and the most famous F word that, yes I know, I tend to overuse anyway... By the time I'd looped Mercer Island, I had to stop at the park/bathrooms to get some (next F) feeling back in my (next one) fingers. On the way back over to the Seattle side, though, the F-ing Fog was melting and I warmed up a little in the sun... just in time to get a Flat (next F word) right at the hairpin turns by the Bush School...augh!! At this point, I'd already used up my week's allocation of the usual F word and started paying it forward into next week's usages. I was less than 5 miles from home and just didn't want to deal with it. I tried to buck up and changed the tire once only to have it go "ssssss" as soon as I tried to inflate it (at this point, I'd used all of next month's bank of F word exclamations). At this point, I got out my most favorite trusty tool, my phone (ok, it's a "ph" not an F), and started calling people who could possibly scoop me with a ride home. After a few near-misses, I got a hold of Nancy who promptly dispatched her husband, Harry, to pick me up (thank you, thank you, thank you). My bike hung on the rack with its flat tire till this morning...

Moving on to the school week...the next F word was fascia. We are continuing to learn about superficial and deep fascia and the techniques of myofacial release. Fascia is kind of the saran wrap of muscles and is a webbing that runs throughout the body---the fibrous evidence that everything is interrelated. This technique of MFR has been something very difficult for me to embrace---for the very simple reason that it requires patience and sitting still. It's possible to hold an area of tissue for a really long time (our TA says it's like watching paint dry, totally true) to enable the fascia to "melt," change, and unstick itself...Of course, it's against my nature to wait for anything, especially with movement the speed of a sloth...so experiencing and working on my presencing with it has been pretty powerful for me. And, of course, it's not lost on me that it's a bit of a metaphor for the slowing down/being patient that the universe is suggesting-- via my broken butt muscle--that I do elsewhere in my life. Kind of like fascia, things all over the place seem to be webbed together and related.

Today, I fixed the flat with my last tube and set out for a bike ride again, wearing the proper gear this time. Since I'd blown through at least 3 tubes on Monday's little F-ing episode, I drove my bike to Leschi and re-stocked at Triumph Multisport before the ride. It was definitely brisk, but I had a nice 28 mile ride out-and-back on the long side of Mercer Island.

Later this afternoon, I went back to my trigger point guru, Dale, for a treatment. My butt has been killing me constantly and it was good to have him work on me again...and, of course, he talked with me about how valuable the pain is and yelled to me on my way out the door, "Remember, this pain is a gift..." I'm really really trying to hear that and accept that he's totally right (he's not the first person to suggest this lately), but was leaning more toward using the old F word again...!