Be the change you want to see.

This one reminded me, that if you go outside in the sunshine, sometimes life doesn't suck quite as bad as it did. So I went outside in the sunshine, and I was straightening up my winter holiday decorations. I still need to hang ornaments on them. And I did start to feel better.

Next goal: Get yourself some water you beautiful and capable but dehydrated bitch...

I am a day and a half off my 52nd birthday, and I'm just come home from a delightful evening dancing with five, or six other friends and new friends.

I keep receiving the same message and tonight was just the most recent. The message is move first. Then your brain will catch up. Do the thing first. Okay! Tonight I did the thing.

I listened to new music on the way out to my friend Michal's dance event, and the delightful part is that she actually hosted an angel wash, which is what my old dance teacher used to call hey it's your birthday, happy birthday to you.
...Just kidding! It's really this incredible meditative emotional opportunity for your friends to show you that they love you and want you to be happy.

Angel wash is something that happens once a month in the dance community I've been part of for years, the dance community that dissolved shortly after shelter in place started. It used to be if it was your birthday month, the last dance event of that month would include a dedicated space, for allowing the birthday people to receive loving touch from their community. And it's been 2 years for me, participating OR receiving.. I am not ashamed to tell you that I cried. I needed to cry but even so. We had two other birthday month people, so I got to do the angel wash also! Offering loving touch feels good in a different way, but I love doing both when I have explicit permission.

I needed to move so that the feelings would move and I needed to dance so that my body would have the chance to break down some of the things that are holding me back.

Sometimes taking the action needs to come first, a leap of faith if you will, trusting that the universe will catch you. That might be the case!

When I physically move it fixes some things in my body. Sometimes it's short-term fixed sometimes it's a long-term effects. Tonight it's a short-term fix, my hip is already tight and tender again and that makes me sad cuz it's sign that I'm getting older. But getting older is still better than the alternative so.

Update from the morning: I drank wine last night with my post dance snack (I made on fries potatoes!) And that plus a little acetaminophen meant I guess that I woke up with mild pain of exertion but no joint pain !! Yay!!

And then Jeff was out in the very hot hot tub and I joined him and stretched and gosh that felt good and right now I don't have pain, it's 5 to 11 and my tea is brewing (a chai blend my sister and niece got me) and I need to eat something.

It's a good last day of my 52nd year. Looking forward to starting 53 tomorrow

Gonna go visit family and a few friends this week in Sacramento.
All summer for whatever reason my anxiety flared hard whenever I thought about going to Sacramento in the heat, and I couldn't make myself go.

But it's November and should be nice, temperate.
Birthday month for me, my sister, my niece. I was last up in May, and that was the first visit in like 20 months because pandemic!

I'm feeling decently balanced, emotionally, right now, and like I'll be fine without my emotional support husband. :)

(I do think that I'm going to pack my own pillow from home to sleep at mom's because her house always has Unexpected Dust and my allergies kick my ass for a long time.

Packing list:
* The usual clothes and toiletries (ALLERGY and regular MEDS)
* At least 3 fabric masks
* Charger collection for phone, laptop and hearing aids
* Laptop/sketchbook bag, daily planner/address book
* PILLOW
* Mom's stuff that I meant to mail to her and never did
* Birthday present for my niece
* Some fresh figs off our tree to eat at mom's.

Altogether I feel like I'm traveling pretty light

N bought a house just about as the pandemic started. A gorgeous, expensive, historical house, I've just realized, a house that can authentically be called a proper mansion.

Oh my God. Holy forking shirtballs. Fuck the fuck off outta here then do that again.

It's completely insane, totally nutburgers, there's 7 people living there and it's so giant they're RATTLING AROUND IN THE PLACE OH MY FUCKING GOD.

AND this place is a hundred years old, and in damn good repair, and I'm just completely gobsmacked.

And we had noodle soup for dinner, and a mini fashion show of k's Halloween costume possibilities... And it was gorgeous and surreal and I got SO MUCH DOPAMINE TONIGHT. great chat, insane house holy shit.

That's all I've got for this instant, just HOLY SHIT.

So I think this is depression again. As the change of the year, as the days get shorter, darker, colder.
But I think I've been struggling with this for a long time. Since I lost the teaching job, since I lost daily contact with hundreds of people who were enthusiastic and interesting and various ways. I can go days now where I only see Jeff. And I don't seem to have the energy to dig myself out and go solicit company.

Tonight I am tired and sleepy, I got a short weekend of sleep because we went camping and the first night was also the last night, because it was too cold. Because it was October already, maybe we should have realized. It was still fun but the sleep deficit is real.

The anhedonia is real also. Everything seems sort of numb and wrapped in cotton wool. All I do is read, it feels like. Even when I have things that would connect me to other people, I can't make myself do it. I'm made an appointment to see the therapist, hopefully talking to Lara will un snarl some things.

Just a minute ago I got ambushed by some brain weasels. And they were trying to tell me that I am a bad human being and I am an awful friend. So I let them try what they were doing for a couple minutes, and then I went to unpack the dishwasher. Putting things in order is one of the ways that I manage when my brain is giving me toxic messages.

So I was starting to feel better, and was going to come here to write about the moment, and a friend of mine, Jay, talked about how starting their ADHD medication, is helping them at work but is, they're feeling some feelings about it, about noticing that they think differently and don't have their silly, fun, side thoughts while medicated. So we're currently chatting about that. And that puts paid to the brain weasels. When person reaches out, and we have a conversation. And the brain weasels have been proven wrong.

Next thing I need to do is get cleaned up and my hair combed and washed and get dressed and accomplish a couple more things around the house, maybe finish some more of that dragon art I've been working on. I have a cute little design for a dragon baby that's sleeping, it's going to be a gift for my friends Sean and Julia.

Ok my back/hip/si joint was painful enough that I finally booked with my chiropractor, Larry, last Monday, a week ago today.
It took a longer than usual session because it's been about two years and a stressful election and an attempted coup and a deadly global pandemic since I saw him last...

But the ribs have expanded. Breathing is easier, I think. I've been doing zipper cracks of my lower spine, and the general body Bain has been much better.

I actually posted to FB something about the crazy endorphins I was high on, immediately post session. (Awesome.

But then this weekend my LEFT hip and si joint were excruciating the way the right had been, before the adjustment. And I just figured, maybe this was related to how my left side was a couple inches higher when I sit with that leg up in figure 4.

More compensating. But it was bad. Like any kind of rotation of that hip, especially load bearing: turn it pivot on that leg in the kitchen? OUCH!

And huh now I remember I had a hip-flexor or lower belly cramp and release while Jeff and I were in Mendocino last week... And generally moments like that have led to range of motion increase, and decreased pain...

But last night it was bad enough that I was fidgeting lots, trying to see if I could find the right stretch to release the pain. And then I dig out the flexiril and took one with the bedtime meds. That does tend to work well for me.

Sweet sleep that knits the ravelled sleeve of care, or something... 😉

Then this morning as I started to wake up and do the morning stretches, I felt something small go *poink* deep in my hip socket as something shifted. A tendon, maybe, I'm never exactly sure.

But when my muscles are strong and soft and limber, good things happen.

It's taken several major steps to get where I am after the injuries to my knee. Double sprai, one year apart (1997&1998). Then the actual ACL tear in 2007, and then finally surgery in November of 2011.

The body does amazing things to hold us together and let us function, when we're injured. That functionality often comes with a hefty cost of pain.

The first real relief came post knee surgery. My toes uncurled. My back and hip heaved a sigh of relief. I cried. I cried kind of a lot.

Other moments of pain and release have come at other logical times. Well. Logical in retrospect. One massive spasm and release came halfway through a weekend dance workshop in San Rafael, something like five years ago. I was sitting on the toilet 🚽 during the break and my hip flexor SEIZED. Holy Mary Mother of God, that hurt. The other dancers were asking was I okay and I was just cussing and saying that it was a muscle spasms. Which it was. I went back to the dance floor once it resolved itself, tenderly testing for pain and range of motion, and DAMN if I couldn't do several things more easily and with almost zero pain than I had, only an hour before the cramp....

And I have had multiple other breakthroughs of a similar type. Late last week, on our Mendocino trip, I'm realizing that I had almost the exact spasm, sitting in the car, as the San Rafael dance workshop spasm, after two days of gentle hiking 🥾...

I have a theory that my body holds onto tension until I prove that I can be trusted to work the support muscles appropriately, and enough to support the joint... And then the muscle agrees to let go of its death grip clench. Which got us by well enough for years, you know.

But the chiropractor, the hot 🛁 bathtub, the gentle movement, have worked to convince my LEFT hip that it could finally let go after... After many years.

Blessed be the body, and the bodymind as well. I'm grateful for my healers, my team.

And I'm grateful for my trust of myself, my hard won trust of my own body.

Thank goodness for the Age of Information, where I can look up anatomy details without going to the library and paging through huge tomes. If I want to learn about the psoas or the piriformis, I can just *click* *search* 🔍 *sort* *find* *read*.

Okay. Less sitting today, more gentle movement.

Like in finding Nemo? Dory was right.
You've got to just keep swimming swimming swimming...
:)

My leg and hip are hurting a lot less. I think Etty and I are successfully digging into the tight/locked up/atrophied muscles that have been causing me such pain over the last several months. Hip rotational work is good, feels good, and I can feel things releasing bit by bit.

Thank fuck she's patient and gentle, because I still struggle to hold those concepts in mind (and body) simultaneously with "working out". And "me".

She's teaching me to be gentle to myself the way that my cat (who is sometimes a very bitey little calico) has taught me how to be gentle to other people (and critters.)

Slow. Steady. Regular.

And the body is changing.

We're not where we were, my body and me. But nobody's is. We're all figuring out how to care for ourselves and each other in a world 🌍 where Covid is A THING, and it's still causing fear and damage... And I have folks who care. And I care about myself.

A little bit every day. Just a bit. And I can build my wind back by my next birthday (November) because I do well with long distance goals, and I can do a little bit every day that hurts in the good way. Gods know nobody is going to do that FOR me.

Okay. I'm feeling good.

(I learned this week that I'm in menopause. 71 on the FSH blood test. And I'm feeling like, an unchained self, beneath some piles of old chains that I've been moving off me for DECADES. I have other feelings, not yet fully identified yet.)

Last night we had dinner at friend's house and they have a saltwater pool (it's very luxe, DO RECOMMEND)

ALSO they have a jacuzzi with jets strong enough to do authentic massage.

It was my first time in a pool in over 2 years I think.

Took a leisurely swim and float, looking up at the stars, chatting with L, one of the daughters of the family, and then I did oopsy daisy over into the Jacuzzi from the pool and had the jets absolutely POUND my sore places in back and hips.

Today, the world is beautiful, and nothing hurts.

Just as I was posting the previous, Jeff came to find me and ask if I wanted to be a third person to play a game called Wizards. So I spent the last half hour of Gem's visit learning a new game with them.

Disappointment mitigated somewhat, as the game and social time were fun. IDK when I'll get another time to have the house to myself though, I do want to have a me-date soon, before the hormone cycle tips again and has me uninterested in sexy times.

Time to get out the calendar with the spouse and the new sweetie and find a good time this next week!