Was That Me?

My massage today mellowed me out in a big way. I have various aches and pains and my muscles tend to be tense. On the plus side, except for my gut and girl parts, very little of me jiggles. On the minus side, when my muscles knot up, they do not let go! This massage therapist is great for me. She does a blend of regular ol' massage to start out, which feels nice but is not terribly theraputic, and lots of theraputic stretching of muscles and tendons and what not in my specific problem areas. It turns out that I have more problem areas than I thought.

The shoulder knot that drove me crazy for 3 days last week and then felt bruised but less knotted for 2 days after the massage is doing much, much better. I don't have any instances of trying to pick something up only to drop it when my arm spasms, and sitting in a chair doesn't make me want to scream. But the rest of my neck is tight, which is what drove me into the office for chiropractic in the first place, and I have some scar tissue in my abdomen from a hernia repair that I'd really like to see if I can get it smoothed out and broken up some.

Several years ago, my crunchy-granola neighbor had a car accident and turned to Rolfing to get her body back to normal, and this worked for her. It involves really digging into the muscles to tear them apart a little to allow them to relax and realign. I hear it also sometimes involves screaming in pain. While I really think the deep tissue massage is the way to get at this hernia repair scar, I hadn't found anyone who does a deep enough massage to be effective. I did look into Rolfing in particular, but the 3 practitioners in Boston whom I interviewed were all schkeezy true believers who I didn't want to have touch me even a little. I have tried other massage but until this lady I had kind of given up hope.

So I got my shoulders and hips stretched today, which felt good in a rather painful way. The endorphins from the pain then made me a little stoned which led to an extremely zen evening doing exactly what I should be doing, which is packing for my weekend trip. I can hardly believe it! Usually I'm up 'til 4am the morning of a trip frantically making the hard decisions. Then I have about 2 hours of sleep and leave for the airport and generate all that "I haven't had enough sleep and I'm all stressed out" sweat which mixes with the "crammed in steerage" sweat and really starts a trip off right. But with the exception of a couple details I have to take care of tomorrow, I'm done packing on Wednesday. Before bedtime. For a trip on Friday. I know! I can hardly believe it myself.

It started out innocently enough. I was taking a shower to wash the massage gel off, and starting a load of laundry so I'd be able to wear one of my cute new shirts again. I found myself making a packing list in my head while shampooing. The list started getting long, so after I dried off, I started writing it down. From there it wasn't too hard just to pack, although I did toss on a tie-dyed dress in case I had to walk in front of windows.

I was able to be somewhat detail oriented while waiting on the laundry. I gave a pretty thorough cleaning to my pill container which had turned strange colors. I re-bagged some toiletries that were in some really ratty ziplocs. I dug out the stuff I wanted to return to my mom and squished it in a space bag. I lysoled the luggage and left it in front of the slider to breathe. I made my own gorp from my stash of Trader Joes nuts and dried fruits. I cleaned out my wallet and purse. I confirmed that my emergency credit card is active and found my frequent flyer number. Then I made a mug of Rooibus (red-bush) chai tea from my very last hand packed teabag so I could use the tin to take some tea with me because I really prefer assam tea to orange pekoe, and the tea wasn't getting any younger. And except for the stuff I wrote down to finish tomorrow, I'm done. Weird.

But good weird.

(The not-good weird is that in order to take only a carryon and not get tagged by the TSA, I can't take sunscreen or hand lotion or my first aid kit, and I have to use the contact solution that makes my eyes dry out. I'll be wearing the wonderbra in case I have to smuggle on some extra eye drops that don't fit in my miniscule ziploc. Who thought it was safer to re-bag chemicals in unmarked, non-sterile packaging again? Sorry, rant for another day. Don't want to harsh my mellow.)

Now I have time to drink that cup of tea, re-read some Izzy POV scenes in ITF, think about whether I should take little "nice to see you" gifts along, sleep on the packing job to decide if I need to edit or not, and blog. And get some rest so I don't look worse than the octogenarian and nonagenarian relatives I'll be visiting in southern Illinois. Now to see if I can repeat the miracle next week for my San Fran trip.