Clenched Up

I'm back from meeting up with friends in San Fransisco and am downloading pictures so I can write up a nice blog. I also have plans to review ITF a bit. But those are big things and right now I'm just dealing with daily life. Which is ok, but I've been tired. And sore. And being sore interferes with my sleep which makes me tired. It's a place I've been in before, but I'm using different tools on it now.

One of these tools is massage. I've been trying for years to find someone who can give me a theraputic massage, Rolfing style, without being a hardcore true believer and my new masseuse fits the bill. I doubled up today for the first time, going for an hour, and she hit every painful thing in my body. My neck and shoulders are feeling better after her ministrations, but my feet still hurt 3 years after the fasciitis made its debut, and almost 2 years after I figured out that orthotics really do help and actively started treating it. My feet probably still hurt because having my leg tendons, which connect to my feet, poked at made me lever up off the table. And I still have to be able to tolerate her poking at my hernia scar ridge. But mostly, I think it's the tendons.

As near as I can tell, every tendon I own is tight as a tick. The tendons in my legs are tight and painful. The tendons in my feet are tight and painful. The tendons in my neck are tight and painful. The tendons in my shoulders are tight and painful. The tendons in my wrists and hands are tight and painful. I have a feeling that if I can change my body chemistry somehow to relax the tendons, a lot of my current issues will recede. Especially since I'm "perfectly" healthy but for a deformed aorta and an inability to sleep restfully or walk barefoot.

I might also wind up with a CPAP except I get apnea when sleeping on my back and I don't usually sleep on my back, so it may or may not be useful. If anyone out there knows how to combat "Alpha-Delta" sleep so it goes away and I get regular sleep, sing out. Don't worry if it's not good enough for anyone else to hear; I'm looking for any nutjob idea that I can try out. I've tried out most of the non-nutjob ideas with varying degrees of failure so I'm past being picky.

Or if there's a magic superhero potion that would turn me into Stretch Armstrong, that would work too. I bought a ring in San Fran that seemed to be modeled after S-man's Fortress of Solitude, but so far it has conveyed no magical powers.

And still, there are good things happening.

• Trader Joes sells a fantastic house brand French Vanilla ice cream that goes great with the frozen black raspberries they also sell.
• I got to see my former college roommate in San Fran after she'd dropped off the grid for a while. And she still swears like a sailor.
• The date was actually anxious to see me when I got back.
• I was able to use some expertise (in PROMIS, shudder) to help train some people at work so they could function better at their jobs.
  
• There is a giant otter statue in Fergus Falls, MN. One of my best friends as a child had grandparents from FF, and I remember arguing with her that "pertner" wasn't really a word. These days, I'd still argue that a contraction of "pretty near" still sounds off, but I wouldn't forbid her from using it. Like "She pertner did a back walkover until her hand slipped on the grass." We used to do gymnastics on the lawn together. She never told me about the otter.