Zumba! & Front Row Divas

Two weeks ago, I went to my first Zumba class. My friend Jeanette teaches Zumba, so I asked her which class I should take. She recommended a class with Daren at Community Fitness on Roosevelt. She said he is upbeat yet his classes are relatively low impact, which is exactly what I wanted for my first class after recovering from my ACL tear and surgery last year.

Aerobic classes used to be my main form of exercise before I had kids. After Claire Adele was born, I took an aerobics class three times a week. Once the Boy was born, I had a hard time squeezing in classes so I would ride my bike instead. Once in a while, I'd take a ballet or tap class, but those only lasted for a few weeks.

Since I've torn my ACL, I've wanted to take an aerobics class. I was worried that I wouldn't be agile enough. A few months ago, Jason gave me some agility exercises, and I felt great. I was slow, the exercises loosened up my knee.

The challenge of an exercise class is that there are other people in it. With all of my cardio machine exercises, I could go at my own pace and stop when I wanted to. I could do that in a group class, but that is not the point of a group exercise class. The point of a group exercise class is peer pressure: everyone keeps going even though they are tired and sweaty. Everyone else is doing it! You can do it, too!

My knee was still kind of stiff and I didn't want to be the one person two steps behind for the whole class. Again, peer pressure. I didn't want to be the one person off from the rest of the group. The steps are relatively simple and repeated often. Most people should be able to keep up. If not, go back to the cardio room where you can watch television while you exercise!

But hey ho! I did it! I took Daren's class and it was great. (I took two classes a week apart just to make sure the first one wasn't a fluke.) Zumba is just like old-fashioned aerobics from the 1980's, 1990's, and 2000's, but they changed the music to Latin Dance, added a few hip and shoulder shakes, and gave it a new name.

The women in the class seemed to welcome all types and abilities. There was a wide range of ages, from mid-thirties to a woman who had to be at least seventy. None of the women in the class were worried about my performance. They were either too tired and sweaty to notice, or they were too busy trying to keep up with steps. Or, if they were like me, they were having a Walter Mitty hour of pretending they were in a nightclub in a tropical city dancing the night away, not in the middle of soggy Seattle before lunch. How come we all showed up wearing exercise clothes and not slinky dresses and heels? Why teach the class at noon and not ten at night? Where was the bar? Shouldn't we be tossing back sangria and not Nuun water? Seriously, someone needs to rethink this. Regardless of my new ideas of how to exercise, I checked off another goal for my ACL recovery: dancing. Yay! It took longer than I would have liked, but I made it.

After the first class, Jeannette and I talked with a few other women after the first class and I heard a term I never heard before: front row divas. Those are the women who know all the moves, know how to dance, and show off by staying in the front row. How come I've never heard this term before when I've taken a million aerobics classes before? Front row divas can't be exclusive to Zumba, can they?

I didn't stand in the front row for the first or second classes. I stood in the second row. I had always thought the I liked to stay near the front so I could see the instructor better, right? There was no way I was going to stand in the back row. There was no point in that. Then it occurred to me: I had been a front row diva in my former lives, back at Lakeshore Athletic Club, at the YMCA in St. Louis. I wasn't intentionally a diva but I stood in the front so I wouldn't be distracted by people who were two steps behind, who couldn't keep up with the simple choreography. I wanted a clear shot of myself in the mirror so I could see if I was doing the steps right. Did that make me a diva? Yes, yes it did.

I am not a diva in other areas of my life, at least I don't think so. Yet, my dancing "divaness" prevented me from going to the class earlier, until I knew I had a 98% chance of keeping up. I needed to stand that in the middle of class, hold my own and not hold anyone back. Would it have been better if my ego didn't get in the way, if I didn't care if I was two steps behind or moved like Frankenstein? Probably. But then I wouldn't be a diva.

Chocolate Cake and the Big Dance

I am watching the Northwestern vs. Vanderbilt NCCA basketball tournament game. There are 6:40 minutes left in the second half. This game will probably end before I finish writing this post. The score is 48-55. I missed the first half (not that I mind) because I was at lunch with a friend. I know this woman through mutual friends, and we are looking for a job together. We discussed all of the horrible shit that ever happened to us. It was one of those lunches.

I normally don't watch television during the day because it makes me suicidal, but this is the first year the Wildcats made it to the Big Dance and the television stations need to broadcast thirty-two games in three days, so the Cats get the Thursday afternoon slot. They are the last major conference team to make it. Their drought isn't as long as the Cubs winning the World Series, but still, this is a big deal. When I was a freshman, I was at the game where NU beat Bobby Knight's Hoosiers.

I tried to find friends to watch the game with, but everyone had to work or had other obligations. A group of NU Alums is meeting at a Bell Town bar, but I already had plans to meet this friend for lunch. I also didn't want to drink during the day, and I'd be more than tempted to have a Manny's or two while watching the game. Or maybe a Goose Island IPA in honor of Chicago.

Instead, I am sitting at home with Fox. Instead of drinking beer, I am eating microwave chocolate cake in a mug with espresso ice cream. The Boy and the Girlfriend re-introduced microwave mug cakes into our home. Claire Adele ate them before, but I never had one. The Boy made me one the other night from the first recipe he found on Google, and now I am addicted. It is probably worse for me to eat sugar in the middle of the day than to drink beer, as sugar will make me want to take a nap. Beer will give me a hangover around eight o'clock tonight, and I don't want that, either.

Yes! Vandy just missed a free throw. Less than two minutes left and a two-point game with NU in the lead. Argh. Now Vandy is in the lead. Doug Collins might have a heart attack watching his son coach. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is also going to have a heart attack.

Did I mention it is sunny in Seattle today? For the first time in months and I am inside, eating chocolate cake and watching television? I feel like I need to watch the game. What if they don't make it again for another 78 years or whatever? I'll be dead by then.

More about microwave cake. When I was a kid, my friend Missy's family had a microwave way before anyone else did. Her mom worked, and Julie, Missy, Vicki and I would try to bake stuff in the microwave when her parents weren't home. We would melt chocolate chips with stuff like peanut butter. We were like alchemists trying to make dessert instead of gold, but we never made anything worth eating. If I had a time machine, I would use my one trip to go back and visit the three of us and hand them a recipe for microwave cake. Our minds would have been blown, and I would have been the coolest adult they ever met. It is very easy -- three tablespoons of flour, sugar, milk, and vegetable oil, plus two tablespoons of cocoa powder, 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder, a pinch of salt and a splash of vanilla. Mix and bake

WOOHOO!!! Cats win!!

Bake for 90 seconds in the microwave. Cool for two minutes. Top with ice cream. Check the Food Network website for the recipe and complete instructions. I might have made a typo while watching the last two minutes of the game. There are dozens of recipes for this type of thing online.

Oh, God. The Cats have to play Gonzaga next, a number 1 seed. Oy. For the next game, I might need to make a chocolate microwave cake soaked in Bailey's.

My Left Knee: Prologue

Hello readers: I am creating a book about recovering from my ACL injury. Here is the a draft of the prologue to the book. -- Lauren

* * * * * 

It is not like my heart was broken—literally or metaphorically—but still this was tough. It wasn’t a permanent injury, either: people heal from torn ACLs all of the time. I wasn’t examining my mortality like I would with a cancer diagnosis, but I was contemplating how my lack of mobility impacted my ability to function. I felt like I had to put my brain on hold for months while I took care of my body. It was a challenge.

My initial injury from a skiing accident was bad enough that I couldn’t walk for almost a month without crutches, a knee brace, or both. After the surgery to repair my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL)—the short ligament that connects the kneecap to the thigh bone, I was back in the brace and on crutches for weeks. Even after I could technically “walk,” I wasn’t very good at it. My gait was off, I was incredibly slow, and I couldn’t walk very far without my leg revolting, begging me to slow down or stop. The trivia of my old life—making breakfast, walking down stairs, and bathing—suddenly became the main event. After my injury and during my recovery, I saw life through the eyes of a person with a disability. For months, my biggest worry was if I could cross the street before the traffic light changed. At times, it seemed like I would never get better, but I did.

This is a survival story of sorts. Unlike Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, I didn’t go to faraway lands for my uncomfortable journey. I mostly stayed on my couch icing and elevating my leg when I wasn’t at the gym. My enemy wasn’t an Orc, but my own body. Unlike Sir Ernest Shackleton combating the Antarctic Ocean, my hostile environment was my home. The twenty-three steps to my house were like icebergs crashing into my vessel, making it both dangerous and onerous for me to leave my house.

There are worse things that can happen to people other than not being able to move, and yet for me, there was something primally disturbing about it. In modern times, we have wheelchairs, ramps and the American with Disabilities Act (ADA). I don’t need to outrun a bear or lion or chase prey for dinner, but what if a fire broke out in my home or there was a mass shooting in a shopping mall: how would I escape? How could I dodge a car backing out in a parking lot if I couldn’t run? As long as I had limited mobility, I felt mildly unsafe, and that was not a comfortable feeling.

The month before my skiing crash, I ran for school board and lost after a year of campaigning. Every day during the campaign, my calendar was full. When I hurt my knee, I was in a post-election lull with very little to do. After I hurt my knee, I had even less to do, which I was surprised was possible. Countless people who struggle with the inability to move lead interesting and productive lives. I was not one of them. Two major unpleasant and unexpected side effects of my injury were isolation and boredom.

Before I had my skiing crash, I had imagined that life with an injury or major illness would be a time to slow down from day-to-day stress, ponder what is important in life, read great books, watch great movies, and find inner peace. If I couldn’t find inner peace, then it would be time to be pampered like a princess. When I was in elementary school, friends of mine were lucky enough to break bones, have their tonsils out or get the chicken pox. I had none of those experiences. Dee Dee had a party when she broke her arm. She sat on the couch wrapped in an afghan while we sat around her in a circle and gave her presents. When Lisa had her tonsils out, she got ice cream every meal and got to miss a week of school. While I knew it wasn’t all fun to be sick, there was certainly an upside.

I should have known better. As a parent, I know that when a child is ill, parents do everything possible to make their child comfortable and/or distracted. Instead of this being a time of ease and introspection, I was learning to walk, ride a bike, climb stairs, hop, jump, swim, and run. W. Timothy Gallwey writes in The Inner Game of Tennis about Self 1, the talking and thinking part of our minds, and Self 2, the muscle memory “doing” part of our minds. All of the actions and activities with my legs that used to be automatic now needed to be relearned. My Self 1 had to step in and guide the way because the muscles that Self 2 relied on stopped working.

Unlike the flu where you lie in bed until you feel better, I had to work to get better. My new job was to rehabilitate my knee with the help of the University of Washington’s Sports Medicine Clinic. Getting better involved twice a week physical therapy appointments plus an hour or more of exercises every day. Their goal was to return me to sport, in my case, skiing. My goal was to move without limitations. If I wanted to ski, I could ski. If I wanted to dance, I could dance. If I wanted to play tennis, hike, climb stairs or walk my dog, I could play tennis, hike, climb stairs and walk my dog. I didn’t think this was too much to ask. I was forty-six at the time—too young to permanently assign myself to be a spectator and not a participant.

You might be reading this book because you tore your ACL, or maybe your spouse or child did. Perhaps you are a physical therapist who wants to know more about your patients’ life outside of your office. My experience may be different than yours. I am a middle-aged woman with two teenage kids and aging parents. I am married to a doctor, but I am not a doctor, a nurse or anything related to medicine. You might be a young athlete or an old couch potato. You might be curious to read this book to compare your experience to mine. In some areas, I was better than average. In others, worse.

Please note that the research-based protocols and milestones may have changed since the time this was written. For example, a few years before my surgery, continuous motion machines were in vogue. Now they are not. Treatments evolve, and sometimes you will get caught in the middle of those changes. While I can’t imagine what your experience will be like, I can say ice became my new best friend during my recovery. I don’t think human anatomy will evolve that much in a few years such that ice won’t be an effective way to reduce swelling.

I have several friends who tore their ACLs before I did. I didn’t pay attention to what was going on with them before or after their surgeries, probably because they didn’t leave their homes for a few months. After I had torn my ACL, I asked them tons of questions about the recovery process. They all had massive amnesia.

“When did you get out of the brace?” I had asked Michelle before I had my surgery.

“I think it was around a month or so. Maybe six weeks. Maybe eight. I don’t remember,” she said. She didn’t understand this was the most urgent question I had.

“When were you able to walk again without crutches?” I’d ask Greta.

“Ahhh….” She couldn’t remember.

I wanted answers and information on what it was like and how they survived. They were not helpful.

My physical therapist, Evan, was also not forthcoming with information. He is a one-day-at-a-time guy, giving me information on a need-to-know basis, whereas I wanted to know everything I was going to go through in the next year right now.

This book started out as a blog where I would track the ups and downs of my recovery. I figured out that I, too, would have massive amnesia. Amnesia can be a good thing—it helps you to forget your misery so you can move on. I didn’t want to forget, so I wrote everything down. I wanted to look back and remember and say, “Look how far I’ve come!”

This book isn’t about how I found spiritual enlightenment through an injury. I was too focused on survival to achieve self-actualization. It is about how I embraced reading People magazine on the exercise bike at the gym and watching television during the day while doing leg lifts. My saving grace wasn’t an appreciation of how much my health and family meant to me. My salvation came from the endorphins I got from forty-five minutes of cardiovascular exercise every day.

As a lapsed Catholic, I welcomed the suffering. These were my forty days in the desert, minus the crucifixion at the end. Suffering gave me the motivation to do my exercises so I could escape the miserableness of limited mobility.

The ups and downs of healing were real, and a continuous part of the process. I remember years ago riding my bike on the Tour of the Mississippi River Valley, (a.k.a. The TOMRV). The ride from Davenport to Dubuque, Iowa and back had one stretch of fifteen miles of roller hills. I call them roller hills because riding them was like riding a roller coaster. I would pedal downhill as hard as I could in my highest gears, and the momentum and speed would lift me up over the next hill. This repeated itself again and again for miles. It was exhilarating. This reminded me of my recovery minus the speed, momentum, and exhilaration. As soon as I made it over one hurdle in my recovery, I would be so pleased with myself. Then I would meet the next hill and start a new climb. Before I went into surgery, my dad told me, “It is all uphill from here. But when you get to the top, you will be in really great shape.”

I hope you find this book helpful on your path to recovery. Heal well!

It's a Miracle?

I talked to my dad this weekend and got an update on my mom. He decided not to tell me right away with the good news--he wanted to see if it stuck before he got his hopes up. My mother--who has Alzheimer's and has been chair bound and mute for the last nine months--is walking, talking and feeding herself.

It is kind of unbelievable. That is not to say that I don't believe it or think it isn't true. I believe she is walking, talking and feeding herself. I don't believe her Alzheimer's is receding, though. I think something else is going on.

Many months ago (I don't remember when), the staff at Danbury found my mother one morning in a different state.

"What has different about her?" my dad had asked Deena, the head nurse.

"She wasn't crabby and angry," she had said. "We thought something had happened to her." Even Alzheimer's patients don't have that dramatic of changes in behavior overnight.

My dad met my mom at the hospital. One possible explanation for this change was my mother could have had a stroke. The only way to tell was for certain would have been to give my mother an MRI.

"An MRI isn't worth the trouble," my husband said, echoing what my father had been told by the physicians at the hospital. "She couldn't sit still for that long, and they would have to anesthetize her. It wouldn't be worth the risk. Plus, the treatment wouldn't change."

One day a few weeks ago, a new hospice nurse came to see my mom. The new nurse gave my mother a spoon and a smaller bowl to see if she could feed herself. Much to everyone's surprise, she did. After months of being spoonfed, my mother used a spoon and fed herself.

A few days later, Laura, one of the regular nurses, tried to get my mother to walk. After months of being wheelchair bound, my mom is walking with assistance from a nurse. After my skiing accident, my quadriceps atrophied after not using them for two weeks. I feared my mother's leg muscles would be similar to mine after the accident--inert due to lack of use. Somehow, my mother's legs could handle walking. It sounds like they aren't that strong, but they are strong enough to stand and move with help.

I talked to my dad and Jack about my mother's miracle recovery. We suspect my mother had a small stroke or a TIA, and now she is bouncing back from that setback. When my grandfather had a stroke, he had speech and occupational therapy. My mother didn't have rehab for a variety of reasons. First, it was unlikely that she could have understood what was happening and could have participated. Second, they didn't know what happened, so they didn't know what to do to make her better. With her Alzheimer's, she couldn't articulate what was wrong in order to get the help she needed. Maybe she didn't want to eat for a few days because she didn't like the food. Maybe she had a stomachache, and couldn't say it. When she stopped eating, they decided to spoonfeed her. Unlike toddlers, once my mother was spoonfed, it became a one-way street. No one tried to get her to try to feed herself again. Most patients with Alzheimer's have a slow and gradual decline. Why would they assume that she would get better when that goes against the trend of the disease?

I find this fascinating, not just because my mother got better, but because the nature of assumptions. It wasn't until someone gave my mother a spoon again did they test if she could feed herself.

Blogging

When I blog, I usually like what I've written. At times, there are things I would like to write more about, but I don't for the sake of other people's privacy. 

Recently, I wrote a post that I didn't like. I wanted to express something but wasn't sure how to get it out. I was muddled and confused by what I was thinking, and I think the blog post also came out muddled and confused.

I could take the post down, or I could leave it up. I could edit it, but I think it is beyond editing. To use a remodeling metaphor, the essay would need to get taken down to the studs and recrafted, and then it wouldn't be recognizable from the first draft.

I'll leave it up, as an example of the theme of my blog: rough draft. Maybe in a few days I'll think of a new way to present it and have a new essay.

Underdoing It

Jack, the Boy and I went skiing Sunday with another family. The mom is recovering from an injury, as I am. Katrina and I spent all day on the green slopes where we learned to ski again while the boys went to the terrain park and practiced jumping. The husbands/dads skied black runs.

It was a good day. Katrina skis slower than me, if that is humanly possible. This was fine with me. I was glad not to be holding anyone back.

The best part of skiing again went unnoticed until Sunday: I was wearing ski boots, ski pants and a helmet in the lodge. In the handful of times I drove the Boy to ski, I sat in the lodge in my hiking boots and jeans, jealous of the other moms skiing. I don't think they noticed me, but I noticed them. How could I not notice the empty lodge in the morning filling at 11:30 with people coming in for an early lunch, staying packed until 1:30, and then having a slow flow of hot cocoa and coffee drinkers for the rest of the afternoon. 

I was happy to stay on the green runs Sunday mainly because my legs were tired from working out so much last week. I stretched myself on my weight lifting (150 pounds on the leg press) on Thursday, and paid for it on Friday and Saturday with sore and stiff legs. I am used to being flexible, and when I am stiff I feel out of place, not like myself. 

Now that I have started skiing, I am starting to take my workouts more seriously. I have a purpose, a reason to be in shape other than being in shape for its own sake. I feel like I need to workout, to lift weights, to do my home strengthening exercises regularly. Before, I had been doing my exercises, but I was underdoing it. I would stay in the safe zone, not pushing myself too hard fearing I'd get hurt or sore. Ironically, my extra workouts to get me into shape to ski have made me kind sore and weary, which makes me hesitant to ski. It keeps me conservative on the slopes, afraid to try anything too challenging, steep or bumpy. Even though I am skiing conservatively, I feel like I am on track to go on a ski vacation with the family in the future.

I've never been a slacker or an underachiever, or so I thought. I shouldn't be so hard on myself. The workouts right after my surgery were hard and I needed to go slow. It was hard to judge when I was ready to start making things harder for myself, which is why I had a physical therapy team to push me along. I could have stopped going to physical therapy months ago, but I wanted to learn to run. I needed to push myself to do that. I wanted to become more agile, so they added agility exercises for me. I wanted to ski, so they tested my strength.

I had been underdoing my workouts for the past few months. Even though I was lifting weights and gaining strength, I wasn't lifting as much as I could. It took me skiing a few times to recognize that I could push myself harder than I had been. It wasn't that I was slacking as much as reaching a plateau. I needed a nudge, a push down the mountain, to get me to advance.

Why Celebrity Marriages Fall Apart & the Ugly Goddess

I woke up this morning, and I thought I know why dual celebrity marriages so often fail. When a celebrity marries a non-celebrity, one person is the star and the other person is tending the home fires. It harder for two people to be the star.

Let's say our celebrity couple meets on a movie set. They are working together fifteen hours a day towards a common goal under challenging circumstances. They see each other before they have their make-up on, and they both understand the stress and joy of being in the spotlight and being in a competitive business. 

In the other case, the non-star might appreciate the person for their non-star like qualities when everyone else loves them because they are a star. The non-star can tell the star unpleasant truths, and the star doesn't feel hurt or insulted. I think about the Boy and his Girlfriend. In this case, neither is a star. Last week, the Boy had texted me from his bedroom at 8:30 p.m. that he needed forty plastic forks for French class the next day. I went to his room where he was Facetiming with the Girlfriend. I told him he could go down to the pantry and look for forks.

"Nah," he said. "I don't really need to bring forks. It's not a big deal."

"You are so lazy," said the Girlfriend. 

"I like you," I said to the Girlfriend. I wanted to say I'd send her a list of other things to tell the Boy to do: his homework, practice his bassoon, get ready for soccer practice in a timely manner without me riding his ass, make his own lunch, etc.

The Boy burst out laughing. If I called him lazy, it would have started a pissing contest between the two of us. The Girlfriend says it and she speaks the truth. The Girlfriend thinks the Boy is wonderful and amazing, but not so much so that she is blinded and can't call him on his bullshit. This is good. In mythology, the ugly goddess speaks the truth to the hero. With her hideousness, she has nothing to lose by saying what might get her shunned, because she is already shunned. The Girlfriend here knows she is safe enough not to be shunned for speaking the truth.

The stars might have all of this, and it might be fine. Until one of them needs to go to a movie set in Thailand and the other is on a movie set in Vancouver, B.C., or at home with a new baby. Maybe one of the stars skips a great role to follow the other star to Thailand. In all cases, it is hard to maintain a marriage when one person is absent. It is hard to see each other outside of the adrenaline filled movie set, to be at home with regular life. Bruce Springsteen in his memoir Born to Run talked about the depression he would experience when he was off tour. His wife was a member of his band. She knew the business and would travel with him.

The real crux for the star marriage is holding together a sense of belonging when one person is gone for three, six or nine months while making a movie. What happens to the person left at home, while Odysseus is off to sea? Penelope, his wife, stayed faithful for twenty years, putting 108 suitors on hold while she waited for Odysseus to return. A character from Greek mythology could pull that off; mere mortal women might bail, not being able to withstand the loneliness.

The Boy and the GF & You Never Can Tell

The Boy has a girlfriend. The dating world of our kids approached Jack and me with the silence of a Tesla. The Boy and the GF have been together since late December, so this is an eternity in middle school years. More than most middle school couples of my memory, the Boy and the GF are actually friends. They talk on the phone, eat lunch together, and are in a few school clubs together.

The GF is lovely. I won't comment on her loveliness here because on the very rare chance one or both of them reads this, they would be embarrassed. I'll just say the GF will be a tough act to follow.

This idea of my kids dating is new to me, and I am not sure how to act. When the Boy and the GF first became a couple, I told my dad.

"This will last about three days," he laughed.

"They are actually friends," I said.

My dad paused. "The Vances have been together since high school," he said. The Vances are friends of my parents who have been married for more than forty years. "You never can tell."

You never can tell, as Bruce Springsteen sings here. Maybe the Boy and the GF will last a few more days or weeks, or maybe months or ever years. There probably is a chart someplace that calculates the odds of a middle school relationship lasting through high school, through college, into adulthood or into a long-term marriage.

I have no idea what the odds of this will be. Today the GF came over to our home and hung out with the Boy before going to watch his soccer game. Watching the game meant she hung out on the sidelines with the Jack and I while the Boy warmed up and then played. The GF happily chatted with us.

After chatting with the GF--the first significant other I've met of either of my children, I came to a new thought. No matter what I think of her (or any other future girlfriend), it will be in my best interest to treat this young woman as the potential wife of my son and mother of my grandchildren. The odds are low* that this relationship will last a long time, but you never can tell. Years from now, I don't want her to remember that I was dismissive or treated her poorly when they first started to date. Jack and I had dated for a year in college before I met his parents. The first time I met my future mother-in-law, she greeted me with a hug. I will never forget that act of warmth and welcome.

Other parents of people I've dated were not nearly as nice. The most common form of new girlfriend torture I've experienced is being grilled, questioned about my background, interests, political views and what my father does for a living in the first ten minutes of meeting them. I will try to take an interest in the people my kids date, but I will try to spare everyone the agony of interrogation.

Being nice to the GF and getting to like her has a cost--I could get my heart broken, too. If I start to like her, I will be sad if or when they break up. If the Boy dumps her, I will be sad for her. If she dumps him, I will be sad for him. I know relationships have their ups and downs, rocks and soft spots, but I will have to let the Boy manage that. The GF is his girlfriend, his choice, not mine.

The Boy and I have recently been talking about risk. While it is unlikely that his phone will break without a case on the way to school, the cost to replace it will be high if it does break. The longer he goes without a case, the greater the odds of it breaking and the more likely it will be rendered useless.

My ideas on risk for a cell phone are the opposite of what I think about my son's GF. I know the odds are almost impossible that the Boy and the GF will end up together long-term. The odds of heartbreak are high, but I will bet on the longshot, and continue to treat the GF as one day she might become part of my family.

If nothing else, I should grateful for the joy she brings him today. That alone deserves my kindness.


* I accidently typed "love" instead of "low" at first. What would Freud say?

My New Trainer

My friend Carla read my blog about my needing a push to exercise. After she had read it, she sent me an email saying she would be my new trainer.

"I am your trainer asking if you did your exercises today," she asked.

"I did!" I replied. I had to after I wrote that blog post about it. Yesterday, I did my exercises while the Boy watched. He put down his phone to chat with me. I told him these were exercises to get me into shape for skiing, and he tried a few himself. Today, I ran and lifted weights, in case anyone was wondering.

I heard a story about who had a writing buddy who held her accountable for put words on paper. Every Friday, the first woman would send the second woman the updated chapters of her novel that she wrote that week. The second women always wrote back, "Good job! Keep up the good work!" The first completed a novel that was eventually published. It turns out the second woman skimmed the first woman's work, and thought she writing was weak, but she never said anything except "Good job! Keep up the good work!"

Now Carla is my workout accountability partner. Yay! Hopefully having someone to report to will keep me honest and inspired.

Last Physical Therapy Appointment (Or Not)

Yesterday, I went into what I thought would be my last physical therapy appointment for my knee with Evan. God forbid I have to go back into PT in the future for a bad back or shoulder, but if I need to go, I will go. I've seen first hand the miracles of physical therapy, and I am sold on its value to humankind.*

It has been a year since my surgery, and I've skied twice. Not once--twice. I had to prove it wasn't a fluke that I skied, and that I wasn't afraid so afraid that I would do it once and then say "I'm done." In fact, I am inspired to go to Whistler. They have the best green runs. The runs are long, and there are several runs off the same lift for variety.

I digress. When I walked into my appointment, I saw the same handful of receptionists I've seen almost every week--often twice a week--since January 2016. I told them "This is my last appointment!" They cheered and shared my joy at my completion. I was so confident it was going my last appointment, I almost pre-wrote this blog post.

When I saw Evan, I told him I've skied twice since I was last at physical therapy two weeks ago. He winced a little. "Skiing is the highest risk activity of tearing your ACL. You have a big lever on your foot that can twist your knee." I know.

He had me repeat the jumping tests to test my leg strength. I passed the triple jump and the triple cross jump. For both of those tests, my injured leg was 95% and 96% of my healthy leg. The goal to return to sports is 90%. My problem was with the single jump. There, I was only 77%. While my single jump was better than my previous test a few weeks earlier, it wasn't close to 90%.

At my last appointment, Evan commented that this was an unusual set of jumping results. Most people are closest on the single jump, and further on the triple jumps.

"This tells me your balance is good because triple jumps require balance. The lower percentage on the single jumps tells me you need more strength. I wouldn't let you play soccer yet. I might let you go back to practice at a low level, but you aren't game ready."

I don't play soccer, so cool, right? I changed the subject. "What do I need to do to maintain my leg, so I'll be ready to ski?" I asked.

"I've been giving you skiing maintenance exercises all along," he said, smiling. "That was the goal." This was good news. I wouldn't have to start anything new--I would just have to maintain.

"I would like to see your strength improve, though," Evan said. "You really need to work on that."

"Do I need another appointment, or am I done?" I asked. My tone and expression showed that I hoped I was done. I don't know why I so badly wanted to be done considering I don't mind it. I figured my goal was to ski, and I skied; therefore, I should be done.

And yet... I have a friend, Daphne, who stopped physical therapy after a few months after she tore her ACL. She could walk, so she thought she was fine. She went cross country skiing a few weeks ago, and her injured leg pooped out and gave up. It was a cautionary tale for me. Not having a fully functional leg scares the crap out of me. After I started running, I started using physical therapy more as training to get me in shape for skiing, dancing, yoga, running and whatnot. The Sports Medicine clinic's goal is to return people to sports, not just walk without a limp.

"It is your choice," Evan said. "If you think you can build up the strength on your own, you are done. If you need the pressure of not disappointing me, then you probably need another appointment."

Dang. After a year of working with me, Evan knows me too well. He knows I need the push, the check-in, the reporting back to authority. While I waffled, he gave me a new printout of my exercises.

I am not a person who is naturally or intrinsically motivated to be physically fit. I don't dislike exercise, but I was never a person to stand in front of a mirror and admire my tight buns and buff legs, or likewise to dismay at my flabby arms. I don't think I'd be comfortable if I were so overweight it impacted my ability to participate in activities of daily living, but I am not uncomfortable settling into my middle-aged spread. I'd rather read a book or work on a project than exercise. I'd rather eat good food than being hungry all of the time. Would I be happier if I were in better shape? Possibly, but I am not going to sacrifice chocolate for it or spend all of my free time at the gym. I am happy living inside my head.

Which is all why I need a second physical therapy appointment. I wouldn't do it on my own. Now, I do barely enough. I can make it to the YMCA to run, bike and use the elliptical several times a week, but doing my home exercises every other day becomes once a week if that.

So I have another appointment in a month. In the meantime, I will have to adjust to keeping up with these exercises, doing it on my own without a weekly or every other week check-in, where I am the only person who knows if I am doing my exercises or not.

When I was a kid, I took ballet classes. I loved the flow that would come after a long workout. I loved moving my body to the music. I remember one dance class when I was about ten years old, where I asked myself if I could dance forever, make it my job. Did I want to pursue being a professional dancer? It was as if the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter was placed on my head. Instead of asking which house I wanted to be in, it asked did I love dance enough to do it more than anything else?

The answer was no. Even though I loved it, I wondered how I could live an intellectual life and be a dancer. I couldn't imagine my life without going to college, without having a strong life of the mind. Even though now I daydream about being a professional dancer, I don't think I would have traded away my college degree for going to ballet school.

This question I asked myself when I was ten years old is relevant to me now. I know myself well enough that I'd rather sit down and pound out a blog post before I would choose to exercise. That when I am hungry, I'd rather eat than workout beforehand. Yet, I know keeping my knee in shape is a priority. Not being able to move would also be untenable. Given the choice of exercising when my knee is "good enough" and reading a book, I'd probably pick the book nine times out of ten.

So I am going back to physical therapy in a month. I know I need to do it, but I know myself that I need someone to hold me accountable for myself until I can develop the habit to do it myself.

* I can't say mankind. I am feeling down on the patriarchy lately.