"Rub it?" I asked Jeff, hopefully. "Not like scritchies, but real massage work?"
From the master bedroom, he nodded. I picked up the nearest bottle of massage lotion and thought for a moment how much my life has changed in the past six months; my now-life dictates keeping a few bottles of massage lotion in different rooms around the house, because there's no telling when or where a sore muscle might strike.
"Which side of the bed? You're right-handed, and the sore muscle is on my right side…" I looked up and realized that Jeff was giving me his 'That's-too-much-information' look. I shrugged, took off my shirt, unhooked my bra, and lay down on the guest bed.
"Where's it at?" His hands, dry, pressed slowly down my back.
]]>"Rub it?" I asked Jeff, hopefully. "Not like scritchies, but real massage work?"
From the master bedroom, he nodded. I picked up the nearest bottle of massage lotion and thought for a moment how much my life has changed in the past six months; my now-life dictates keeping a few bottles of massage lotion in different rooms around the house, because there's no telling when or where a sore muscle might strike.
"Which side of the bed? You're right-handed, and the sore muscle is on my right side…" I looked up and realized that Jeff was giving me his 'That's-too-much-information' look. I shrugged, took off my shirt, unhooked my bra, and lay down on the guest bed.
"Where's it at?" His hands, dry, pressed slowly down my back.
"That's the right area. Move a bit further out from the spine - up just a little - ow! Not so hard! You'll have to ease into that much pressure. I can't take that all at once." His hands eased, and began massaging the sore spot, first dry, then with a bit of the massage lotion.
With time, and gentleness, the clenched muscle began to relax. He began to sweep his hands up and down my back, gently, fingers splayed, thumbs following spine; my mind drifting gratefully toward thoughts of sleep, comfort, other nights like this.
He drew his hands down around my waist, momentarily curling his fingers around my waistline, and I remembered.
* * * * *
I had been lying on my side, a slight glow, a slight sweat, emanating from my skin. We were both blue-eyed and blind, our glasses guarding our respective nightstands, our eyes seeing only degrees of shadows. He brushed the hair away from my face and trailed the hand down my body, coming to rest at the notch between rib cage and hipbone.
"I like this. It wasn't here before." He traced it, gently, letting his fingers tell me in the darkened room of the curves: inward from rib cage, outward again at hipbone.
"That wasn't there before. I like it."
* * * * *
I felt the bedspread rasp against my lips as I smiled. He continued stroking his hands down my back; up, down, up, down. I remembered comments of friends hugged, and wondered if they were true.
"Does it feel different to you? Look different?"
"With your arms up, like they are now, it's hard to tell. When they're down, though…yes."
I know the internal answer, but I'm not always sure of the external answer. I can feel the changes in me, an awareness of muscles growing and strengthened, but I'm not sure how much of that translates into changes visible to others.
In the mirror I catch glimpses of it. A stretch in front of the mirror unwittingly shadows unfamiliar curves. Where there was once round, and pudge-there is, admittedly, still so-but less of it, now beginning to share center stage with what this body must look like without it: the swell of breast, a noticeable dip at waist, the flare of hips.
He trailed his hands down my back, spread them softly against the sides of my rib cage, and squeezed gently; a hug in another guise. "Better?" he asked.
"Yes. Thank you."
We were once described as violinesque, and I cannot argue. I've been called far worse.
]]>After speaking with her again, Val has cleared me to do cardio work this week. I'm to do no weightlifting for the next eight days, though. Let the healing and rest commence.
After verifying that my unexpected Sunday morning skidoo had not managed to permanently realign any bones, I tried to figure out what in the world had caused me to slip on an otherwise fairly-trusty bathroom floor. It only took me four days to spot the mess.
Ever heard of silicone serum? To those of you with short, fine, straight, or otherwise manageable hair, it's a foreign and vaguely disgusting concept. (I cannot begin to count the number of times I've been asked "You put what on your hair?") For those of us who fall - multiple times - into the latter category (known to stylists as "Oh God" hair or, more simply, as "A Challenge"), silicone serum is revered, worshiped, and hoarded.
]]>After verifying that my unexpected Sunday morning skidoo had not managed to permanently realign any bones, I tried to figure out what in the world had caused me to slip on an otherwise fairly-trusty bathroom floor. It only took me four days to spot the mess.
Ever heard of silicone serum? To those of you with short, fine, straight, or otherwise manageable hair, it's a foreign and vaguely disgusting concept. (I cannot begin to count the number of times I've been asked "You put what on your hair?") For those of us who fall - multiple times - into the latter category (known to stylists as "Oh God" hair or, more simply, as "A Challenge"), silicone serum is revered, worshiped, and hoarded.
You know the type of hair. It's on the type of woman you love to hate - the woman who has obnoxiously thick hair strands, all of which are individually wavy or curly, and a great abundance of them.
Yeah. Hi. Don't hate me because I have a hair explosion. Trust me, it's not quite so cool as you think. Ask anyone who has ever tried to braid my hair.
My hair wasn't always like this. Nobody knows what actually happened to me in the sixth grade, but I have pictures to prove it. In the fifth grade, I decided that I didn't like my stringy, dullish, stare-at-the-ceiling-and-think-of-England hair, so I got a perm.
I spent two years waiting with bated breath, wondering when the perm would go away and when my real hair would start growing back. But the straight roots never came. Eventually, I cut off what had to be the last of the permed hair, and made the only possible assumption: the chemicals in my hair had prompted a mass follicular breakdown. My hair follicles had been converted to the way of the S-shaped wiggle.
I became Triangle Head. (For the first two years after a haircut, my hair grows out, not down. Eventually it becomes so heavy that it falls down in spite of itself, and proceeds to do the S-shaped backstroke all over my head.)
Hair like mine (heavy, dense, strongly wavy, really long, and a lot of it) has two cardinal rules.
Sure, you've all played with gel and mousse. It's fun, it works great, and the next day, your hair resembles a child's glue-and-sticks project. Now imagine this situation multiplied: someone with a lot of unruly hair. They require even more gel or mousse to receive the same effect that mortals get with just a dime- or quarter-sized dollop of styling goo.
The next-day results are magnified. You no longer have individual hair strands. You have hermetically-sealed hair clumps which cannot be broken without a) showering or b) jackhammers.
So, you say, fine. I don't want to glue all my hair strands together. I'll just wash it, condition it well†, and toss it in a ponytail tomorrow instead of washing it.
Then, on morning #2 without hair-taming potions, you realize that your hair has no intention of allowing itself to be brushed. If you're lucky, you realize the gravity of the situation before your hair actually eats your brush, (I've seen many a brush meet brutal and untimely ends this way) you jump in the shower so that you can wet your hair down, condition it yet again, apologize profusely and beg forgiveness.
Then get out of the shower and try to style your hair.
A while back, Monica reminded me of the goodness of silicone. I tried it, and - wondrous to behold - not only could I brush my hair, but I could do it without pain. Better yet, my hair settled down from S-Shaped Thermonuclear Blast to ... S-Shaped Firecracker Wiggles. It's now easier to braid, stays more neatly braided when I do braid it, and best of all, I have contiguous, separable hair strands for more than twelve hours.
The bad news: guess what happens when this stuff spills on the floor. Think oil slick. Think of the disasters that would happen if you took a bottle of spray silicone and sprayed it all over your tile floor. Now imagine that this slippery stuff was completely clear, and practically invisible to the human eye.
Perhaps I should have thought about this before I left the bottle so close to the edge of the vanity. I should have had a toxic-waste cleanup plan in place before one of the cats knocked the bottle (of a clear viscous fluid that might as well be marked "Slip And Fall With Ease!") of silicone serum onto the (white) tile floor.
I had lots and lots of time to think about this between slip and thud, and even more to think about it while I tried to mop up the mess with toilet paper.
Which, I might add, does nothing but disperse the slick stuff everywhere, removing 95% of the evidence while leaving 95% of the slickness. Now, granted, the foot that stepped into the goop stayed disturbingly soft and slick for the next few hours, but that's a rather grotesque memory that I'd prefer not to revisit.
I lost the last third of my bottle to the floor, so I went out and bought another. Haven't figured out yet where I'm going to keep this one, but it'll definitely be in a place that won't turn my bathroom into a no-wheels-needed skating rink anytime soon. I've broken bones by trying to fly a kite and by falling out of bed, and just this week I managed to slice my thumb open with a butter knife. I absolutely refuse to add "broken bones caused by hair care products" to the list.
Even I have to have a little dignity.
]]>† Speaking of conditioning it well. You know the recommendation "a quarter-sized dollop of conditioner to cover all your hair"? I always find that excruciatingly funny - after I use up the quarter-sized dollop, what am I supposed to use on the other side of my head? I won't even go into the uselessness of most conditioners. I learned in college that if I wanted to be able to brush my hair at all, I had to use the heavy-duty 'ultra' conditioners on almost a daily basis, or I could just give up on ever being able to brush my hair.
I think I was bored with short hair. I didn't have anything to complain about.
However, in all those PSAs, parental lectures, and root canals, has anyone ever said to you "Stay away from that nasty chocolate or you'll get a one-inch gash on your left thumb?" Don't think so.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am the only person I know who has shed blood over a Sunday morning chocolate craving.I have also, however, managed to prove yet again that the severity of my injuries can be determined by the amount and hue of my swearing just after the injury is sustained. Torrents of colorful and inventive invective can mean only one thing: paper cut.
For some reason, the breaking of bones or the flagrant spouting of blood makes me completely forget how to swear.
]]>However, in all those PSAs, parental lectures, and root canals, has anyone ever said to you "Stay away from that nasty chocolate or you'll get a one-inch gash on your left thumb?" Don't think so.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am the only person I know who has shed blood over a Sunday morning chocolate craving.I have also, however, managed to prove yet again that the severity of my injuries can be determined by the amount and hue of my swearing just after the injury is sustained. Torrents of colorful and inventive invective can mean only one thing: paper cut.
For some reason, the breaking of bones or the flagrant spouting of blood makes me completely forget how to swear.
When I went to Harry's Farmers Market in Atlanta a little over a week ago, I spotted broken bricks of Callebaut baking chocolate for sale on a table near the cheese section. I came home with samples each of the dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate.
This morning, I said to myself, "Mmmmm, white chocolate. I'll break off a bit and nibble on it." For the sake of not making you run and scream, I will not tell you what happened next, except that it involved a butter knife, a completely incomprehensible and utterly inexplicable accident, and me standing there holding my left hand and thinking, "Ooops."
(See also, major gift for understatement after more-than-minor injuries.)
I can only assume that I managed to forget about the piles and piles of utility toweling in the kitchen due to the blood loss. Meanwhile, I stood there, bleeding freely upon myself while standing there and thinking dumbly, "I really should do something about - "
Ring! (Proving once again that the phone is far more likely to ring when you are physically incapable of answering it.)
I said a less-than-interrogative "Hello" into the phone. The caller ID said that it was my spouse.
"You ready to go to lunch with us?"
"Um. No. You'll have to excuse me, as I'm currently bleeding profusely into a kitchen towel at the moment. I'm going to have to pass on lunch."
His answer was, of course, the summation of so many of the reasons why I adore my spouse: "Well, then, why don't you take care of that, and we'll talk in a bit." Unflappable. Absolutely unflappable. Anyone else, hearing that dead-calm-over-utter-panic note in my voice, probably would've dropped the phone and come running at full speed.
Not Jeff, whose lack of panic tends to inspire lack of panic in me. Then, of course, I hung up the phone and went into the bathroom to bleed freely for another minute or two. I applied compression to the cut, determined it was really ugly, would probably scar, but probably wouldn't require stitching -
- then bandaged it up, sat on the couch, and swore for about thirty seconds straight.
After the swearing tapered off into something more resembling a low, rolling mumble, I stomped into the kitchen, got the chunk of chocolate, sat back down on the couch, and proceeded to enjoy every scrap of it.
If you were going to bleed for it, wouldn't you?
]]>After more than a few minutes of typing, I can feel each keypress radiating down through the soft tissue of my finger. This is—in my world at least—a glaringly obvious sign that I should Do Something Besides Typing.
The list of What I've Done To Compensate includes…
]]>After more than a few minutes of typing, I can feel each keypress radiating down through the soft tissue of my finger. This is—in my world at least—a glaringly obvious sign that I should Do Something Besides Typing.
The list of What I've Done To Compensate includes…
Then there was that whole running-through-the-rain in the parking lot at Target, only to realize that my shopping list was in my car…on the far side of that downpour I'd just run through. Luckily, I managed to remember all the ingredients (save one) that I needed to make tonight's dinner (Vietnamese noodle soup), so all was not lost.
Haven't even looked at code today. Or pseudocode. I'm doing good to write this damnably short entry. In the meantime—meaning, until I can type for more than ten minutes at a time—do pretend that I've continued to post my semi-pithy, semi-meaningful discourses here on cat.net.
In actual pithy news: Jess of orangeclouds.org has been kind enough to start up a webring, 'skinned!,' for skinned sites. (It's available at skinned.orangeclouds.org.) Some of you might find that sort of thing interesting.
Perhaps my next entry won't be so much of a marker of time. Sorry, guys. Call it an injury timeout.
]]>So, let's skip all the boring stuff and go right to what you want to hear about. You know it, baby—more about the "I got up to get some ice cream and all I got was this jammed finger" story.
You know what's really bizarre? My left middle finger has swollen up enough so that it's actually larger around than my thumb. It's fascinating, in a bizarrely morbid sort of way. It's bruising around the joint a bit, and I have about 25% of normal range-of-motion. But you know what the weirdest thing of all is?
(Of course you don't; that's why you read domesticat. That, and because reading my words makes you feel so utterly normal.)
]]>So, let's skip all the boring stuff and go right to what you want to hear about. You know it, baby—more about the "I got up to get some ice cream and all I got was this jammed finger" story.
You know what's really bizarre? My left middle finger has swollen up enough so that it's actually larger around than my thumb. It's fascinating, in a bizarrely morbid sort of way. It's bruising around the joint a bit, and I have about 25% of normal range-of-motion. But you know what the weirdest thing of all is?
(Of course you don't; that's why you read domesticat. That, and because reading my words makes you feel so utterly normal.)
You know the loose little creases on the top of your fingers—the ones that give your skin enough flexibility so the finger can bend? Right now, those creases are pretty much nonexistent in said injured finger. You have to admit that it's kinda wacky and gross, but it's also kinda fascinating too. Well, ok, maybe it isn't, and maybe this is just the extra Advil speaking on my behalf.
The Advil is nothing, though, in comparison to the good kitty drugs the cats got this morning before their rabies shots. By noon today, Tenzing could barely walk in a straight line, and Edmund couldn't jump onto the couch. I felt so badly for both of them that I sprawled out on the couch for lunch and let both of my high little felines curl up on my stomach.
It was either do that, and soothe them to sleep, or the munchkins were going to stagger drunkenly around the house, unable to focus on both following me and walking in a straight line at once.
Once I sat down, though, I got them to settle onto some of their kitty blankets (same ones that I tripped over, causing the jammed-finger incident in the first place) and they slept. For hours.
Actually, they're still trying to sleep off the medication. Tenzing still looks cross-eyed when he opens his eyes, and Edmund isn't much better. Here's hoping we all feel better tomorrow.
]]>Sotto voce to the Buffy fans out there: we're plowing through Season 3—we did three episodes last night and another two tonight. We're enjoying this just as much as you all said we would…
'armed with will and determination / and grace too' - tragically hip
Every one of you who started laughing at the thorough inappropriateness of that comment may now, quite simply, hush, because Ms. Domesticat has a whole bowlful of smack-fu for you. Well, that is, as long as the bowlful of smack-fu is applied with my right hand…See, here's [one of] my problem[s] with the world. Everybody else gets the good injuries. You know, the war stories. Sean's got good, manly rollerblading stories of doom. Kat and Kara have the equivalent in soccer stories. Most of my friends are like that.
In comparison, it's hard to thrust your fingers in your belt loops and say nonchalantly, "Yeah, you know how I've broken bones? The first time I was flying a kite, and the second time I fell out of bed…oh, shut up already."
If you only knew how close I came to adding yet another stupid mishap to those two tonight…
]]>'armed with will and determination / and grace too' - tragically hip
Every one of you who started laughing at the thorough inappropriateness of that comment may now, quite simply, hush, because Ms. Domesticat has a whole bowlful of smack-fu for you. Well, that is, as long as the bowlful of smack-fu is applied with my right hand…See, here's [one of] my problem[s] with the world. Everybody else gets the good injuries. You know, the war stories. Sean's got good, manly rollerblading stories of doom. Kat and Kara have the equivalent in soccer stories. Most of my friends are like that.
In comparison, it's hard to thrust your fingers in your belt loops and say nonchalantly, "Yeah, you know how I've broken bones? The first time I was flying a kite, and the second time I fell out of bed…oh, shut up already."
If you only knew how close I came to adding yet another stupid mishap to those two tonight…
See, everyone else finds really cool ways to break stuff, injure stuff, or otherwise come home with cuts and bruises and war stories. I'm reduced to poking fun at myself on my own website because I asked Jeff to pause the VCR in the midst of episode 2 of tonight's Buffy-a-thon.
Why? Because I wanted some ice cream.
So I made grand plans to walk around the table and into the kitchen, a trip I have made many, many times before for different reasons. Instead, this time, I stepped on the two TenzingBlankets™ that are on the floor, and I skidded. Forward.
You know this cannot possibly have a good ending.
My right knee locked, and in one of my more pitiable examples of "two broken wrists haven't taught me a thing," I threw my left hand backward to catch myself. Instead of falling on my wrist and managing to make nice crunnnnnchy noises, I instead managed to aim the fingers of my left hand exactly perpendicular to the coffee table…and attempted to make them hold my entire body weight.
Judging by the whimpery noises I made (most of which could be translated to "Ow!"), this was not a good idea—a suspicion that was further increased by the aforementioned finger's loss of motion.
I am the only person I know who can manage to sustain injury by deciding to sit down to watch a Buffy-a-thon with her spouse. You'd think such silliness would've been weeded out by evolution a long time ago.
Could be worse. At least it's not broken. If I thought the falling-out-of-bed bit was humiliating…
Laughter, pointed (uninjured please) fingers, and general canoodling may be left in the comments…
]]>