The Visible Woman...August 4, 2003

Normally I feel great all the time. But occasionally something brings you up short for a moment. As long as it doesn't last more than a few hours, fine.

I think I didn't drink enough water or something. I was pushing the cart vigorously up the hill at Sam's Club and I felt this twinge in my shoulder and neck. Sort of like a cramp or like when you have arthroscopic surgery of the abdomen and they blow you up with some gas and, before it dissipates it settles in your shoulders and hurts. My chest felt tight, too. It wasn't extreme and it was almost like muscle soreness....cramps and 'cricks' (as we used to call them in northeast Texas) feel like that. I don't know, maybe my weight thing yesterday then the water aerobics followed by some exercise bike...maybe I didn't get enough water. You know when you are in the water you don't think you'll be needing to drink water.

Anyway, I knew I just needed to relax it, get enough water, etc. Of course, there I was with frozen and refrigerated food and it was a thousand degrees. I rushed everything into the car, cranked the car and turned on the A.C. , sprinted the cart to the corral despite the pain and drove home with the A.C. on high. I rushed everything inside and into frig and freezer.

Yowee, my shoulders hurt. I futzed around a little while trying to clear the paperas that are all over my office. Finally I decided to give it up and try to relax the muscles. I heated my microwave buddy, I got a glass of leftover wine from the frig, water, a banana. It started to feel better and then I slipped putting the wine glass on the coaster and crash. My shoulders and neck screamed as I tried to get down and clean up the mess. FFP made me a vodka tonic in a plastic cup. (I jokingly told him to do it in a plastic cup and he did.)

Gradually, it relaxed...alchohol and heat will do that even if you are reading old newspapers about wars, floods, tornados, fires and pestilence.

Well, anyway, this is the kind of malady I like...short-lived, not contagious, but one that makes you understand you are human.

I tried to dispose of the newspapers that are threatening to take over my office (along with boxes, books, photos from Dad's house, files, cords, computers, etc.

. for some reason I wanted to call this spot on the drag 'Grove Drug' because maybe there was a Grove Drug somewhere else in old Austin but this spot on the drag is where FFP's life crossed briefly with Charles Whitman's life	where'd that come from? Normally I feel great all the time. But occasionally something brings you up short for a moment. As long as it doesn't last more than a few hours, fine. I think I didn't drink enough water or something. I was pushing the cart vigorously up the hill at Sam's Club and I felt this twinge in my shoulder and neck. Sort of like a cramp or like when you have arthroscopic surgery of the abdomen and they blow you up with some gas and, before it dissipates it settles in your shoulders and hurts. My chest felt tight, too. It wasn't extreme and it was almost like muscle soreness....cramps and 'cricks' (as we used to call them in northeast Texas) feel like that. I don't know, maybe my weight thing yesterday then the water aerobics followed by some exercise bike...maybe I didn't get enough water. You know when you are in the water you don't think you'll be needing to drink water. Anyway, I knew I just needed to relax it, get enough water, etc. Of course, there I was with frozen and refrigerated food and it was a thousand degrees. I rushed everything into the car, cranked the car and turned on the A.C. , sprinted the cart to the corral despite the pain and drove home with the A.C. on high. I rushed everything inside and into frig and freezer. Yowee, my shoulders hurt. I futzed around a little while trying to clear the paperas that are all over my office. Finally I decided to give it up and try to relax the muscles. I heated my microwave buddy, I got a glass of leftover wine from the frig, water, a banana. It started to feel better and then I slipped putting the wine glass on the coaster and crash. My shoulders and neck screamed as I tried to get down and clean up the mess. FFP made me a vodka tonic in a plastic cup. (I jokingly told him to do it in a plastic cup and he did.) Gradually, it relaxed...alchohol and heat will do that even if you are reading old newspapers about wars, floods, tornados, fires and pestilence. Well, anyway, this is the kind of malady I like...short-lived, not contagious, but one that makes you understand you are human. I tried to dispose of the newspapers that are threatening to take over my office (along with boxes, books, photos from Dad's house, files, cords, computers, etc.
JUST TYPING Being in pain. Is all focus. Normally, we are focused. Away from a smooth-running vessel The pain turns us inward Even as we try to distract it.
		Food Diary. A big salad at Whole Foods. All kinds of lettuce and greens plus spinach. Squash, carrots, dried cranberries, two dolmas, two kinds of cheese, tofu, Bleu Cheese dressing. [I was going to get one of those 'natural' sodas but none appealed. I drank water.] A couple of servings of 'tofu no-egg salad.' A banana. A small glass of white wine. A vodka tonic. About five slices of provolone, about ten small carrot snacks. Another vodka tonic. [It's hard to know what to make of my diet today.]
		Time flies.... I met my dad at Westwood today to try the water aerobics. I then spent another hour...I showered the chroline off and did fifty minutes on the exercise bicycle. Then, of course, I had to shower when I got home. So the swimming pool and the shower...that's what I did with my morning. I went to Sam's in the afternoon. I wanted to get a few things for us (some computer papers for me and cheese) and get stuff to feed Dad's Senior Games folks at church on Friday. But it was the lunch hour when I got to the Gateway area. I went to Whole Foods for a salad and then went to Sam's. I ended up buying other things like shirts and an atlas for my Dad (his birthday in next month) and a new Mapsco for me and a memory card reader. That's the trouble with Sam's. I also got mass quantities of stuff to make sandwiches for Dad's group and salmon rolls and crackers and spinach dip. I have a love/hate thing with shopping. I like to see what the stores have and get what I want but the stores themselves and the actual buying bores me quickly. My whole afternoon and evening was sucked down the rat hole of my cramping shoulder and trying to dispatch some of the papers.

		Reading. Moliie & Other War Pieces by A.J. Leibling. Is it really worthwhile to read the newspaper? Or, in our case, two dailies, one weekday paper, and three or four weeklies? The old papers I perused last night gave me a lot of more or less useless information about bankrupt companies and CEO scandals, a new technology analyst causing waves by daring to talk about return on investment. There was news of the Y chromosome being able to repair itself (a DIY gene?) and about the first map to identify America (ca. 1507) going on display. If I'd just tossed these papers unscanned, I'd have missed the part where an alligator eats a Florida boy, where New Orleans flooded and New York had rain and rain. I wouldn't have realized the Apple G5 used an IBM chip or that there was an Australian group called 'Wiggles' entertaining toddlers to great acclaim. Or that the Intel skeleton was going to be the site of the new federal courthouse. Actually, I did get some of these stories on TV or radio or from glancing at the papers in real time.
		"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; All our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death." Man that Shakespeare could really write.
		Exercise One hour of water aerobics. Fifty minutes on bike to nowhere..
		Ouch. ss, w

Monday, August 4, 2003

A Journal from Austin, Texas. A Project of LBFFP Stealth Publishing.
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