Unknown Day/1001–the lost post

****This post somehow got lost and was not published with the others. It predates Day 705/1001 by one day.****

I’m not sure what day it is of the 1001 days I started with. There has been progress on  some of the items on my list, although I never managed to list 101 of them. I’ve been seeing a trainer and biomechanist to help me get past my compensation methods developed while recovering from the knee surgeries. The strength and flexibility imbalances are challenging to remedy, but I will persevere. Some things had indeed been looking up.

In July my husband and I stopped at our local, family owned pet supply store to get food for the dog. As it happened, they were hosting a kitten adoption fair that day and we decided to have a look. I knew I would want to hide all of them in my pockets and take them home. I always do when I see animals in need. There were a dozen or so kittens in a handful of cages. Adorable. All of them. My husband hones in on one of them; a little orange and white one at the bottom of a cage. He’s playful and observant. And very, very cute. My husband asks to see him and them tells me I should hold him. This itty bitty kitty places one paw on my left shoulder, another on the other side of my neck and buries his little head in the hollow above my collarbone and begins to purr so loudly and so contentedly it melts my heart in an instant. I walk around in the back storage area of the pet store holding this purring bundle on my shoulder. He doesn’t move except to nestle himself higher on my shoulder. He purrs more loudly or more softly but does not stop. I stop with a tiny gasp of realization, turn to my husband and say, “Frito!” And that is his name. We took him home that day. July 18, 2010. He was 2 months old.

Day 705/1001

We set Frito up in our guest room with his own bowls of food and water, his own littlerbox and a few toys. Because we had Snickers, the 14-year-old curmudgeon kitty, and Koby, the 10-year-old nose-in-the-kitty’s-butt dog, we wanted to give them all an opportunity to get each others’ scents. Hubby and I took turns hanging out in that front bedroom playing, petting, holding and loving the little guy. We learned he was a little food machine. ‘Did they feed him enough in foster care?’ I would ask myself. We learned his favorite way to be held was up on my shoulder, preferably the left, looking over. This, of course, gave him full access to the irresistible earring. Small, shiny, dangly things are just too much temptation for little kittens. Frito was bold but not necessarily fearless; he was curious but not necessarily careless. He never held back his purrs. Because he clearly enjoyed being held, I held him every chance I got wanting him to know his people, where his food comes from, where his home is so in case he ever got out, he’d have a reason to come back.

I don’t think we even lasted that day  before he met Koby. She sat whimpering in the hallway outside the guestroom door and Frito would walk tentatively toward it, head bobbing, alternately lifting it to listen and lower it to sniff what was on the air coming under the door. After a new hilarious displays of “Halloween Kitty” (back arched, tail skyward and poofed to three times its normal size, whiskers spread, hissing and bouncing sideways), Frito walked right up to Koby and touched his nose to her. Koby didn’t know what to do, poor thing. She looked dumbfounded. She sniffed his butt, he didn’t run. In fact, a couple of times he turned around and whacked her one across the snout. That didn’t stop the dog, and the kitten didn’t care. They got along just fine. Snickers was another story. Poor old kitty just wanted to lie in her bed undisturbed, but nothing is left undisturbed when there’s an 8-week-old kitten in the house, especially another feline. Frito tried to make friends and Snickers hissed. So Frito started playing with her, sneaking up from behind her cat bed then reaching a paw up and over the side, tapping Snickers. It was pretty funny, but we tried to distract him with toys–wads of tinfoil and wine corks. Those became INSTANT favorites. After chasing one down, sometimes sliding across the hardwood floor or rolling comically over himself while grasping the object in all four paws, he would pick it up in his mouth and bring it back depositing it in my lap, my hand, on my face, anywhere. And then he’d wait to see it fly again.

Day 388/1001

#29. Dreams

I’m at a table and have just finished some kind of pot pie, and I found it delicious. I was so stuffed and was about to push my plate away when I realized there was a baked crust on the bottom. I procede to dig in to the flakey goodness.

In the end I fell off the 30 yoga classes in 30 days bandwagon. Between the classes I teach and the ones I subbed, it became unrealistic with time as well as my body. I did, however, experience 20 classes over the 30 days and for the first time since my knee surgeries over 2006 and 2007, I sat in extended child’s pose without pain in my right knee. This is a good thing.

Prior to 2006, I was an enthusiastic runner and triathlete albeit not a fast one. My most favorite thing to do was run the trails of a local open space preserve in the pouring rain, splashing in every puddle possible, surrounded by the sounds of raindrops in the trees. I would always finish one of these runs filthy yet exhilerated, pleased to see the steam rising from my body as I walked about the parking lot cooling down. Toward the end of 2005 I noticed a little twinge in my right knee, but figured I simply needed a little downtime. The second week of January 2006 I limped back to the gym from an ill-fated run and knew there was something wrong. An orthopedist confirmed my fear: a radial tear in the lateral meniscus. “A common injury,” he said. “The surgery is a simple, outpatient procedure done in less than an hour with a 4 to 8 week recovery time.” My concerns were simple as well. “Can I continue to run after the surgery?” I ask. “Oh yes,” he says, “you’ll be back to running in a month.” I considered most physicians are conservative in their recovery projections, so to me, that meant I’d be running in 2 or 3 weeks post-op. As it turns out, he looked at the world through rose colored lenses and I am an idiot.

Flash-forward 6 months after my February 6, 2006 meniscus resection surgery… My knee continues to swell with regularity, so the orthopedist drains it and gives me a cortisone shot–which hurts like hell, by the way. For a couple of days. Thinking my body is just being difficult, I continue to plow through my workouts and try to run on the treadmill. (I hated the treadmill but was not confident enough in my knee to go outside for a run.) The day before our house-warming party while teaching a class, I landed a plyometric lunge horribly, horribly wrong and I hear a pop from my right knee. It reverberates up my body and I feel a terrific, sharp jolt of pain. It was exactly 11:19am, September 9. Less than 20 minutes into teaching a class, I continue in pain through to the end. A week later I get an MRI that reveals a tiny tear in the medial meniscus and the doc is reluctant to approach it with surgery. “I’m popping Advil like Tic-Tacs, doc,” I tell him. “It really hurts and the swelling is crazy.” So, September 20, I’m in for another meniscus resection…and the doc discovers the real source of my pain. I’ve managed to virtually destroy all the articular cartilage on my lateral femoral condyle. It’s hanging from the bone in shreds like some ghostly kelp forest.  To be continued…

Day 369/1001

It’s January 4, 2010 and I have actually managed to do a yoga class each day for the last 6 days: 2 each of Bikram and Power Yoga, 1 Foundations of Flow and 1 Yin Yoga. I’m registered for a one hour Power Yoga class today at 12:15. Glad I registered because it will make me go. It’s not that I don’t want to, I’ve just been up since 3am. Adhering to the 30-in-30 commitment has ended up being one of my positive things (#42), but I feel like that’s cheating in a way.

The New Year is when most people feel the need to improve, make changes and make fresh starts and I am no exception. I didn’t resolve to lose weight, eat better or be more productive. Rather, I resolved, simply, to be better. There’s always something each of us can do to be better. My suggestion is we all start by being better to each other and as trite as it sounds, to practice random acts of kindness. Maybe it’s letting someone in on the freeway, maybe it’s asking the checker at the grocery store how s/he is doing, or maybe holding the door open for someone. Being an asshole has detrimental effects like increased stress, higher blood pressure and making you look like a tool.

Day 366/1001

The first day of 2010. I’ll be 40 this year, which is really hard to believe.

#29. Dreams

I’m in a car with a friend of ours who seems like he’s a little drunk and we’re driving through mountains in Sweden. I’ve never been to Sweden and I’m confused as to why I’m there with this person. Anyway, I’m trying to persuade him to let me drive because he’s taking some curves super wide and I’m afraid the next turn on the road will mean certain death. And it does. The next turn around sharp edge of this mountain and his delayed reaction time sends us waaaaay too wide. I feel the two passenger tires slide off the edge of the road–which has no guard rail (typically European). In slow motion I feel the car list over the edge pulled by force and gravity. I look down through my passenger window and all I see is the shear face of the cliff and fog below. A lone bird is startled off it’s ledge perch and barely escapes getting caught by the falling car. I wake up.

#42. Positive things

Positive thing number 1: I’m starting a brand new year and decade with the love of my life.

Positive thing number 2: I’m still on a roll with the 30 yoga classes in 30 days goal

Day 363/1001: #42

Positive thing number one: I started on #18 today! (Attend one Bikram class per week.) This works hand-in hand with a little commitment: 30 yoga classes in 30 days. My local yoga studio offered a great deal, so I figured it was a good way to jumpstart #18.

Positive thing number two: I enjoyed reading a book just for the sake of doing so today.

Day 362/1001: #42

I think the positive things today revolve around some productivity. This probably means my life is boring.

Positive thing number 1: did laundry

Positive thing number 2: began learning the new BodyPump release

Day 362/1001: #29

Strange stuff again, but I remember very little in terms of specifics. There was again the sense of frustration…something about trying to find things and being disorganized. Perhaps further proof of my sleeping, yet still firing synapses nudging me in a direction.

Looks like I should get on 5, 8, 21, 22, 27 and 28 but that I should also try to organize my head.

Day 361/1001: #42

Positive thing number 1: worked out

Positive thing number 2: took the dog for a nice walk

Tomorrow will be better.

101 Things: Day 361/1001

41. Be comfortable enough to teach a class with bare midriff.

This is not to say I’d actually do it, teach like that, I mean. This is to say I’d have the abs to pull it off. I know it’s totally vain, but I sort of take the easy way out with stuff. Because I teach the classes, I sometimes don’t go as hard as I should. It’s like I’m paying myself 70 – 80 cents on the dollar. I need to be a better role model, and that means getting closer to “the look” of a better role model. I’ll never be thin or have ripped legs, genetics have me at a disadvantage there, but I can capitalize on my “better parts” (shoulders, back) while working on my average parts (arms, middle) and then cleverly hide the bits I’d rather people not look at.

42. Come up with two positive results every day.

No matter how shitty the day, I need to make sure I come up with at least two positive outcomes or results from the day. Clearly to keep me honest, I’ll have to post these babies.