the other side of serious

When you see them competing tomorrow you won't see this side of them.  When you see them you won't know to look for the little things that gives each one of them away.  

At this point most of them call me Mom. Even a higher honor they trust me to hold their fancy phones for them. At one point I had one in every pocket. 

These young ladies spent their afternoon into the night working together to make sure their gym and the girls competing in today's session had a good meet.  They worked for sake of working and for the love of gymnastics. A 3 hr practice followed by helping to run a 4+ hr meet, no problem, where do they sign up?  

When you see them tomorrow wish them good luck but know luck has nothing to do with it.  

Boo-Bear number one bar timer

 And on a side note I heard that BC called the gym owner leaving a message that I was out too late too many nights in a row and that I should be fed and sent home. The price of being a gym mom in the hosting gym.  One more day.  We are almost there....

on hold

"Her eye is drooping.  And she looks very thin." He writes.  I can see the computer speak deep in a holding pattern he is writing more but it comes slowly.  "Did she not recover well from her illness?"...."Perhaps time off from the gymnastics would..." 

From half way across the country he is harassing me,  all be it lovingly, about a child he hasn't even really met- at least not as the child she is today.

I ignore all the little stabs that are aimed at me, the words between his lines 'what are you doing? whatever it is, it isn't enough'.  

"What do you want?" I ask typing too quickly so that some of the letters stick to the wrong words.  It isn't as rude as it seems not with this many years of friendship logged between us.

He is writing.  The computer keeps me on hold with little dots, the hold music of private messaging.  His words come.
"I.WANT.TO.KNOW.YOU.ARE.DOING.OKAY.AND.THE.ONLY.WAY.TO.KNOW.THAT.IS.TO.GET.TO.YOU.THROUGH.YOUR.CHILDREN.BECAUSE.YOU.ARE.TOO.OFTEN.SILENT.WHEN.YOU.SHOULD.SPEAK."


"I not being silent."

"You are.  Are you doing okay?"

"Her eye is dropping because her glasses are breaking and we are trying not to use them too much to make sure she has glasses for her meet this weekend.  She bounced right back from being sick and taking time off gymnastics is never going to happen.  We haven't even skied.  I'm just under a lot of pressure- this too shall pass."

"Misty..." There is along pause.  He is typing.  Then he is gone and nothing more appears on the screen.

it's all fine

“It’s all fine to say, “Time will heal everything, this too shall pass away. People will forget”—and things like that when you are not involved, but when you are there is no passage of time, people do not forget and you are in the middle of something that does not change.” ~Steinbeck, Cannery Row~

Genaro Zaragoza-Valencia died after being struck by a car while crossing the street.   
That was November.  It is January.  
The world only stops here now because the sign says to.

against the wind

 Alone. 

With dogs. 

 In the snow.

 I lost my bandanna.

I lost the dog's leash.

I even lost my water bottle.

(no idea)

 I didn't even know my nose was bleeding until I saw the blood in the snow.

I didn't feel cold.

I didn't feel the wind.

The wind that the dogs couldn't stop licking.

Alone. 

With dogs.

In the snow and wind.

(God I love the snow.)

Happy.  But it would be nice to have a friend up here....

bent

A few months back I did what most medical text will tell you is pretty hard for a grown-up to do: partially dislocated my own elbow in my sleep.  I was having a nightmare that I was moving back in with my ex and as we were unloading boxes I was realizing we didn’t have a coffee maker or any coffee! 

Now while I was having this dream I was curled up into a little ball with my left arm tightly locked between my knees.  And as I slept I was pulling with my knees, applying constant 4-5 hrs of tension on that joint… when I woke my elbow felt like I had hit my funny bone.  I thought it would go away but it didn’t.  

Later that day I showed it to a EMT friend who balk at the possibility I had dislocated it in sleep, he had a point considering in an adult it usually only occurs with a radial fracture. Even my doctor was doubtful at first joking "If you dislocate your elbow in your sleep do you call Ortho or a Shrink?" 

Days later the pain was still there, that ‘I hit my funny bone pain‘. It took a week for the pain to go from constant to intermittent. I had muscle weakness and in some positions right out failure.  I couldn't bend my elbow all the way, it hurt when I rotated my arm, and I developed a point tenderness at the joint. At that point my doctor agreed everything was backing up the fact that I actually dislocated my own elbow (real name: radial head dislocation) in my sleep.  

The whole thing is rather funny, painful but funny, it is commonly known as Nurse Maid's Elbow caused most often in toddlers when a caregiver tries to prevent a fall by pulling up on the arm.  “When longitudinal axial traction is placed on an extended pronated arm, the radial head may therefore slip or tear through the weak annular ligament into the radiocapitellar articulation”  My elbow was clearly back in joint so there was little to do but to power through it. 

Yep, power through. I have history with this. A few years back I dislocated my shoulder and tore my tricep pulling my bike heavily loaded with 4 year old Beach in a bike-trailer out of deep playground bark using more stubbornness and force than common sense and physics. Then I biked home to load the van for a 10 day river trip and drove to Montana. 

At some point in Montana I realized I couldn’t move my arm. That night camping at the Put In I started to feel the pain.  Facing 10 days with little chance of medical help I choose to ignore it. The only reason anyone found out was because I couldn’t row. Well I could push out but I couldn’t pull back. I could half row, which isn’t very helpful.  We happened to have a PT on one of the rafts traveling with us.  She, a 10 year veteran of her field, was blown away not just that I had concealed it but at what I had managed to do to my arm. I had managed an injury usually seen on one after being involved in a blunt force trauma.

It’s not that I am so tough, I am a huge baby, it is that I have a well developed ability to ignore or stuff any thing I can‘t process right away.  I broke my arm stacking wood, finished the pile before going in to look at it because I knew I wanted to finish and that if I saw my arm I wouldn’t be able to keep going.  I broke 4 bones in my foot dropping a razor scooter on it that one of my young soccer players left on the field.  I didn’t look at it until I got home because once again I knew I wouldn’t be able to do what I wanted if I acknowledged the injury- which at that moment was drive clutch.

So what is the point of all of this? Yesterday I ran 10 miles, slept hard, and at about 4 in the morning I rolled over to find BC.  When I pulled my left arm around the CRACK it made woke BC from a sound sleep.  It sounded exactly like a brittle stick snapping.  “What was that?!” He asked alarmed. 

“My elbow and it feels fantastic. I think I just fixed it.”  

Yep.  My elbow is swollen, it feels hot & wet inside (?), and throbbing today but it is 100% better than it has been for weeks.  I am convinced that CRACK was the ligament finally slipping back into place. For the first time in months I can fully bend my elbow!!! Sadly, rotating it still hurts.

cRaZy!!!! But good to go :) Crossfit anyone?

how to make the morning smile