Clever Manka is dressed and undressed

Yesterday's calisthenics were apparently productive. My shoulders and triceps are making their presences known. My hips are sore, but I can't tell if it's deep soft tissue or joint ache. I rolled out my glutes, quads, and IT bands for about twenty minutes last night after dinner and man it was rough. My arms were so tired from the morning's exertions that eventually I just had to let myself collapse on the therapy ball and lie there until the knot dissipated.

I woke at 5:45 this morning, but couldn't bear to get out of bed. Today is Restorative Yoga day and I knew my room downstairs would be too cold for me to relax into any of the poses so I lay there for an hour and fifteen minutes, reveling in the warm softness of my beautiful bed. DELIGHTFUL. Tonight I'll set up the space heater in my downstairs room and after dinner I'll crank the heat in the house and settle in for a nice, long restorative session before bed. ALSO DELIGHTFUL.

This cold snap is becoming wearisome. I cannot drink enough warm beverages. It's supposed to get up to 32 today. We'll see. I'll be making myself some chicken soup for dinner. mckitterick is not a huge fan of sloshy soups (they need to be more stew-like), but he is most likely going out for dinner this evening so I'm looking forward to making a nice, basic soup with lots of onions. LOTS. Man. Now I'm really looking forward to dinner and not just because dinner means I won't be at my desk anymore.

Sunday: Yoga
Monday: Rest
Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: Yoga
Thursday: Spaced it until too late--argh! Make-up day next week.
Friday: Yoga
Saturday: Self-myofascial release

Very much looking forward to boxing again tomorrow. Today was a slow, sluggish week. Not much to be done about it--when the uterus says "stop," I stop. But hurray boxing Sunday!

I just had the most wonderful ...revelation? epiphany? I'm not sure how to describe it. I was pulling on a pair of leggings and realized I'd accidentally bought a size medium instead of large and hadn't noticed until now (after they'd already gone through the wash). I figured I might as well see if they fit even a little, and was quite pleased to see that they did.

My first thought was how great this was, because next time I go to Penny's (they have great tights, seriously), I can look for mediums because they often have more colors. It wasn't how great because look I'm getting skinnier.

Ahhh, internalized body-hate, so nice to see you're leaving. Buh-bye.

Seen on Breaking Muscle:
When your efforts are extreme, they will also be temporary. Intensity is meaningless if not consistent. It's not what you do today, it's what you do day in and day out. Training is a process, not an event or an experience. Like a farm, today’s yield is the result of yesterday’s work. It’s much more about everyday habits than occasional stunts.

It's important to understand and internalize the notion that something we do a couple times a week isn't going to make lasting, healthful, and beneficial changes to our lives or bodies. Fitness isn't a goal. It's a path, and it's one we've gotta walk, even briefly, every single day. If I desire a certain level of fitness, I need to walk that path for as much of the day as I can.

Going all out for forty-five minutes (or an hour, or even two hours) at the gym every day is great, but if I immediately after go sit my ass down in front of a computer for the next eight hours, I'm not doing my body many favors. I might increase strength, but I also allow my muscles, damaged and torn from the weight-lifting, to mend and heal in a sitting position--one of the worst postures for the human body--and that will inhibit my progress past a certain state.

This doesn't apply only to high-intensity activity or lofty goals. When it comes to long-lasting, life-changing habits and achievements, consistency is key. This is why I committed to something that might seem small--30 minutes of intentional movement five days a week. In a month (depending on how well I do and how well I feel), I might increase that to 30 minutes of intentional movement six days a week with two days a week incorporating higher-intensity resistance training. After a successful month of that, I might find ways to further build strength and stamina. If it's too much, I'll fall back and resume the previous practice. Regardless, I am participating in a regular healthful habit and not treating that activity as an event separate from the rest of my life.

Regular application and commitment to constant (if slow) change is necessary for improvement. Yes, of course one's health and fitness isn't always going to be the driving force behind every single action. But if fitness is your a priority (and fitness is a matter of setting priorities), consideration of the healthful aspects of an action must at least be considered. Everything we do makes us more or less healthy in one way or the other--physically and emotionally. It's crucial to remember that when we make decisions about what we're doing and how we're living our lives.

And that doesn't apply to just exercise.

It's been so long that I've put up a post with substance. I have many little things to talk about, and I'm all over the place here, so I'm not bothering to even attempt smooth transitions. Be warned.

Yesterday I listened to a grad student and professor talk about the Bechdel Test. The student had just learned about it and the professor had never heard of it, but was excited by the idea and asked the student to send her links about it. Fandom is amazing and important, you guys. Just fuck academia. Seriously. Sometimes the ignorance, privilege, and prejudice makes me so angry. I don't judge the student or professor for not knowing about the Bechdel test before now. I am blaming The System. Hard. Fandom is important and fangirls are smart and clever and people need to understand this.

What with my elevated inflammation levels, the tendonitis in my right wrist has gotten pretty bad. I'm having problems just holding onto things with my that hand. Pens. Forks. Pieces of paper are particularly difficult. Monday and Tuesday saw me typing everything one-handed. Today I'm back to two-handed typing, but it's early in the day. If things start to hurt again, it's back to pecking. Probably three-quarters (if not more) of my social life is online, and even if it wasn't, it's not like I have the energy to do much with people in person right now. Mix exhaustion with slow typing and I'm pretty much not interacting with anyone except mckitterick. I adore him, but seclusion isn't helping my blues.

In a post about her experience with a recent unexpected purge of belongings, mildred_bobbin posted this mighty fine observation: "...the price for letting the clutter (mental or physical) get to the point (is) that a full clean sweep is the only way...to address it." This is a good thing for me to remember. I mustn't let things accumulate until they get horrible. Take care of the little things as they come. It makes dealing with the big (and unexpected) things so much easier.

One way to do that is by following the suggestions in this Whole9 article on six ways to avoid exercise-related injury. Avoiding injury is so much easier than recovering from it.

I'm not really digging Tai Chi. I think I could enjoy the movements, but the instructors (bless them) are a little too...imaginative? metaphorical? and I'm just not enjoying the classes and I don't feel I'm learning appropriately or adequately. The visualizations and pretend stuff was great at first. Pretend you're sitting on a horse, or you're reaching for a piece of fruit, or you're dragging your arm through water. Feel the horse, the fruit, the water. I understand this teaching style works for a lot of people, but at this stage I need some concrete information. Here are the particular muscle groups you want to activate for this movement. Here is the breathing pattern for this form. Here is where the movement originates and where it ends. To anyone who has taken Tai Chi classes before: Is an anatomically-focused teaching style unusual? Are most Tai Chi classes based on a sort of visualization technique?

Yesterday I was feeling in particular need of indulgence, so last night I skipped Tai Chi (there were numerous reasons I felt wretched and exhausted, it wasn't just that I didn't want to go to class) and made these chocolate chip blondies that drinkingcocoa mentioned on her LJ yesterday. I generally stay away from beans and legumes because of gut permeability issues, but I'm fine with occasional treats of things to which I am not actually, actively allergic. These blondies are even eggless, so I didn't have to use any of my duck eggs (which are expensive and sometimes scarce). Instead of chocolate chips (which usually have soy lecithin), I chopped up four squares of Alter Eco's Blackout Bar. They were fucking delicious. I ate half the pan.

I'm on a discussion panel this afternoon that's being organized by the Graduate School. They want us to talk about things that make us an effective graduate secretary. None of the questions they gave us for preparation deal with graduate students, though, except to ask how we track their progress to degree. All the other questions deal with faculty. How we get faculty to use new tracking systems. How we deal with problematic faculty. Fuck the faculty. I'm not here for the faculty. My number one priority is supporting graduate students, not graduate faculty. So guess who's going off script? CAN'T WAIT. *cracks knuckles*

Woke up at 4am from a combo of being really hungry (I didn't have much of an appetite yesterday) and a nasty, violent dream (see subject line of post). Good times.

I was gonna try the rock climbing thing at the student rec center, but I think that's a little more ambitious than reasonable right now. Instead I'm gonna re-join Westside Yoga and hit at least the two evening classes on Thursdays. At 5:45 is a vinyasa flow class and then at 7:15 is a restorative class (which was great last time I took it). Westside Yoga has unlimited classes for $50 a month, so if I'm taking two classes a week, that's pretty cheap, even if I do have to drive way the fuck to the opposite side of town. To get that price, they require you to sign up for six months at a time, but for some reason I'm always more motivated to go to yoga classes in the winter, so that works fine for me.

So I'll have Sunday boxing, Tuesday tai chi, and Thursday yoga. Maybe by spring I can start lifting again. POSITIVE THINKING.

I almost cried again yesterday, twice, for different reasons/absolutely no reasons at all so that was frustrating. I am not a naturally emotional person (mckitterick is not the first person to refer to me as Spock or Vulcan), and constantly being under the weight of near-tears is so fucking annoying. I feel like I could cry right now for absolutely no other reason than I feel like I could cry right now for absolutely no reason.

Monday morning I go in for the usual blood tests and four new ones: HS-CRP, which measures general inflammation levels; IG-1, which measures stress--lifestyle stress, exercise stress, and calorie/nutrient depletion; Vitamin D levels, which if low can correlate to low testosterone and high cortisol; and oxygen saturation, which might be what's causing my chronic weakness, fatigue, and shortness of breath. That's gonna be, like, half a pint of blood. Sheesh. In my never-ending research (yes, I found out about and requested those myself--hurray for doctors who will run tests based on my own research but JFC I am tired of doing my own research), I found out about something called cytotoxic hypersensitivity which basically as far as I can tell means being allergic to everything in the world including oneself. I have no idea if this information is actually helpful or meaningful or could in any way lead to possible solutions to my health issues, but it's a new phrase to throw around and that's always fun. *eyeroll*

Did I tell you guys I'm on Twitter now? I don't tweet very often, just a warning. I use it as a sort of drive-by thing when I have something quick to say that doesn't warrant an LJ post. Things might pick up when I get a smart phone. Someday. Maybe. I'm actually a little worried about what I'll be like when I get a smart phone because GOD DAMN I LOVE THE INTERNET SO MUCH.

More intentional movement stuff! I'm not a big fan of spot exercises or spot toning or whatever you want to call isolated things like crunches and bicep curls and quad extensions, etc. (and by "not a big fan" I mean "will mock mercilessly"), but integrated core work is super important for basic daily life. A strong core is crucial for good posture. And stop thinking about abs for godssake, though, your core is so much more than your fucking abs. So anyway, here are some integrated core movements for building strength and stability. Note how the whole body is engaged? No letting your arms or legs lie down on the job here. With the exception of the leg dips, these movements could be combined to make a great basic flow series. I would leave out that weird drop on the side-plank-with-twist, though--that just looks awkward and not so great for the low back.

In other news, I am preparing for another possessions purge. I'm clearing out my craft/studio room of project supplies that have lain dormant for ages. If you're interested in inheriting any of these things, let me know. I can't say precisely when I'll shed them, but it will be in the next six to nine months.

Ren Fest. I'm keeping one complete costume from my whore days, but the remaining stuff is outta here. My cloak, mug (because if I'm a patron I'm drinking out of a god damned plastic cup for the sheer joy of it), horn spoon, and even (yes) the giant picnic basket I used to haul all my shit around in. I could be ready to get this stuff out of my house this weekend in time for use at KCRF, which still has six more weekends, counting this one.

Beads. I'm making necklaces with the few remaining beads I can't bear to abandon, and the rest of them (as well as findings, tools, etc.) are going to a good home.

Fabric embellishment. My days of creating dance costumes covered in done-by-me shisha mirrors and other embroidery are over. If (and that's a big if) I create more dance costumes, they're not going to be tribal-esque costumes. I'll keep the coins and cowries because those are still appropriate for American cabaret (especially the 70s style that I love so much), but everything else (the tiny mirrors, the big beads, the odd applique) goes.

Water gun mods. I had a plan to paint and sell these, but I got frustrated with my low-quality paints and I didn't want to sink the money into more expensive ones that don't require five coats of each color to be opaque. I'm going to keep a few of them in case I want to paint some for just myself. A small group of them, arranged like an installation piece on a wall, would look fantastic. But I don't need twenty (more?) freaking water guns in my craft room closet.

Sewing patterns. Time to ruthlessly cull the herd, here. I don't know how many I have, but I stopped counting at 250 and that was several years ago. I'd like to get some money for the vintage ones (just a couple buck apiece would be nice), but the modern ones just need to get gone. Obviously I'll keep the few that I can actually see myself making, but otherwise, BYE. If there's interest by non-locals, I'll get pics and post them. Otherwise, just drop me an email to schedule a time to come shop.

Miscellaneous crap. Vintage travel irons, metal card catalog drawers, fabric I will never use, craft books (let's be honest, I am never going to take up quilting), etc. I'll be listing those in a separate post once I'm to a point where I can actually get to this stuff.

Who knows what else I might find in there once I get this stuff out, too. Christ, I have way too much stuff in there.

Oh, friends. I am running out of steam. siro_gravity mentioned a couple days ago that I hadn't been chatty much and indeed, no, I haven't.

The majority of my mental energy has been used in public conversations and private considerations of race and white privilege and it is exhausting. I hold in awe people of color who deal with this shit every god damned minute of every god damned day. You all are amazing. Please have my esteem, sympathy, and respect forever and ever.

One of the posts I want to write soon is about my motivations for being such a vocal proponent for equality and justice for all. I just can't do it justice (heh) right now. I am too tired.



Another factor influencing my exhaustion is the fact that I don't think I fully recovered from spraining my back in July. I took two weeks off, then resumed training, then hurt it again, then went to Comic-Con, and then was gun-shy about returning to activity, and then failed to do active and proper recovery work, and now I'm just a fucking mess, physically.

My inflammation and swelling are horrible, I'm tired all the time, and this month my body decided to resume its old 22 day cycle. I'm mostly sleeping through the night, and when I do wake up I'm able to fall back asleep, but I don't know how well I'm resting because Christ I am so tired. I'm tired nearly from the time I get up until the time I go to bed, with a small afternoon window of energy. In other words, pretty much textbook timing for adrenal fatigue, which I know kicks me into a chronic fatigue spiral.



So I'm looking at another period of clawing my way out of this fucking health hellhole and god damn that is just depressing as hell you guys. It's rough to do it once or twice but I feel like I've been climbing for the past fifteen years. And just when I think "Hey! I'm finally out of the well!" or even "Hey! I can finally grab the bucket!" something knocks me off the edge back down to the bottom.



*cue pity party music*

I was planning to take a week off work for a staycation (seriously my favorite type of vacation I am not lying) sometime this semester but it needs to happen sooner rather than later.

My relief at not doing Renaissance Festival this year cannot be described in words. OH MY GOD YOU GUYS.



So that's where I am right now. I'm already pursuing new strategies, too. I bought a registration? membership? thing? at ph360, an online program that adjusts food and exercise recommendations based on one's changing health. It told me to cut out some of my favorite foods (no cruciferous vegetables, no egg yolks--not even duck eggs, no alcohol, no a lot of other things), but suggested some things I've been avoiding (like butter lettuce and alfalfa sprouts, because they're raw). Since I haven't noticed any improvement in my body's reaction toward the foods I have been eating, I figure why not try incorporating salads more often? And that's been nice, especially with our current weather. I'm also going to attend an open house of a chiropractor/holistic health dude in KC that otterdancing sees. Feel him out to see if he's someone I can work since I think I've about exhausted what Dr. Khosh can do for me.

One step forward, two steps back. But at least I'm not lying down and letting the current carry me the wrong way. Still fighting. I'm having a hard time getting my hands up but I'm still standing.

My Tumblr is FERGUSON FERGUSON FERGUSON WHAT THE FUCK FERGUSON right now (and let's not even talk about FB where I actually had someone I knew twenty years ago piping up to talk about PROPER USE OF TEAR GAS and LAWSUITS*), so I really need LJ to be something else for me today.

* Here is his entire comment: If the police use tear gas improperly, then they are liable. If it used properly, the mother can be charged with child endangerment. There is a middle ground where the mother is not liable and the police used it properly as well. Because, you know, throwing tear gas into a non-violent crowd that has families and children can TOTALLY BE "proper use."



Nerdfitness has a good article on how to get over your fear of going to the gym. There's a link in the story that takes you to this piece on how to be a good spotter which I'm linking here as well because this is good information for long-time gym folks who might not be inclined to read that first piece.

I walked this morning, and met up with sherwood21 who volunteered to be a motivator for me. Thank you, bb! I got there right at 6am and it was so dark. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to do this. I don't relish walking around a dark track. Pffffff. It was pretty cloudy this morning, though, so provided Wednesday and Friday are clear, I'll be able to better judge lighting conditions for the next week or so.

Also, you guys, I have what would be an embarrassing confession to make except for the fact that ho ho ho don't you wish it was so easy to embarrass me. I bought a vibration platform. I know. Right? But I saw on someone's LJ that she'd bought one and that a friend of hers tried it and had near-immediate improvement with her digestion.



I started to read a bit about them and found studies show that vibration platforms can assist with the improvement of circulatory problems and bone density protection. Hm! So mckitterick offered to buy me one and it arrived last week and you guys it is so weird and strangely enjoyable. I haven't noticed any immediate improvements, but we all know I'm slow to change.

So y'all locals, if you're over at the house and want to stand on it for a while, lemme know. It's a hoot.

And then there's this:

Today's Tumblr collection is Tuesday, August 12: Badass Women.

( Click if you want to hear about my current female hormone fuckery )

I had a realization last night/this morning, too. I've been sleeping well--really well--since I returned from San Diego, and even in the week leading up to the trip. The one thing I changed in my program? I haven't been exercising. Like, hardly at all. So I think I'm gonna cut out the heavy lifting for a while again. Go back to walks and yoga.

It's hard for me to get interested in walks and yoga so I tend to not do them at all. I gotta ditch this all-or-nothing mentality when it comes to movement. If it's too late and my body simply can't handle weightlifting ever again, well...am I going to completely give up on maintaining any level of fitness? That's not a rhetorical question. It's something I seriously need to consider. How do I find a way to enjoy, how do I find ways to want to do low-level exercise like I want to throw heavy weights around? That's the question for right now.

Perhaps you've heard the phrase "Do something that scares you every day." To that, I say fuck no because stress is not good for me. But I do like to try new experiences when they come along, which is why I'm going to Comic-Con next week. It's also why, this morning when I passed a group of men doing surveying outside my office building, I asked if I could look through the survey camera-thing. Fun! I'd never looked through one before. It was pretty much like looking through a telescope, only with a grid pattern. And all I could see was a tree. But hey! I've now looked through a piece of surveying equipment (which a Google search tells me is called a theodolite).

I also walked around the high school track (about a block from my house) this morning. I've been meaning to do that for ages. It was nice! I got a late start, so only managed to get around four times, but that's a mile, right? And I was walking around the outside lane, so a bit more. I'm still keeping up (mostly) with my get-away-from-your-desk-every-hour walkabout, too. The path I take for that is about a quarter to a third of a mile, too.

I'm doing my damnedest to avoid falling under the classification "sedentary." If you're interested in research that shows how even those of us who exercise daily are still at risk for sedentary lifestyle diseases, check out that article. It's the first in a four-part series. "No matter your body weight or how much you exercise, sitting too much still results in increased health risk."

In other words, your job really could be the death of you.

Thanks to the incredible generosity of my friends Paul and Amy, with whom I'll be staying for part of my Comic-Con trip, the logistics aren't looking quite so dismal. I still have a rather serious To Do list, though. One of the biggest/hardest (heh) is learning to use my GoPro. I would link to the GoPro website for those of you who might not be familiar with the product, but it has auto-loading sound and that shit is against my religion.

It's been a while since I talked about cooking. Last night I made a pretty damn tasty meal, so Imma share it with you. I started with Melissa Joulwan's fabulous Mackerel Cakes (tasty, nutritious and so much cheaper than salmon cakes). For the vegetable, I made yellow squash noodles with a creamy sauce, which provided a good texture compliment to the fish cakes and enough moisture to keep the meal from being too dry. ( Click for noodle recipe )