Author Angel Ackerman

Socks pose a threat

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Good morning. As you may have seen on the post from the Parisian Phoenix Publishing blog, yesterday got a little crazy with F. Bean Barker needing a quasi-emergency vet appointment for a splintered toenail.

I did some housework, unpacked my Hungryroot box, read some of an old Harlequin and basically hung out with the dog while the teenager worked.

Now, with my cerebral palsy, I have a bit of an aversion to socks and shoes. They are hard to take on and off, and sometimes they make me fall. Just like “Agador Spartacus” in The Birdcage.

The teenager got home from her last dog client of the day around 8:30 p.m. Friday night, so I was happy to head to the shower and get to bed close to my regular work bedtime.

I had on my cute cat socks my neighbor gave me for Christmas which perfectly matched the baby blue sweater which had also been hers.

I had removed all my clothes and only had my socks left, and the shower was running. I slipped my left hand into my sock. It got a little caught around the heel. And oddly, I felt this enormous pop and thought I heard something.

But my sock was still on my foot.

So I swept that off and looked at my finger. Which was a little floppy past the last knuckle.

My finger fully extended

I laughed and hopped in the shower after screaming down the stairs, “I think I dislocated my finger taking off my socks.”

I kept laughing. Stress response. I didn’t even bathe because it became apparent there was something wrong.

Which made me laugh harder because I was removing my socks.

The teenager dragged me to Patient First. I have an official diagnosis of “mallet finger.” And if I chipped the bone I may need surgery.

I emailed my paperwork to my warehouse supervisor— as I can’t go to work until I see a hand specialist. And with the holiday tomorrow, that will need to wait until Monday before I can even find a specialist and make an appointment.

It looks like the prompt splinting of the injury may save me some complications later so here’s hoping.

More on this type of injury.

Survive and conquer

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Growing up, I never felt like I had a disability— maybe when you’re younger your body has more ability to compensate.

But I’m guessing with decades of repetitive stress from walking funny and the normal wear-and-tear from age, it makes sense that the last decade has left me hurting.

The last decade led me to my first official broken bones. The last decade left me with a host of experience with weight training, body building, gaining weight, losing weight, chiropractic care and orthopedic and joint issues.

And like I mentioned, I’m not in my twenties anymore so none of this should be surprising.

But it’s really hard to maintain when troubleshoot these physical issues and it’s frustrating when suddenly you wake up in the morning not only stiff but feeling your bones in a way I can only describe as poking where they shouldn’t be.

Ninety-five percent of the time getting up and doing a normal routine eases some of these sensations, but this week was hard.

Today— after all of my ten-hour warehouse shifts— I woke stiff and feeling like my left leg didn’t want to cooperate.

And so when I got to the gym, Apex Training and met with Andrew, my trainer, I gave him my report. “Nothing hurts,” I said, “but nothing wants to work.”

We did leg day. And for the average person, it probably would have been easy. But even my bodyweight bench squats seemed difficult and clumsy. Warm up stretches I can usually knock out without breaking a sweat were a struggle.

And he critiqued my lunge stance and examined it until I could feel the muscles at least trying to work the way leg muscles are supposed to work— i.e. together.

And the worst exercise was a simple calf raise standing on plates so I could extend my heels. While holding barbell.

I’m no longer stiff. Especially after my shower. But man am I tired and wondering what muscles I will feel tomorrow and how my chiropractor appointment will go.

Fitness lamentations and celebrations

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It’s been a demanding week with my body in revolt for most of it.

I’ve succumbed to some bad moods but for the most part kept it together— and even enjoyed another pizza outing with the teenager and my blind friend Nan where we have officially determined that Nan and I think Nicolosi’s eggplant parmesan is our new favorite pizza. The teenager is in the chicken-bacon-ranch camp.

The teenager has been housesitting and her own dog F. Bean Barker seems to prefer sleeping in her crate downstairs to being in the teen’s bedroom alone with the two foster cats, Mars and Khloe.

Mars & Khloe

It has taken a few nights of sleep deprivation to discover this.

And it’s cold. And rainy. So the dog and I are both grumpy.

But this week I have started a new routine— getting up at 4:15 am so I can write for 30 minutes before work. In addition to my publishing business (Parisian Phoenix Publishing), I also need to commit to my writing.

Speaking of commitment, I’ve been trying to buy a bookshelf all week.

But I did buy a microphone for the business so that hopefully we can record some authors reading their work and have discussions with and for writers as part of our marketing material.

Nan and I got together today to run errands, see what was going on with Axiom, drink chai and read poetry. The best publication we looked at today was definitely *82 Review which featured Nan’s poem, “Brewing Chai.”

The magazine is very very diverse in its style and I am very excited to read more.

One of the best pieces I’ve read in a long time is “A Child in Need of Services” (a flash submission) where the speaker talks about the origins of their three talents, with such humor and joyful voice that you just don’t see the ending coming. The author is Amanda Skofstad.

We retrieved Nan’s laundry and I parked the car at the high school and walked the half mile in the cold rain (uphill as the teen would remind us) to the gym so the teen could have the car after school to go to work.

But I made it to the gym… for session 73 at Apex Training with my trainer Andrew. I love his current approach— a lot of back and shoulder based weight training for the upper body and creative more-or-less body weight exercises for the lower body so we can develop some muscle memory in those body parts that don’t understand how to play on a team. We also did some hex bar work and other stuff. I always feel good when I leave.

But by far, the hardest exercise for me today was wide stance squats. That had me struggling, concentrating, breathing and thinking I wouldn’t make it through. For squats. Bench squats at that.

Let me explain.

My cerebral palsy makes this the ultimate torture. Remember— my quads, hamstrings and calves never relax. My heel tendons are too short and my ankles don’t have the right mobility. My knees point in because of my femoral anteversion, and that just means the top of my femurs go into my hip sockets at the wrong angle.

So when I do that wide stance bench squat, I need to practice the most muscle control I can. I have to plant my feet and manually rotate my toes to what feels like uncomfortably out. And when I rise, I need to maintain balance, push with my upper region of my legs and force my hips out so they can force my knees out.

It’s damn hard.

But I can feel those body parts trying to cooperate and that’s exciting. If Andrew and I had more money and could work less at traditional full time jobs, I would love to train every day.

I posted this to Facebook:

I came home and stood in the rain for ten minutes holding an umbrella over the dog and she still wouldn’t pee. I took a shower, got dressed and gathered laundry. The washer wouldn’t work. My seven month old washer.

So I made myself an omelet of peppers, two eggs, heaps of Black Bear Mexican turkey, a slice of black pepper Cooper, a half slice of horseradish cheddar and piled it on my last slice of ShopRite bakery seeded rye.

The teenager came home and I googled the error code on the washer and she moved the whole wash tower and ripped the rear access panel off. When the drain pipe wasn’t back there, I had her read me the exact model number so we could Google again. We found this video, by a man with nice hands: Fixing the washer.

The teenager watched about half a minute, grabbed a bucket and ran to the front access panel. Within seconds, she had removed the whole plug apparatus and flooded the bathroom with gallons of wash water.

“How am I supposed to get that into a bucket?” she asked.

I continue watching the video. There’s a tube you empty first.

“There’s a tube!” she yells.

Oh, Pop Pop on the Mountain, wherever he is in the afterlife, is laughing his ass off now.

The apparatus is clogged with poly fill, a metal ring, quarters and other nonsense. That is fixed now. Drain hoses cleaned. Wash loads continue.

So then we Google the dishwasher as the teen also wants to clean that. We find Big Al. Clean the sprayers in a Maytag dishwasher.

I’m still cold and wet but now some of the appliances are clean.

I added a raisin to my shoe (again)

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So, once again, my body started hurting— of course starting with a burning in my hip.

I had a blog post about this Sunday and Monday I thought I should do something about it.

Logically the appropriate action might be to call the doctor or at least the chiropractor.

But instead I put a raisin smack dab in the middle of the ball of my foot and slapped a band-aid on it.

Because when I had a splinter, and also put a raisin there, all my pain (except for the splinter) dissipated.

That didn’t happen yesterday— instead I ended up in hip and spine and lower back muscle pain.

But I still hit the daily goal at work.

And I felt better this morning thought I was achy and stiff all day.

I worked a full ten-hour shift and made 104% of the daily goal. (168 fixes)

Heartstrings and hip pain

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The start of the Covid-19 pandemic two years ago brought an end to a couple toxic situations in my life, and led to many new experiences that were both rewarding and frustrating.

If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you may remember teenager #2, a friend of my teenager who needed a place to stay. Teenager #2 and her cats stayed for about nine months, with minimal support or contact from her parents.

Teenager #2 turned 19 last week, and I don’t know if she’d expect me to remember or not, because I haven’t heard from her since she moved out. And left a very trashed bedroom behind. And her cats taught my cats bad habits we are still trying to break.

I’ve heard rumors that she’s expecting her own baby now.

It’s also been about five weeks since my mother contacted me. Though she will probably read this later and text me nasty messages.

And my dad is three-and-a-half months gone now, and it leaves me wondering how people can be there one second and just… poof… gone.

But I’m not trying to elicit pity, I’m merely stating some of the thoughts in my brain to say that my emotions are already on edge.

So, a couple weeks ago we (the teenager and I) received a text message that our former foster Extra Crunchy was being returned to the rescue because a new baby was allergic.

This broke my heart.

But the family never showed up. They turned up unannounced at the FURR adoption event yesterday and returned him on his first birthday.

Readers, I think I am losing my stomach for rescue work.

Extra Crunchy was one of two kittens who survived a bout with distemper last spring. Feline distemper is a very fatal and preventable disease. FURR received a call that someone had three cats, two female and one male, neither fixed nor vaccinated. The two females each gave birth to a litter of kittens. But everyone contracted distemper. And the adults died.

So they called FURR, and FURR took in these ten dying and starved kittens who had never even had the chance to nurse from a mother.

My daughter asked if she could foster these babies, and our cat foster godmother said yes, but that we had to be prepared for them to die.

So my daughter started syringe feeding them. On the day she took over their care, two died right away. And it seemed like every day another would die, usually in the teenager’s arms.

We gave them ridiculous names because they weren’t going to live. Rufus. The Magician (he would just randomly teleport from one end of the playpen to the other). Spunky. Parker (which was actually Parkour because he climbed everything).

And Extra Crunchy. Because he was covered in formula, cat food and feces. After all, no one had taught him how to groom and no one had groomed him.

Extra Crunchy Kitten.

Extra Crunchy being syringe fed by the teenager

Extra Crunchy and Parker survived. They beat the odds. Like I did. My mother named me Angel because I was supposed to die.

So it hurts to see his adoptive family reject him, but they did the right thing by returning him to us.

YouTube Playlist for all the distemper kittens (trigger warning: some of these videos may reference or feature death.)

Extra Crunchy is currently at Chaar Pet Store in Forks Township.

On Friday, the teenager plans to bring him home for a bath and grooming before Saturday’s adoption event.

In addition to that, my hip is acting up and I don’t have a chiropractor appointment for two weeks. So I’m trying a whole lot of stretches.

The pain got worse throughout the day, and I accepted the offer to leave work at 3 when they announced VTO. I picked my own cart to start this morning, which meant I had a 3,000 step walk first thing in the morning. And by the end of the day, I had shipped 380 items, which, by my calculations is 108.5%.

Real friends eat fried chicken for breakfast even in the car

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

Thursday is my Saturday for those who don’t know or can’t keep track of my schedule.

Since my schedule change— from second shift to day shift— I have met with my friend Nancy (poet and essayist and blind lady with a wicked sense of humor and simple approach to life’s joys) usually every other Thursday to work on her writing commitments.

Recent changes in her life have made that every Thursday now, as I help her with some errands, and then I changed trainers at the gym and the teenager now works out with us so Nan gets Thursday morning while the teen is at school.

It’s automatic in my brain. As automatic as my standing Friday morning chiropractor appointment.

But what happens when we get together is never ordinary. Or the same two weeks in a row.

Like today we were going to see if our local Family Dollar had the individual creamers she likes. Except they weren’t open. So we opted to go to ShopRite.

And somehow— I got turned about driving there and thought I was on the wrong road but I wasn’t. So we zigzagged all over the place and eventually I had to Google map the grocery store.

We finally made it to ShopRite and the first thing I saw was a single serve bottle of orange juice— which Nancy is always looking for.

Then I saw fried chicken, still warm out of the oven. $9 for eight pieces. I had to get it. And I knew damn well I’d probably end up eating in the car.

Nan and I went through the various salads and deli meats— I picked out some broccoli slaw and ultra sharp cheddar for Nan and some black pepper Cooper for myself.

And next we saw small partial loaves of rye bread in the bakery. And muffins.

And so it went.

We found the items we needed, items we didn’t and a slew of things that we want to buy in the future.

The cashier actually addressed Nancy and understood to speak so Nancy could locate her.

And then we were in my car eating warm fried chicken at 9:15 a.m. Nan hadn’t had fried chicken in ages, and she kept saying she didn’t want any. But I insisted and handed her a drumstick.

She said it was delicious and that she’d forgotten that she likes fried chicken. And I said I’d be good on the fried chicken front for probably at least six months if not a year.

And then she pulled wet naps out of her purse.

After retrieving Nan’s laundry and taking her groceries home, I brought Nan back to my house for chai and well, the plan was poetry. But we got sucked into NASA briefings (crew4 and Axiom) on YouTube.

Nan listened to the briefings and pet the dog while I cooked some random items for her to share with the teenager and I. Nan enjoys my cuisine so when she comes over I try to send her home with a meal.

Sometimes you need to have fried chicken with a friend, in the car, for breakfast.

This Monday is a disability day

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Yesterday was a good day at work. I worked all ten hours and packaged 561 items. I came home achy, but not in a horrible way.

Then, today I woke stiff with my bones burning. The temperature had dropped 20 degrees and I thought maybe that had caused the issues in my joints.

I had that feeling — I’ve mentioned it before in my posts about my life with cerebral palsy— that my right leg was not in the hip socket all the way. It didn’t hurt, not really, but the persistent sensation left me queasy and close to vomiting.

The feeling in my hip changed a lot throughout the morning and as the awkwardness and instability in my right leg changed, my lower back began to burn.

Then one of the process leads came around the warehouse offering an early out for all of us— so I told her… I’d like to call my chiropractor, and take the early out.

So I called Dr. Jensen of Back in Line and she, herself, answered the phone.

“I don’t know if you have the time or the interest to see me today,” I said as I explained everything.

She wanted to see me.

So despite the fact that I did 112% in my job yesterday and I believe 105% in QC today, I went to the chiropractor and had a grueling appointment. Things popped. Body parts screamed.

My body still aches— but now my bones no longer feel like they are grinding or that they are pointing the wrong direction.