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Sometimes the bad, and the cold, can be good

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

Working 10-hour day shifts after a year of second shift has certainly proved challenging (and this weekend will be one of those challenges as we change the clocks in the wee hours of Sunday morning). And I do appreciate the long weekends, but not the 6:30 a.m. start times.

My “weekends” (Thursday, Friday, Saturday) get hectic— usually one day for errands and medical appointments, one day for chores, and (only quasi-joking) one day for cats.

I woke today at 5:30 a.m. in part because my cat Fog seemed to be in the middle of a panic attack, banging on my door and screaming, wondering why I was still in bed. I thought I might snuggle back under the covers when the garbage man rolled up and decided to bang cans and recycling around underneath my bedroom window.

Now that I’m on day shift and normally wake at the ridiculously ungodly hour of 4:45 a.m., 5:30 a.m. is technically sleeping in. And while the garbage man and his predawn ruckus used to piss me off when I went to bed at 2 a.m. after clocking out at midnight, “he” is merely a minor inconvenience now.

But I woke with a strange chill as I crawled out of bed— but I am always cold so I thought nothing of it.

I picked up Nan and 9 a.m. and as we were working in my dining room, I asked, “Are you okay, I’m cold.”

And she confirmed that it was cold but it was okay.

But I said no, that I couldn’t feel my toes and we needed to nudge the heat even though it was approaching 50 degrees outside.

But the thermostat read “56” even though the heat was set at “62.” And I realized that my fuel oil company, Deiter Brothers, had sent me an email that I would receive my automatic delivery fuel drop in the next day or two.

Obviously, we didn’t make it.

We were out of oil.

I confirmed it and called Deiter Brothers and brought Nan out to the sunporch where it was 60 degrees and sunny.

And the dog kept us warm.

After I took Nan home, I did a headcount on our personal and foster cats and sure enough everyone was someplace warm.

Tripods: Foster Louise (left) and our pet Opie
Clockwise from left: personals Oz, Fog, and Misty and foster Touch of Grey
Fosters Mars (tuxedo) and Khloe (torbie)
Foster Minerva (sister of Mars)

I folded some laundry on the porch, now a toasty 64, and the oil man arrived as I sipped a cup of coffee to stay warm.

And much to my surprise— I had enough summer prepaid gallons left to fill the tank. If I didn’t, my locked in rate would have been $2.399 a gallon. Which seems insane compared to the current price of oil.

This is only the second time in the twenty years I’ve lived in this house that automatic delivery let us run out.

So now we’re toasty again— thanks to the oil delivery man priming the furnace and getting us running again.

I shared some good laughs with Nan, got some good animal cuddles and appreciated the sunshine more than I might have otherwise.

The raisin and the good day

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

So, if you read yesterday’s post, you know I have a massive splinter in my foot.

What you don’t know is that the teenager told me to put a raisin on it.

Apparently, she saw it on TikTok* and my follow up research suggests that there is something in the chemical construction of the raisin that helps the splinter get out.

*edit: The teenager informed me that the raisin came from a discussion in English class not TikTok.

So I went to work with a raisin under the ball of my foot.

And stood on it for 10-plus hours.

They made those of us on 10-hour shifts in outbound stay the whole day even though everyone else in the building went home at 3. There was probably 10 of us left behind.

But here’s the amazing thing—

We had a meeting and I still managed to fold 175 fixes. The goal for a ten hour day is normally 162, but the 15-minute meeting drops it to 157-158.

My process lead called me a beast.

My supervisor confirmed I did 110% of the daily minimum expectation.

Nothing, other than the splinter, hurt. For the first time, the first day, in years if not decades, I didn’t have some body part malfunctioning.

Did the splinter in the ball of my feet change my alignment?

I slept well last night but still didn’t even get 7 hours sleep. I ate the same meals I’ve been eating all week.

And yesterday I was miserable.

So what changed?

Something to ponder.

I came home and checked the splinter. There was no swelling where the raisin had been.

I took a shower (because I worked so hard today I was smelly), soaked my foot in Epsom salts and applied a fresh raisin to the swollen pocket.

And then the dog forced me off my spot on the couch.

What a week… work, doctors and Shamrock shakes

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

I’ve been trying to gather my thoughts for this blog for 24 hours now. And just when I thought I had them… The Teenager had dinner ready. Then The Teenager left for work and forgot to grab her shopping list.

I went to take a photo of it for her and got the largest splinter I’ve ever had in my life.

(And if you are looking at the photo, you’ll also see all the cracks in my toes from the blisters.)

I hobbled upstairs, dug my tweezers out of the closet and manage to very painfully remove the top half of it.

It’s so wedged deep into my foot and still very painful. I’m soaking it in Epsom salt right now.

Just another reason for my left leg not to work.

It’s already been giving me trouble today and leading to a lot of muscle pain in my back and torso. Even though it’s not responsible of me, I accepted the voluntary early time out at work today and only worked an 8-hour day.

So speaking of work…

Sunday I worked Freestyle which is a department where I can usually hit 100 percent. But Stitch Fix changed our small (#5) envelopes. They had two strips of tape instead of one. They were a tighter fit than the predecessor. And they were just sticky.

I ended the day at 86%.

Yesterday I worked in my home department of QC— at the quirky poorly set up table— and reached 100%. But today I was at a high table and only hit 80%.

Yesterday I saw a sports rehab doctor recommended by my primary care physician for his knowledge and training in orthopedic care. He was going to evaluate my hip pain. I shouldn’t say that— he did evaluate my hip pain.

He also read my x-rays, did a physical exam and used the photos and the exam to measure the extent of my femoral anteversion.

Apparently, the head of my femurs aren’t positioned correctly in my hip sockets. It’s what causes me to look like this baby when I walk:

Apparently, as the screenshot shows, it’s not uncommon in children and even more common among children with cerebral palsy. If the bones don’t rotate into the correct position on their own by age 10, often surgery follows.

A rather invasive hip surgery where the femurs are cracked, repositioned and stabilized with rods.

I have an appointment with the neuromuscular physiatrist May 31– but until then here are my thoughts.

1. I still think I am leaning forward at work causing the issue with my toes blistering. If my femurs fit into my hip sockets at the wrong angle, this lean might be “natural.”

2. The doctor I saw yesterday says nothing I do is causing damage to my body, so my activities are limited only by what I can tolerate.

3. Relieving some of the tension in my hamstrings may lessen some of my symptoms.

4. There is no clear solution on how to move forward.

So, I called Nan to discuss it and get her opinion. I learned she never had a shamrock shake. I rectified that. See video.

Nan’s first shamrock shake

Gym Update: By Now, You Probably Know I Love The Guys at Apex Training

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

So, I’m in the midst of what feels like an incredibly long, never ending journey. I’ve posted frequently about fitness, health and disability.

And I’m getting to the point where I’ve accepted that I will never be done.

It’s probably a long shot that my body will ever be athletic or even dependable, but at least I can commit myself to doing as much as I can to be as functional as I can.

I have hemiplegic cerebral palsy, which means it only effects my lower limbs. On good days, in the right circumstances, with the right concentration, you might not even notice. But those days feel fewer and far between as I age.

I started strength training in college— and if you’ve read some of my previous posts this might be repetition for you— as one of my gym electives. My liberal arts education included gym.

I returned to it on and off, mostly for stress management and then health after The Teenager was born. That’s when I met some very awesome vegan gym owners. (I was still in my vegetarian days. I keep trying to get more into a plant-based diet again.)

I worked out at home for several years while regaining strength after broken bones. And— as I’ve shared before— I got very lean and cut.

Now I have no desire to be than thin again and no discipline left to be that lean. But I am working toward regaining my strength and muscle. Those pictures are from when I was 40. Well, I’m going to be 47 in a few months and progress is slow. I’m still at an all-time high in my weight. I have days where my hips don’t want to work. And my spine hurts most of the time.

My eating habits also don’t match my goals— but my emotional state has to improve for me to fix that.

But I keep working on all these things.

As my marriage ended, I joined Planet Fitness and that kept some of my health demons at bay. The pandemic ended that, and that’s where my weight gain exploded, too.

And I also realized my desire and discipline had faded in direct proportion to my pain and physical difficulties. If I’m going to be crippled away, why bother?

But this summer, I saw a Facebook post by Apex Training here in my neighborhood. So I reached out and Greg got in touch almost immediately. I told him my story— and this meant a lot of vulnerability for me— and he immediately recommended Dan without missing a beat.

Now I was very very intimidated. I had walked by their gym 1,000 times but usually found small gyms and local trainers pushy and unwelcoming. Like a private club.

But I hit it off with Dan and found myself impressed with his knowledge and his creativity. He’d be a gifted physical therapist.

My strength has returned but my body still doesn’t always cooperate but Dan always knows how I’m feeling just my how I’m moving.

This gym is amazing. I see a lot of guys who come together to lift, a lot of women who want to lose weight, and married couples who work out together. And the environment is very family friendly— you’ll often see Greg’s dog Gotti or the babies, Dan and Greg both have toddler sons.

The Teenager has started lifting. She has a love of pushing around heavy weights so Dan has started teaching her barbell sports. Around the same time she started accompanying me to the gym, Andrew joined the team and he has a background in powerlifting.

The Teenager squatting with Dan

Well now it’s too late to make a long story short, but I’ve been feeling better and Dan has made some creative adjustments to my sessions to try and improve my range of motion.

Dan had to cancel this morning’s session so he suggested reaching out to Andrew, but Andrew was running on fumes. We weren’t able to schedule a workout but we had a great conversation about the prospect of getting The Teenager into her own sessions with Andrew and I can continue my work with Dan.

Andrew said she has potential and that he’s impressed with the lifts he’s seen. She now squats 155 I think and deadlifts 195. But here’s what I didn’t expect… “Your work ethic,” Andrew said to me, “is inspiring to watch.”

My world has been upside down for the last three to six months. So to hear that is just a reminder of how you never know who’s watching and how you may impact others.

And while I am still searching for the right doctors as I age, I know that strength training serves as a great boon to my future mobility and health. I see the orthopedic physiatrist this week and scheduled a visit with the neuromuscular physiatrist at the end of May.

I’m hoping these doctors can teach me how my body works so I can give this information to the team at Apex and maybe I could have a future in strength sports. Or maybe I can finally jog a 5K.

But more people need to understand—

Physical therapy is a blessing for specific injury. But as we age, most of us will gain a disability if we don’t already struggle with congenital issues. Just as I look for the doctor that can help me understand my whole body and its movement, the right personal trainer can help me strengthen my whole body.

I really wish I could be with the guys at Apex Training five days a week.

And I hope anyone with a disability who wants to improve their physical condition will consider committing to work with a personal trainer.

The experiment: chiro followed by personal trainer

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

This is another post mostly about my journey into learning more about my body and cerebral palsy.

First off, before I jump into my update, let me give a huge shout out to “the teenager” who solved an issue in my kitchen that had been a thorn in my dad’s side for more than a decade.

I once had him over for a dinner party in the early days of owning this house and during said dinner party, I set a candle on fire in the kitchen. It burned a hole in the countertop. My dad thought he’d buy a replacement as a Christmas present as the counter is probably three feet long.

Problem was it’s an unusual chunk in the corner and needed to be custom cut.

Somehow the teenager got the idea of applying special contact paper designed for counters.

It looks pretty damn cool— my dad would be very proud.

I’ll have to dig up a before photo.

In other news, my boxes of Not an Able-Bodied White Man with Money arrived. (Purchase on Amazon here.) I have an official unboxing planned and a blog entry for Parisian Phoenix but my body is having a minor revolt so the debut will be postponed until tomorrow. AND my credit card reader came.

I do love what Gayle did with the cover.

And now on to my experiment… The background… On Sunday, I performed at 99% preparing packages in Freestyle— pretty impressive considering we had computer problems and a work shortage. And we worked all 10 hours. Yesterday I worked eight hours in my home department and did 131 fixes, which I believe was 101%.

I knew I had a chiropractor appointment at 5 p.m. Monday so I asked Dan, my physical trainer at Apex Training if he would be around for a workout. I knew it might be light, after a workday in the warehouse, but wondered if my body would move differently after visiting Nicole Jensen of Back in Line Chiropractic and Wellness Center.

Nicole made sure everything was stretched and aligned and off I went.

And Dan led me in what would be a light leg workout for most— a lot of squats and floor exercises. He was impressed and honestly I didn’t have to concentrate as much as I usually do.

I woke up this morning in no real pain, and through most of my days doing women’s returns processing, my aches and pains were muscular and not skeletal.

But then, I took a small walk around the neighborhood and things started feeling off. My phone later revealed that my walk was indeed asymmetrical.

So I took a shower and plan to go to bed early as my body is stiff and achy. We’ll see how I feel in the morning.

For more on this topic, click here.

Marvel review: Ant-Man & the Wasp and the final two Avengers movies

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

The latest three in our series of Marvel movies— Ant Man and The Wasp and Avengers Infinity War and Avengers End Game— brought some fun moments into my experience of the Marvel Comics Universe.

The teenager brought home generic takis from the Dollar Tree and I had some of those and Cabot Cottage cheese for supper.

I still think the length of the Avengers movies is unnecessarily long— fight scenes and excessive fancy CGI does not attract me. The contrast between Infinity War and Endgame is strong. The former clearly is conflict driven while the later seeks resolution to the past as its plot. So whereas Infinity War offers the fighting of villains vs heroes, Endgame offers a chance to solve a puzzle.

Ant-Man, as in his previous film, blends pure silliness with the everyday experience of the Everyman and the Ant-Man & The Wasp storyline puts Scott slang, as the Everyman, in a unique position to miss the events of the Infinity War and have a worldview that gives him the strange understanding of quantum physics that he doesn’t really “get” but has lived. He has the knowledge potentially to revive the world.

I love the dynamic paths of Hawkeye— I’m drawing a blank on Clint’s full name— and Tony Stark. And Thor’s deterioration from a god to an overweight alcoholic is a beautiful tribute to the toll trauma takes on any hero.

We still have an hour to go on Endgame, so perhaps my opinions will grow. But for now, here it is.

Jake not from State Farm and other fun chores

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

The last 48 hours have been chaotic and exciting. On Wednesday night, as I hobbled around like a Barbie doll with her leg half popped out, I received my LLC approval via email in a pdf called “Happy Letter.”

I brought this and my fictitious name registration and my EIN to my banker, Jake, who is not from State Farm.

Turns out I’ve gathered more paperwork than I need. And none of it matches. So in the future I may need an EIN for the LLC as the original EIN lists the business as a partnership and the LLC does not.

Jake not from State Farm enjoyed my enthusiasm for setting up my banking business and shared that his wife is working on a book about parenting autistic children. And how much he enjoys poached eggs.

I had had plans to have breakfast with Nancy, but those plans had to be delayed. I was supposed to pick her up at 9:30 but I told the teenager I would drop her off at school at 9 and I thought I would run to the bank and see if I could open business accounts.

I told Nan if I were on time it meant I had bad luck, and if I were late, it meant I had a business bank account.

So when I called her at 10:30, she was happy for me but it also meant we couldn’t get breakfast potatoes at Wendy’s. We opted for egg sandwiches from Dunkin instead and came back to my house to work.

I made Nan chai, we did her work, and I subscribed to Poets & Writers for the business. Then Nan and I went to Grocery Outlet.

We got some goodies for the upcoming ice storm— which for Nan meant cotton candy grapes, Cherry Coke Zero and cheddar quinoa crisps. I got the sea salt version of the crisps, some creamers, hot dog rolls, monster cereal, raspberries, dates, frozen cauliflower and whipped cream cheese.

Somewhere along the afternoon, Nancy and I laughed ridiculously hard about things I don’t remember. We picked up the teenager from school.

We went to pick up Nan’s laundry. The teenager helped her carry it up to her apartment and as Nan washed and started snacking on her grapes, the teenager and I went to the gym, Apex Training

The teenager achieved a new personal best for barbell squats— 175 pounds.

I managed my lower body workout, which wasn’t easy with my right hip and leg not acting as a team. I feel so weak and still feel out of shape, as if I’m wasting my money, but this morning I found it much smoother to move so maybe I am moving forward.

And then the teenager and I showered and met my stepmother for dinner. We ate at Thai Orchid in Stroudsburg and followed with ice cream at Jimmy’s.

I had a delightful, flavorful tofu in yellow curry and canned Bubble Tea that made the teenager get over her distaste of tapioca.

This morning I wrote a blog entry for Parisian Phoenix and spoke with Ludwig about merchant services. My credit card reader will arrive next week.

F. Bean Barker assisted in the “office.”

And now to share Parisian Phoenix’s post:

Two official big announcements from the Parisian Phoenix universe today: 1. Not an Able-Bodied White Man With Money, the nonfiction anthology of …

Jake not from State Farm