Monday. I slept pretty decently last night despite the oppressive heat. I had performed 105% in Freestyle on Sunday in the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy warehouse, folding and shipping clothes while dreaming of new sundresses for myself.
I came home a little stiff and achy, a trend that seems to be back-sliding on the recent physical progress I made but the finger held up to its first day out of the splint at work.
I also came home early, as the Teenager planned a movie night for blind friend Nan to watch How to Train Your Dragon, a movie I have not yet seen despite the fact that I made a Toothless stuffed animal at Build-A-Bear.
Nan and I were to stop and pick up dinner at Wawa and the Teenager had made homemade ice cream (that honestly was on par with Cold Stone Creamery). And everyone got their desired dish from Wawa— except me— as I wanted a pre-made salad from the grab and go cooler and apparently the cooler was broken. The employees were removing all the food and the floor around it bore wet floor signs.
So I ate leftovers out of my fridge.
The audio-described version of the movie was intense. The poor man doing the description didn’t have time to breathe.
I was in bed by 8 p.m. The cockatoo had issues at 2 a.m. But all-in-all a good night.
At work today, I was tired, hot and a little bored at my regular table in QC. I did 101%.
I’m still have issues with a strange burning and tightness in my right thigh, and dealing with that is causing lower back pain.
I got home from work and tentatively poked my head around the corner in the garage— checking to see if dog was in the yard. She was not.
I walked up the stairs from the car bay to the main room of the garage. Walking across the big open space in my garage, I tripped over my own foot and fell. I did some sort of corkscrew dive and fell backwards through the screen door to exit the garage then skidded across the floor. I scraped my hand, my knuckles, my elbow and I think my leg and knee.
But then I still went to the gym. Under Andrew’s careful eye at Apex Training, I did my workout. I felt better than when I arrived, even if I am still a little stiff and achy, but such is life with cerebral palsy.
Yesterday was my first day working with a custom splint on my mallet finger instead of a cast. And it went really well— except for the times I put my splint back on the outside of my hand instead of the inside. And I went to apply fresh tape and the nurse at work wanted to help.
All-in-all, I achieved a new record (for me) in Freestyle, shipping I believe 574 items or 115% of the 500 item goal for a 10-hour shift. And that includes 15 minutes I spent trying to find a work station that was operational. If you subtract that as official “non-production time” it might be damn close to 116%.
Today, a Monday, with the traditional Monday through Friday people at work, I was assigned to a different table in QC, my regular department. It was a table just a smidgeon higher than the table I worked at last week and the line was on the left instead of the right.
This is the first time since my return-to-work in late May that I have worked on the left. In one way, it’s nice because I have been having issues with the stability of my walk and control in my right leg, so working on the left means I can use my left side more.
But working on the left side means I’m shoving all those boxes with my injured hand and after two hours the cuticle area under my nail on my injured finger is tender and really red. Despite this, at one point this morning, I reached 118%.
But then I got a call from The Teenager. She rear-ended someone in her father’s 2022 Kia SUV. The car he bought after he rear-ended someone in late December and totaled his beloved 2016 Nissan Juke.
She’s fine. It was raining and she misjudged how long it would take her to stop in the wet. The car looked driveable, but when she tried it started leaking fluid and overheating. So, she called AAA to tow it.
I left work early. At four hours into my shift, I think I had QCed 69 fixes, and goal for that specific time of day is 65. That’s with going out to my car to get info for my daughter, calling her father, and similar nonsense.
I was listening to an episode of business wars, the podcast, or was it The History Channel’s The Food that Built America and the history of Burger King vs. McDonald’s and the invention of the Chicken McNugget.
Now I distinctly remember the debut of the Chicken McNugget, which, according to the podcast, became available at all McDonalds in 1983.
I was eight. Probably riding around with my mom in her 1979 Camaro (black). We lived in a very rural area in Pennsylvania’s Slate Belt. The closest actual town was Portland, Pa., which I feature in my first novel, Manipulations (and if you are interested you can buy it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble.com, or at Bookshop.org here — the Bookshop price includes shipping and designates a portion of the profit to an independent bookseller of your choice).
Anyway, we had a very small supermarket in Portland so my mom would do most of her family shopping in Stroudsburg, Pa., the gateway to the Pocono Mountains. If she were shopping at Kmart for clothes or household items or at Shoprite for our groceries, we would often stop at Burger King where the delight would be a cheeseburger and some onion rings.
But if we had to go to the Stroud Mall, McDonald’s was across the street. So we want to McDonald’s. I didn’t like McDonald’s — they put onions on their burgers and I don’t like onions. So, eight-year-old me was very excited for these Chicken McNuggets. If my mom was in a good mood, I could order a Chicken McNugget Happy Meal. Which— in the eighties— came with six nuggets in a styrofoam container. And of course, I only liked the barbecue sauce.
So the podcast got me thinking about McDonald’s in general especially since I worked at a McDonald’s (a very busy McDonald’s) from the summer I graduated high school until the August after I graduated college.
We made $5.25/hour in the late 1990s. A full-time employee made $200/week. And we got one meal per shift. I ate a lot of McChicken sandwiches.
I’m thinking about McDonald’s and listening to Conan O’Brian and Andrew Gurza (not together although that would be amazing), when I get the phone call with the teenager in tears.
“Mom, I rear-ended someone in Dad’s new car.”
This was her first car accident. It’s a rainy day here and she misjudged how far she needed to stop. And she didn’t want to slam on her brakes harder and lose control of the car.
At first, she and the police officer who responded thought the car was driveable. It started leaking what looked like antifreeze and overheated. So the officer called AAA.
I told my Stitch Fix supervisors the situation and asked to leave.
The teenager told me she was on a side street “out by Target” “by the library” and I misinterpreted her and went to the wrong town.
The teenager texted me a photo of the nearest intersection and I realized my mistake and turned around.
A very kind officer waited with her and I drove her to the dog walking client she had been driving to when the accident happened.
And then I grabbed us lunch at McDonald’s because their triple cheeseburger is my favorite sandwich on the menu and I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
I don’t need to get up this early. But, I’ve been on 10-hour day shifts in the warehouse now for 6 months and I feel like it’s the best way to maintain some work-life balance and some productivity.
And honestly, by 8 or 9 p.m. I’m usually so exhausted, mentally and physically, that I am mindlessly eating and/or watching TV.
So I rise in the early morning. It’s too early. I have to tip-toe out of my room as to not wake the cockatoo. The cats are confused. But… This is my creative writing time, my Parisian Phoenix business time, my coffee time, and my cuddle cats time.
Our “gen pop” of cats include brothers Misty and Fog, and fosters through Feline Urban Rescue and Rehab Touch of Grey and Minerva, with an occasional visit from our almost 12-year-old cancer surviving old man tripod Opie. Opie is like an old mob boss, but he’s tired now, and Fog, with his 2.5 years, has been challenging him for about the last year. Not in a really aggressive way, but challenging his authority enough that there have been some issues.
This morning, my productivity is not as, well, productive as I prefer. Sure, I tried to tame my curls. I started the dishwasher, took my allergy meds, made a big cup of coffee and checked for book sales. (None last night. The new title debuts next week– and it’s only $6.99. It’s also a novelette and written a little lighter than my usual dark style.)
But Minerva keeps coming to cuddle, Misty and Fog are playing, and Touch of Grey (Tiggy, as we sometimes call her) is patrolling. Oz is considering waking up in his crate, but he’s giving me side-eye. He will only wake if I plan to feed breakfast.
And if you have cats, you understand why I will not feed them breakfast at 4:30 a.m.
We corralled these “gen pop” cats into the spare bedroom last week for the teenager’s party, as we had some guests allergic to cats. The teenager thought it best to lock them up, then clean, as it would reduce the likelihood anyone would die.
We also passed out Benadryl at the door.
But that was the same stretch of time where two of the three cats accidentally given the dog’s flea meds ended up seizing. Misty and Touch of Grey ended up at the emergency vet, and $2300 later, they are both home. Neither is exhibiting any further neurological symptoms or personality damage.
They are both on muscle relaxers. So the teenager maintained quarantine to facilitate delivering their pills. But last night, she released them.
And I’m happy to watch Fog and Misty play, cuddle Minerva and encourage Tiggy to patrol.
The teenager said she liked the peace and quiet of having them locked up, but she has a dog to keep her company. I miss their cat obtrusion into my daily routine. Especially in the dog-free hours of pre-dawn.
For those of you who know me or follow me regularly, I performed at 89% today after a month of short-term disability leave.
Short answer to how my day was: good. I felt pretty good and my aches and pains at the end of the day feel pretty normal.
Now, for those who want more detail, let’s start at the beginning.
On April 15, I ruptured a tendon in my left ring finger taking my socks off. The nickname for the injury is “mallet finger” because your finger looks like a mallet or “baseball finger” because if you catch a baseball wrong you can sustain this injury.
I worked with my hand like that for a week at the Bizzy Hizzy folding clothes for Stitch Fix’s clients, performing at a solid 90%. But… I realized I rely on my left side for balance and stability and using my right side to do everything exacerbated problems I was already having with my right hip and spine as complications of my lifelong battle with cerebral palsy. That has been another journey of mine— learning about my body and how I can work with it to age well.
I often wonder what I could accomplish if my body could do what other bodies do.
So I asked my family doctor if I could take a short-term disability leave from work and focus on building core strength and stretching my hips. Because with this silly finger cast, on top of all my other issues, I was falling twice a week.
Today I returned to work— one ten-hour shift in my home department (QC) before the holiday weekend. I work Sunday. We have a paid holiday Monday. And I have a doctor appointment Tuesday afternoon with the neurological physiatrist.
Returning to work today gave me a way to ease back into it, and allows me to gather data on how my body performs. I can give that info to the physiatrist. If I hurt again by Tuesday, it’s a sign that either:
I am moving wrong, or
I shouldn’t be doing this kind of work with my body.
I arrived at work for my 6:30 a.m. shift and friends greeted me that I haven’t seen. At first I went to the wrong table, but caught my mistake, and corrected myself.
I had a right table, good for my hand injury, and one at a good height.
But then they shut the line down and I moved to a left table that was a tad high for me.
For the first 60-90 minutes, I hit all my numbers.
Eventually, I got a text from Mr. Accordion. I hope he doesn’t mind but I’m sharing his photos because:
Mr. Accordion’s ingredients Mr. Accordion at workMr. Accordion’s Halupkis ready to go in the oven
A couple times today, I had to answer phone calls regarding the toilet explosion that happened in my house yesterday. The insurance adjuster will be here Tuesday and meet with the teenager. I am working on getting water remediation people in to make sure everything is dry.
At the end of the day, I have a weird uncomfortable feeling in my left wrist and the kind of typical aches and pains that come from being older than 40 and working in a warehouse ten hours a day.
I attribute some of my success today to my personal trainer Andrew at Apex. We did an exercise yesterday that was something he called a variation of a good morning. This had me holding a weight across the back of my shoulders and “hinging” at the waist while using my hips for most of the motion.
I tried to replicate those techniques when I bent down to get items out of the bottom of my carts.
Then, when I came home, the teenager had dinner in the oven. I received a lovely message from a former editor at The Morning Call’s short-lived weekly editions, Chronicle Newspapers.
He said I was a truly good person (for all my work fostering cats) and that he missed seeing me every day.
I thanked him and said he made my day.
He replied that there were many times when I had made his and my boss’s day.
That was my favorite job ever, and one I was very good at.
Also, I tried the blueberry muffin flavor of ready-to-drink Supercoffee. My initial reaction was that it was gross. Will give a more thorough review later.
This post may not be the most exciting as I sit here stinky after a small home workout— smelling the petroleum heavy heat of asphalt. But it is a hopeful post. My roses sit heavy with blooms, and the first flowers have opened behind the bush.
Such a metaphor for life. The whole “bloom where you are planted” concept.
I have been working hard— like I want to stop, I want to vomit, my muscles burn. Andrew at Apex Training has been amazing, helping me stretch and challenge spastic muscles in my lower body.
I have had two days now with no hip or back pain, and I can drop into bed and lie anyway I want.
My weight has been up and down thank to Taco Bell and Mothers’ Day cake and ice cream and generic Takis.
But I went for my check-up bloodwork yesterday, and the phlebotomist told me my insurance doesn’t cover vitamin D unless my doctor codes it a deficiency. We skipped that, but my ferritin has risen from 28, just barely in the normal range, to 36. Still far from the middle of normal but rising.
That might be my theme for right now— rising.
And my bad cholesterol, which should be under 100, has fallen from 109 to 107. Again, not a huge leap, but progress. Progress made during a difficult, difficult time of my life.
My pill dispenser has made it easier to take all my vitamins and allergy meds. And I started the process of putting myself back on a low dose of Lexapro,
Maybe it will help.
My personal cat, Fog, decided to love me today. And I wrote a poem about buying my new socks from the Dollar Tree.
The teenager has been nursing an ear infection all week so between that and the roses bloominfection, spring has really sprung.
She returned to school today.
Today I made a leftover sandwich— some old smoked Turkey, slightly wilted lettuce and my coleslaw mix stirred into chipotle mayonnaise.
I spent the morning with my blind friend, Nan, and took her for her bloodwork.
Came home and the dog came out just in time to see that the paving crew had Taco Bell for lunch.
My trainer asked to reschedule my session today, so I told him I would do something at home.
This was my half-assed work out. My trainer asked me to select exercises and do them with intent, and instead I fought with the dog, picked some exercises I thought would move the important parts and retain the ground I made versus improve. Here is a video.
I also received a payment from my short-term disability insurance through work, and I’m grateful as this is giving me time to strengthen myself and recovery from my mallet finger. Hopefully, this will prevent further “domino effect” on my health. I see the neuro-physiatrist at the end of the month.
I’m curious what she will have to say, and I’m thinking this may be the end of my quest for answers about my cerebral palsy.
It’s the end of April and it was 35 degrees last night. The price of oil continues to skyrocket and I’m still heating my house halfway through spring.
The cold does not help the poor circulation in my hands which has intensified in my left hand because my mallet finger restricts my movement.
My hands are painfully cold, except when Andrew is making me curse him in my head at Apex Training. Today was leg day, and I was so tired that when I came home and let the dog out I turned around and lost my balance and slammed right into the brick wall between my mud room and my kitchen.
Nala, my six-year-old Goffin’s cockatoo, started shaking and plucking her feathers today. Nothing in her environment has changed except the neighbor’s dog has been barking nonstop all day. The teenager believes his distress causes her anxiety.
Speaking of the teenager, she made this thick chocolate chip cookie/blondie dessert that I topped with ice cream that Sobaka’s mom brought home from Penn State when we dog sat last weekend.
Before the teenager brought home our dog, I would never criticize a dog owner, but now that I see the difference between different dog care styles, I feel back for dogs that aren’t spoiled like Sobaka and Bean.
And I don’t know how Sobaka’s mom does it— that dog is a bed hog.
But now an update on my mallet finger:
Stitch Fix has been amazing. Because my specialist at OAA took a week to return my paperwork and then didn’t properly fill it out, the onus was on me to find jobs I could do to not hurt myself. It turned out I can QC just fine— I hit 92% just fine.
But here’s the thing… my specialist knows hands, he doesn’t know me. I don’t think he heard me when I said I have cerebral palsy and that I work 10 hours a day in a warehouse. I’m just not sure that environment is safe for me right now,
Why do I say this? Because this week drove home to me how much I rely on my left side for stability. By forcing me to work 90% on the right, I am struggling to keep my right hip in place.
I am so stiff by the end of the work day. I also end up pinching and slamming my right fingertips and by the end of the day my left fingers I can use are swollen and sore.
And I fold 750 clothing items a day, handle 150 boxes and rip open probably 500 plastic bags. That’s a lot of fingers moving.
Once I consider the risk of accidentally losing my cast and bending my finger (which would extend my healing time) and adding the increased fall risk of mine because I am aggravating known issues with my balance and mobility, I just don’t feel safe.
This is a horribly stressful feeling.
I’m going to talk with my family doctor about it. I already mentioned it to my therapist, because I wanted to confirm my thoughts were rational and not whiny or emotional.
Today’s vegan lunch: curry carrots, lentils, quinoa, my own roasted chick peas, toasted sesame seeds, green olives and a touch of Thai peanut sauce topped with pumpkin seeds
And last but not least, cats. Misty caught a mouse! Video here.
Misty and Fog, our brothers Foster Touch of Grey Foster Tripod Louise
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 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%.
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.
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 OpieClockwise from left: personals Oz, Fog, and Misty and foster Touch of GreyFosters 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.
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.
Angel Ackerman 