I’m on a long weekend in Illinois to see family and friends. After the numerous visits I made last spring and early this summer I have needed some time away, needed some time not spent in the car driving seven hundred plus miles round trip in three days.
Last spring I was in Chicago for a holy union ceremony and was able to spend a couple of days with one of my very best friends. Together we briefly visited a third old and very good friend. Except for weddings and such, the three of us haven’t been together just for being together’s sake in far too long. Active live styles and geographic distance have conspired against us, that is until now. Saturday the three of us are going to spend the day hanging out together.
I am very much looking forward to catching up on their lives, and on sharing what is new and good in mine. These two men are my oldest friends - they’ve known me for over a quarter century and we’ve all watched each other go through the twists and turns life’s path presents.
It’ll be good.
I’ve been lifting weights three times a week for several weeks now. The routine is becoming a habit, and I actually look forward to the time spent in the gym early in the morning.
Some of the exercises are becoming easier, others are still challenging. My old (ancient?) rotator cuff injury weakened my right shoulder more than I would have imagined. I think that I compensated with the other arm and never really knew how much strength I had lost. There is a seated shoulder press machine that really taxes my shoulders. Thirty pounds, twelve times leaves me weak and trembling. The first week or so I wasn’t able to complete two sets of twelve repetitions - this week I’ve finally started completed both sets.
The abdominal crunch machine is another matter altogether. The trained wanted us to aim for twenty or more repetitions on this machine, for two sets per workout. I’m only using thirty-five pounds of resistance and was easily able to complete two thirty repetition sets. Last week (two workouts ago) I decided to up the reps to forty per set. Eighty felt good, and I thought maybe I should try for one hundred total.
Bad idea.
Monday morning I did two fifty repetition sets at thirty-five pounds. At the time nothing seemed amiss, but by the end of the day - and a long wait at the eye doctor’s office - I was beginning to notice some stiffness when I first got up to walk. After dinner I took a short walk outside and discovered that my lower abdominals were quite pissed off at me. Four Motrin barely put a dent into the discomfort stemming from walking.
Overnight the pain lessened some, but I am still hard pressed to move about. It seems incredible to me that to few extra repetitions, only twenty more that Friday, could have such a huge impact. Unless I feel much better by the end of the day I won’t be lifting tomorrow morning - don’t want to make this a chronic injury. And I am not sure about kendo either. The weather forecast is for thunderstorms so maybe that decision will be made for me.
And when I do return to the gym I think I’ll return to fifty or sixty total repetitions for a while.
At my follow-up exam yesterday the eye doctor measured my vision at twenty-twenty. That’s with both eyes working together. The near eye is at twenty-thirty by itself, and is working perfectly for up close reading of the computer or books.
Other than some slight dryness in the right eye, he was pleased with my progress. He wants to see my one final time in about ten weeks, otherwise I am done.
I would recommend this to others with the caveat that you are certain you want to alter your vision forever. This is not a cosmetic procedure. For me, getting rid of bifocals has been more than worth it, and since my astigmatism prevented contacts, this was my only option. Even with that driving me this has not been easy.
As with any large metropolitan area in the summer, there are numerous highway construction projects tying up traffic here. There is one huge project that starts just where I get on the ring road and continues for the first few miles of my commute. All of the work being done is off to the side or overhead, so the traffic flow isn’t too bad. The lanes are narrower there, and snake back and forth from one shoulder to the other throughout the construction zone.
One my way home there is a long stretch of the far left lane that is on the shoulder, where the rumble strips are - all thirty of them. Yes, I counted them. In and of itself, counting the strips isn’t a bad thing, but I count them every time I go over them. The first eight are evenly spaced, and then number nine comes almost immediately before the original rhythm returns. I suppose this is a little bit of OCD surfacing - nothing to be concerned about - but I am aware of it.
The second stretch of shoulder on the way home only has exposure to eleven rumble strips, and the lane is just wide enough to miss hitting them if traffic isn’t too heavy. That I can avoid hitting, and therefore needing to count, these strips most days pleases me.
Go figure.
Pete reminded me that Black Rain had a scene involving kendo in it, so I got it from Netflix and watched it again. The kendo scene is good, but all to brief. The rest of the movie was good, if a bit formulaic.
Rating: Predictable action fare
I never saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl when it originally came out. A friend loaned me the DVD last week and I watched it over the weekend. People kept telling me that I’d like it, and it was good, but a bit childish. I guess I’ll have to see part two now.
Rating: Good clean fun even if it does romanticize pirates
Having experienced to one degree or another the impact of four deaths in the past two years has focused a lot of my thinking on death and dying. Ultimately I have come to an understanding that works for me. I share it here mostly to capture it in words and solidify it in my mind.
I believe that emotion and intellect are the most important gifts we as humans posses. It is a shame that our society places so much emphasis on latter and almost none on the former. Whether or not you accept that you are an emotion-based being isn’t necessary for it to be true. I have no idea what portion of the strife, war, anger, hate, and unhappiness in the world is the result of society’s inability to accept emotion as normal and natural, but I think it is a larger portion than most would believe.
As we grow and experience life we build places of recognition for our emotions. Repeated experiences resonate as they have a home in us - a place already established. It doesn’t matter what the emotion is, the pain of being teased as a child or the elation at hearing from an old friend unexpectedly, we all have experienced these feelings before and therefore have a response. A response that we recognize and accept.
Death, dying, is something outside of the normal range of experience. We will all experience the death of loved ones in our life time. But not to the same extent that we experience the joy of hello or sadness of parting. The ordinary, common emotions, whether pleasant or not, are familiar - known to us. Death is a stranger, and interloper, and with no place of recognition where we can set it down, we struggle with feeling out of place, feeling upset, or feeling grief.
For a time after Michele’s death I participated in a survivor’s group, and what struck me almost immediately was the length most there went to re-frame death to something else. It was if the concept was too large to take in, so they tried to ignore it, while all the while dragging it along behind them like a ball and chain. Most couldn’t even embrace the manner of death, preferring to say “completed” rather than “committed” suicide.
Personally I found it better to acknowledge the manner of her death - to use the words hung, dead, death, suicide - than to gloss it over with platitudes. I think that by being blunt or direct every time I spoke of it or thought about it I was able to start to build a place of recognition inside of me, a place for those emotions to be anchored. Instead of being at the mercy of swirling emotions that felt out of control, I found a way to root them so that I could be in control. I still experience the emotions but I am no longer helpless in their grasp. Make no mistake, I am not talking about building an affection for the emotion; I don’t want an affinity with death. But I have found a way to understand the emotion that comes with that experience in a way that allows me to continue my life and not to have my life defined solely by grief or sadness.
Maybe this won’t work for everyone, but I think that by owning the truth of the event - My mom died from lung cancer - rather than whitewashing it - She passed away peaceful - is the better way to continue with my life.
Maybe three weeks ago I had the car into the shop for a scheduled maintenance and oil change. One of the activities performed is a tire rotation. In the days following that visit I noticed that at highway speed the car had a pronounced pull to the left. Since I was going to be taking it back in order for the front brakes to be replaced in a couple of weeks I wasn’t’ too worried about it.
Yesterday the brakes were replaced and the rotors resurfaced, all four wheels were balanced, and the front end aligned. One the way home the car was still pulling to the left. (Somewhere in there is a liberal in Kansas joke.)
Calling my service representative this morning I was able to set up another appointment on Monday to have the wheels cross rotated to see if that corrects the issue. I wonder if the rear end is out of alignment, and if so, could that make the car liberal in its handling.
Ah the joys of a car nearing 100,000 miles of usage.
Sparring in kendo is vastly different than sparring in karate-do. First off, the other guy is trying to WHACK YOU WITH A STICK. And given the it is rather small in circumference, and you are wearing a mask with bars obscuring your line of sight, you easily lose track of where it is currently. That is until it snacks into your hand, or rings your ears with a solid whack on your head.
Okay, to be fair - you’ve got a stick too. But they aren’t holding still, and every time you try something you get your knuckles smacked again. (I have new respect for those of you who survived Catholic school.) There are only three targets (the head, the wrists, and the sides of the body) - you’d think you could keep yourself covered up and protected.
You’d be wrong. And I have the swollen, bruised knuckles to prove it.
One of my least favorite exercises in kendo is a step back (evade) step forward strike combination. I feel awkward and out of shape doing it as speed is involved. I understood mentally what its purpose was; after tonight I understand physically the value of hiya suburi.
The final piece of my weight adjustment program is taking daily supplements. Since I am eating less, and doing more, I am giving my body conflicting messages. I’m also starving it of necessary nutrients simply through less food consumed.
My friend Pete recommended the “Men’s Pack” from Walgreens, so I have added them to my routine. It has Vitamin E, Selenium, Vitamin C, a B-Complex, and a Multivitamin.
Unlike the weight lifting or the kendo, which has visible results, I’m not sure I’ll be able to measure the difference from taking the supplements. But I am willing to believe they will make a difference.