Thursday, March 27, 2014

Musical Chairs

Inspirational song: Elbow Room (Schoolhouse Rock)

One of the very first socials I attended with my club was a "getting to know you" event. We played a states-based trivia game, and had a lot of fun meeting new friends. At the end of the night, they divided up the centerpieces from the tables, which were little bird's nest ferns with Mylar foil around their nursery pots. I got the fern from my table, and I brought it home and planted it in a bigger pot. I nurtured and grew it. I loved how it reminded me of Sideshow Bob's hair. A few months ago, I noticed that it was no longer sprouting new fronds from its center, and then bit by bit, it started to die off from one side. I don't quite know what I did wrong to it. It had seemed to do well with minimal attention, but maybe I should have given it more of my time. I bought a new, tiny version of it last week, and I pulled the plug on the old one. The best I can tell, as I dug out the old soil, it had become a little potbound. But not so much it should have died. I decided that it was time to rotate a couple other plants, that have not been faring well either. I have been so focused on the outside plants, I have let several of the inside ones languish, and that wasn't fair. I have a couple arrowheads that needed me, and I ignored them. One threaded itself through the big shefflera, getting leggy and misshapen. The other had been in a pot that wasn't draining well, and its roots were soggy and smelled of ammonia. I moved them up into the successively larger pots, and I need to make a mental note not to leave the fern in the small, water-holding pot for very long. It will outgrow it soon anyway, but far enough out to give me time to sort through my existing pots (or to sneak one home from a nursery).

On Tuesday, we closed the book on one course of physical therapy, and opened another today. I had to fight morning rush traffic to get there, allowing 30 minutes more drive time than I would have later in the day. I barely made it, arriving three minutes before my appointment time. But I had to wait nearly an hour to start the actual evaluation. The central company is forcing a new computer system on all of their locations, and no one, neither the front desk, nor the physical therapists, know how to make it work yet. The IT reps were at the clinic again today. I was a little creeped out that I had to give the description of my plantar fasciitis history with an extra guy lurking around, reading over Bones' shoulder while he typed in my answers. The clunky computer medical files slowed things down so badly, we patients started to pile up. They try not to run more than three people through the clinic at once, so that we aren't having to fight for machines or exercise space. Lucky for me, my entire "training" routine for this morning was to sit in a chair, barefoot, and using only my toes, dragging a towel with a dumbbell on it closer to me. You can laugh, but that was way harder than I could have imagined. Hurt like the dickens too. I got a little dry needling before I walked out the door, right in the back of my calf. We are only doing one side to start with, to verify that it is the right course of action. I couldn't have handled it on both sides. I can't say yet whether it is going to work. My heels have hurt 24/7 for coming up on ten years. This will take a while. 

No comments:

Post a Comment