Tell me when you can't talk!

So there's something funky with my blog, comments used to be on as a default, now they're off. I don't know where to go to change the default or why it changed.

So if I post another one that you can't comment on, tell me. Otherwise I'm all sad and thinking no one reads my blog anymore ...

Also, I think the search is broken. And the pic is way out of date. And I really should overhaul the whole design.

Except suddenly I'm pooped.

stupid is as stupid does

I've once again proved I can't do a little caffeine, regularly.

I haven't been having a lot. But I've been having a little, regularly.

I'm starting to feel anxiety creeping up on me.

I know the caffeine is what triggers it. But I can feel it slowly rising over the last few days.

I'm discouraged at the idea of trying to quit again. It doesn't matter that I haven't been drinking a lot. My 1 cup of coffee has been 1/3 regular, 2/3 decaf. You'd think that would be low enough. But no. I'm pretty sure I'm facing the same horrible headaches, fatigue, and depression even with that low level.

It's a lose-lose situation, and I'm in the Loser seat.

Today I'll try to stick to that one cup I had this morning, not add a can of diet coke or anything. We'll see if I survive.

Maybe it's redundant

Feel free to skim and/or skip this -- it's my update after my first PT session...

This is really long 'cause I copied and pasted it from an email. Not 'cause I'm always long and rambly. Oh, wait.

PT was good, I guess, I don't know. It was a big evaluation, she had me stand this way and that, and twist and lift legs and push against resistance and stuff like that. I told her about the gait analysis, the hip pain last year, the doc, the new shoes ... She said my hips are definitely not level right now, that they're tiled / rotated ....

In the end she said:
1.) I DO have a small leg length discrepancy (she measured, hip/pelvic bone to ankle, on each side) - just under .5" -- not enough to be noticeable walking, etc, but possibly enough to cause problems in running
2.) pregnancy loosens ligaments (I knew that) and it takes a year or two to recover. Successive pregnancies can make things more out of wonk. After hearing that I have 7 children and the youngest is 17 months she said that my ligaments are probably "shot" and that I'll need to do muscle strengthening to help the muscles support what the ligaments are not doing.

She gave me a lift for my left shoe and encouraged me to wear it as much as possible unless it makes things worse (which might happen because my body compensated long ago for the discrepancy) ...

She said we'll give it a day or two with the lift, and then talk about running but we don't want to try too many new things at once. She said if I'm improved by Wednesday I'll try to run a little (1 mile (or less if it hurts)) and then see how I feel in the 2 hour window afterward. If I'm lurching / hurting worse then I run only half as far the next time. If I'm okay, then I can incrementally creep up the distance. Too early to know if I can run in the Dow run, she said it's probably cutting it close but who knows, I might see a huge improvement with the lift.

I have to go 3x/week for 4 weeks (which takes me right up until the race) ...

Soooo. I don't know, I guess that's good that 1.) she thought there were two clear problems and 2.) she thinks the lift and strengthening / stretching / exercises will help. But I guess I'm frustrated that we still don't really KNOW if it'll help. I came home thinking I should've just quit and given up before starting down this road, but that's kind of silly.

She said I could bring in my shoes and the class gait analysis / shoe recommendation sheet and she'll try to see if my new shoes fit the bill, and she said we could talk to the PT who did the analysis, and she wrote on her list to do another one.

So now I'm a dork with a special thing in my shoe ....

She didn't really confirm or say it wasn't what Dr. B said (tight adductor muscles), so ... :shrug

She does think that strengthening my core / doing Pilates might help in the long run. Although she said not to jump in and take a class and do all the hard moves right away, that I'd need to ease into it. And that she'd incorporate some pilates into the exercises we do.

And she said that even though running can be hard on the joints, the other health benefits outweigh the damage running does, and that it's worth pursuing continuing to run.

Maybe I should learn the Chi Running technique (forgot to ask her about that, if she knew of it, whether I could try to learn it while recovering) so that I do less joint damage in the long run. The chi running is supposed to put your body into alignment and work with gravity to run fluidly and easy on the joints -- to prevent injury.

I've been meaning to ask the Chi Running guy about learning while recovering.

One of the leaders at the Race Prep class said she took the Chi Running course last year and it's taken her a year to really *get it* physically -- it's apparently easy to *understand* but not so easy to retrain your body in how it moves.

Huh.

So.

Anyway.

Eating a Robot; Run, Stop, Run

Now that Robotics season is over, we're free to eat the robots.

Both Buzz and Sputnik asked for robot cakes for their birthdays. I made each the same general way, using a 9x13 cake pan cut into pieces and then covered with homemade fondant and frosted. I have a recipe that *tastes* very good for the fondant - but I'm still working on getting the consistency right. It's a learning process.

Anyway, here's Buzz's cake from the other day:

And Sputnik's from way back in March:

Both were somewhat dictated by the child's description and/or drawings.

In (non) running news. I took almost 2 weeks off to rest my hip. I went to see the doc on Tuesday. He told me what I wanted to hear - he thought it was a strained tendon, probably due to weak muscles (he thought the hip adductors, although the hip adductor 'tests' did not produce pain) ... he gave me some pages of stretches for the hip adductors, and said I could keep training for the 10K. I was both hopeful and skeptical.

On Wednesday I took a "short, easy" 2 mile test run. I could tell the hip felt off at times, and sometimes hurt, but sometimes didn't seem to too much ... but as the day wore on, it got worse. I ended up lurching around so much that the leaders of the race prep class I'm taking sent me home, telling me I shouldn't be briskly walking on it. All the instructors (many of them nurses) that I talked to at the class encouraged me to call the doc back and push for physical therapy, to get a 'full workup' ... they seemed to think there was still hope for me running a 10K in June, if I was proactive with treatment.

So ... we'll see. For now I will stay off the hip - again - until I talk to the doc. Who isn't in (at our location) on Thursday, so it'll have to wait until Friday.

Dandelion in Blue

I took this a week or two ago. I didn't realize how lovely blue it would turn out.

in related news, all my boys need haircuts.