So I dunno

(Pictures of the last two items: a still-nameless Baby (hammerhead) Shark and Pippa the Pony will come maybe later today)

I once opined that I was more a spectator of my moods than a participant - I don't always know WHY I feel a particular way. Little things can set me off ("An undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.")

I guess low-level physical pain can be one thing - shortly after I got back from break, I was having a number of problems - my other hip (not the one in which I had had bursitis) was bothering me. In fact, the day I was to go out and do Meals on Wheels, while trying to move stuff out of the passenger seat of my car (in case Dessie wanted me to drive), I bent over in the cold and felt a twinge in my lower back.

I don't think that's "throwing your back out," when I've heard people describe it it seems like they're immediately immobilized and while I had *pain,* I could straighten back up and it was not so bad I couldn't keep going. And Tylenol mostly kept it at bay until it went away. (Possibly a muscle cramp? It was a cold day. I seem to get muscle cramps fairly easily but they tend to go away pretty quickly)

And also, my right shoulder was bothering me, though that might have been a hangover from hauling my heavy suitcases around while traveling (I have never learned the art of traveling light...). And I "slept funny" on it one night - woke up on my right side with my shoulder almost "folded up" in front of me. (I don't have a hypermobility disorder, I swear. My body just does funny things some times).

And my knees and hips were bothering me off and on, and I was all "Well, this is the price I pay for being heavy" and "Welcome to 50" and also "I really need to stop sitting with a leg tucked up under me."

And finally, I said "You know what? Maybe I need to try something different." So this week, I've been wearing the couple of pairs of dress shoes I can wear with my orthotics (I have orthotics, have had them for years and years. I probably do need to drag myself into a podiatrist and see if I need a new set made up, but these seem to work well). 

And dangit but: the hip and knee pain are gone.

So okay, I guess that means my future shoe purchases should be vetted to make sure I can wear orthotics with them, at least when I'm going to be standing around a lot.

And anyway: my mood is MUCH better. The pain was probably part of it.

And also, this morning, I was able to get 45 minutes done on the cross-country ski exerciser. One of my low-level resolutions is to push myself to do slightly longer workouts. I don't know that I'll ever get back up to an hour at a go (which I did when I was a good bit younger), but 45 minutes is pretty good. 

And I'm seeing results: it looks like I'm losing a little pudge off my upper abdomen and that makes me happy. Mainly for health reasons (upper abdominal fat is a risk factor for a number of things I'd prefer to avoid) but also, yes, I do look a little better in the knit dresses I've taken to wearing. Now if I could just reduce the potbelly, I'd be really happy.

I also wonder if maybe I've finally successfully completed menopause. I didn't have a lot of the "typical" symptoms (no hot flashes and not really anything I'd call "night sweats," though many nights I do wake up in the middle of the night, decide I'm a little warmer than I want to be, and kick off some of the covers). But I did have increased anxiety. I recognize it now, now that it's abated. I would have times where I'd worry very concentratedly about some thing, usually a thing over which I had no control. Or I couldn't sit still happily and just do something. And I was doing stuff like getting up out of bed to make sure I'd locked the front door. (I now make it a practice, when I come in the last time for the night, of consciously thinking "See, you are locking your front door" and that reassures me if the thought pops up in my head). And I may have had a little "brain fog," I don't know. I don't think I taught as well last semester as I might have some days. 

Of course, it's also possible my better mood right now is the result of it being early in the semester - so I have no grading to drag home with me and nothing "scary" to do in the immediate future. And that I'm looking toward a three-day weekend (one of the few I ever get). And a few other pieces of good news: there was demand for summer Ecology but I didn't really want to do it, but one of our Master's graduates (I served on his committee) who is now teaching at a junior college would like to come back and teach it, and I told my chair I would give him any help he wanted, including sharing lab packets with him and letting him just use my labs and stuff. Shoot, I'd even give him a flashdrive of my PowerPoints and tell him he can alter them at will for his own class. I'm just glad someone is doing it and I don't have to. 

So maybe things look good for both the "more drudgery" resolution (work up to longer exercise time) and also the more fun one (finishing some long-term projects). And in service of that second, yesterday evening, I pulled out the materials for the Color-Bar Blanket (a crochet project I've been working on, though mostly off, since 2008 or so - I'd do a block once in a while, and then get attracted by some other project and put it away). I've got it maybe 1/3 done save for the attaching the squares - I have all the lighter blue, fuchsia, and medium-blue squares done, and the red ones about half-done, and one or two of a couple of the other colors. What I did after finding and sorting all the squares was make up a note card listing how many I need of each and how many I have done, so I can see my progress at a glance. One of my plans for this weekend is to finish the set of the red squares....and from there I will probably go "in order" now, based on how they're listed in the pattern, so green will be the next color to do....I have to do green, most of the yellow, the navy, most of the grey, the black, and then all *21* squares of the white.

But. I can complete a square in about 15 minutes or so if I'm not looking too closely at what's on TV, and so they're kind of instant-gratification. And I think I get faster once I get into the rhythm of making them. (I am still a tiny bit apprehensive about the "joining" step but maybe the pattern has some suggestions; I have never made a granny-square afghan before)

This will be a nice project to have finished: kind of a funny idea, a blanket made to look like the old CMYK test pattern TVs used to use (I see it once in a while still, mostly when one of the local network affiliates is trying to toggle between local coverage and the national feed and something goes wrong) but I suspect it's something more familiar to my generation, or the Baby Boomers, than it is to people 35 or younger...

And as I said before: I don't think a person can have too many of these small blankets. Nice for putting over your legs in the evening while you sit and read or knit, good to put on the foot of the bed (I never used to have a problem with my feet being cold at night, but now sometimes I do). Nice to wrap around you when you're cold or even just sad...

I've also been doing a little work on the quilt currently in the frame. And yes, it does feel good to pull out a long-term project and get a little closer to finishing it.