Yesterday evening, after my husband and I had returned from the quinta, our grandkids Sofía and Ian came over with their dad. Sofía was sound asleep and was deposited on a couch, but Ian was full of life and had much to say.
Ian is six. He is adorable. He has big brown eyes, lashes to die for, and a non-stop personality. He sat at the table with me and my husband while he polished off an orange, and he filled us in on the latest:
"There are bad guys on the road to the quinta," he calmly asserted.
My husband and I looked at one another.
"Who told you that? What bad guys?"
"Dad told me," he replied.
"I'm going to have to speak to your dad, then," I said. What in the world was going on? Why was Rodrigo scaring Ian about going to the quinta? Ian adores the quinta.
"You can't do that, he's Dad," stated Ian flatly.
"Oh yeah? Well, I'm your dad's mom, so I can set him straight any time I need to," I clarified.
"They stole Felipe," added Ian.
"What??? Who's Felipe?" chimed in my husband. Things seemed to be going from bad to worse.
"I don't know," said Ian with irritation, as if Felipe's identity was a minor matter, "but they stole him. Bad guys," he added, since it was evident his grandparents were not the sharpest crayons in the box.
At that point Rodrigo came in and we demanded to know why he was scaring Ian about going to the quinta. Rodrigo was totally perplexed and never could find out from Ian who Felipe was or who told him these things. My suspicions lie with Alejandra, who is frightened of everything going on in Mexico (justifiably so) and thinks driving to the quinta is taking your life in your hands.
Then my husband proposed taking the children to get an ice cream cone, and while he was getting an umbrella (it rained last night!), Ian was giving me a big hug and climbing into my lap. He looked deep into my eyes and said:
"Hey, you look like an iguana! You've got that thing under your chin that hangs down!"
As soon as I reach my desired weight, it's off to the plastic surgeon, by dang.
lunes, 19 de septiembre de 2011
viernes, 16 de septiembre de 2011
Running Path Oddities
Yesterday was rheumatologist day, a routine visit which takes place every couple of months (the man is a stickler for monitoring fibromyalgia), and I made the mistake of going to get blood drawn straight from the running path. Apparently exercise alters the results, and it did, but fortunately my doctor--being an exercise fan himself--took it into account. This guy, I may have mentioned before, used to run but had to change to bicycling when his orthopedist found he had a loose vertebra that tends to slip around.
Since the good doc lives in mortal fear of the notoriously bad drivers in our area, he took up the mountain bike, much to the horror of his wife. The gal has a point: what is the improvement over running when you risk crashing and breaking bones? In fact, this year the doc broke his collar bone falling off his mountain bike when he hit a patch of ice coming downhill.
"It's like I told my wife," he stated, "a broken bone heals, but an injured heart is another matter entirely."
I say all this because it might help explain his instructions to me. At the moment my fibromyalgia pain has decided to settle in my back right between my shoulder blades, so yesterday I got put through the wringer: had to touch my toes (with no warm-up!), twist this way and that, and then get pounded on hard enough to get toppled over if the man hadn't been holding me upright at the same time. Man, he hit every single fibro pain point.
Then, after prescribing a muscle relaxant, he told me--and I quote--"to increase your usual training by one kilometer". This after I told him it was all I could do to finish 5K trotting and walking since summer hit.
"Are you daft? Half the time I finish on my hands and knees as it is!" I protested.
"Oh, you'll get used to it, then you can increase up to ten K."
The man has taken leave of his senses, but after hearing about his adventures on his mountain bike, we find all the earmarks of a fanatic. I can understand and identify fully: as far as I'm concerned, a horse is better than travel, fine food, and sex. Of course, when I talk about me, I prefer to think I'm passionate in my interests, but when my rheumatologist ups my training by a kilometer, he is a some kind of nut.
I was thinking about all this as I did today's 5K at a forced march--this was a light training day. There was no way I was going to add a kilometer, at least not yet. As I marched along (sweating as much as if I had been running), I noticed that the grass bordering the path seemed covered with some kind of pointy black objects, some of which stood straight upright, others lying down. When I put on my glasses, I saw that the objects were long feathers. It was amazing. We have tons of starlings that make a huge racket in the trees that line the park, and it looked like they had gotten into some kind of massive battle that involved pulling out each other's tail feathers. I say tail feathers because for several days now, I've seen starlings in my back yard minus precisely these feathers. I began to look at the starlings I could see on the ground, and several of them looked oddly stunted in the rear. It must be hell flying with no rudder, but the bigger mystery is, what the dickens is going on here?
Things are out of whack. Starlings losing tail feathers, my jacaranda tree is blooming (this only occurs in springtime), doves crashing into our windows. It feels like the ominous build-up in a Stephen King novel!
Since the good doc lives in mortal fear of the notoriously bad drivers in our area, he took up the mountain bike, much to the horror of his wife. The gal has a point: what is the improvement over running when you risk crashing and breaking bones? In fact, this year the doc broke his collar bone falling off his mountain bike when he hit a patch of ice coming downhill.
"It's like I told my wife," he stated, "a broken bone heals, but an injured heart is another matter entirely."
I say all this because it might help explain his instructions to me. At the moment my fibromyalgia pain has decided to settle in my back right between my shoulder blades, so yesterday I got put through the wringer: had to touch my toes (with no warm-up!), twist this way and that, and then get pounded on hard enough to get toppled over if the man hadn't been holding me upright at the same time. Man, he hit every single fibro pain point.
Then, after prescribing a muscle relaxant, he told me--and I quote--"to increase your usual training by one kilometer". This after I told him it was all I could do to finish 5K trotting and walking since summer hit.
"Are you daft? Half the time I finish on my hands and knees as it is!" I protested.
"Oh, you'll get used to it, then you can increase up to ten K."
The man has taken leave of his senses, but after hearing about his adventures on his mountain bike, we find all the earmarks of a fanatic. I can understand and identify fully: as far as I'm concerned, a horse is better than travel, fine food, and sex. Of course, when I talk about me, I prefer to think I'm passionate in my interests, but when my rheumatologist ups my training by a kilometer, he is a some kind of nut.
I was thinking about all this as I did today's 5K at a forced march--this was a light training day. There was no way I was going to add a kilometer, at least not yet. As I marched along (sweating as much as if I had been running), I noticed that the grass bordering the path seemed covered with some kind of pointy black objects, some of which stood straight upright, others lying down. When I put on my glasses, I saw that the objects were long feathers. It was amazing. We have tons of starlings that make a huge racket in the trees that line the park, and it looked like they had gotten into some kind of massive battle that involved pulling out each other's tail feathers. I say tail feathers because for several days now, I've seen starlings in my back yard minus precisely these feathers. I began to look at the starlings I could see on the ground, and several of them looked oddly stunted in the rear. It must be hell flying with no rudder, but the bigger mystery is, what the dickens is going on here?
Things are out of whack. Starlings losing tail feathers, my jacaranda tree is blooming (this only occurs in springtime), doves crashing into our windows. It feels like the ominous build-up in a Stephen King novel!
sábado, 10 de septiembre de 2011
Blast-off
Last night, the president of a club my husband has joined invited the members and their wives to a wonderful supper replete with anything you wanted to drink and delicious food. There were some shrimp that were to die for.
To my consternation, an announcement was made that all the women would sit in the living room "to get to know one another", while the men gathered outdoors in the pleasant garden. I thought maybe this was a temporary arrangement, but as the evening wore on and we women had more or less shot our conversational bolt with topics such as how nice the house looked, people we know (not me, I don't know anyone in the rancid aristocracy of the neighborhood, at least not women), and other burning topics, I noticed with horror that there were two tables set up--one indoors and one outside. My head was beginning to ache and I was getting angry at the primitive social arrangement that might have been great in Yemen or Saudi Arabia, but not in my 21st century world.
Finally I decided that even at the risk of being thought forward and rude, I'd had it. Either I went out and joined the men, or I would not be responsible for what came out my mouth. I was not feeling particularly spry anyway, having ridden that morning in a sitting trot until I drew blood. I was also slightly dyspeptic.
So I excused myself, got up, went outside and announced to all concerned that I was going to sit with the men. There was a great, though quiet, rejoicing, since it seems the men were not thrilled with the arrangement either. I told the men they need have no qualms about cursing, either--I'm a clinical psychologist and I've heard it all. In fact, I could probably teach them a few choice phrases.
My compadre Armando then went in and brought his wife out, who was near a comatose state from terminal boredom. She had a kind of fixed smile on her face that she really had trouble removing--her mouth was going into rigor mortis thanks to the living room excitement. And a really good time began to be had by all, especially me. At supper we were not segregated by gender, and the other women seemed relieved to be out of the harem too--one, a financial investment expert, must have been near death by negative numbers of mental stimulation, poor thing, but she perked up and had us fascinated with her travels and ideas.
The evening was so entertaining that my tiredness dissipated, but not my dyspepsia. A few bites of the excellent food and my digestive system went into terminal flatulence. I may have sunk my chances of being invited to join the club, the first woman member, by the fact that the explosions were not under my control. My husband said the conversation was so lively that surely nothing could be heard over it, but I told him that if you were in the northern hemisphere, you knew what was going on.
On another front, however, things weren't quite as serious: in the garden, a number of those anti-mosquito smoke bombs were slowly simmering, so at least I didn't gas anyone. Well, at least not anyone at a certain distance. I'm tempted to ask my comadre if she noted my problem, since she was right by me, but I'm afraid she might say, "Jesus H., yes!!! What was wrong with you??"
To my consternation, an announcement was made that all the women would sit in the living room "to get to know one another", while the men gathered outdoors in the pleasant garden. I thought maybe this was a temporary arrangement, but as the evening wore on and we women had more or less shot our conversational bolt with topics such as how nice the house looked, people we know (not me, I don't know anyone in the rancid aristocracy of the neighborhood, at least not women), and other burning topics, I noticed with horror that there were two tables set up--one indoors and one outside. My head was beginning to ache and I was getting angry at the primitive social arrangement that might have been great in Yemen or Saudi Arabia, but not in my 21st century world.
Finally I decided that even at the risk of being thought forward and rude, I'd had it. Either I went out and joined the men, or I would not be responsible for what came out my mouth. I was not feeling particularly spry anyway, having ridden that morning in a sitting trot until I drew blood. I was also slightly dyspeptic.
So I excused myself, got up, went outside and announced to all concerned that I was going to sit with the men. There was a great, though quiet, rejoicing, since it seems the men were not thrilled with the arrangement either. I told the men they need have no qualms about cursing, either--I'm a clinical psychologist and I've heard it all. In fact, I could probably teach them a few choice phrases.
My compadre Armando then went in and brought his wife out, who was near a comatose state from terminal boredom. She had a kind of fixed smile on her face that she really had trouble removing--her mouth was going into rigor mortis thanks to the living room excitement. And a really good time began to be had by all, especially me. At supper we were not segregated by gender, and the other women seemed relieved to be out of the harem too--one, a financial investment expert, must have been near death by negative numbers of mental stimulation, poor thing, but she perked up and had us fascinated with her travels and ideas.
The evening was so entertaining that my tiredness dissipated, but not my dyspepsia. A few bites of the excellent food and my digestive system went into terminal flatulence. I may have sunk my chances of being invited to join the club, the first woman member, by the fact that the explosions were not under my control. My husband said the conversation was so lively that surely nothing could be heard over it, but I told him that if you were in the northern hemisphere, you knew what was going on.
On another front, however, things weren't quite as serious: in the garden, a number of those anti-mosquito smoke bombs were slowly simmering, so at least I didn't gas anyone. Well, at least not anyone at a certain distance. I'm tempted to ask my comadre if she noted my problem, since she was right by me, but I'm afraid she might say, "Jesus H., yes!!! What was wrong with you??"
jueves, 8 de septiembre de 2011
Plodding along...
Something must be working in spite of the heat, in spite of fibromyalgia kicking in with barometric changes, and in spite of the move because I am managing to lose weight rather painlessly. None of this would have been possible without a training group and without an athletic rheumatologist. Almost everyone else has recommended doing, basically, nothing except perhaps some mild yoga, but my rheumatologist told me to fight fibro with running. I think he thinks I'm going to become flooded with endorphins and thus be able to leave off medications.
Well, the endorphins are there but they can't hack the work, and when I tried to leave off one of my medications, after about a month I noticed that my aches and pains began slowly to increase in intensity, so I went back on the medication. Now I'm back to my usual level, some days bad, some days good, but familiar.
There seem to be a considerable number of people running with injured knees, more than I have seen before for some reason. The vast majority of runners appear to have healthy knees, but there are a lot of people running with tight bands below the kneecaps to keep them from moving down, a few with complete knee support with only the kneecap exposed. I was sure that my knees were going to act up when I began trotting because they have been banged up over the years--falls, slipping in the bathroom, being hit by a running dog right on the kneecap, tripping over sleeping black dogs in a dark hallway, you name it. More than once I've had a hugely swollen knee bandaged in order to manage to walk. And yet, for some wild and incomprehensible reason, the old knees have held up just fine, thank you. Not a twinge, not a single groan, nothing whatsoever. If this keeps up, lordy, what tremendous luck.
Well, the endorphins are there but they can't hack the work, and when I tried to leave off one of my medications, after about a month I noticed that my aches and pains began slowly to increase in intensity, so I went back on the medication. Now I'm back to my usual level, some days bad, some days good, but familiar.
There seem to be a considerable number of people running with injured knees, more than I have seen before for some reason. The vast majority of runners appear to have healthy knees, but there are a lot of people running with tight bands below the kneecaps to keep them from moving down, a few with complete knee support with only the kneecap exposed. I was sure that my knees were going to act up when I began trotting because they have been banged up over the years--falls, slipping in the bathroom, being hit by a running dog right on the kneecap, tripping over sleeping black dogs in a dark hallway, you name it. More than once I've had a hugely swollen knee bandaged in order to manage to walk. And yet, for some wild and incomprehensible reason, the old knees have held up just fine, thank you. Not a twinge, not a single groan, nothing whatsoever. If this keeps up, lordy, what tremendous luck.
martes, 6 de septiembre de 2011
Moving Day
Various moving days, in fact. Last Monday our furniture from Austin finally arrived and since then I have had no time to sit down. Now that the house is more or less in order (it's always less in order than more), time to go to the quinta and arrange all the stuff we sent there. Once again I have proven that if you have to stand up and move around long enough, your feet can hurt even if you are wearing high-tech tennis shoes.
The only good thing about the last couple of days is that the temperature has been cooler in the mornings, and today I was able to drag myself to the park and join the training team. Since I spent the weekend at the quinta and rode my new horse, every bone in my body ached in spite of Advil, but the walk/run seemed to relieve the situation. Now, if I can just find some of those doo-dads that hold your glasses on while you run, I may be able to recognize my fellow trainees. Right now I only know who they are because we congregate on the same street corner in the park, so I say "hello" to anyone who happens to be there. At least I can recognize Adrián...
It's off to the quinta again to see if I can finish up there. God.
The only good thing about the last couple of days is that the temperature has been cooler in the mornings, and today I was able to drag myself to the park and join the training team. Since I spent the weekend at the quinta and rode my new horse, every bone in my body ached in spite of Advil, but the walk/run seemed to relieve the situation. Now, if I can just find some of those doo-dads that hold your glasses on while you run, I may be able to recognize my fellow trainees. Right now I only know who they are because we congregate on the same street corner in the park, so I say "hello" to anyone who happens to be there. At least I can recognize Adrián...
It's off to the quinta again to see if I can finish up there. God.
viernes, 2 de septiembre de 2011
The brother of the mayor of Monterrey was videotaped accepting money from casinos; apparently he was too stupid to know what "closed-circuit t.v." means. He claimed he was selling cheese from Oaxaca to the casinos, but you gotta sell one hell of a lot of cheese to get four hundred thousand pesos for it! It has been said that politics is the cheapest form of public entertainment, but that is wrong: it aint cheap, and sometimes it aint entertaining either.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the rumor has it that the reason our municipal district is so safe is because certain individuals in high places have made a deal with one of the cartels--they can sell their drugs as long as they keep other cartels out. This, of course, is just a rumor, and you may have heard how it goes: When someone says "they say that...", just remember that "they" is the world's biggest liar.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the rumor has it that the reason our municipal district is so safe is because certain individuals in high places have made a deal with one of the cartels--they can sell their drugs as long as they keep other cartels out. This, of course, is just a rumor, and you may have heard how it goes: When someone says "they say that...", just remember that "they" is the world's biggest liar.
jueves, 1 de septiembre de 2011
Incense
After today's walk/run, I got to the corner where my trainer and the team meet, but at some distance a terrible, strong scent filled the air. It was like a powerful, old-fashioned perfume. At first I thought someone who had doused himself in aftershave lotion had run by. I went up to the team, one of whom was on a mat and stretching with the help of one of Adrián's fellow trainers.
"What's that god-awful smell?" I asked. Ana roared with laughter and showed me: a small stick of incense burned at a small distance from the mat.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because it's better than smelling Rodolfo," she replied--Rodolfo being the sweat-soaked runner stretching on the mat. Rodolfo, being the good-natured young man he is, only smiled. Not only that, it seems the incense remedy is used with some frequency, though only with men.
It's the testosterone that makes 'em stink.
"What's that god-awful smell?" I asked. Ana roared with laughter and showed me: a small stick of incense burned at a small distance from the mat.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because it's better than smelling Rodolfo," she replied--Rodolfo being the sweat-soaked runner stretching on the mat. Rodolfo, being the good-natured young man he is, only smiled. Not only that, it seems the incense remedy is used with some frequency, though only with men.
It's the testosterone that makes 'em stink.
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