THE SHOULDER SEASON

In the travel world, the shoulder season is when trips are supposed to be a little cheaper because not so many people travel during those times, and hotel rooms and whatnot tend to be less than full. 

In my world, this is my shoulder season.   In January, I was taking Christmas lights down and fell off my house.  (Note the hyperbole here -- falling off the house sort of implies I fell off the roof instead of off the porch.)  But falling off the porch just sounds lame and like, get over it.

Only I can't, because as it turns out, I tore my rotator cuff.  Before this happened, I thought a rotator cuff would be a pretty exotic piece of jewelry, maybe a bracelet that would spin around, emitting lightning bolts like Wonder Woman's, or something.  Now I know that a rotator cuff does a whole lot of things I never appreciated before, like putting on your coat, or hooking up a bra, or reaching up over your head.   

So, I go to Physical therapy twice a week, and do self torture at home twice a day, and because it's so comfy warm here, I also sit with an icepack on my shoulder for a half hour or so twice a day.  I love my physical therapist, Wendy, and her drill sergeant assistant, Katie.  We have lots of fun.  I get to pull my arm up and down on a pulley over and over again, in a motion reminiscent of when I worked the pie line at Campbell's Soup one summer during college.  I get to have people massaging the sorest parts of me -- definitely not the pleasant kind of massage, and then I get to lift huge weights (some as heavy as three whole pounds!) I get to push my arm to the point of pain with a giant stick, and I get to climb stair steps with my fingers. 

My amusement has been to figure out ways to do these exercises at home with different materials.  The stair step one seemed the easiest.  In this exercise, there is a sort of a stairway to heaven made for your fingers to walk up until you get your arm straightened out over your head.  Then you kind of slide your hand back down and climb up again.  I think this appliance is called the Sisyphus, but I could be wrong. 

I decided I could do the same thing on a palm tree, which has lots of little "stairs" to climb on.  I didn't really reckon with the fact that the Sisyphus staircase is relatively smooth, and you get to rest while letting your hand slide back down.  Not so much on the palm tree. 

Wanting, as always, to multitask, I would stop and caress every no parking pole in the neighborhood on my walk (for the exercise where you loosen up by pushing a towel up the wall).  Too many of the neighbors were horrified by what apparently looked to them like an elderly woman practicing a pole dance, so I kind of gave up on that, and now use that exercise to wash windows.  I only have to do ten at a time, and if the windows aren't clean by then, too bad. 

I then got an exercise to use with stretch cords, which I actually happened to have one of at home, but because our doorknobs are quite high it wasn't at the right place, so I attached it to the bed.  Now if you walk into our bedroom, you gotta kinda wonder where the fuzzy handcuffs and the whips and chains are.  Since I do a couple of my exercises on the bed, I'm also considering putting some mirrors on the ceiling so I can monitor my progress.  Now all I need is an excuse to put flocked red wallpaper on the walls.

Last week I finally got an MRI and since I go to a doctor who just asks what I want to do and gives very little direction, I get the impression I should have surgery.  However, from my own extensive medical training (Google) I get the idea that only a fool would have surgery before they did PT for about six months. 

In the meantime, I continue to shuffle past my harp, sit down and play for a minute or two and then get angry all over for trying to be one of the flying Wallendas.