Field Trip

The Food Bank Director and I went to the Alameda County Community Food Bank last week. I'd never been there and I wanted to see it. It's a huge place, with a walk-in freezer almost the size of our house (part of which you can see in the upper left corner of the photo below), and a small section set up with shelves where we "shop" that is probably 30 x 40 feet, minuscule in relation to the size of the whole warehouse. There's a desk where you sign in and they give you a cart, Then you walk up and down the aisles until you have everything you can get. The weight of your stuff is recorded for billing purposes and you go out and pack your truck or van and leave.


The difference between our food bank and the ACCFB is kind of like the difference between a mom-and-pop grocery store and a grocery distributor. We get our stuff there and then the clients come to us to get their stuff. We got ten cases of tomato sauce, ten of diced tomatoes, ten of cranberry sauce (for next November), and five of pork and beans. We also got 100 pounds of sweet potatoes, 100 pounds of carrot stubs, and 50 pounds of onions. The ACCFB charges by the pound for the canned goods, and the produce is free. Unlike a grocery distributor, the choices are limited, as are the amounts (sometimes). You get what they have when they have it because you don't know when they will have it again. We have a lot of tomato products because that's pretty much all the ACCFB has had for several months, but come September they may not have any so we should get it now - and do.


All cans, jars, and packaged food like crackers and cereal have codes printed on them which mean various things. The date printed on the can is often a "best by" date (sometimes it is a packing date). After the "best by" date has passed, the food inside the can is generally good for up to 24 months (depending on what's inside the can), though the nutritional content may be compromised (particularly in the case of vitamins). When we get cans and packages donated by the community, we look at each one to see if it's worth putting up on the table for packing. We all throw stuff out if it's more than two years old, and sometimes before that if the packaging looks iffy or (obviously) of the can is bulging or leaking. The oldest can we've received since I've been at the food bank had a "best by" date of June 1995. I think it came from someone who brought us the contents of their parent's kitchen when the parent died or moved into supportive housing. We all wondered at the age of the can and then someone pitched it in the trash.


Carrying all these cans around reinforces my weight training - and my need for weight training!

Routines

I redesign my workout routine every two months. I do this because the first trainer I worked with said that the body gets bored and the muscles cease getting as much value out of moves that you repeat for a long time. In fact, he said one should redesign a workout every four to six weeks, but I've settled on every two months for ease of tracking and because I go about three times a week. I keep a list of actions in my routines so I can recycle them.


My routines always include something for legs and back, because of the car wreck, and for biceps and/or triceps because I want to be able to carry heavy stuff. The routine always includes time on the elliptical trainer for aerobics and crunches to help support my lower back. About a week ago I watched a woman doing lunges across the gym and I thought I could work that into my next routine.


I changed my routine on Sunday and mixed in the lunges, sixty wide and low steps back and forth across the aerobics room. They are much, much harder than they look, and I wasn't even carrying weights (trying to relieve some of the gripping I have to do because my hands often hurt in the morning). On Sunday my hamstrings, especially in the left leg, started to seize up, but I managed to get all the way through without them totally cramping.


I anticipated being sore Monday, but I wasn't. Zirpu said that often the stiffness doesn't settle in until the second day, so I then I thought I would be sore on Tuesday. I was a little sore in places where the muscles cross over joints, but it wasn't too bad. Of course yesterday I went back to the gym and did lunges again, along with the rest of my routine. I think my muscles would get stiff if I didn't work on my feet and always move around.


When I first started working out at that gym there was a guy who often wore a t-shirt that said "Pain is weakness leaving the body." Zirpu says this is a Marines slogan. I continue to be inspired by it even though I haven't seen that guy or his t-shirt in over two years. I don't mind being sore because in a way that's how I know something is happening. Well, that and lifting apple boxes.

That's All You Have To Do

Yesterday I stopped by Boegle Blog Bloggery and learned that National Blog Posting Month is in November. It is sponsored by the folks at National Novel Writing Month, or by friends of theirs. The whole thing of NaBloPoMo is that you have to post every single day of the month. I've posted 284 times in the 295 days since Christmas Eve last year (and some of those posts covered several days in one post), so I think I can accomplish that.


The only thing I don't like about signing up for NaBloPoMo is that I had to join some social networking thing called Ning to join. It's bad enough that I'm on Tribe; I refuse to explore Ning at all and have the barest of "profiles."


NaNoWriMo, you may recall, is about writing a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. I tried doing this last year, after encouragement from Tea and Shobi-wan. I started twice and got to like 7,000 words on one of them. You have to write around 1670 words a day to write a novel in 30 days. I stopped; I had to give myself permission to quit.


Last summer and fall I was really depressed. Shobi-wan said that she saw it, and tried to encourage me with "If you need anything, call me any time"-type offers, but I didn't think anyone knew what bad shape I was in, because I didn't even know. A lot of the free-floating anxiety I experience from time to time appeared then, and the flying thing got really bad last summer. I went to the gym every day just to get out of the house and to have done something. That's why I say that staring to volunteer at the food bank saved my life, because working there gave shape to my days and connected me with people who didn't want anything from me and were easy to be around.


I set myself this goal to write every day and instead of making me feel better, it made me feel worse. Every day I didn't write 1700 words, or any words at all, was another day I felt like I failed. Having "the novel" waiting for me every day was like having a self-esteem-sucking monster sitting on my desk, chanting, "You can't write and you never could! Nah-nah!" I didn't see that at first, but as soon as I realized that this monster was sitting on my desk, I pulled out of NaNoWriMo. I already felt like I had failed at what I thought was going to be the job of my dreams, and NaNoWriMo felt like more coals on my head.


I'm not going to sign up for NaNoWriMo this year, but NaBloPoMo? Totally doable.


Visit NaBloPoMo

Seeing It

I walk on the elliptical trainer at the gym because I know I should do some aerobic exercise, but it's the weight training that I really like. Not only do I feel strong, but I feel like I'm doing something unladylike. It's a feeling like "No one who sees these shoulders is going to call me 'girl'." I am woman, see my bicep curls!


I'm pretty good about not lifting things that I know will challenge my back too much. I bend from my knees, tighten my abdominal muscles, try to avoid lift-and-twist and bend-and-reach, and ask for help. However, I've noticed that working at the food bank is making me stronger. It's quantifiable because the weights are specific, so I know that I am lifting or pulling or pushing ten pounds or thirty pounds or 110 pounds. I go to work five days a week, and the gym two or three, so I think the two are reinforcing the effect each has.


In the past, I've always asked someone else to put the fifty pound boxes of apples or oranges in the refrigerator for me, or asked someone to help me pick them up. It's not just the weight that's been the challenge, but the shape, and the fact that these boxes do not have handles. I have to get my hands under them and lift them up, and with my short arms that has always been hard, with the weight pulling on my shoulders.


This evening there wasn't anyone around to help me with the boxes, so I thought I would try picking one of them up and seeing how it went. After all, each weights machine has a sign on it saying "Do not exceed your known weight level" or something like that, and I've always wondered how one would know what her weight level was if she's never tried that machine before, or tried a heavier weight? So I knew what I was doing.


So I wrapped my arms around an apple box, stuck my fingers under, tightened my core muscles, bent my knees slightly, and lifted up. Not only could I get the apple box off the table, but it didn't feel as heavy as they always have. I walked over to the fridge and shoved the box in, and did the same with the other apple box and the box of oranges.


ROOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Four Years Ago Today

I still remember the sound of the first impact, though I have no memory of the second one.


The car wreck gave me a lot of opportunities to experience kindness at the hands of strangers, first and foremost the fellow who ran up to tell me that I would be all right and that emergency vehicles were on the way (it turned out that a CHP officer had witnessed the whole thing, and was on the radio immediately). He dug out my cell phone so I could call Zirpu and tell him I was okay but had just been in a serious accident. I figured that the part I would want to hear first was "I'm okay" so that's how I started out.


I'd been at a training at Fresno Pacific University and one of the ambulance drivers called the financial aid office to contact someone at the training. Someone I barely knew at the time came to the ER and stayed with me until Zirpu arrived three hours later. We just talked, but it was really comforting to have company in that crowded ER. I had no idea how badly injured I was; I expected I would be back at the office the following Monday, and instead I was out for six weeks.


Unfortunately I don't remember the kindnesses as much as I remember the unpleasantnesses. I won't even go into how difficult it was to get straight answers from the HR office and from anyone at two of the three insurance companies I had to deal with, and what an ass the orthopedist was.


Years after working in drug treatment I got really clear on why people would self-medicate. I was angry all the time, irritable even before I started withdrawing from Vicodin. The Vicodin made me feel better; the pain went away and everything else went with it, too. What a relief, to not feel angry.


I struggled a lot with feeling like I ought to feel grateful that I hadn't been injured worse when I was feeling really angry that I had been injured at all due to someone else's error. Fresno PD wrote on the report that an "unsafe left turn" was the cause of the accident (as if there is any other kind of left turn when rolling on the highway at 65 mph). The other driver reported that she lost control of the vehicle, but I know what happened was that she yanked the wheel to the left when someone took the spot she was planning to merge into, because that's happened to me.


Four years later I can tell when the weather is changing and I am really careful about my back. I'm stronger than I was before, because physical therapy led me into weight training. I'm a cautious driver (Zirpu would say too cautious), and I plan to never return to Fresno.


I also consider myself blessed.

Strength

After coverage for physical therapy ended a couple months after the car accident in 2003, I decided that I wasn't done recovering my physical self. I could see that my left leg was smaller than my right, and that wasn't good enough. Before starting to dance, it would have been; I don't think I would have pursued more physical recovery. However, I was starting to understand that my body was more than just something to carry my mind around, which was due to dance. Dance is a sport, and I had unconciously started thinking of myself as a sort of athlete.

I took my cane with me when I went to the 24 Hour Fitness down the street to learn about membership plans. I expected to receive some fierce sales pressure, but I knew that if I waved my cane in their faces they would back off - if for no other reason than the company would require a doctor's clearance form before they could sign me up. Utimately I got the doctor's clearance and I signed up. I signed up with a trainer because I knew that I didn't know anything about weight training and I didn't want to hurt myself anymore than I already was. The trainer recommended was a man who has sustained several injuries over the years, someone, I was assured, who would be able to understand where I was coming from when trying to get my body back to doing things it had been able to do before the wreck (and, as it turned out, more).

Each time I've re-signed with a trainer he or she and I go through the nutrition explanation and I politely remind them that I don't care about losing weight. I want to build muscle so I can balance better, carry heavier, survive longer. My father's mother just turned 104, so I expect to be here for a long time - and I do not intend to break a hip someday.

One of the things that Adonis - nor any of the trainers I've worked with there - hasn't really been able to understand was that I was interested only in becoming stronger. I came through the accident, injured relatively lightly because I was in good health to start. I think that if I had been stronger, I would have gotten through injured even less. I do not mean to make light of how serious my injuries were, I'm just very clear that they so easily could have been much much worse if... The big IF of any car accident.

I've been recovering from this accident for a long time. My leg injury is healed, but when the weather is about to change to rain, I usually know. Unlike before the wreck, I have to act as if my back is a fragile thing - even though it's probably stronger, and better supported, now than it ever has been. I've worked with all of the long-term trainers at that gym and noted their different styles; now I combine Adonis' and Smiley's localized muscle training, the Skater's back strength techniques, and the whole-body sets taught me by The Guy Who Looks Like My Brother into my own workout routines.

I like having biceps I can see and muscles in my (matching) legs I can feel, but the best compliment I've received was one day recently when Adonis poked me in the stomach. Because we were laughing, my abs were tightened, and he said, "Damn, girl!"