Relative Something

My cycling friends invited me to go for a ride yesterday. Six days ago, I was suffering an immobilizing pain in my back. I could hardly stand up. On Monday, I tried to take my therapeutic walk, but couldn’t go but a short distance. I stayed home from work, and scheduled my first-ever acupuncture appointment with no idea what to expect.

It was very simple. After a very brief description of my situation, the practitioner placed needles in various places: ears, arms, hands, legs, and feet, and left me reclining in the dim room amid sounds of flowing water and celestial music. I’ve suffered worse procedures.

I had no idea what I was supposed to feel. It was nothing, if not relaxing. After almost an hour, the needles are removed, and it’s “Have a nice day.” That’s it? I just get up and go now? Okay.

I worked half a day on Tuesday, before I tired of trying to function in a semi-normal fashion. At least I was able to do something. There was definite improvement. By Wednesday, I was able to complete my usual distance of therapeutic walk in the morning, and did all my back exercises.

I had two follow-up acupuncture appointments, on Wednesday and Friday. I was feeling very close to normal function. I had not taken any pain medication beyond one last dose of ibuprofen on Monday morning. I have had zero negative side effects from having acupuncture.

In the past, I have been able to ride a bicycle, even though my back was ailing, so I was willing to try joining my friends for a ride yesterday. However, during my mental preparation for the excursion, I realized that my bike was hanging upside down overhead in the garage. I was going to need to reach above my head and hold that weight at precarious angles to get it down. I’m pretty sure that this falls well into the category of things I’ve been advised not to do.

With some trepidation, I carefully managed the task, bending over multiple times as I prepared my bike and myself for the ride. I pumped up the tires, using my manual pump, thinking the whole time that the motion was probably ill-advised. I removed the front wheel and picked up the bike to hoist it into the back of my car. All accomplished with no problems from my back!

We had a wonderful 20-mile ride on trails from Hopkins to downtown Minneapolis, where we lunched at the legendary east European deli, Kramarczuk’s.

I can think of no reason I shouldn’t give the practice of acupuncture credit for giving me such a quick return to one of the great pleasures of my life. I will gladly continue to do more testing of this judgement.

Here we are again, with the clocks adjusted ahead, moving dusk beyond the dinner hour. That means darkness is delayed long enough that chores can be prolonged later into the evening. Oh, joy.

I spent the weekend removing wallpaper from 2 bathrooms. I am really glad that is done. Now I am struggling to figure out how to choreograph the next phases of drywall repair and painting. Ideally, the furniture should be moved to a neutral location, but we haven’t got a room that doesn’t need work. I have no idea where I am going to end up sleeping.

I will likely have to ask the crews doing the work to break the job up and just do portions at a time. That would allow me to empty some rooms by putting everything into a different room that will be done later.

On the surface, that may not seem like too big a deal, but I am here all by myself, and moving furniture alone is an onerous task, especially with degenerating discs in my spine.

It is less than a year now since I suffered the first symptoms of pain from degenerative disc disease, for which “the first line of treatment is usually to avoid aggravating the condition. Modifying activities to preclude lifting of heavy objects and playing sports that require rotating the back (e.g. golf, basketball or football) can be a good first step.” (from Lumbar Degenerative Disc Disease Treatments by Peter F Ullrich, Jr., MD)

On the subject of not playing sports that involve rotating the back (or pounding up and down the hardwood gym floor), I was considering canceling my membership to the sports club where we play our three-times-a-week morning futsal games, and just quitting cold turkey. I had already reduced my attendance to Mondays and Fridays, but since my most recent flare-up, haven’t played for 3-weeks, and I will have plenty of work to do on preparing the house for showings, and will ultimately be moving to a more rural area that will likely pull me away from the games anyway. It seems to me, quitting now would be a logical thing to do.

But… maybe I have played too many years with these guys to just disappear. Something is keeping me from taking that step that would guarantee the conclusion of my participation. Part of me is wondering about the possibility that I might experiment with altering my level of play to become more conscious of how I move during action. I could practice being light on my feet, and deliberate in my attempts. I will be a bit slower, and probably less effective. I’ll finally start acting my age out there. If I learn to play more prudently, I may be able to prolong my opportunities to mingle with a great collection of friends who share my love of soccer.

That is, until we move out to live with horses.

Now that my routine has returned to a relative normal, post the holidays, I’m going to provide an update on the status of my solo living. Even though it’s been almost 4-months since Cyndie moved east to accept a position with Boston Public Schools, it still feels a bit new. At the same time, it has been long enough to pretty much figure out what works for me. I have been getting my needs met, and am tending to the needs of the household. With only one person messing up the place, shouldn’t I be able to sweep the kitchen half as often? It does not appear to be the case.

For the most part, I am taking advantage of having groceries delivered to the house. I do my food shopping online. Thus far, I am happy with my ability to avoid relying too heavily on restaurants for my sustenance. In fact, I think I am eating out less than when Cyndie was home. Since I don’t automatically have a companion, that seems like a logical outcome to me. I expect it might be different if I was inclined to eat out alone.

The real staple has turned out to be soup from my good friend and fellow Himalayan trekker, Chef Pam Knutson. I buy soup through her Birdsong Soups business out of the Kitchen in the Market facility. I get a quart each week that her husband, John, generously brings to his work in Eden Prairie where I can conveniently pick it up. This has been providing about 4 different meals a week for me. I don’t think I will be able to eat soup out of a can ever again after this experience. What a treat! This is gourmet level eating that seems like it would only be available in fine restaurants, and I have it in my own kitchen! I highly recommend you check out this community supported soup business, Birdsong Soups.

I have also become just a bit more social since Cyndie has moved out, hosting a number of gatherings of friends at the house, and going out with others. Part of that is a result of friends offering to step up to help fill the void. Thank you, friends!

The one thing that isn’t working so well is my being able to touch base with my lovely wife with any regularity. All too often, multiple days pass where we fail to speak or even successfully exchange a text message. You’d think a one-hour time difference wouldn’t be a big deal, but I find it does complicate things, or maybe it just seems to, because Cyndie’s work hours have been ridiculously long. I was shocked to be unable to reach her on a Friday night, nor the entire following Saturday, only to find out she was working both times and had unknowingly dropped her phone under the seat of the car they provided for her use.

I figure I should be nurturing a relationship with the security personnel in her building so I can contact them to find out where she is if I want to speak to her. Nothing can really replace the small talk that has been dashed from our relationship. I miss how she would politely listen to me talk like a little kid about the excitement I enjoyed at soccer in the morning. Yesterday I would have whined to her about the owie I got when I sprained a finger playing around with a basketball in the gym before soccer started. Then I would have bragged about the success we had making multiple one-touch passes to score lots of goals, or mentioned that I forgot to use my asthma inhaler before playing and noticed some suffering as a result. Tolerable, but noticeable suffering.

Kind of like the feeling of suddenly living separated from your beloved spouse of 30 years.

The fantastic brilliance of life springs forth in everything! It is in the good and the bad, the easy and the difficult. Our greatest lessons do not come from times of calm and collected, easy living. It is the challenges, the trials and tribulations, which produce the gems of outcome that glimmer with the brilliant beauty of our eventual successes in life.

It has been brought to my attention, by friends who care about me, that some of what I write lately is spawning worry about my state of being. I will admit to taking advantage of some of the angst, (created in me by the departure of my lovely wife to the job in Boston), composing some prose that explores the feelings thus produced. To an artist, such fodder is a rich vein to be mined.

I am grateful for the feedback, though, because I was not aware of the level of impression my words were creating. I am richly blessed by friends. In particular, Ian Rowcliffe, who provides me with insights and inspirations through his comments, and his unfailingly positive focus. Also, my good friend, Gary Larson, a champion in helping me take care of myself. Mike Wilkus has been a (mostly) weekly date for dinners out on the town, or movies, or sometimes both. Many special friends from my circle of bicycling buddies, who came over last Saturday, bringing food and good cheer, to watch a movie I’ve been itchin’ to share for weeks. And my morning soccer comrades, who just yesterday were helping me release endorphins with plenty of laughter and cheerful competition.

I am eating very well, despite my disinterest in cooking, getting in my maintenance exercises for my back, and actually enjoying the opportunity to get a taste of living on my own. Being separated from Cyndie isn’t easy, but it isn’t all that hard, either. It is “both / and.”

Part of me just might have been hesitant to portray my situation in too rosy a light, lest I come across as a heartless cad. I fear there could be some ‘splainin’ to do if my wife thought I was having too much fun here without her.

I was telling Gary last night that I am enjoying having some of the rooms in our house become more a reflection of me, as I remove some things that had been put in place for when two people occupied the space. As referenced in yesterday’s poem, the rooms are losing some of Cyndie’s soul, but I see that as a logical step toward our putting this house on the market. When she moves home again, we are envisioning that we will be in a new place, on property with space for horses. I expect the current situation will end up making it easier for us to part with the house we’ve lived in for over 25 years.

Thank you to all friends, new and old, who read me here! I’m hoping you find my travails relative something… preferably something positive!

This is one of those moments when I would like to be able to tell you all about the exciting adventures, not the least of which included what went on in my dreams last night, that have occurred for me over the last few days. However, I am still living the adventures, and unlike my studious chronicling of bike trips, Nepal treks, and Portugal paradise visits, I have not been keeping a keen journal of events.

The short version is that we are at the lake with Cyndie’s family and our wonderful community of friends that serve as extended family, playing and relaxing in the beauty of the woods that surround us. Friday we survived a terrific storm that knocked out our electrical power for about 12 hours, mostly the hours we slept. Finding our way to bed was the hardest part, in the total darkness.

The storm released us from oppressive humid heat and the weather is now luxuriously ideal. Today will be the annual games of the US Independence Day celebrations, and the evening will bring a community feast at the lodge.

Otherwise it has been lake play, with boats pulling kids on a variety of fancy floating rafts, resting in the new hammock, walking with Cyndie in her wheelchair, watching cycling and the Women’s World Cup of soccer, and Scrabble games on the iPad.

It goes without saying that the food has been spectacular and plentiful. We are enjoying ourselves immensely. If I had time, I’d tell you about it. The only thing we can think of that could out-do this would be to have successfully landed in Portugal and be visiting our friends, the Rowcliffes, at their Forest Garden Estate.

Yesterday afternoon, Cyndie and I were lounging together on the hammock overlooking the lake as all manner of glee was audible from the kids down on the beach. She had a book and I brought out my laptop. I noticed that our friend, Ian, was logged into gmail, which would support a chat. We were overjoyed to find him available and spent over a half hour visiting, getting a taste of what we were dreaming of achieving before the calamity that postponed the trip. What a pleasure that proved to be for us. We woke up this morning feeling the joy, still.

The amazing power of friendship.

I have been blessed with a true friend in Gary Larson, my trekking buddy and cycling comrade, who has welcomed Cyndie and me into his semi-annual gathering of long-time friends for their music parties. Last Saturday we joined the gala event for a fine dinner followed by some spontaneous music making. Dessert was so spectacular that Cyndie paused to capture it in a picture.

It is an interesting challenge for me because I never mastered the finer points of music theory which would allow me to actually know what chords to play for a given key. When attempting to play along with somebody in an unrehearsed performance, I am left to hunt and peck for something that sounds right. They have been polite to accommodate my shortcomings and we forge ahead together for a very enjoyable session.

Here I am with Peter on mandolin and Mike on banjo. We are performing the obligatory opening number… tuning. Since I rarely seem to know what chords to play, my first cheat is to look over at the finger position of the other players. However, if they aren’t playing a guitar tuned the same as mine, what I see doesn’t provide me with information I can use. It adds to the excitement.

One of my favorite things to do is harmonize when singing. It can be a bit tricky since I usually don’t know the words to the songs, and often find myself guessing about the intended melody.

I complicated things a bit on this occasion, since I was well into my little experiment of playing doctor with my asthma condition, and in its untreated state, I was suffering from a compromised lung capacity. (See yesterday’s post, if you haven’t already.)

In a beautiful demonstration of true friendship, Gary called me yesterday, after reading my post, to offer some perspective about treating an affliction like asthma. I was pretty uncomfortable all day long with pressure that felt like someone was sitting on my chest, and my persistent clearing my throat with a regular cough interval, was annoying me for how annoying it must be for everyone else. I decided that as soon as I got home from work, I was going to resume my regular full dose of control medicine that I have been prescribed.

I may not know what my ultimate un-medicated situation would be these days, but I do know that my asthma is treatable. Whether or not I am currently experiencing the worst it would get, I think my experiment has proved well-enough that I am a legitimate candidate for medication to control my condition.

Thank you, Gary, for taking the initiative to call and share your thoughts. It is what a friend would do.

Let’s hear it for fun friends. Think about it. People who you consider fun, you probably also think of as being funny. We all benefit from laughter.

This morning, on the weekly television program, CBS Sunday Morning, there was a feature segment on comedian/actor Chris Rock. As it ended, I was left with the feeling that I wanted to have Chris Rock as my friend. That isn’t likely to happen.

I already have many friends that are fun. In an instant, I became aware of how my regular daily activity, especially when my wife is out-of-town, plays out lacking in the people I appreciate for their characteristic of being fun. People who radiate fun energy, cultivate fun attitudes, and display an artistry for being funny.

I have long known that my sports activities provide much more than physical exercise for me. I play sports with fun people. Beyond that small percentage of time every few days each week, I experience a lack of interaction with people who emit beams of the ‘fun’ mojo.

How much of your day-to-day life is lacking in healthy doses of fun people? It is telling to every so often take measure of our relative environment. It provides a reference measurement to highlight our surroundings and bring awareness to the things that are impacting the water we swim in, the air we breathe, the views our eyes see, the words we hear.

I want to increase my daily exposure to fun people. I wonder, do you think Chris Rock would be interested in taking a job in my industry in Minnesota?

Much as it may seem that the miracle of friendship is manifest in the way our friends support us in times of need, the bigger miracle worth noting may occur at the moment we allow ourselves to actually ask our friends for help. I think most of us recognize the difficulty in determining when it is time to ask.

I’m reminded of a thought that occurred to me last weekend when I was biking with Jack through the woods in Wisconsin:

How do you know when you are carrying too much speed into a corner?

The answer is, you don’t know you have too much speed until it is too late and you are unable to stay on the trail through the end of the turn. “Oops, should have applied the brakes a bit there!”

How do you know when it’s too late to ask a friend for help?

It is never too late to ask.

I am feeling particularly grateful for all my communities lately.

Com • mu • ni • ty: (noun)  3. a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

First, and most recently featured here in my previous two posts, there is my online community, Brainstorms. Next, there is the group I am missing the most right now, because I normally get to see them three times a week, my LIFA (Lifetime Indoor Football Association) soccer community. Rehab on the strained hamstring is commencing into the 2nd phase, so I hope to rejoin you all before the snow is completely gone.

Then comes my cycling community, which primarily is made up of the folks who I have met through participating in the annual Jaunt with Jim biking and camping week in June. It consists of approximately 150 friends whom I spend an intimate week among, and then, for the most part, don’t see again until the following year. Each year, on the first night of the ride, when we re-meet all the familiar faces, it is as if we have hardly been apart. Luckily, after having done this ride many times, I now also have a subset of friends from that larger group which I remain in contact with throughout the year and with whom I enjoy sharing a wide variety activities, interaction and support.

There is one other athletic community in which I claim membership: Floorball. Once again, due to my hamstring injury, I have been unable to participate for a few weeks, but they are a unique group with whom I share a special bond of love for playing this customized version of floor hockey in the evenings on Wednesday nights in the winter.

Interlaced within a couple of those communities are members of my group of life-long friends that I grew up with in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. I often see that group as overlapping one last community I will mention, easily defined by one word: family.

Our communities enrich and support us in a multitude of ways and play an important role in nurturing our better health and well-being. Within a community there are opportunities to serve and to be served. Together, those two simple tasks provide connections that sure help me to exercise critical aspects of my deeper mental processes.

As a reader and viewer of my postings here, it is more than likely that you are a member of one of my communities, or possibly only slightly removed, and as such, I salute you for all that you provide me in so many valuable ways. Here’s to community.

Public Art in Pioneer Court, God Bless America, Sculptor: J. Steward Johnson - Installed: Dec, 2008

Did I mention that I was going to Chicago for the weekend? Cyndie and I and our good friends, Bob & Kris and Mike & Barb, reunited for a January weekend in Chicago because someone spotted low airfare specials again. Our calculations revealed that the last time we did this was 3 years ago, in 2007, when we attended a performance of the play “Wicked” and watched a downtown 3D fireworks show over the river. The keynote event this year was a show at the Second City comedy theater. It was a gas! A bit tricky to discern if we were witnessing an early performance of someone who would someday show up on SNL or make it big in the movies, but the ensemble was very capable and highly entertaining and the skits were definitely funny. They finally got me laughing to tears, even though the topic of the cab driver explaining to the imaginary passengers (the audience) behind him, why the fares keep going up, wasn’t specifically that funny. It was his delivery. The timing he executed to deliver the repeated intro line for the next gag seemed to do the trick for me. Throughout the night they employed the craft of weaving independent skits, on-again, off-again, among other scenes, to squeeze extra laughs out of one idea, just by returning to it later to add one more comment or interaction. Very effective. Very funny. Highly entertaining!

My mauled open-face Reuben at Lou Mitchell's

We also visited Lou Mitchell’s Restaurant and Bakery at the start of Route 66, played $3000 guitars that are delivered upon request to the rooms of guests of the Hard Rock Hotel where we stayed, connected with our son, Julian, and other friends at the ESPN Zone to watch the NFL Vikings defeat Dallas, and followed a tip to a 1920′s speakeasy style cocktail bar, The Violet Hour, and then Francesca’s Forno in the Wicker Park neighborhood. We ate too much and tried to walk some of it off, but often took cabs or the CTA. For a person who doesn’t drink alcohol, I spent more time in bars over the weekend than I regularly visit in a couple of years. The Violet Hour, in particular, makes a seriously enticing ‘mocktail’.

Thank you, Southwest Airlines, for giving us these opportunities. They did a great job. And, once again, Chicago was a great host, even given the gray and somewhat chilly January climate. We are talking about considering altering our focus to start watching for cheap January airfare deals to warm destinations, but then, everybody does that. That’s the very reason it ends up being so cheap to go somewhere like Chicago.

The entrance to the Violet Hour. Seriously.