11 weeks or so into the knee recovery thing - honestly, if someone were not really motivated to get help it would be well nigh impossible to get through all of the hurdles put up by all of the various medical entities - just to get a few sessions of physical therapy.

All during this time, I've been doing my knee strengthening exercises, that I found mostly from this book: Healing Your Knees, and doing an upper body only weightlifting program. By the time I finally got my first physical therapy appointment, ol' Leftie the Knee was feeling not too bad. The physical therapist I'm working with is great, though, and is showing me all sorts of perfect strengthening exercises and really guiding me through what I need to do. Evidently, I need to really work the foam roller for the iliotibial band and also do lots of hip strengthening, specifically hip abduction.

What I still need to figure out is how to tell when I'm overdoing things. For example, yesterday, I had a great workout - some weights, a little walking, but the knee was really talking, as in sore, during the afternoon. I've promised her a complete day of rest today, but during the workout, I wasn't getting any cries, I guess because the endorphins kicked in and masked it? The New York Times had a great article recently about this: Link.

The photo is called "Crow on a Stick"; I know it's not a stick, but anyway.

Proceeding Apace

The knee feels better, but not quite right yet - it'll still zap me a good one if I bend the wrong way. I went for an MRI on Friday morning, early (6:45) and was turned away because I didn't have the paperwork proving it was OK to do with the titanium implant in my right ear. (Yes, I know I sound like an old granny with all of her surgeries and so on. In reality, I'm an iron woman with killer biceps.) Just another hoop to jump through, I should have the written approval Monday.

Continuing my knee exercises which help.

None of this has prevented me from taking photographs of course. More from the Collier Canyon project, although this particular spot is outside the Canyon itself, nevertheless I've been enjoying this view for years.

Darn

I'm currently healing up my left knee from a meniscus injury. (update: turns out to not be the meniscus, it's chondromalacia). I don't know yet whether it's torn or not, since the approval for the MRI is still winding its way through my health insurance bureaucracy. This little problem happened when I got over-enthusiastic about going up an escalator and missed or bobbled or something and twisted my knee. That was two weeks ago, and I've been limping ever since, although I must admit, feeling much improved the last few days.

As you can imagine, my brain sort of exploded a little at the lack of activity the first several days, but I've been finding ways around it that don't aggravate the injury or cause pain and I've been able now to get back to the gym for some upper body weights workouts, which feels great.
Although I would really like to get back to heavy lifting, it appears that it's going to be a while, so I'm playing the waiting game now while I let my sad little left knee recuperate. (I refuse to call it my bad knee - I have a sad knee and a happy knee - disgustingly perky, I know.) At any rate, I am constrained from doing knee bending at the moment, both doctor's orders and also frankly, just the thought of it makes me cringe. So squats and lunges are out.

I've been working on a pretty good substitute upper body program into which I'm incorporating some unweighted and prone or seated leg exercises. Quad sets: contract and hold the quads while prone; hamstring sets: seated upright, knee slightly bent, activate the hamstring by pressing the heel into the floor, hold. Straight leg raises, various varieties. Single leg balancing. Calf raises. The only weighted leg exercise I feel comfortable with just now are RDLs - oh I did some yesterday with a pretty light barbell and feeling that hamstring stretch and work felt great. The mighty deadlift! And I'm thinking that by the end of this recovery period, my upper body should be killer, even if my legs will have to catch up later.

Collier Canyon Project

I've worked at the same job now for 8 years. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, I just this last week passed that anniversary date. As is true with all jobs, it's really awful and really great. I must say that just now I'm grateful for being gainfully employed, so I'm not griping, believe me. I have two possible driving routes to work, one on a piece of freeway that consistently makes the top 3 worst congested commutes in the Bay Area, the other using a scenic backroad. Guess which one I take?

I have seen so many interesting things on my little backroad, the aforementioned Collier Canyon. The bird life is wonderful, although a little difficult to see sometimes from a moving car, but I consistently see red-tailed hawks on the power poles, scrub jays making a racket that can be heard through rolled-up windows, killdeer swooping across the road and loggerhead shrikes sitting on their catbird seats. (I recently read a blurb somewhere that the phrase "catbird seat" was actually in reference to shrikes.) The residents of the houses along the road keep horses, several breeds of cattle including some longhorn numbers, llama, sheep and goats. I've seen lots of wildlife: deer, wild pigs, coyotes, skunks, the everpresent and numerous ground squirrels and the remains of opossum and raccoon.

Toward one end of the road is an absolutely magnificent view of Mt. Diablo.

All in all, this drive makes the extra few minutes it takes worth it and can anyone argue with avoiding the freeway?

I've started taking my camera along some days to record it. Here is something from the start of this project. This is a ewe from the sheep pen.

Yes, But Why Does It Have To Be So Invasive

A week ago last Friday, I finally gritted my teeth and went and got the recommended screening colonoscopy that "they" want everyone to get when we turn 50. Yes, I procrastinated a couple of years. And of course everything went well and I got a clean bill of health.

I have to admit that I was more apprehensive about the day of fasting that's required beforehand than I was about the actual procedure or other prep. I have convinced myself that I go a little nuts when really hungry but it seemed to go just fine. Maybe just knowing that I couldn't and that it just had to be done made it easier. Also it's just a day.

The other thing that I have noticed in the last week since then is that I get fuller faster - or I notice my fullness more. Or I don't enjoy being really full the way I have in the past. Now, I've been just eating an extra bowl of salad to achieve this lately but still there's a marked preference for fullness, which is a leftover from the old stuffer days of eating. I haven't really been working on eradicating that preference but now I'm thinking that there's a little crack in the armor. We'll see. I don't know if that happened because that day of required fasting flipped a switch somewhere (I'm NOT recommending fasting by the way unless you have to do it for something like this, mostly I think the fasting craze a BS weight loss fad.) Maybe it's just because it took a while for my digestion to get back to normal and I'll go back to it? I think what I'll do, as an experiment, is to see if I can hold off on satisfying the urge for getting very full, even if it is just with lettuce and cucumbers that I do it with.

Ladybug Butts and Hunger

I've moved on from New Rules of Lifting for Women and am now working the original New Rules of Lifting programs, by the same authors. Anyway, I'm in one of the fat loss programs, which boils down to doing relatively high reps and short rest periods during the workouts. Also, keeping a slight calorie deficit, because really, if you don't do that there is no fat loss. So I'm feeling a little hungrier the last couple of weeks, the prospect of which caused my husband, the Dinosaur, when I told him about it and said we'll see if I can stand it, to inquire whether he would be able to. Ha! There are only four more weeks, she said through gritted teeth.

But of course, with being somewhat more peckish on a daily basis, comes the usual dealing with the mental and emotional issues of eating. Here is an example of some of the food-related BS my brain comes up with sometimes. After supper the other night, with a nicely full/satiated stomach, some needy part of me was insisting that I "had to have" a bowl of cereal. Not just a little bowl - a big full bowl of it. Excuse me? And where would that fit exactly into the aforementioned Full Stomach? Somehow the earth continued spinning on its axis when I passed on that suggestion and drank some tea instead.

The Days Do Tend to Follow One Another

I find that I'm not coming up with ideas for here much. Some periods of life are like that I suppose, the struggle isn't so "struggly" I suppose. I've been posting at my Dryad Ranch blog with all of our weekend walks and the beauty of the place. I have been enjoying taking photographs and sometimes they just don't fit for Dryad, so what the heck.

An aloe from the Lower Garden. This photo almost makes me want to get out my pencil set and some paper, but in spite of looking everywhere, even under the couch, I have not found the time to do it.