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You lie flat down, with your feet elevated (knees at 90 degrees), and they put a belt just above your hip bone and another belt just below your ribcage. And then they flip a switch and start the s-t-r-e-t-c-h!
It's a really strange feeling... the top part gently rolls back while the lower belt pulls down, so you watch the ceiling move back and forth -- which would be very strange if there were a pattern on the ceiling. In this case, it's just a plain white room, so when they first did this to me last week, I wasn't even sure that I was moving.
Today, they put massaging rollers under the platform so my spine got a nice rub and pull at the same time. Hm.. that almost sounds dirty.
I got an epidural in early January to help with the chronic pain I've lived with since herniating three lumbar/sacral discs in late 2001 (just days before 9-11, as it happens). Bellydancing has helped tremendously, but much of the pain is not from the spine itself, but from the surrounding muscles, which locked in spasms after the injury, and have taken years to even begin to release.
Although dancing does a lot to strengthen the core, the movements are very taxing to the QL muscles, which join the lower back to the hip bone. And those muscles are crazy tight on me... crazy, crazy tight. It's so bad that, until fairly recently, I couldn't sit cross-legged for any period of time without serious pain.
After the epidural, the pain went down a bit... but nowhere near the "loosey goosey" feel my cousin experienced when he had one a bunch of years ago.
But it's just like my life to never have an easy way out.
So then I started PT. I'd gotten PT before when my back first went out, but the exercises sucked. They'd hook me up to a machine and seem to forget about me... eh. It was a whole downer experience.
At this place, though, everyone has been wonderful. My therapist gives me a fantastic lower back massage before we start. Sometimes she uses so much pressure that the area is mottled with bruises for days after. But I wouldn't have it any other way.
And somehow I've been motivated to do the core exercises twice a day, so for the first time in over 10 years, I'm getting back the tight abs I had before the surgery in 2000. My dance moves are looking better than ever as those muscles become more limber and strong, and I'm having no trouble keeping off the 20 pounds I lost last year.
Interesting how the things that cause the greatest trouble often yield the greatest rewards.
I don't really have a headache... well, I kind of do, but it's just a little tension thing from not getting done what I wanted to get done today -- which includes doing real work as well as doing a quick blog post.
Coming into work this morning, I was listening to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me..., which is one of my favorite podcast shows on NPR, and they were doing a recap of their "Not My Job" segment ... memorable "interviews" from 2008, where they asked famous people ridiculous questions about the news.
Well, the first interview happened to be with Leonard Nimoy, and he was talking about going to Star Trek conventions, and Peter Sagal was revealing his "dork" side by confessing that he had gone to one as a teen.
One? ONE??? That hardly counts.
In fact, I find that almost insulting. Because I was so completely socially maladjusted as a kid that my first healthy interactions happened nowhere other than at Sci-Fi conventions (I was more into Doctor Who and Hitchhiker's at the time, but I was enough of a Trekkie to have seen and memorized all 78 of the original series -- which was the only series back then -- and would argue about whether or not there were 78 or 79 episodes... i.e. do you count "The Menagerie" as two episodes or one, or do you just count "The Cage," even though it wasn't aired...? and so forth.. you see the passion with which I approach the subject).
Anyway.Then I got to thinking about my ex, Michael -- the cartoonist who used to say things like, "You can't understand how difficult it is to be the funniest person in the room."
He was a mean fuck.
Well, really he was just a really injured person who was in pain most of the time. But he was also smart and sarcastic and made his living drawing cartoons, many of which were, in fact funny... but his cartoons were about pop culture, which deserves to be mocked and can't really get hurt when you make fun of it.
But then he'd turn that same venom on people. Me, for example (and most frequently).
He'd mock me, pretty viciously, in front of his friends and family.. people I didn't know... take things I'd said or done out of context, exaggerate them and basically say, "See what an ass my girlfriend is."
He'd do this, and people would laugh, and I'd pretend to laugh because I wanted to be a good sport about it, at least I would until I started tearing up and would slither away to the toilet to cry, where he'd ultimately find me and berate me for being oversensitive...at which point I'd really start bawling, and then he'd realize the harm he'd done and get upset and start crying himself.
And I stuck around for this for a year, but I had my own reasons for that ... and they are another story altogether.
Anyway.
Michael was one of these people who realized there was a connection between meanness and humor, but couldn't quite grasp that funny didn't have to be mean, and mean wasn't necessarily funny.
Most often, funny was just an excuse to be mean.
And in that meanness, he could tear apart just about anything... and when he found out I was a sci-fi geek... he would go to town. At least he would over Trek -- he had plenty of apprciation for my Who habit because it was one he shared (he too had a 17-foot long scarf -- though his mom did his and I knitted mine myself -- AND he had a TARDIS in the basement of his parents house, which is REALLY weird, even by fan standards.. which are pretty lax).
But when it came to Trek or the cons or any of that, he couldn't wait to slip in some cutting remark demeaning that whole scene.
Which is so cruel and unnecessary because a lot of those people are really, really nice. I mean, incredibly nice... they welcomed anyone... kindly and without judgment, in a way that is so rare in any scene dominated by teenagers.
I mean. It's almost sick! But sick in the best way possible... a disease of kindness.
Now there's something that surely deserves to be mocked, right?
Hmph.
So, as I start getting back into comedy, and think about how so many comics behave... how they tear at the world around them with "How stupid do they think we are?" or "Can you believe this fucking guy??"... I'll never forget the asshole comic who started his Premium Blend with a 5-minute tirade against Paul Newman. Paul Fucking Newman - the poster boy for Human Decency in a Celebrity.
And what was Paul Newman's great crime in this comic's eyes? During an Actor's Studio interview, he told the wannabe audience that if they wanted to act, they had to get their asses on stages and film sets and act, not "hang out in the drug store sipping milkshakes".
And for this fucking comic, it was all about those drugstore milkshakes.
Gee, that would be the first time ever that an octogenarian referenced something from his youth -- that perhaps is no longer valid to a young person today -- but if you could turn the "translate" button on in your brain, you could easily replace "drugstore" with "mall" or even "computer" and get the fucking point. Which was a completely valid point, and a well intentioned one.
But no, it's all about the drugstore.
And the audience went along and laughed. They laughed and laughed at the stupid comic... because they were on TV, because they were supposed to... because the fucking guy is onstage and HE thinks he's hilarious, and people are weak and so they laughed.
And what a month! It's kind of not even worth it to go into everything that's happened since my last posting (eventually I'll put it all on my "official" blog tandavadance.blogspot.com), but I'm feeling pretty good these days.
Had a terrific time at Dunya's Fall Intensive last week, and I'm gearing up to do Ranya's Gala in December which is always a tremendous experience.
Rayhana asked me to dance in her Rock show.... I think I may do Pink Floyd's "Money" ... perhaps I can find a way to comment on our current Dow-down situation......
Hey, I just confirmed a gig for a private party out in New Haven... guess I better get my Zip card going.....
Long overdue... sorry.
I've actually been keeping my non-super-secret blog more up-to-date (http://tandavadance.blogspot.com)... And I've been throwing lots of little status updates into Facebook.
That's about all I can handle these days.
The BQ show went very well... the GP show went very well. Uniformly, things have been going well. But I'm miserable. I overexerted, and then got very upset because my mad graffiti artist went to town on my door again.
This time, she wrote "Hoe stay away from E.N.Y + clubs"... so that confirms it is a case of mistaken identity. But it's still really, really, really upsetting... because this fucking whackjob is getting more and more unstable and she has a serious beef with whomever she thinks I am. And the management of my building refuses to do anything about it (other than paint over the graffiti -- and badly at that, because it is still completely visible!!).
Argh.
And I've been losing sleep and am now sick with an awful cold and every part of my body hurts.
Feh.
- Mood:
scared
Another crazy-busy weekend.. at least Saturday was.... As usual, I biked the 9+ miles to the Boathouse on Meadow Lake of Flushing Meadows Park, taught one sailing student for 3 hours (actually, I think they pulled us in shortly after noon, but I made her do a few more maneuvers she had been struggling with before we went in).
It was my parents' 45th Anniversary, so I had arranged to have them come by during the afternoon during the open sail/racing time. The winds were very strong, coming from the northwest, and I helped some students get underway by pushing them along the dock only to get hit in the head by the boom, and then have the block get caught in my hair (which was tied up and under a hat, but still enough was sticking out to get caught and dragged).
After a few moments of swearing-like-a-sailor panic, I unhitched myself and hurled them off the dock. Unfortunately, that set the tone for that afternoon's racing, as everything that could go wrong for me managed to go wrong.
First, the dockmaster gave me a boat, but then it turned out the boat wasn't rigged up so I had to rig it up -- which takes 5-10 minutes, and the first race was due to start momentarily. So that was that. Then there was another club member, Ernie, who was given a boat that mysteriously lacked a boom. Apparently the guy had rigged the entire hull of the boat before realizing this and was out of a boat. So I invited him along with me.
We finished rigging our boat and sailed off on a practice run while the first race was still going on, figuring we'd get back to the dock in time for the second race (races take about a half-hour to complete). But I saw my parents on the dock, so I went in early and let Ernie take the boat. Happily, my folks had brought some food for me, which I wolfed down just in time for the next race, where I was given another boat -- which turned out not to be rigged up!!!
So I started rigging, but another boat came in and they let me take that boat instead. In all the hurry and fuss, I slamed into the secondary dock with only a minute to go. I managed to make a good start -- but in the wrong direction!! (Normally we start the races from right-to-left, but today we were going left-to-right!) Unfortunately, I didn't figure this out until I hit the second buoy -- and I literally hit it! I slammed right into it and gave up.
I went back to the dock.
The next two races went a little better and I managed not to come in dead last -- but it was very challenging because the wind direction kept shifting, and I was alone in my boat, working tiller, mainsheet and jib sheets by myself. Another disadvantage to being alone in strong winds is that you only have your bodyweight to act as ballast, so you can't hike out during strong winds -- which means you have to spill your wind (and ultimately slow down) if you heel too much.
One guy who did very well had his two, smart, capable pre-teen daughters with him. This is DEFINITELY the way to go: you have four extra, agile hands to work your jib and bounce around your boat as the wind changes. It didn't hurt that he was a pretty good sailor too...... :->
Anyway... my parents decided not to sail with me, but rented a rowboat instead, managing to take many pictures of me racing -- but I was so consumed with my boat that I couldn't see them at all (though I did look a few times).
We left the boathouse around 5:30pm and walked up to the Shea Stadium subway stop, figuring we'd take the 7 to the Q (normally we walk to 71st and take the F). But we went so slowly, stopping to look at the whacky World's Fair Time Capsules (the 1939 one contains Beetleware???), we didn't board a train until 6:30pm.
We arrived at Grand Central after 7pm and the Q was going local... we had planned to go back to my place, where I'd drop my folding bike and head out to Cheryl's Global Soul Cafe, near Grand Army Plaza, but it was so late that, as we passed by 23rd Street, we decided to go to Je'Bon instead (which hosts Bellyqueen's weekly bellydance show).
And I got my folks hooked on their Lychee Saketinis a few weeks ago, so it is now one of their favorite restaurants.
So I folded my bike, stuffed it its bag and headed off to Je'Bon for tasty Anniversary dinner.
To my surprise, there was a tribal bellydance show happening downstairs, but after the day's exertions, we decided to cool our heels at the quieter tables upstairs.
I came home last night to find this written on my door: 
And this below it: 
And this on the wall beside it (for emphasis, I guess): 
Although it looks like she was in more of a hurry this time (or more strung out on booze or drugs or both), it is definitely the same handwriting as the person who graffitied my door in late May:
This time, however, I called the police. Apparently this is a crime and, if identified, I can have this person arrested. Of course, they asked if I had an idea who it could be -- and I have less of one now than I did in May.
Per my journal entry then, I thought it might be one of the nutty girlfriends of a neighbor I went out with last year. But he broke up with her in early June and I think he's out of town right now, anyway.
So now I'm thinking it's just a crazy person who has me confused with someone else.
Over the past month or so, many signs have appeared in the halls and lobby saying that we are now under video surveillance. So I pasted a sign on my door saying:
To the CRAZY PERSON who wrote this:
(1) You have the WRONG APARTMENT
(2) The Police have your handwriting
(3) This is Criminal Mischief
(4) You have been videoed
(5) You will be arrested!
Have a nice day!
And, lo and behold, when I looked at my door late this morning, it was all wiped off!
I guess -- in true psycho fashion -- the Crazy Lady went to admire her work this morning and got scared by the note.
Either that or the Porter saw it while making his rounds this morning and cleaned it off.
But I kind of hope it was her and that she's scared. Let her sweat it out.
I'm going to look at some of the video footage next week during the hours it happened, so we'll see... if she's dumb enough to have done this, she was probably dumb enough to get herself on candid camera.
Cairo, California, multiple artistic retreats -- more intense than relaxing -- and now this crazy show that finally closed on Sunday. Oh, and the PURE event, and I'm refinancing my apartment, which is scary because I'm throwing every spare cent I have at my principal.
We're supposed to close on Friday, but the managing agent of my building is being a real horse's ass. He is demanding a special letter from the lender "on bank letterhead" specifying details of the loan and any absence of liens on my place -- which is mighty fishy to me because his negligence in a legal action last year resulted on a lien being placed on the entire property!! Needless to say that screwed up multiple refinances and purchase.
Anyway. I was so stressed about this last night... my mind was teeming with the various nice and not-so-nice ways I can handle this.
"He told me you were very human," I said.
My attorney friend was touched by this and considered it a great compliment.
"How sad is it," I remarked, "that 'human' is a high compliment for a lawyer?"
Stranger still, I then realized, that most of my friend's colleagues -- at his firm and mine -- probably would not have considered it a compliment at all.
And then there's the Tree Campaign.
I sent out an email for donations to about 200 people on Wednesday (I think... maybe it was Tuesday). Two came in. Well, I guess that's the 1% return we're always warned about.
I need to send out an email to some of my friends in the office (it helps to actually send to people who have money to give), but I just can't seem to motivate myself.
And a Call Tracking ticket just came in... which is kind of like the tech support version of the Bat Signal.
I'd better go take care of it.
I've been having some issues with the littlest one, Julietta. She is very thin and, although she is invariably the most vocal about demanding food, she loses interest in eating a few bites in. It may be that she gets thirsty, goes for the bowl, and forgets she has food elsewhere.
But invariably, her half-eaten food is left out, and I have to protect it from the other larger cats (Simon and Chloe) who are very aggressive about vacuuming up every last available morsel.
Usually, to rescue the remaining portion, I put Julietta's food on the cat tree, and then physically put the silly baby there so it's in her face -- and out-of-sight/out-of-mind of the other ones -- but only for a short time.
When they are done, they always climb the tree and push poor Julietta away from the bowl.
The most aggressive about this is top-cat Chloe. She is also the smartest cat, and has a unique ability to understand what kind of behavior her mommy wants.
So I told her that she is not allowed to push Julietta away from her food. She must just wait, and if a small portion remains when Julietta walks away, she is allowed to have that.
So now courteous Chloe sits and waits...
... and waits...
... and waits...
.... usually only scoring a few morsels. But such is the life of a kitty!!!!
