Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"That's not someone presenting valid criticisms. That's someone having a conversation with themself about how to avoid cognative dissonance." -- holzman, discussing a familiar pattern of behaviour that extends well beyond the context in which he was describing it.

This can't be good.

I've had a bad week, as I mentioned in an earlier entry, and that's included a fair bit of physical pain. I've been wearing flat shoes, instead of my usual heels, when I've gone out this week, because I'm favouring my right knee. Well it seem that the way I've been limping has taken its toll on my left heel. Yesterday I went out to pick up photos from the lab, and wound up doing a bit of walking (seven blocks total, not much), and was moving very slowly by the end of that. This morning I woke up around 2:00 or 2:30 (I fell asleep around 22:00), and have spent a couple hours since then sitting at the computer, feeling some discomfort in my knee ...

A few minutes ago I went downstairs to get a) a snack and b) migraine meds. I nearly gave up halfway down the stairs. And trying to move to-and-fro in the kitchen was excruciating. And this evening I have a performance in St. Mary's. We're only a quartet (just under half of The Homespun Ceilidh Band) so it's not like other instruments can just cover for my absence. So I'm going to the gig, but unless the nap I'm about to try to take results in major improvement in my knee, this is going to be one of those gigs where I have to concentrate extra hard on my timing to compensate for the painkillers. :-(

With the fibromyalgia, I'm accustomed to pain. But when it hurts bad enough to bring tears, that's a bad sign.

(Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, but I'm still going to the gig. The old "the show must go on" meme is lodged pretty deep in my brain. I'm going. I just don't know what I'm going to be able to do tomorrow.)

An idea that just came to me while writing email ... since I have to go up and down stairs so much in my house, there's a limit to how much strain I can take off my knee by using crutches at home. But if I flatten a bunch of cardboard boxes and tape them together and turn the back stairs into a slide, the one direction gets easier at least. (And I'd come back up on the front stairs.)

Okay, I'm feeling a little better. Didn't get much sleep, but I did sleep since my last entry. Migraine drugs did help. Knee still hurts -- still worried about performing with my knee feeling this way, and a little afriad of how it'll feel after a couple of hours in a car (I'm only driving the first half-hour, then carpooling the rest of the way, but even in the passenger seat, my knees tend to not like cars all that much), but at least the rest of me doesn't feel so wrung out. Maybe someday I'll even manage to get enough sleep.

Had an odd dream just before I woke up, involving someone who looked a Hell of a lot like galestorm; a bit taller, but the same body and almost her face (mix in just a wee bit of Lucy Lawless) suddenly showing up and announcing her new role in my household (in the dream I didn't live alone, but it wasn't clear who else was in the household already). I woke up when (in the dream) I got out of bed to look something up on the computer.

My house isn't the kindest place for bare feet. Or feet in slippers, which is where my feet are most of the time. Some of the floors are more than happy to donate splinters. Getting out of the shower, I got poked in the sole, and as I hopped and swore, I wondered, "Why are there so many nerve endings in the arch of the foot when that just seems like begging for pain?"

Instantly I remembered my worst fall from a tree: it was the weeping willow in my family's back yard after a rain storm, (I think I was going to check on the treehouse or something) and somebody pointed out that the branches would be slippery, so I'd better put on shoes. Mistake. If I'd been able to feel my footing, I wouldn't have fallen. Rubber soles might provide more friction, but they diminish feedback. (They're also the wrong shape, but anyhow...)

So the parts of us that get slammed againt the ground with force and are vulnerable to picking up pointy things hard are so sensitive because we used to climb trees.

Dammit, now I want to go find a tree, but a) that's probably not a good thing to do to my knee right now, and b) I really need to get out the door to get to a music store and then this gig in Southern Maryland.

(My second-worst fall from a tree was when I was trying to get away from other kids who were chasing me at school. I fell from much higher up, in an evergreen, but landed on ground-ivy three feet deep. I didn't quite bottom out those natural springs.)