Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Projects And Setbacks

My life feels like one big project lately. My body is a project, my house is a project, my kids are a project. With all projects come setbacks. That was the story of my weekend (read all the way to the end, I swear it's not excessively boring).

My first project was to hang a bar in our laundry/mud room for clothes fresh out of the dryer. This actually went remarkably smoothly, and I'm happy with how it turned out. It is straight. It is rigid. It is good.
Next up was some work in the kids' bathroom. A new, curved shower rod and a new hand-held shower head. This is designed to greater facilitate bathing the dog. The hand shower makes cleaning the mighty rodent hunter a much simpler task.
This is where I started running into issues. We bought the shower rod and head at TJ Maxx, and the quality wasn't, how-you-say, good. The brackets that hold the rod to the wall did not hold the rod properly, so it sagged. Nothing pisses me off more than a saggy rod. I used some other bolts and hardware that I had in the garage and managed to find a workable solution.

The hand shower (why do I feel so dirty typing that???) had a major problem, as well. The hose was not long enough to reach down into the tub, rendering it useless. This was returned, and I bought a quality shower head at Home Depot.

Later, we went to Target with the intention of getting a new shower curtain for the kids, but ended up decorating two bathrooms! A quick, 20-minute trip to the store turned into 2 hours. But hey, the bathroom looks adorable (yes, I just said that, fuck off).
Penguins and sea creatures!
The octopus soap dispenser is my new favorite thing in my house.
We also bought new towels for the master bathroom. Cuz I'm the master.
We had purchased new bath mats for both bathrooms as well, but they looked out of place and were subsequently returned.

That night, I decided to do an ergo workout to get a benchmark of where I'm at. My power actually wasn't too bad, just over 1800 watts, but I re-injured something in my hip.
At first I could hardly even walk and it got really swollen up. The next day was quite a bit better, and today I hardly even noticed it. I'm not sure what I did, but it's incredibly depressing.

Now, check this bitch out:
Can't tell what it is? Here's a better look:
Yeah, that's a ball of something-or-other in my hip. It moves around, kind of like the third testicle I never had. I'm hoping to make my return to racing at Radius 6 on September 13th, but figure I better get this thing checked out by my doctor.

Like I said, my body is a project. One that's not reaching completion nearly as quickly as I would like it to.

And now I'm about to embark upon a new, exciting project. I'm planning to write a book, which is something I've always wanted to do. I started college as an English major with the intention of becoming a writer, but switched to Computer Science because, let's be honest, I was already pretty good at it and I thought it would be easier. I think that was ultimately the best decision for my life, but the dream of writing never really went away. It's going to be an adventure and I know there will be setbacks, but I couldn't be more excited.

4 comments:

Russian Bear said...

Follow that dream.

A third ball? On your hip? That is an even worse spot than where the other two balls reside.

Great watt output but then again, you should be extremely recovered.

Resting since May and all.

Your hip is like "dude, what the fuck?"

Walk before you run. I did my first Sprint in 5 years a couple weeks ago and I nearly died. Still recovering. Mostly mental trauma at this point. Either way you should be scared and, judging from your past sport experience, you really should have know better.

There is no reason to think your power would go away in 3 months. Or ever really. Once you have it, it's there.

For riders like you, the power is there but no endurance or suppleness or anything but brute power. Reach for the gas and you can go. I totally get that.

But the consequences can be dire.

Your hip is not ready for 1,800 watts.

Think about it. Very few people can do those watts. 900 watts for a strong roa sprinter. Maybe up to 1,200 on the national level

Get that extra ball on your hip checked ASAP. It does not belong on your hip. It looks bad and must be hell finding jeans.

Was it there before the workout?

Tenacious T said...

Yeah, it was there before. It hides out most of the time. Must have a home somewhere that it retreats to. But it shows up on a pretty regular basis, especially if I've been laying on that side.

I have an appt later this week.

Of course I should have known better, but I haven't done anything stupid in a while. I was due.

Anonymous said...

What the H are you going to write a book about? M

Tenacious T said...

M-

If you came to visit me more often, you'd know :-)