running

Do you know what my favorite part about taking up running again is? The delightful way that my thighs start to chaffe from rubbing together. That's lovely.

I now remember why I don't wear cotton shorts to work out in.

On a side note, I saw a guy running in khaki shorts yesterday. Who does that?

when will it wear off?

I keep waiting to just wake up one day and be like "So, I can see. What's the big deal?"

But it hasn't happened yet. I still wake up every morning and am amazed at the way I can see. I can't get over how pretty the world is. And not just the actual pretty parts- I ride past the ghetto on my commute and can't get over how detailed everything is.

My new favorite things are trees. I can seriously stare at them for hours. I got lost in the intricacies of the bark. I feel like I am on drugs where you can just sit and stare at your hand for an hour. Except I feel that way about the whole world.

This rocks!

what are you thinking?

People always ask me what I think about when I am giving massages. Sometimes I talk to my clients, like the math professor that I worked on two days ago that I talked to about calculus and when children start becoming modest about nudity. (Those two subjects were not linked, by the way.) Usually, however, I am silent so that my clients can fully relax and get lost in the massage.

That leaves me with a lot of free time. I try to be present and focus on my client's body and her energy. Now that I've been doing massage for so long (over six years) that all comes sort of naturally and doesn't require as much conscious thought on my part.

I notice things about my client's muscles like, "her tissue feels gluey like she is dehydrated. I bet she is dehydrated, grrr, I wish my clients drank more water. Their muscles release so much easier when they are hydrated and it makes my job so much easier, plus it makes me look like a better therapist."

Or I will notice things like "there are a lot of knots and trigger points in between her scapulas, that's usually a sign of hypertonic muscles. I bet the subscapularis is tight (move over to that muscle.) Yup, sure enough, hmmmm, I wonder if this is going to be too much pressure for her, I better say something just in case." So then I say something and check in with her and then I continue looking to see if the teres minor and major are tight and work the rotator cuff area, all the while noticing which muscles seem to be getting pulled and which are tight and how the client's body responds to the different techniques and then switch up the techniques if they aren't working.

It seems like a lot to be thinking about, but like I said, it is almost second nature to me now. So getting back to the question, what DO I think about?

Food. And this is true for almost every therapist I talk to. We think about food. What we are going to have for lunch or dinner. What we are going to buy at the store. What we are craving. We think about these things several times during the massages. If guys really think about sex as much as women think about food, then there are some dirty, dirty men out there!

The reason for this post is that yesterday I was thinking about something else. I was noticing my client's underwear. I would say that the vast majority of my clients don't wear underwear. There is nothing wrong with wearing underwear during a massage (I prefer to do it myself) but since a lot of my clients are coming from the steam room or hot tub where they were naked or had a bathing suit on and thus end up with no underwear. On a side note, panties are fine during a massage, but take the dang bra off! It is so hard to give a massage to someone who is wearing a bra because the straps cover the areas that tend to need the most work. And ya know what, nobody cares about your boobs. We don't look at your boobs (which are covered by a sheet anyways.) The only thing that massage therapists notice about your boobs is if there are fake or not. The way you can tell is if the boobs stay pointing directly up to the sky when a client is on her back, then they are fake because normally they fall out to the sides a bit.

Anyways, back to underwear. So if you were going to get a massage, what kind of underwear would you wear? Some people wear thongs, which makes sense because that way you are covering up less skin. I tend to go with more comfy pairs that I don't mind getting oil on (it washes out of cotton a lot better than satin.) But my client yesterday was wearing a pair of really cute red lace underwear. Adorable. Expensive. A little out of the normal for our totally laid back spa. Does she wear super cute underwear like that every day? Did she wear them knowing that other people (like the women in the locker room) would be seeing them? Was it her last clean pair?

That's what I was thinking about during my massage yesterday. That, and if my sister was going to be making stuffed peppers for dinner.

another happy entry

It's back... the chirpy optimism. The feeling that everything is right in the world. I've tried to tone it down on my annoyingly happy posts but I just can't help it. Life is so good.

Why do I feel the need to write about it? Because it continues to surprise me!

I have dealt with depression my entire life. Seriously, my entire life. I remember curling up in a ball and crying my eyes out when I was eight years old just because I was so sad. In high school with the crazy hormones, it got even worse. Then I made the mistake of going to Minnesota for college. Minnesota winters do not agree with me. It is such a miracle that I graduated on time seeing as how many times I ended up freaking out winter term and dropping a class. I remember one time going up to one of my teachers and just being honest, telling her that the paper I was supposed to write for class was not going to get done in time because right now it was taking all of my energy to keep the suicidal thoughts out of my head.

I've never even come close to committing suicide. I don't want to commit suicide. But there have been times when I've been depressed and the thoughts just kept hammering away at me. Luckily I've always had self control and I could rationalize with myself and find ways to cope and get through it. There was a point after college where not only was I depressed and not only were the suicidal thoughts taking over my mind, but I also felt like I was losing control.

I realized that all it would take was one minute of me not being in control and I might do something that I would regret forever. That was when I decided to go on medication.

I didn't like going on anti-depressants. In fact, I hated it. They made me feel weak. I was ashamed of them. Plus they raised my blood pressure and gave me horrible headaches. But they helped. They didn't make me happy. I was a little disappointed about that. I wanted "happy pills." With the ones that I was on, I felt the same feelings as before, but I felt in control.

I was only on them for a year and then I was able to wean myself off of them. I don't know if the change was physical or just psychological but I feel like I am a new person. I wish I had taken the medication back in high school. I think about all the relationships I ruined because of my crazy mood swings. I think about what college would have been like if I had been in control back then.

But no sense crying over spilled milk. I prefer to think about now. I prefer to think about the fact that I haven't had to deal with depression in God knows how long. I can't even remember the last time I felt depressed. This whole winter I kept waiting for it to hit. Waiting for the darkness to settle on my soul like a straight jacket. And it never happened.

I just feel so light and free... and happy. I think one of the things that I am really enjoying about being single right now is knowing that my happiness doesn't depend on another person. I control it.

I know some people who never deal with depression and have no idea what I am talking about. I know other people who know what I am talking about a little too well. Even when I was going through the worst of it, there were very few people that I talked to about it. It was my secret. My dark secret that was ruining my life.

Now that I'm not dealing with depression, I feel like I've been given a second chance at life. I feel like the world is mine for the taking.

That's why my posts can be annoyingly, blissfully happy at times. I just can't help it. I want to shout it from the roof tops: I'M HAPPY!

can't remember

My nephew Beck had something very exciting happen to him on our trip. He got his first loose tooth. He showed me, wiggling it back and forth.

He was very excited about it. And the prospect of the tooth fairy coming.

I know that I lost all of my baby teeth when I was a kid. And it wasn't scary because I knew that my adult teeth were coming in. I know that happened, but I can't really remember it.

It is so hard to imagine losing a tooth. So creepy. If one of my teeth got loose right now I would panic big time.

That is one of the things that scares me the most about getting old. I don't want to lose my teeth. Hopefully science will have figured out a way for me to keep my teeth until I am 102 years old (and yes, that is about how long the women in my family live to!)

Anyways, it is just interesting to think about things that give other people excitement that cause nothing but panic for me.

seventh grade

Like I said, I just got back from a week with my family, which included my niece Irene. I find it difficult to remember the kids' ages and grades. So I'm a bad aunt. Sue me. I remember their approximate ages and more importantly, I remember their names.

So I was asking Irene what grade she was going into. She told me seventh. I don't think she was expecting my response. I said, "Uggh! Seventh? Good luck with that. Seventh grade is the worst grade ever."

I felt bad about saying that so later I went back to clarify, even though she had not been upset when I said that. I told her that while I was in seventh grade I didn't think it was that bad, it is just that everything keeps getting better and better as you get older. In seventh grade everyone's hormones start to go crazy and they get all moody and backstab each other. She agreed and said she could already see it happening with her friends.

I am so thankful I am not going into seventh grade. So. Very. Thankful.

parenting tip of the week

I just got back from a week long vacation with my family in San Antonio. It was heaven. Good food. Good times. Surprisingly well behaved kids.

For those of you who don't already know, I have a very large family. I'm the youngest of six kids. Two of my sisters and one of my brothers are married with children. All together there were twenty-one of us living together this week.

It is interesting to see the different parenting techniques that my siblings use. I think they are all good parents but they are all different too.

My brother Mike and his wife Kelly have been taking a parenting class through their church. It's hard to say if the change in their daughter, Ella, is because of the parenting class or just because their daughter is 8 months older than the last time I saw her, or if it is because their daughter has had surgery to fix her very painful throat since the last time I saw her but the difference is night and day. I never saw the girl cry once. She is a happy little girl.

So I asked them what they learned at their class. The most interesting trick they learned was "couch time." Kids want their parents to be together. The kids are happier when you show them that your marriage is one of your priorities. The trick is simply to sit down on the couch, with the kids, and talk. Take time for one another.

I asked if sitting on the couch watching TV counted as couch time. Nope. Nor does making dinner together. Not even taking a walk together. The key is to not be doing anything else, just focusing on each other.

So what are the benefits of couch time? The kids are more secure in your relationship and that makes them happier, but the real benefit that the parents have found is that the kids no longer feel the need to come into the parents' bedroom at night. Often times the bedroom at night was the only place that the kids would see the parents together not doing anything else. Now that they had couch time the kids didn't need to come into the bedroom. My brother said that it worked right away. And then after a couple of days of not having couch time, their daughter started trying to come into their room again!

I like being the youngest- I get to see and learn from the mistakes and discoveries that my older siblings make.