Saturday 9 April 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The advance of spring has been stalled for the last couple of weeks. Temperatures rise and fall around freezing. We wake to a frosting of snow, which melts by mid-morning, and refreezes after night fall. The days are cold and damp; the nights cold and slippery. But finally the gears seem to have engaged, the snow has melted from even the most shadowed areas, and temperatures reach into the 40’s and 50’s. B’de Maka Ska — our local lake — is melting around the edges. If we have a good windy day the ice will break up and form small ramparts along the shore, to be admired by walkers wearing shorts. Such is spring here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
My life continues on its even course. I make slow progress in my physical therapy, which now includes more general strength exercises. I’ve refined my tracking system so that it changes colors as I make progress, rather than just turning green when I’ve done everything. That is helpful, both in encouraging progress, and I can also see from a glance whether I have a long way to go or am mostly there. It is also nice to see, or rather experience, more direct evidence of progress. Where I could only do a plank for about 10 seconds, about eight weeks out from surgery, I can now do up to a minute — and I am doing that six times a day. I show similar progress on other exercises, though not so much yet others. Still, everything is headed in the right direction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am now able to run continuously for 2 to 3 miles. I had begun running cautiously, and found I would get very winded after about half a mile. Not wanting to overdo things — since the main impediment to my running practice in the past has been pushing too far and hurting myself — I contented myself with short runs interspersed with long walks. Then, when the weather got stuck in freeze-thaw mode a couple of weeks ago, I stopped running (and even, for the most part, walking); I would tell myself, ‘oh, it’s nasty out now, and it will be nice again in 4 or 5 days.’ That is finally coming true, after a couple of weeks. So, yesterday I ran for two miles, and feeling no warnings from my muscles this morning, I ran three today. I will keep ratcheting up, though probably not at a mile a day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A nice thing happened during today’s run: I had an idea for a story. What is nice is not the idea itself \u2013 I suspect it is not, as they say, ‘a keeper’ \u2013 but simply the fact of having the idea pop into my head into the middle of my run. I played around with it as I ran, and expanded it a bit. As I approached the car after my run, I remembered that this had been a regular occurrence during the summer and fall, and that I had started keeping a notebook in the car to jot down post-run ideas. By the time I reached the car something had distracted me, but the memory resurfaced on the drive home, and so I pulled over and pulled out the notebook (tucked in the car door pocket). The last entry was in October of 2021, which shocked me a bit, and made me recall my recent observation that I’d allowed my exercise regime to lapse around that time, presumably (so I speculate) because the diagnosis of my prostate cancer had been confirmed. So this is another abrupt ‘dropping’ of a regular practice in the same time frame. It prompts me to reflect on what else might have dropped, and to also marvel at the fact that I’m pretty sure I’m unaware that the diagnosis had altered my patterns so much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, the re-emergence of this, unprompted, is quite heartening. And it keeps company with my re-engagement in physical therapy\/strength training. I have a sense that I am recovering things that I wasn’t aware I’d lost (or dropped). Somehow this seems very in keeping with the season: spring, though it is happening slowly, is indeed a time of (re) emergence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Views: 4<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saturday 9 April 2022 The advance of spring has been stalled for the last couple of weeks. Temperatures rise and fall around freezing. We wake to a frosting of snow, which melts by mid-morning, and refreezes after night fall. The days are cold and damp; the nights cold and slippery. But finally the gears seem … Continue reading Moving Slowly into Spring: Continued Recovery<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federate","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-note","category-overview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1043,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions\/1043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomeri.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}