Tat and Tattoos

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to unearth stuff, you open the closet door and there comes a tide in the affairs of stuff that requires that you either move out or organize it.

What happened was a concatenation of events. Started with tendonitis in both thumbs, pain of Biblical proportions, but no way to rest said thumbs, since hundreds of times a day, nursing care requires pressure on them -- hooking up the lift, braking and unbraking the chair, moving, exercising, dressing, cleaning, etc. the patient. And that's just the patient care. There's also laundry and cooking, and even putting on a winter coat which has become quite acrobatic. No matter how you adapt your movements, some things can't change.

Sooooooo I was whining about this to HP's physio on his home visit the other day, after consulting with my doctor, who had given various bits of advice including continue with weight work, and physio asked me about my weight work. He observed that none of my weight training actually involves strengthening the wrists. Apparently this is vital to protect the thumb tendons, to spread the load as it were. Like getting your legs in trim to protect your knee joints.

Sooooooo he had me show him my weights to demo some wrist actions for me. And nearly fainted dead away when he found I routinely use 8 pounds per hand. I think he'd pegged me as a two pound tops person. Anyway, he said that is too heavy for wrist exercises, though fine for arms and shoulders.

So I sighed and after he showed me on a one pound weight what to do, that weight being far too small in circumference for my big mitts, and usually used as a doorstop around here, I realized I would have to excavate the closet where I thought the smaller weights, like two and three pounds, were.

Which was true, but they were under a ton of supplies and walkers and transport wheelchairs and clothes HP can't use now and various miscellaneous bags of stuff. All had to come out on the floor, and this was not fun for the thumbs but it was in a good cause.

And I ended up with two giant bags of men's small clothes to Freecycle, including some great stuff, which already have takers.



And a molecular model kit, which was immediately requested by a Chinese mom for her bright child! And best of all some nice stuff of mine that I don't know how it got in there.



Such as books of temp tattoos, which I love, and a gold neck chain, and a pair of silver cufflinks from some exotic place, and a lovely Cuban cigar box, and a couple of pix of me from long ago, all dark haired and not wrinkly, and a bunch of Canadian dollar and two dollar bills. And a complete watercolor set in a metal box. And a manicure set HP gave me fifty years ago (!), made in Australia, lovely fine leather. I have the scissors elsewhere, use them all the time, but had lost track of the rest of the set, which is quite posh. No, nothing in this picture is going to be Freecycled. It's mine, all mine.

Oh, and under all this I found the smaller hand weights and have faithfully started doing the exercises in the fervent hope that working with HP will evoke fewer screams of pain and bad temper. From me, that is. But I'm all cheered up by finding the tattoos.