Lots of people are applauding this story that’s been making the rounds this week.
I liked Yoni Freedhoff’s comment on Twitter about this study, and the resulting media attention, that anyone who thinks this is good news has probably never tried to sustain a commitment to an hour a day of exercise.
Also, in the news is this story about the weight reducing benefits of bike riding. Now I love riding my bike as much as the next person but I find hours and hours on the bike don’t make much difference to my weight. I reread the story more carefully and it turns out the weight loss benefits of cycling amount to 1.6 pounds. I’m not sure that anyone who is concerned about losing weight cares much about 1.6 pounds.
So there I am browsing online sales on the internet looking for my favorite brand of Spanx tights. They’re wonderful black tights. They fit. They feel good. And they last.
Whatever awful things you have to say about Spanx shapewear, I likely agree. I bought some once to fit back into my work clothes for a conference right after Christmas after a heavy over eating holiday season and I thought they were dreadful. I never wore them again. Yes, I got into my suits for the purpose of interviewing people for jobs but I could barely breathe. Ugh. But I like their tights.
But while browsing for tights, I came across Man Spanx. New to me.
There are have been lots of videos and articles about men trying on their girlfriends’ Spanx underwear.
But now men can have their own because there are Man Spanx, promising you a trim, lean, athletic physique without working out. As they say, “See an improvement in your physique without even hitting the gym with SPANX men’s shapewear.”
There are trimming undershirts and high waisted underwear that tame bellies. Sigh.
Image description: low angle street shot of Tracy and Sam with a building and stop sign behind them on an overcast day. Tracy is standing, dressed in running gear, wearing sunglasses. Sam is on her bike, standing, left foot on the ground, right foot on her bike pedal, wearing black workout shorts, a black tank that says “FEMINIST” and sunglasses.
During the media around the book, someone, somewhere described Sam and my Fittest by 50 Challenge as a “pact.” Maybe it was that time we were on TV. We’d never described it quite like that ourselves, but it was a pact. Our challenge was to be the fittest we’d ever been in our lives by the time we turned 50. We made the pact when we were 48.
Now, there were lots of factors that kept us going through the challenge — not the least of it was the public accountability of the blog. But looking back, I think one of the most important factors was that we made a pact with each other. The dictionary definition of a “pact” is a formal agreement. It involves a kind of mutual commitment to do something.
Having that commitment in place made it harder to back out. It didn’t exactly have the moral weight of a promise. But it still had some binding force or at least a sense of accountability. In other words, the pact became a motivating factor in our fittest by 50 challenge. It also provided a framework for mutual support and encouragement. And a sort of shorthand for what we were undertaking to do — i.e. “planning to be the fittest we’ve ever been in our lives by the time we turn 50.”
We weren’t doing it for each other, but we were doing it together.
I realize that I quite like pacts. I’ve got a meditation pact going with a friend right now. We’re both committed to getting back on track with meditation. I started out on my own, deciding that I would do 90 meditations in 90 days. I’m on day 15 now. I mentioned it to my friend last week and he liked the idea. So we made a pact. Now we check-in daily–usually by text–to say we’ve done our meditation. And we agreed to have an actual conversation at least once a week about what our experience of meditation was that week–what shifts we might have noticed; what challenges we might have faced; anything we want to share about the previous week of meditation.
The pact has helped me stay on track, and has also given me a nice way to connect with someone with a shared commitment.
That idea of connecting with at least one other person who is trying to do exactly the same thing, even if not in exactly the same way, has power. Samantha and I each did very different things for our fittest by 50 challenge — she dedicated herself to training for the Friends for Life Bike Rally. I dedicated myself to training for an Olympic distance triathlon. Similarly, my meditation friend and I haven’t given any ground rules for what style or length of meditation we need to do each day. We might do quite different things and experience it completely differently. But having the pact means that we are more likely to do it, to report to each other about it, and to feel a sense of camaraderie about it.
So pacts aren’t just about being accountable. They motivate more by fostering a sense of connection and common purpose. I love a good pact!
Saw the surgeon and his team on Monday. I’ve been crying on and off since.
The easy bits are that I got another shot of synvisc under my kneecap. What is it and what’s it for? “SYNVISC is a viscosupplement injection that supplements the fluid in your knee to help lubricate and cushion the joint. SYNVISC is for people with knee osteoarthritis who have not received enough pain relief from diet, exercise and over-the-counter pain medication.”
I’m also still wearing the knee brace and it’s helping on days when I’m on my feet a lot. I spent the weekend in New York and even though I took the subway more than usual and hopped in a few taxis for good measure, I still got 13,000 steps in on Sunday including a walk through Central Park. Thanks knee brace. I did some shopping for more leggings for under the brace and for short skirts and dresses to wear over the leggings. The brace presents some fashion challenges and I’m warmer than usual with black leggings on no matter what.
Image description: A photo of Sam just outside Central Park. I’m wearing black leggings, sandals, a sleeveless black jumper and a purse over my shoulder. Also, a knee brace. I’m smiling and the sun is shining.
I’m still going to physio and doing lots of knee-supporting exercises.
I still meet the conditions for knee replacement surgery (in both knees actually though only the left hurts) but neither of the surgeons I saw recommend it. I’m too young and I’m too active. The surgeons made me laugh, which is something, given the general message they had to deliver.
They said they like to make people happy. The person they make the most happy through knee replacement is somebody who arrives in their office, sad and older. Someone who just wants to walk to the grocery store without pain, the kind of person who says they want to lead a normal life, get a decent night’s sleep, and not suffer all the time. Knee replacement apparently makes that person very happy but they said for someone like me it wouldn’t make me happy.
Why not? Because I want to regain function and their line on knee replacement is that you shouldn’t do it to regain function, you should do it to lose pain. Also, knee replacements don’t last very long maybe 20 years and I’m young. I want to do things like ride my bike and some patients after knee replacement have difficulty bike riding because they don’t have the full range of motion back necessary for riding a bike.
So, no.
Instead they discussed a different surgery called high tibial osteotomy. That surgery involves breaking bones and resetting them so I have a bigger gap in my knee cap on the side that’s in a lot of pain. It’s a good sign that the brace helps because this does surgically what the brace does mechanically. But it’s not a permanent fix. There’s a chance the other side of my knee will become painful as arthritis advances. So it’s good for 2-10 years maybe. Also, it’s big deal surgery. Like knee replacement it’s months and months of recovery. I’d trade off 10 years of active living without pain for six months painful time consuming recovery but I’m not sure about 2 years. There are no magic globes I can peer in to see the future.
I’m trying to decide. See them again in three months.
But the other depressing piece of news from the surgeons was the strong recommendation of weight loss, both as a way of avoiding surgery and as essential to recovering from it. Either way I should lose a lot of weight. It will definitely, they say, help with pain relief. The pain is all about weight bearing. That’s why downstairs is harder than up. It’s all about force on the kneecap. And as far as motivation goes this is pretty horrible pain. Like pain that makes hard to think about other things.
Now as I’ve said before I wish that it were the case that medical reasons for weight loss changed the facts. But that’s not so. Your body doesn’t care how good, how “pure” your motivation is. It’s still tough. It’s tough losing weight and tough keeping it off.
I don’t have any choice but to try. The worse case scenario is that I lose it, gain it back, and more and need knee replacement surgery. But that’s the same worst case scenario I face now. I’ve lost significant amounts of weight in my life, 70 lbs in grad school, 60 when I turned 40. The trick, the hard part, is keeping it off. This time, if I actually lose weight, I’ll be unicorn training, learning the habits of people who actually keep weight off.
Don’t worry. This won’t become a weight loss blog. Likely I’ll save any angst, any updates, to my monthly check in posts. I’ll also add content warnings.
I thought about leaving blogging but making this pain manageable and movement possible is a big part of my life right now. And I’m very much still a fit, feminist just one who is coping with injury and aging and hoping to keep in moving.
It can be tricky moving around in a small boat in ways that don’t hurt my knee but I’m learning how to do it. I haven’t raced a small sailboat ever. All of my sailboat racing experience is on relatively big boats so this is new to me. With all the knee misery, see above, it’s good to have something new to focus on. It’s fun and exciting and lots to learn.
This week I’ve been in Tucson, Arizona on a work trip. Two colleagues and I are developing a paper on discriminatory speech and weight concern trolling– e.g. when health care folks urge weight loss, saying “I only care about your health”. And so on. This is a prime entry point for fat shaming, and we’ve blogged a lot about it.
But that’s not what I’m here to tell you about today. I’m here to spread the word on the joys of yin. Yin yoga, to be exact. Or maybe yin in general. I’m not sure, but hoping it becomes clear by the end of this post.
Starting at the beginning (of the week): I flew into Tucson from Boston on Monday night late, and woke up early Tuesday, jet lagged and not well slept. I had arranged for delivery of a rental road bike by 7:30am, so I could ride before it got beastly hot. However, the delivery folks had a problem, and I was wide awake and without bike.
Looking around online, I found a cute downtown Tucson storefront studio called Tucson Yoga. They had a gentle Yin yoga class for 9am. Perfect! Even though I don’t really know what yin yoga is, it sounded relaxing and soothing for my jet-lagged self.
What is yin yoga? Here’s what one yoga website has to say about it:
Yin yoga is based on the Taoist concept of yin and yang, opposite and complementary principles in nature. Yin is the stable, unmoving, hidden aspect of things; yang is the changing, moving, revealing aspect. In the body, the relatively stiff connective tissues(tendons, ligaments, fascia) are yin, while the more mobile and pliable muscles and blood are yang.
A Yin yoga class usually consists of a series of long-held, passive floor poses that mainly work the lower part of the body – the hips, pelvis, inner thighs, lower spine. These areas are especially rich in connective tissues. The poses are held for up to five minutes, sometimes longer.
You might think, hmmm– I wonder if this is for me. Well, here’s your answer:
Yin yoga is for you if you are tired and craving energy or you’re over-stimulated and have too much energy; if your mind is overactive or your energy levels erratic.
Right. This means yin yoga is for everyone. I was certainly in a slow-down mood that morning. So I headed over to this lovely little studio, and walked in.
The storefront of Tucson Yoga, complete with serene sun and mountain mural.
The place consisted of one long room, with a registration desk and IKEA cubbies for storing stuff at one end. We all got our mats, blocks, bolsters and blankets, and set up. I didn’t even realize it until my second yin yoga class this week, but this studio doesn’t have air conditioning! They left the front and back doors open, and there was a very nice summer breeze. That, along with ceiling fans, made the temperature perfect, even in July in Arizona. Amazing.
Back to class: we started with a guided centering meditation, and then moved to various seated or lying-down poses. We did some twists, some forward folds, some chest opening poses, and other non-demanding moves. The difference was that we stayed in those positions for several minutes at a time. This deepened the feelings of stretching, and for me, allowed me to sink into the pose and really relax. This pose below is my new favorite relaxing yoga position:
A person lying down on a mat with a block under their chest, and another under their head.
I could lie like that all day. But the class ended at 10:15, so I left, but not before buying a 5-class card. Which cost $28. That’s less than $6 a class! Did I step back into 1996 or something? I had discovered not just yin, but heavily discounted yin. Woo hoo!
My main activity plans for this week were to cycle on the bike loop around Tucson, a more than 120-mile network of protected paths and roads with bike lanes. I did this in March with friends and really enjoyed it. However, there were more logistical snags with getting the bike, so I didn’t actually get around to balancing my yin with some yang-like cycling until Thursday. And man, was it not fun! I was miserable in the heat and humidity (the monsoons are here, so it’s in the upper 90s with high humidity and intermittent heavy rainstorms.). I managed a bit more than an hour and called it quits.
Friday marked my full return to yin. The day started with a visit to a fancy Tucson resort where other friends were staying, so we could all float together down the lazy river pool.
A lazy river pool at a desert hotel, with trees and desert mountains in the background.
Okay, maybe that’s technically not a yin activity, but it certainly felt yin-ish. And deliciously relaxing.
After lunch my friend Alice and I went to a restorative yin yoga class at Tucson Yoga. It was very hot outside, but again breezy and refreshing in the studio. This class was more intense, as we held poses for up to 5 minutes. That doesn’t sound like long, but is when you are holding this pose:
A person seated with soles of the feet together, knees out, leaning forward, head on a yoga block, arms forward resting on the mat.
We were encouraged to play with finding our edge– seeing what level of stress or discomfort we were experiencing, and decide before adjusting to create less or more stress. I enjoyed having the time to experience changes in physical stress or tension in various parts of my body. I could then back off and create a sense of relaxation. Or, I could stay with a pose and the feeling would morph from tension to release and then relaxation. Cool, huh? I thought so.
I gave up on cycling in Tucson this week. It was too darn hot, I couldn’t seem to get up early enough to manage it, and I was finding myself desiring more yin. So I’ve done some gentle swimming, easy walking, and am going to a yin restorative class Sunday afternoon following my morning hike in Sabino Canyon with Kay. Even the hiking has felt more yinny, as Kay doesn’t mind going at my pace.
Monday I fly back to Boston to my yangy life of work, responsibilities, and cycling (which I adore). But it’s been nice to slow down the pace and focus inward for a bit. And I am going to incorporate more yin into my yoga and life schedule. Maybe I can even take some yin bike rides.
What about you, dear readers? What do you do when you want to slow down the pace of activity, life, self? I’d love to hear some tips.
Last week, Catherine explored different swimsuit options beyond the one-piece/two-piece dilemma and our bloggers talked about their swimwear preferences. But what if, on top of wanting something you feel great in for getting in the water, you also want something that isn’t going to poison the environment even further? As a swimmer, I’m painfully aware that my sport of choice isn’t exactly light on the planet. All my equipment is, essentially, made from plastic. It also doesn’t take a genius to figure out that keeping the pools I train in filled with water, clean, and warm is going to have some environmental impact. And last but not least, I have to drive to the pool (where I train is too far to bike and unreachable by public transport from where I am).
So I started looking around for some options that would reduce the environmental footprint of my aquatic exploits at least a little bit. It’s not easy, but it is getting easier.
Last year, I purchased a bikini made from Econyl, a recycled nylon fiber. It’s produced by a small German startup, INASKA Swimwear, that aims to produce bikinis for women who do water sports (rather than for lounging round the beach or pool), so that was huge in my book. They also sell tops and bottoms separately, which is fantastic (one of my main gripes with bikini shopping is that not more companies do this. I always struggle to find bikinis that will fit both my boobs and my bum). The bikinis are made in Europe.
Bettina in the far-off distance, sporting her ‘ethical’ bikini on a beach in Galicia, Spain. (There are no other pictures of me in swimwear and I was too busy this week to take any).
The bikini itself… fine but not a 100% hit just yet. Especially the bottoms were cut in a way that still makes them feel like they’re about to slip off when you’re swimming fast. But the nice thing about a small startup is that they’re responsive: at the end of last year, they did a customer survey and it seems like I wasn’t the only one who complained – there’s a new model out this year that promises better hold (I haven’t tried it yet, though I’m tempted – but in line with trying to reduce my environmental footprint, I decided not to buy a new bikini this year). I would also add that their bikinis don’t strike me as particularly plus-size friendly, even the new model. Their advertising is certainly geared towards the thin end of the spectrum. And the bikinis aren’t fully recycled fibre (78% I think). I actually don’t know if 100% recycled is technically an option at this point, or whether something is going on with the fibres that would prevent that from happening.
Bettina’s teal-coloured sports bikini.
For training suits, the picture doesn’t look an awful lot better, but again here, this is starting to change a bit. Adidas has launched a collaboration with Parley for the Oceans, a campaign seeking to clean the sea of plastic waste. Among other things, they make Parley swimsuits. I own one, though again if you read the small print, it becomes obvious that it’s only partially made from recycled material (and they don’t say how much, at least not that I could find). It gives the whole thing rather a “greenwashing” taste. But other big companies of swimming gear such as Speedo or Arena don’t seem to have caught onto this issue at all yet, so at least Adidas’s move is something? Also in the big-name range, PrAna and Patagonia have some interesting options made at least in part from recycled materials. PrAna in particular offers a wide range in terms of coverage.
Still, if you want ethical swimwear, in many cases you’re going to have to buy from small businesses. Which has the added benefit of being able to support young, often female-owned, companies. Frequently, they spring up from their owners’ passion for water sports and factor in the needs of women who like to be active.
But it is more complicated than being able to just walk into any old sports shop, try something on, and choose between different options. Some of these small companies produce on demand, so you have to measure yourself first to work out your size, order, wait (after all they still have to make it), and hope for the best. They’re also not cheap. And in many cases, their sizing options are more limited. But it’s an exciting scene, and if you’re willing to put in a bit of extra effort, you may well end up with something lovely.
In addition to the aforementioned INASKA Swimwear, I’ve done a bit of research for options on both sides of the Atlantic. Once you start looking, there are TONNES of ethical swimwear companies out there. I tried focussing on those geared towards more active behaviour in the water. One thing that struck me was that this seems to be a bit of a Euro-centric endeavour. I found more European than North American-based brands (and a lot of Australian ones) that matched my ethical-and-activity-friendly search criterion. There were loads of US and Canada-based ethical brands that make bikinis and one-piece suits in the “cute but not for sporty swimming or movement” range. Without further ado, here are some options, in no particular order:
Finisterre (UK-based) – swim and surf gear made partially from Econyl, and they donate 10% of the price to Surfers Against Sewage). Cool stuff, but comes at a price.
Davy J (UK-based) – also made from recycled fishing nets (also Econyl, I think). I’m not totally sure their stuff will really stay on (the tops seem a bit low cut), but they claim it will.
Josea Surfwear (Germany-based) – bikinis and one-piece suits designed for active women and produced in Hamburg, Germany. I’ve heard great things about their stuff, but their collection is a bit… changeable. I’d had my eyes on a pair of boyshort bottoms that have now suddenly disappeared from the shop. Also, no detailed information about the materials they use, only that they’re “sustainable”. I’d want to know more.
Greenswimmers (Germany-based) – I had really high hopes for these guys after reading in a swimming magazine that they were going to start producing swimsuits for women this March. The men’s trunks had received rave reviews, and the preview of the women’s suit was also great. But alas, no swimsuits in sight, and it’s now July. I wrote to them at some point and they said they were still planning on launching them but had some internal issues. The website hasn’t changed since early this year (they still promise the swimsuits for March), so I’m starting to wonder if the whole enterprise hasn’t gone South. Sad times 🙁
Beefcake Swimwear (US-based) – already mentioned in Catherine’s post for the cool options they provide, this company doesn’t say anything about using environmentally friendly or recycled materials, but they are female-owned and make their suits in the US, so at least that’s fewer production miles and fair wages. It’s a great start.
Loka (Canada/Australia-based) – also using Econyl, Loka makes different options, at least some of which look like they might withstand sporty behaviour (like this one).
Rubymoon (UK-based) – multi-sports wear that transitions from the water to the yoga mat or the gym. They re-invest all their profits into women-owned micro businesses.
Mymarini (Germany-based) – many of their models are in the less practical range, but there are some options that would be quite good for water-based activities.
Morning 6 km run on the trail beside my mom’s before my aunt’s funeral. I need more sunscreen.
As many of the readers of this blog know, Sam, Catherine and I are part of a facebook group called “218 in 2018,” which is a simple way for people to support each other in working out 218 times this year. Sam and I did this last year and hit our 217 number, with a little hyper-activity at the end. We’ve both written a lot about why having a number goal motivates us, what counts as a “workout,” and the joy of accountability.
The one place we disagree, though, is on what total number goal is actually “the right one.” Sam is a big advocate of not setting a days-worked-out goal too high, and making sure you build in rest days. She has a lot of science to back her up that recovery time is really important.
I have a bit of a different approach. I agree with her completely about the need for recovery when you’re training for something — when you’re working out to improve stamina, distance, build strength, etc., it’s definitely important to have restoration and rest time. That’s how your muscles repair and you rebuild your energy stores, hydration, etc. That I completely agree with, and when I’m training to run a race or do a bunch of long bike rides, I need rest days.
But for the first summer in a long time, I’m not training for anything. I did a big bike trip in Bhutan in May, and I’m not doing the Bike Rally or the Triadventure, and I’m not planning to run any races. I’m just trying to … be. To be more motivated, to feel strong and resilient. I’m feeling a lot of stress — the World (I just can’t even), immediate politics (the shift in the provincial government has Not Good implications for my business, plus, COME ON!), and my aunt died last week. These are all things that can lead to me spending way too much time lying on my bed listening to podcasts, procrastinating work, and not moving my body. Reading the news and feeling anger, despair, fear.
So after missing a chunk of my 218 workouts in June because I was sick and unmotivated, I decided I wanted to try to “work out” every day in July. I wanted to see if I could build my mental and emotional resilience through deliberately moving my body every day.
legs up the wall with a weight on my feet before my yoga fundamentals class
I’m using my 218-workouts definition of “workout” as a deliberate episode of moving my body outside my day-to-day life. This is day 13, and I’m observing that it’s simultaneously daunting, motivating and energizing.
So far, my workouts have included: a bunch of short runs (4 – 6km), some of them more joyful than others, most of them super hot; two yoga classes (flow and fundamentals), and one set of online yoga videos; a 60 km (super-hot) bike ride; two days of walking more than 20,000 steps while lifting boxes for a fundraising yardsale; and a one-hour (6+km) brisk post-dinner walk after eating a ton of pizza at my mom’s.
Making my niece ride bikes with me in the heat
That list documents what I did, but it doesn’t carry any of its actual meaning. That 6km walk was the first moment totally to myself where I wasn’t working or fundraising in days. It was breathing space I sorely needed between traveling to my hometown and the day of my aunt’s funeral. I walked past where my dad lived for 20 years after my parents’ divorce, reacquainted myself with my yearning 14 year old self.
One of those runs was after 8 pm, when the sun finally waned and — again — I was catching my breath after taking the train home from Montreal to Toronto with my friend and her toddler twins, and after spending a weekend with my 12 year old niece. I love all these children with a passion — but I needed to breathe. I had to force myself off my bed but I came back a different person.
Making more deliberate choices to move also led me to a hot, important walk with my little sister and my toddler nephew along the river after the funeral, and the clear choice to call on not one but two yoga videos for regrounding after my cat opened the screen door herself and I had to climb fences to rescue her from my neighbour’s terrace.
I’m noticing that I have a little bit of approach anxiety — eek, I don’t want to run, do I have to?, I only have an hour — but the moment I feel my body slip into its jogging rhythm, I breathe differently. I arrive a few minutes early for yoga and lie with my legs up the wall, breathing. I have no time or speed goals, and no pattern — I just want to move and feel myself present in my body, to feel flexibility slowly ease back into my muscles. If I notice “this is a slow run,” so be it. It just is. This is a time when it’s important to fully feel my feet on the ground, to remember to breathe.
At my aunt’s funeral, I sat with my cousin who had lost her 18 year old son two years ago. It was her mother-in-law who died. We held hands and sang along with Hallelujah and Let it Be and wept. She whispered “we’re breathing in unison.”
We were.
That’s what moving every day is for. To find my unison with the world I’m moving through, to breathe deeply when my heart is racing every time I look at the news. To find that presence to be as grounded as possible, to trust that I can move when I need to.
Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede, who lives, works and breathes in Toronto. She writes for this blog on the second Friday and third Saturday of every month.
This summer finds me taking a few longer-haul flights, to and from the western part of the US. Yes, this is not bad compared to European flights, or even longer, to Australia or Asia (where, for one trip, I logged 38 straight hours of travel door to door).
But these days, just getting on a plane and sitting in that cramped space for a couple of hours or longer is not just unpleasant, but also bad for my body. My ankles get really swollen on flights of more than a few hours, and this week I’m nursing a vaguely injured foot/calf muscle that I pulled incidentally while moving through life. Sigh.
A female relay runner with baton, wearing blue compression socks that match her shorts and top.
Yeah, this is totally the vibe I’m going for (in my head).
Enter reality. I was pressed for time to buy the compression socks, so I didn’t go to a cool sporting goods store or order some really interesting colored or patterned socks for my upcoming flight. Instead I went to my local medical supply store, which is a 3-minute walk from my house.
When I walked in, I was confronted by, well, medical supplies. Adjustable hospital beds, portable toilets, canes, walkers, gadgets and devices of all sorts, and also a bevy of older customers, some of whom were there to try on and buy compression socks.
A salesperson approached me as soon as I walked in, and when I asked about compression socks, he pointed to a rack with beige and black color choices. He said, “the ladies prefer beige ones because they look like knee highs”. My first thought was:
A woman with long brown hair, running in a field, with the words “just run away”.
Trying not to lose my cool, I asked about other colors. He looked puzzled, and then I said I was getting on a plane and wanted them for that. Then he went, “oh”, and pointed toward the cash register. There, in 4 colors (blue, brown, charcoal and black– nothing cool, but I’ll take it), were the socks I was looking for. They looked like this:
A package of compression socks, called “Flight socks”.
Okay, maybe I won’t be able to imagine myself as a cool athlete, but at least this package tells me that these socks are for a practical purpose: airline travel. Buying them doesn’t challenge my views of myself as 1) not old (whatever that means to me); and 2) able-bodied (again, addressing my inchoate notion here). More on this in a sec.
I bought them (selecting the charcoal ones), put them on, and headed for the airport. I was wearing long pants for flying to Tucson, AZ, so I could wear them in stealth mode. You can see them here:
Compression-sock-wearing me, same sneakers.
Me, just wearing long pants and sneakers.
I can report that the compression socks helped. My left ankle and calf are still a bit swollen, but it didn’t get much worse, and my other ankle didn’t swell. Success!
What else I learned: I’ve got an ageism problem. In that store, I was seeing older people, in particular older people in search of devices to address medical and functional conditions, as something to be feared. Also, I was seeing them as different from me. I am not old (well, not very– 56 is the new… what? isn’t that silly?). I am also able-bodied (although I mentioned my recent injury and worries about swelling joints and limbs while flying. Hmmm– should I rethink all this?)
This whole experience has given me pause. I see that fearing and distancing myself from aging and the needs/conditions/accoutrements that come with it is probably not the way to go. I don’t know if I’ll take to wearing my airline compression socks with a skirt, but maybe it’s ok. I mean, they’re socks. Still, I would like some in pretty colors.
Pretty patterned compression socks (these are marketed to nurses, fyi).
As I looked back on past July’s and landed back in 2016, I decided to reblog something in keeping with our body policing/body shaming themes that have emerged in the recent posts about swimwear and body hair. Also, it’s Wimbledon! I actually haven’t been following my favourite tennis tournament this year so I don’t know what the latest controversies are, but a couple of years ago people were upset about nipples. We’ve got them, but no one wants to see them “out of context.” Read more….
Talking with Tracy this week about sleep made me realize a difference between us. She was asking how I managed to get to sleep before 10. I said I just get into bed. The trick for me then is staying up.
When I’m tired I just fall asleep. I start to fall asleep downstairs sometimes, after supper, after dishes, using my phone playing word games on the sofa. By the time I’m upstairs, teeth brushed, in PJs, I’m definitely ready for sleep.
If I’m up and out past my usual bedtime, I’ll fall asleep on the subway, in the car, sometimes I’ll even doze off over dinner. There’s no question about staying up late.
It’s why sleep is my super power. I sleep on short flights. I can sleep anywhere and everywhere at any time of day. But the downside is that at night I don’t have much choice about it. If I’m tired I fall asleep. I fall asleep during tv shows, listening to books, in the middle of conversations. I try to use my phone in bed but sometimes I fall asleep emailing and it hits me on the head.
Going to sleep isn’t a virtue or even a habit. It happens whether I want it to or not. It’s like an off switch. Mornings are the same with on. I usually wake up pretty quickly and have lots of energy. I think this is just how I’m wired.
How about you? Are there any other falling asleep over dinner people out there?
