health

You can’t even tell perfect bodies apart.

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My Ani DiFranco T-shirts are fraying. Not before time, you understand: They’re from a 1997 concert in Anchorage, Alaska, which I reviewed. Originally they belonged to my daughter, who went to the concert with me.

The gray tee features a DiFranco verse:

“So I’ll walk the plank and I’ll jump with a smile/If I’m gonna go down I’m gonna do it with style/And you won’t see me surrender, you won’t hear me confess/’Cuz you’ve left me with nothing – but I’ve worked with less.”

The other shirt, a kind of an old rose/mauve color, bears a single lyric:

“Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.”

Neither of us could have known that would be the last summer of Abby’s first life. Seven months after that concert she was on life support in the UW Medical Center’s intensive care unit. Guillain-Barre syndrome paralyzed her right up to her eyeballs and nearly killed her. She’d recover function but would never be the same.

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Inattention can cost you. Ask me how I know.

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On Friday morning I was rushing through my exercises, as usual, and thinking about five other things, as usual. Preparing for a hamstring stretch, I swung my left foot up toward the cedar chest. I missed, and the top of my foot hit the couch.

Side note: It’s not really a couch. It’s a loveseat/sleeper, a purply-pink fabric stretched over a frame made of steel, or possibly bricks. The corner, where the steel/bricks meet, was where my second toe connected.

Instantly I unleashed multi-syllabic swear words. The air turned blue overhead. I swear the loveseat blushed. After hobbling around the living room like a football player who’s just taken a crotch shot (Walk it off, Freedman, walk it off), I said out loud, “I have got to start paying attention to one thing at a time.”

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Therapeutic massage: Rubbed the right way.

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I had three massages in eight days. The circumstances were unusual and will likely never be repeated. But for a while I knew how the super-rich must feel: Really relaxed.

One of the three was my first-ever hot stone massage. I’d told my daughter that there should be Cold Stone massage, i.e., being rubbed with ice cream. She suggested that eating ice cream during a massage would combine the best of two very nice worlds.

The 60-minute sessions at Dynamic Chiropractic and The Vital Energy Center cost $35 apiece thanks to the magic of social buying. The other was slightly discounted ($97 for 90 minutes) because I bought a five-session package at New Seattle Massage.

Usually I try for an appointment every four weeks or so, but sometimes go for months without being rubbed the right way. However, the two social-buy deals were due to expire in early summer and I have to leave in a few weeks for a housesitting job in Alaska. And like my mom, I believe that waste is a sin.

 

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