Friday. I haven’t looked forward to a Friday this much in quite some time. It’s been a rough couple of weeks. I’ve not been working out as much as I’d like and since I was getting angry at myself and aggravated at my lack of progress, I decided to take this week “off”. Come Monday, I’ll approach from a different angle and make it work for me. More running, more Pilates, more weights. It can be done. In the meantime, fun stuff!

• PAPERCRAFT STEAK DINNER?!??!? Yes. Fire up your color printer and assemble a paper steak to delight your friends and family. The site’s in Japanese, but you can figure it out.

• CROSS-STITCH! I’ve been thinking that once I finish knitting this baby blanket I’m making for my friends, it might be time to take up a new craft - like cross-stitch. To that end, I’ve been checking out the cross-stitch kits at my local craft stores. They’re all rather corny and so not me- “Footprints”? Precious Moments characters? A bald eagle against the flag? I’d prefer and old school grandma sampler, honestly. But that’s me. My aesthetic runs in a different vein. Just imagine my delight when I discovered this cross-stitch generator at Dark Lilac! I can upload a picture I create in Photoshop or a favorite image and it will generate a cross-stitch chart including the colors of DMC brand embroidery floss you’ll need. I have plans to create one of my gimpy wrist MRI (just have to resize in Photoshop) as well as one of brussels sprouts or other such food.
• SHRINKY DINKS. I stopped at Michael’s on my way home from work with my friend Krys. She was picking up scrapbooking supplies; I went in to buy unnecessary stuff. Craft stores and Target are perfect for that. I found they were selling packs of blank frosted Shrinky Dinks and my childhood came rushing back to me - like the fumes generated by sticking sheets of plastic into the oven to watch them shrink. That said, I bought a pack. I have colored pencils. I have an oven. I have jump rings. This means I can make pendants and keychains and other random crap - but however I want to do it. Crafty crafty! ($4.99 for 10 sheets)
• Summertime = bright nail polish colors. The new Essie colors for this summer left me a little underwhelmed. There was a color near the display, though, that attracted me. It’s not new for this season, but it fits right in and it’s awesome. It’s called Calypso - a bright fuchsia. It garnered compliments and that’s always nice.
• After much deliberation and whatnot, I’ve finally selected and ordered my new cell phone. Not a Blackberry, not the LG Voyager, not the Samsung Glyde. There were issues with each one (bulk, size, price, less than stellar reviews) so I did a Goldilocks kind of thing. In the end, I checked the Howard Forums and reviews for the phones I was considering - these led me to several people raving about the LG enV(2). It also had good ratings from c|net. It’s not as sexy as the others - it’s not a touchscreen phone; it doesn’t have a huge display on the front. But that’s OK. I wanted a full QWERTY keyboard - it’s got that. I wanted a larger display for web browsing and email composition - it’s got that when you open it up. I wanted a phone that’s easy to use AS a phone - this actually has a number pad for regular old dialing. And it cost me a whopping $49 after my upgrade discount. It arrives on Tuesday. Yippee!
• I’ve just pledged to be a part of Firefox Download Day 2008. It’s not a pledge to do anything other than download the newest version (that would be version 3) of Firefox on the day it’s released. Love love love love love. I love a browser. Hmmm. This might be part of the reason I’m single.

I had my wrist surgery a year and a half ago. I went to occupational therapy for almost five months. I’ve been doing well, I think. I’ve been rock-climbing since September and my wrist has gotten a lot stronger from that; I’m able to grab onto holds with strength I most certainly did NOT have even three months ago, much less last September.

Despite all those advancements, it’s still something that impacts my day-to-day activities. When I was shopping in Princeton yesterday, I had a bag of about eight CDs. After carrying that for about 45 minutes, my left wrist was experiencing sharp pains shooting up into my forearm - I thought about asking one of my friends to carry them for me, but I would’ve felt like a helpless weakling (definitely NOT a feeling I enjoy). So I switched carrying hands for a bit, but I’m right-handed so I needed my right hand to reach into my purse, open doors, get money out of my wallet, sign my name, and other such things.

Yes, I can feel changes in barometric pressure in that wrist; the weather will affect it for the rest of my life, according to my surgeon.

Today, though, it’s really bringing me down. I did some light cleaning and then took a break to do my new Pilates DVD so I would have some kind of exercise today. Since my friend LJ is out in California, responsive and regular climbing buddies are a rare treat (commodity?). I’ve been able to go climbing once every two weeks, basically, down from twice or three times a week. Last time I went (Tuesday night), I sucked. Before getting back from vacation, I’d been climbing 5.9s (not easily, but I was finishing them) and trying 5.10s, but I was struggling with a 5.7 on Tuesday. Maybe it was just a bad night or I was tired from a long day of work; those happen - but it was pretty demoralizing. I didn’t cry, but it was close.

However, in a change from the Eva of Olde, I’m not going to give it up or give up on it. I’m trying to enlist my brother since he has the gear but just hasn’t been climbing in several years. I’ll keep contacting friends at the rock gym to latch onto their climbing nights. This has been such a good thing for me in so many ways, it would be stupid to toss it without trying every possible method for retaining its presence in my life. I can hope that my steadfast friend returns soon and brings with him the promise of regular intensive climbing, but I can’t count on that. In the meantime, even once a week is something.

So my substitution is more Pilates; both Pilates and climbing work your core muscles, so they dovetail nicely (some of my best climbing has been after doing a Pilates work-out beforehand). On this new DVD, I got through the first 17 minutes; broke a sweat, felt good about doing a more challenging workout… but then it got to the portion where the mat exercises required me to rest my entire weight on my hands (a la downward dog) while lifting my legs or stretching. It also called for me to rest my weight on my hands and wrists behind me while I balace on my tailbone and lift my legs into the air.

I couldn’t bend my left wrist enough in either direction to complete the exercises. The range of motion (ROM) in my left wrist is limited and while I can increase strength with exercise, my ROM is as good as its going to get because my anatomy is different; it’s not a matter of stretching or exercising. I have missing bones. Bones that aren’t supposed to be located in the active portion of my wrist have moved into that space; that’s how I was supposed to heal. It’s never going to be the same.

There are other things it will impact as well, but as a currently single gal, I have the luxury of waiting to cross that bridge.