Tuesday Timewarp: Dark Rooms and Liz Phair

I have a ticket to the sold out Old 97's show at the 9:30 Club tonight, but have decided instead to stay home watching Weeds. (Unfortunately, not smoking weed.) I think my body, my shoulders in particular, is reconfiguring itself. Between the hot baths, icing, weight training, yoga, and racquetball therapy (ask me later), I hope to eventually get over a hump physically somehow. In the meantime, the pain has gravitated to my neck and head, so I am lying still in a dark room.

Here's a sold out show at the 9:30 to which I don't have a ticket.



Ok, back to Weeds now.

Food Glorious Food

This post has a one-track mind.

Yesterday, about 24 hours into my fast, on my way back from the Yes! Organic Market (per my last post), I caught a whiff of the strongest garlic aroma coming from one of the many restaurants along the 1800 block of Columbia Road. I kept walking and kept breathing it in for a good block. I wondered if my body was newly sensitized to such an amazing scent. This is the approximate location of its source:

As a practical matter, today I began to plan out my meals for the week. I even decided it was time to introduce my body to something other than my "master cleanse" lemonade, so as to not shock my system tomorrow, so I had a piece of fruit and a yogurt smoothie. As part of my menu planning, I rented a Zipcar and drove to Whole Foods with the grocery list I generated by reading "The Idiot's Guide to Detoxifying Your Body." Now, Whole Foods is usually kind of a treat, and today, I felt like a kid in a candy store. Everything looked good.

I decided I was going tell my penny-counting self not to worry about cost. For that matter, Whole Foods really isn't exorbitant for what you get. It was more the "start up costs" of eating healthfully, that I knew would add up. It wasn't so much the fruits and veggies (although I did buy a yam that cost me *gulp* almost $5), but the miso, the tahini, and the flaxseed. Yeah, I'm just beginning to figure out how to use these things, but I tried to go forth with cooking confidence! This, I'm sure is laughable to friends of mine, like my dear friend Kristen who having given up hope on my ability to make multi-course meals, bought me a cookbook on appetizers a few years ago.

Anyway, I got out of there with a fair amount of stuff and not too outrageous a grocery bill ($61). Add to that the Zipcar ($9 for the hour, plus a late fee of $50 since I wasn't allowed to extend my reservation) Ouch. Ok, I wasn't planning on this grocery trip costing me a RT ticket to NYC, but oh well. It was a stupid expense on my part. Like getting a parking ticket or backing into something. Next time I'm taking the Metro or I'll just walk to my local organic market.

My Shoulders: Massage, Yoga, and Cleansing

I have a complicated relationship with my shoulders. I like that I have strong, broad shoulders. Following in my father's flutterkick, I was a competitive swimmer during high school. I barely use my legs, I extended my reach and pulled volumes of water, building enviable muscle mass. I loved when we did laps with a pull-buoy, and I could really go to town.

When I was in fifth grade, my school gave us scoliosis tests, prompted by a popular Judy Blume book called Deenie. Even then, while I didn't have scoliosis, the nurse warned me to wear my blue, Velo backpack on both shoulders, not slung over just one (the cooool way to wear it). That day I became aware of my shoulders for the first time in my life, always trying to pull them back and stand up straight, and that awareness has never left me.

In November 2004, while I was uninsured, I also damaged my left rotator cuff while snowboarding. I've never gone to physical therapy.

A number of things have come up this week to make this subject blog-worthy:

Now that I walk everywhere, I think about my shoulders a lot. Correction: now that I schlep my life around DC with me, I think about my veritable packhorse existence. One of my recent obsessions is finding the perfectly fashionable, yet ergonomic backpack. I bought a $300 green leather backpack from the Village Tannery in NYC, but returned it in a rushed taxi ride to Penn Station because I realized 1) that it didn't fit my stuff and 2) that it wasn't all that comfortable (defeats the purpose, right?) My ideal backpack would double as a small fashionable vest, a massage therapist, and a storage locker. Needless to say, my search continues...

Last night, being indulgent Friday, I got the most intense hour-long deep tissue massage just on my shoulders, performed by Michael at Natural Body Spa in Arlington. It was deeply intense and at times, I was so relaxed (although in some pain) I almost forgot to breathe.

Wednesday before class, my yoga instructor Corrie (who reminds me a lot of my yoga instructor Suzanne back in SLC) was telling me about her current detoxing cleanse: lemonade, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper. (FYI, this is the same cleanse that Beyonce did prior to filming Dreamgirls.) She said that after feeling a bit sluggish, she was feeling really energetic and that she could move in ways that she couldn't before.So, on my lifelong quest for supple, flexible, pain-free shoulders, which includes weekly yoga, and semi-regular massages, I'm considering my first fast---not only for my shoulders, but also for my general health and energy level---most probably over the weekend that my food-loving boyfriend is in California. Does anyone have any advice?