Tweets for Today

( Cut to spare the uninterested )

Obama's People

From the New York Times.

Re: The Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM

This may clinch your impression that I'm clueless white girl much of the time, and I know that it's really hard to believe (especially since so many on my friends list were involved), but I really did totally miss this. I spent much of the past month not really reading my friends list but instead trying not to get depressed/reading mind-numbing junk/coping with my injury/running the girls to karate/hpalternity/thinking about decreasing worldsuck. But a couple innocent questions to people I know along the lines of "What is it everyone's talking about?" led to me spending a couple of hours surfing the link list over at rydra_wong's journal, and . . . OMG.

I'm not going to even comment. I'd probably have things to say about writing about the Other, if I wanted to wade into the discussion, given that I wrote The Wild Swans, but . . . no. Call me coward, and if you think me one, sorry, but I'm backing away slowly, making no sudden moves and not venturing any opinions. I have fought too hard for my own mental equilibrium over the past year to get sucked into something that seems to have scarred so many people so badly. Yeah, that may be selfish of me, but right now, it's truly the best I can do.

Maybe it's today's contribution to, well, not decreasing worldsuck, but at least not increasing it. Because honestly, from what I've read in the various posts and comments, I seriously doubt that I could say anything at all without managing to enrage someone, somewhere, even if I were desperately trying not to do so. For all I know, some of you might even get mad at my saying I'm not going to talk about it at all.

Hip stabilization exercise, ow

This is deceptively difficult: lie on your side, knees bent 45 degrees. Raise your upper knee so that it points to the ceiling, keeping your feet together (so that your legs open like a clam shell). Hold for a count of three, then lower the knee. Repeat twenty times.

It amazed me how much this one hurt. And I'm a frickin' brown belt. Not that I'm saying we brown belts have god-like powers or anything, but still, you'd think my hips would be plenty strong enough for this. Huh. Go figure.

Other rehabilitative exercises I'm doing:

1) lie on back, raise butt off the ground (bridge). Lift a foot off the ground a few inches, hold for count of two, lower. Repeat on other side.

2) Squats, with restrictive band fastened around the calves (to keep the knees from splaying out.

3) rubber tube tied in circle, with strap around one end closed inside a door. Place the tube behind injured knee, and pull out to extension. Stand with feet hip width apart. Pull the knee back to straighten the working leg, hold for a few seconds, relax. Repeat 20 times. (Strenghtens the quad.)

4) balance on one leg for 30 - 60 inches, while bending the other knee a little to pull the opposite foot off the ground a few inches. It's important not to sink into the supporting hip, but to stand up straight and keep the hips square. Again, deceptively hard, esp. on the injured leg. Again, I was indignant: I'm a brown belt; I should be able to do this without so much trouble. The injured ligament really has affected my ability to balance.

5) Various hamstring stretches.

Today

( What I did today to make the world a better place )

(Non) Cooking for Ingrates

I stopped by the beautiful shiny new Seward Co-op on the way home from work, thinking I'd pick something up ready-made to feed the girls, since I didn't feel like cooking. Everything I saw looked incredibly delicious. I called up the girls on my cell phone and consulted. These were the various options I suggested, all of which were summarily rejected (reasons in parentheses).

From the grab and go cooler:
Turkey soup (black beans)
Tomato basil soup (cooked tomatoes, ick)
Broccoli cheese (broccoli)
Clam chowder (all seafood is verboten)
Borchst (beets)
Sushi (ha. You were kidding, right?)

From the hot bar:
Rotisserie chicken (it, uh, resembles something that was living once, which is icky)
Pizza (has mushrooms)
Spinach lasagna (spinach and onions)
Chickpea curry (chickpeas. And curry)

At this point, I lost my temper, told them that they could get their own damn dinner, bought the spinach lasagna and carmelized beets (I didn't even bother asking about those) and a carton of chocolate tofu mousse to smooth my ruffled feathers. Came home and ate it all, studiously, ignoring both girls. I feared I might say something unforgiveable if I spoke to them.

I have no idea what they had for dinner. Maybe cardboard, for all I know.