storbarnsförälder

I did my split squats today and didn't hate them!

Split squats always get a groan when our trainer tells us to do them, no one likes them, but I've found them a particular trial during ankle recovery. They've so good for me that lunges (which are similar) were a formal part of my physiotherapy. But that also meant they were hard, no fun, and not terribly rewarding!

I've always been fortunate that my recovery hasn't featured a lot of pain, but that almost made it more difficult to monitor, and cope with, the intense weakness in that ankle (and the knock-on effects, like my already-atrocious balance somehow got (and remains) even worse?!).

Feeling okay until my leg just didn't hold me up properly can be unsettling!

I've patiently stuck with it, doing regular bodyweight lunges in circuits when other people are doing walking lunges with the biggest dumbbells available to us there (not very big, but still!) and having to tuck myself into the squat cage for split squats at lift club so I could hang on to the bars to keep my balance.

And now I can do (very slow, increasingly wobbly) walking lunges, and I can do split squats without hanging on to anything -- except a little kettlebell! And I might have to go up to the second-smallest size of kettlebell next time actually, I was thinking today.

It's nice to feel like I'm at about the level where I would have been starting if I hadn't broken my ankle almost immediately into taking up exercise as a hobby. I mean yes it'd be nice if it hadn't taken me a year and a half to get that far, but as with so many of the other changes in my body in the past year and a half, I try not to get caught up in what-ifs and wistful regret, and I think I am doing okay at that.

Sir Ian McKellen to open historic all-trans and nonbinary production of Twelfth Night

What's this, a trans reading of my favorite Shakespeare play, fundraising for my favorite trans charity (the one that brings me that "trans gym" thing I'm always talking about)?

And there's a livestream so I can stay covid-safe? And you can watch from anywhere (for two weeks after the live performance)?

I've already got my ticket!

I introduced my counselor to the "stress bucket" metaphor today.

Some of you may remember it was a Gary thing. I described it here:

The stress bucket is a metaphor about a bucket with a little hole in the bottom. Stress fills up the bucket. The little hole gradually empties it. We learned about what things are good for emptying a dog's stress bucket quicker and also how long the effects of an overflowing stress bucket can hang around.

It immediately made sense to me as someone with chronic anxiety, so while we carried on using it about Gary (it was always so useful), I apply it to myself too. And when my counselor was getting tangled in some other metaphors that reminded me of this, I told it to her. She seemed to really like it and extending the metaphor was useful for us during the whole conversation.

My good little dog, still helping out my brain even now.