It’s not such a bad day sitting in traction when you get to start out listening to Jimmy Durante’s, Make Someone Happy and end up with Adele’s, Someone Like You, with a bit of everything else in between.
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I’ve mentioned before how I have a string of songs on my playlist that are timed just perfectly to coincide how long I have to sit here. Some days life is as easy as pressing a button, closing my eyes and listening, other days not so much. Don’t ever underestimate the power of music and what it can do for you. Here’s hoping you can just hit play today and make it all go a lot easier.
Tag Archives: routine
May be
Oh my, the time is flying, in this month of May as I’ve completed my traction routine I haven’t felt much like typing. My fingers have been stiff and tired and let’s not talk about the neck. I just wanted to write some words for this month as I’ve not missed a month of writing since we started this experiment a couple of years back.
I look forward to June and nimble fingers, a girl can AND should dream……
Happy Anniversary
Wow, it’s been a year this month that I started “thoughtsintraction” and two years ago that I started traction. I’m headed on vacation for a couple of weeks and although I probably won’t post while I’m away trust that traction will travel with me. Thanks for helping me stay on this journey. It’s definitely had its moments of uncertainty, laziness, pain, stupidity, silliness and self-pity. Thanks for hanging in there with me……don’t worry about sending a card, Hallmark has yet to market the corner on “Happy Hanging, you look so much taller than you did last year!” or better yet, “Numb fingers used to be a problem, but thanks to traction you can open this card sent just to you!” or maybe something along the line of “Tick Tock Traction Time is here to stay and we couldn’t miss the chance to say “Hang in There!”
OK, I’m being quite the smarty pants and there’s no card for that either, so I’ll just say, I’ll be back in a few to start year two of typing and three of hanging, can’t wait.
Traction maintenance
So you know how there are times when a website temporarily shuts down to perform routine maintenance; well, I don’t think it’s the same here at the thoughtsintraction blog but I did have to add some water to the weight bag! Two pounds of water had evaporated, and we can’t have that now can we? Can’t have only eight pounds of water pulling at the neck instead of the recommended ten. I’m being a smarty pants about this but it is rather exciting that I’ve been at this so long that I have to do things like “maintenance.” It means more than pouring some water; in fact the only reason I can pour that water is because of traction, it also means that I’ve maintained my schedule, I’ve hung in there. I owe you, I owe every person who has ever read this crazy, random blog and according to my stats that’s pretty many of you. I’ve maintained the hanging when I certainly would have given up some days if I hadn’t had a sense accountability to the blog, to you.
Maintenance is a good thing, Martha Stewart would approve. We maintain our cars, our bodies, our homes, certainly should maintain a traction device if you have to use one. Maintenance isn’t something we usually throw a party for, we don’t make an announcement when we get an oil change for the car, although some do I guess now a days on Twitter or Facebook, but we typically keep the maintenance parts of life to ourselves and in reality if we don’t take care of maintenance it will come back to get us. If you don’t clean out the gutters they will eventually let you know about it in not fun ways, if you don’t maintain now you will pay later. It’s certainly been established in my life if I don’t do traction I lose and if I don’t add weight to the gizmo what’s the point, it might feel like I’m getting by with something in the short run but not enough tension in the traction does little to keep these fingers moving. So go maintenance, in a world that seems to celebrate everything, I think you need your own holiday, your importance should not go unnoticed!
Sunday Traction
A bit out of my routine this week, although I can always benefit from more traction time. Honestly, I could sit here everyday if I could tolerate it but I think I’ve found a good balance, mostly one where I can live with the schedule, commit to doing it, yet still benefit enough to function. Sundays for me have always been a day to do the special things, out of the routine, which everyone needs. So fitting traction in today isn’t cool but for the best. I’m going to a baby shower later today in honor of one of my favorite folks on the planet. How exciting, expecting twins, two babies God willing will soon be coming into our family. Can’t wait to meet them and have that feeling once again of where have you been all my life! Truly, doesn’t get any better than new babies in your life, so fun, so exciting, so worth doing extra traction for!
See you next week.
Rainy Traction
The room where I do traction is noisy when it’s raining, I guess it’s something to do with the pitch of the roof or something. We are forecasted to have inches of rain and I find myself looking up at the ceiling because the sound of the heavy rain is intense. I’ve thought about changing the room where I do traction, not because of the noise, rather for a change of pace but I’m pretty settled in this space and unless I’m traveling its just easier to leave it here. So Spring is within sight, and we have rain instead of snow and colds instead of flu and jackets instead of coats, we’ve traded a red santa for a green leprechaun, we’ve almost made it thru another winter….warmth is coming, hang on, soon I’ll be typing with a sunburn. Seasons come and go but traction is here to stay, I think I’ve typed that thought before but it’s so true it’s worth repeating.
Back in Business
My computer died on me so I’ve been out of commission for a few days but all is well now. I’m not sure I like to admit that I’m now that person that feels out of sorts without a working computer in their life. Not sure when that happened but it’s weird to think of how many times I reached for it only to remember, nope, not working.
And as for this traction gig, I missed my routine with the computer to get me thru the twenty minutes. I moaned how I had to keep my thoughts while in traction to myself! It’s kind of crazy how much I’ve grown to depend on the process, and then there’s the practical side, even something as simple as looking for a zip code you’d have thought the world had ended because I couldn’t search for it on-line.
I’ve tried to blame it on the doldrums of January and the constant color of the sky that resembles dirty snow but I think it’s more than that, I mean for pete sake for the walls to feel like they’re closing in because I can’t type on the computer, yikes, I’m addicted. Along with all my other health issues, now I have to recognize and admit that I’m addicted to my laptop. Where do you go for that meeting?
Ok, before I look that up on-line I’m going to just be happy for a second. I once again have the world at my fingertips while I’m sitting here in traction and that feels good. I like that connection, I embrace that connection. If that means I’m relying too much on the internet in my life I may just have to say, yes Dr. Phil, I’ve substituted my television addiction, that’s where I am right now, sorry, gotta go check email.
It’s the little things
Postage stamps have so much power, with them you can mail anything, anywhere. Well, almost anything, excluding the list of stuff that hangs on the wall of most post offices that are big no nos, but it’s still a cool idea to me to think that with just a few stamps you can mail something pretty much anywhere. One of my first “jobs” as a child was to go into the post office and buy a “book of stamps please.” I learned at an early age that stamps are powerful, you can mail a letter or a birthday card, pay a bill, send a package, exciting things can happen when you have plenty of stamps. I know the world is quite a different place than when I first learned how much could happen when you licked the back of a tiny stamp, attached it to an envelope and threw it in a mail box, and then of course, double checked that it slide in there, it’s all exciting stuff. But now a days when you can pay bills on-line and send an e card around the world it seems stamps are less and less popular. Yet it’s still true when you need a stamp you can not find a substitute to place on that mail, even gluing your money to it is meaningless. If you need a stamp you still have to get a stamp and there lies the power. Yesterday I was waiting in line at the post office to buy several books of stamps because I was completely without stamps for days and therefore felt out of sorts, powerless. As the little girl in front of me counted to her surprise, ten people in line I was oddly comforted that some things don’t change as much as we think. We still need stamps, some folks still mail packages, some people still pay their bills the old-fashioned way, some of us still wait in line and some little girls have it as their chore to buy stamps.
I know there are plenty of ways to deal with mail these days and stamps are nearly out of vogue but I’m sentimental when it comes to some things and today as I’m making my list of things I’ll do when I finish traction I feel powerful because I now have in my possession three books of “forever” stamps.
Feeling groovy, but not.
I’ve been in the groove lately with traction. I feel like I’m really in a manageable routine and even though it’s uncomfortable and tedious and sometimes a bit too much on the painful side I’m really doing ok with it. For the first time I’m allowing myself to even think ahead a week or two and believing, I can do this. Looking back if someone had told me that I’d be so “ok” with it, so compliant with traction I wouldn’t have dreamed it, yet now that I am, it’s so freeing.
BUT, (why is there always a but, anyway)can I tell you my new thought, rather new fear, it’s that I’ll be all content in accepting this, rather than resigned to it, I’ll be as fine as I think a person can be who straps their head and neck in traction several times a week and yet, it will stop working. I’m not sure if this is an irrational fear. It’s just lately the more I do traction the more it feels like I’ve plateaued. The clerk at the pharmacy had to come out from behind the counter to push the key pad for me since my touch wouldn’t push the machine to the next step, yeah, the tired fellow customers in line where real happy about the delay in that moment too, like what’s with the chick who can’t figure out how to use the key pad. Oh and let me tell ya, there was this moment the other day when I couldn’t hit the digits with enough pressure to turn off the security alarm. That got my attention, probably the next door neighbor’s too, definitely got the attention of the alarm company but fortunately not the police’s.
So the new year could prove as interesting as ever but my wish is not to get too far ahead of myself in the fear department, to just take this all as it comes. Like I began this post, I wouldn’t have believed I could come this far with my attitude, or rather to this place in “Thoughts In Traction” as I have, so maybe I shouldn’t terrorize myself with the “what if’s” just yet. Instead I’d rather think of the new career possibilities, just think how “useful” I could be to someone if I develop the skill of not leaving fingerprints!
So I’ll leave you with a cliffhanger, stayed tuned, will I use my new skill for GOOD or EVIL?
Only time will tell.
Titleless/Mindless
There’s a new store that opened today in my neighborhood. It’s kind of funny how much people seem to enjoy checking out something new, like they’re going to find something exciting or different. I’m not sure why that is. It’s a chain store so to me that makes it all the more funny, you can drive about two miles down the road and find the identical store. Yet that doesn’t stop folks from pulling up in droves. I guess we like new, and we are a nosey bunch. I mean if we weren’t would there ever be a followup accident after the first because of gawking or rubbernecking. We just like to get a good look at things. Curiosity is a fine thing to have plenty of I guess, but noseyness is one of my greatest pet peeves. I ran into a woman yesterday that I haven’t seen in probably fifteen years. I would have never recognized her and I’m still not sure I remember any details of working with her but she fired off three rather personal questions within 30 seconds of saying hello. I just never dream of asking people anything other than how are you doing? I care how you are doing, I don’t care what you are doing or who you are doing it with unless you’d like to tell me or any anything else for that matter, otherwise it’s NONE of my business. I once stayed at a retreat house in Canada that had retreatants from all over the world. The one rule at meal time was you were not permitted to ask any questions of each other. I loved the place. It’s amazing what you can talk about when you can’t ask questions. You were free to volunteer any information you’d like, but no questions. The point was you came there to reflect and be alone, you only had to offer what you felt like offering. I’m not sure how my rambles led me here today but on this cold and first taste of winter kind of day I’m sitting here almost finished with traction and I think I have a case of the grumps cause my skin still feels itchy.
The music is coming to an end so that’s my cue that time’s up, it took me three tries to get strapped in today, my unfocused thoughts even led me to not being able to easily set up something as routine as traction. Thanks for helping me pass the time once again.
Thoughts In Traction.... 