dragonlady7

Now I'm remembering my old dilemma with LJ, which is that I always felt like I had to title my post, and I always would try to put the title on first, and then I'd write the post and it would have nothing to do with the title. It was a hilarious unending struggle, and I made a lot of little memes in my own mind.
Really. I'm shit at titles. I mean, I do okay, but it's always way more effort than it should be. Which I suppose is the case for most people. So I won't bitch about it anymore, but I'm just lampshading it-- the titles on the entries on this journal are fucking bonkers nonsense at best and I might as well lean into it.

So here's a personal thing.
I've been uncovering, over the last few months, that if I don't have regular exercise, one of my hips (uh I think the left one?) just ceases to function. Standing in one place for hours is The Worst Thing, but sitting for too long is also a Bad Idea. And coincidentally, I started being able to walk to work, which is an easy, flat, 1.4-mile trek over concrete sidewalks with nice crosswalks at all major intersections. It's fucking ideal, really. And for a couple of months now, it's been just the ticket. Over weekends I'm a lazy lump, and my hip bothers me, sometimes my lower back gets cranky, and then it's Monday and I make myself slog to work and it's all cured, with some limping and judicious stretching and such.

But New Year's Eve-eve I had some bad cramps, and instead of the usual just-uterus kind of deal, they seized up my lower back. And my lower back has been hella fuckin' cranky ever since? And I've made myself walk to work anyway, figuring the only way out is through, but I have been really suffering. It's the muscles down where you've got, like, three layers of muscle, where your back and your pelvis and your legs all kind of attach together? I've torn one of those before, thanks roller derby, and then my coach told me the only way out is through, and in retrospect I should have told her to fuck off but instead I wound up in the ER after passing out at 5am so like. Don't do that, guys; sometimes the only way out is to sit the fuck down for a second, okay? Also I was like 29 and really easily led. I mean, I thought I wasn't, but I was, so. I probably still am. Holy shit that was 10 years ago. WHATEVER.

So, long story short, it's still annoying as fuck, but another thing I learned in roller derby is that sometimes the way to fix a cranky back is to work on your abs for a while. And it does help a lot-- if you have bad muscle shit going on behind, do a bunch of crunches and stuff. Just, for the love of pete, take it easy. It's real hard to know the good, like, working hard kind of pain from the BAD NEWS CUT THAT SHIT OUT pain. I assumed I knew the difference and really, no, I don't. I mean, there are unmistakable cases, but. No, man, that shit can be subtle, even though it doesn't sound like it.

Anyway, I walked to work today, and took really long strides so that I'd be engaging my core more and such (it's blessedly ice-free, currently, and I did reflect for a moment that I have all this cold weather gear stored up for When It's Really Winter and honestly, it's fucking January, we're well into it now, and it turns out this is actually kind of a mild winter so far so here's hoping I didn't jinx it because honestly I don't want to wear the Hideous Orange Jumpsuit to walk in?), and then I sort of self-consciously rolled around on the floor doing crunches and things. Nobody comes up here first thing in the morning so maybe I'm good, but I need to vacuum this goddamn rug if I'm going to do that much more.

We'll see; my back is already displeased with sitting in this chair and I've only been sitting here a bit over an hour. :(

Oh so I think I mentioned? Every once in a while Dude comes up with a weird idea out of left field. Last year, this time, it was, "Let's go to Kyrgyzstan," so we did that. This year, in the autumn, he was like, "I gotta pick up a weird hobby," and I was like "go for it baby I suggest carpentry" which didn't go over well. (Hey. We need some carpentry done. At least I didn't say plumbing.) His initial idea was that he was going to pick up something really esoteric that involved renting complicated equipment, getting briefly obsessed with it, starting a complicated project, and then abandoning it and returning the rented equipment, which displays a pretty high degree of self-awareness from him, I think.

But instead he settled on "I know! Banjo lessons!" which was pretty out there. And then of course he went and bought a banjo, instead of renting one.
It's sort of funny because I'm intermittently super into folk music, and used to drag him to the local music joint's weekly Irish seisuns, where I would sing some of the literally hours-long repertoire of songs I have memorized, and he'd get super bored and fall asleep at the bar. So we stopped doing that because he was so really incredibly not into it. But I guess he's not that not into it.

Anyway, the banjo arrived last night, and if you look at my Instagram stories I have his first attempts at playing chords on it. So that was nice.

So I dragged out my harp, and tuned it, and then retrieved my guitar from the attic, and tuned that too. Obviously we have no shortage of optimistically-purchased musical instruments in this house. But he's actually got lessons booked with a guy, so maybe he'll learn how to do something.
And the dirty little secret of banjo is that it's tuned in a chord, so if you just strum it, it sounds good, unlike a guitar, which if you just strum it open sounds like absolute I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing hell.

*shrug* We'll see what happens. He signed me up for lessons too; if he abandons it, then maybe I'll play it. Maybe not. The farm BIL is actually an accomplished guitar player, though, so maybe he'll want to jam. I have no idea. But it could be fun.

I can pick out all kinds of stuff on the harp I have, but I don't know how to do the fingerings properly so I can't go fast.

But I was really pleased to remember enough music theory to understand that if I flip the tuning levers on my F strings to sharp them, then I can play any song in G, which is what the banjo's tuned to. So that was fun.