Babble and triple D

Mostly sunny today with air temps in the mid-50's. Also breezy, and that northwest wind is blowing over a lot of melting snow and cool ground, so it's a bit chill.

Nevertheless, I did a five-mile prairie run (jog, actually) in shorts, sleeveless tee, and trail running shoes. It was awesome. I found some death camas and larkspur along the way.

Toxicoscordion venenosum, or death camas.

Delphinium spp., or larkspur.

Nature is awesome, even the toxic parts.

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Thursday I had nerve conduction tests and physical therapy.

The PT was great, though I got beat up a little bit. Physically and mentally. "No one in your age group," said the therapist, "can bend over and put their palms on the floor like you can." Yay, I win!!!

"However," he said, "everyone in your age group can bend backward better than you. We've got some work to do." Ulp!!!

So I learned stuff which is good. I feel like it's stuff I should have known, but I'm open minded enough to listen and put criticism -- especially self-criticism -- in the proper scale, context, and perspective. It takes work to do that, but I'm willing to do the work.

Among other things he gave me a bloody good "hands-on" stretching, which was great. Made me feel better both physically and mentally. One of my body's reactions to the new regime is pain. Not a lot, but enough pain to be a hard challenge. That's okay. Hard challenges are good.

Now we're embarked on a twice-weekly regimen of therapy, which will include dry needle therapy. In simple but perhaps gruesome terms, it's basically jabbing needles into stiff and stenotic muscles to force them to heal both the needle trauma and the stenosis. So basically a fun but hard challenge.

The nerve conduction tests revealed that my nerves from spine through toes are in perfect shape. The nerves branching out from L-4, L-5, and S-1 are very irritated at being squeezed, but they are not losing conductivity or otherwise beginning to fail. That's all very good news.

The doctor who did the tests was very skilled and knowledgeable at the physical stuff. She was even better at getting me to talk about and assess the mental/emotional aspects of having this chronic malady. She got me to talk about navy, ranching, and new family, and remarked with awe and wonder that I've had three amazing lives. Very many folks, she said, only ever have one life, and the one life can often be mundane.

I'd never thought about my life trajectory like that. Pretty cool stuff. What an amazing physician.

I am blessed, and I think I know why.

Strike think. I owe it all to God. And I know it.

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I'm quite vexed, as I always am when I sit down to compose a blog post on blooger, that I can't save my compose settings. So I get a goofy serif font and blooger's paragraph setting, neither of which I desire. This is one of the "improvements" the blooger team made. Who, after all, would want to compose a blog post in any way other than the way the norcal blooger team would do it?

So I begin every post with anger and resentment and even fear roiling away in my heart.

A couple of things though. First of all, every scrap of the anger and resentment and fear I experience is on me and me alone. Secondly, I don't know anyone on the blooger team and I have no idea what their blooger motivations are, so when I award them en mass with presumed motivations I'm missing the boat badly. It's said that holding a resentment is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die. The poison hurts me, and the other person has no idea whatsoever that I'm bubbling with resentment rage. They don't know, they don't care. Which is as it should be. Thirdly, when I'm raging against imagined bloogerites who I've never met, I'm violating one of the most important foundational principles we ape-lizards have ever developed. I'm treating them as other, as things, rather than as human beings who are exactly equal to me in their fundamental humanity. I'm not treating them as I would be treated. I'm treating them as a means to an end, rather than as an end only. When I think and behave in a way which eviscerates fundamental principles, I destroy my own soul and I jump right off the path, the way. I no longer walk in the sunlight of the spirit; I walk the dark path which is a journey in a living hell.

It's a choice.

Wisdom reflects good or proper decisions, and the ability to make good or proper decisions comes from the experience of making bad decisions. Over time experience and knowledge develop into wisdom, and this is a grand achievement.

But for me, at least, knowledge and wisdom are not enough. I've been doing this life thing for decades, and I still make bad decisions. I make bad decisions all the time, every day, at the drop of a hat.

This is where spirituality comes in. I am weak, and I need God's grace and God's love to carry me back onto the path, back into the sunlight of the spirit. When I lean on God and trust God, all is well. When I do it my way, on my own terms, it's a trainwreck.

So now that I've asked God to take my anger and resentment and fear, He has taken them away. He has placed my feet back on the path and healed my soul. I am no longer a crying victim of imagined evil forces.

Besides, I am reminded, blooger is monetarily free, and no one is making me use it. When I choose to use it I choose to accept the attached strings. That choice and the consequences -- including dealing with the composition settings -- that's all on me.

So there, I tell myself.

And I smile.

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As I noted, it's a beautiful Sunday. I'm preparing fried chicken and baked beans for the evening meal. The chicken is buttermilked and floured and fried by me, and while the beans come from a can, they are "baked" by me. One of these times I'll do the whole "home baked beans" thing. If I can get the logistics and planning down, that is.

Perhaps I've babbled on enough.

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Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.