Author: Cynical Woman

Did I mention I’m going to physical therapy three times a week? A couple of years ago, four months after Cassie was born, my husband mistook me for a six-foot, seven-inch, 200 pound man during a self-defense drill in karate class and knocked me hard enough off my feet to blow my right knee out. Four months after that, someone else got a little intimidated during a sparring match and took out my other knee. The end result? Two bad knees that sound like Rice Krispies cereal every time I go up and down the stairs. Snap! Crackle! Pop!

My knees got progressively worse during my last pregnancy, thanks to relaxin and all those other fun pregnacy hormones. The crunchy sound I was making going up and down the stairs got so bad that it creeped out one of my best friends (who just happens to be an emergency room nurse and so is not easily creeped out). Since I’d still like to be able to walk when I hit fifty, I decided to see an orthopedist who sent me to a physical therapist who told me that my knee caps are tracking to the outside of each leg and that if I don’t correct it now, my knees will eventually migrate to the back of my thighs, causing me to walk like a bird with my legs bent backwards for the rest of my life.

Fun.

So in addition to all the other stuff I’ve got to do, I’m now going to physical therapy three times a week to fix my knees. Actually, the therapist says the problem is easily correctible if I keep up with all my therapy appointments and do the at-home exercises. I can make it to all the appointments. I’m determined to do that. But remembering to do the exercises at home on top of everything else is a little challenging. I’m trying though. I’ve got to stretch my outer thigh muscles while strengthening the inner ones. This is something I’ll probably have to work on for the rest of my life, seeing how weak and unstable both knees are, but at least it won’t take surgery to correct.

The biggest problem with the therapy is I have to slow down on my exercise and karate. It’s partly because the therapist doesn’t want me to overexert myself until my knees are stronger, but it’s also due to the fact that I’m in her office so frequently that I don’t have any time left to exercise during the week. I hate that. I just got my schedule set up so I could start practicing karate again and go to the gym on a regular basis and now I’ve got to spend that time at the therapist’s office instead. I know, physical therapy is exercise, but it’s exercise that is only concentrated on one part of my body – my knees. The rest of me needs a workout too, you know.

Of course, if I fix my knees, I can go back to having wild sex. I’m not kidding about this one. The last time Michael and I had sex, I just about dislocated both knee caps. And we weren’t doing anything all that kinky, just trying out a perfectly normal position that put a little too much pressure on my knees. I miss my sex life. I want my knees back.

Strong knees will let me get back to sparring (not my favorite activity, but I like being able to brag to weenies who are too scared to step into a sparring ring), it will let me get back to kata, kobudo, running, weight lifting, and sex. All those fun hard core activities that I love that make me feel young. Bum knees make me feel old. I hate feeling old.

Being told I will probably need bifocals by next year also made me feel old. That came up during my last eye appointment. What the hell? I just had a baby. I’m a new mom. Why is my body falling apart now? Oh, wait. I’m thirty-seven, going on thirty-eight. Forty is just around the corner. The warranty has apparently run out on my hot sexy bod. Oh well.

I will not grow old gracefully. I will fight it tooth and nail, kicking and screaming all the way. If nothing else, the resulting temper tantrum should make me look like a three-year-old, which is much younger than a thirty-seven-year-old, and since the goal is to look young(er), I think I can be happy with that.

***

Here is the artwork from yesterday. I’m going to work on figures for a while. I’ve been drawing heads and faces for so long, they’re easy. Now I need to be able to do the same with bodies. I’m having a hard time figuring out how to quickly sketch out a human figure though. None of the books I’ve got do a good job showing how to go from basic shapes to a completed figure. It’s almost like they’re leaving out a key step that I can’t identify. Very, very annoying.

Figure sketches, 18 September 2006

It’s 7:26 AM, September 11th, and Michael is trying his best to get Cassie out the door. Right now she’s fighting him tooth and nail. Michael’s a patient man, but Cassie is really pushing it this morning. They’ve got to head out for preschool in a few minutes, and she’s refusing to stand up so he can brush her teeth. The whole process takes only a few moments, and if Cass would just stop arguing, she’d be done by now. Meanwhile, Sam refuses to settle down and nurse. She keeps popping on and off the nipple, every now and then stopping to grin at me like she’s discovered some wildly hilarious new game. It’s infuriating and it makes it almost impossible for me to type.

Thus goes our mundane life on the morning of the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I suppose I can’t not take time today to think about what happened five years ago. It’s like asking someone from my parents’ generation, “Do you remember where you were when JFK was shot?” Only now we ask, “Do you remember where you were when the World Trade Center was hit?”

I remember. I was sitting on my bed, not ten feet from where I am right now, with a drawing board in my lap, working on a colored pencil sketch that would end up taking me over a year and a half to complete. It was the last real piece of artwork I would ever attempt for a while. We used to keep a small TV in the bedroom back then, but I didn’t have it turned on. It was too peaceful and quiet that morning for me to listen to a bunch of yakkin’ on the tube. So when the phone rang, I was caught completely off-guard.

“Oh my god! Oh my god, are you okay?! Is Michael okay?!”

It was my sister, shrieking hysterically. I had no idea what was going on, and couldn’t get her to calm down.

“Of course I’m okay. Carolyn, what are you talking about?”

“They said there’s another plane! It’s headed your way, for Langley! Are you okay?”

“Plane? What plane? What’s going on?”

“Somebody crashed a plane into the World Trade Center! It’s on fire!”

I finally turned on the TV and saw it. Maybe an hour earlier that morning, the first plane had hit one of the towers. The second went shortly after that. Cocooned in my quiet little world, with no TV or radio on, I had missed it. My sister Carolyn was right in the middle of it. She lived in New Jersey and commuted to New York each day for work, so she was only a few blocks away when it happened. She didn’t know where many of her friends were (one worked in a building right next to the WTC). She’d heard a rumor that more planes had been hijacked and were being flown to other targets, including one on its way to Langley Air Force Base, only five minutes from where Michael and I lived. She was afraid we’d been killed.

I spent the rest of the day sitting by the phone, watching the news. Carolyn was stuck in New York. My dad was home in Arkansas. My mom was off somewhere in Michigan, I think, on a trip with friends. Nobody could get a hold of anyone else but me, so I became call central, keeping tabs on where the family was. I relayed messages back and forth, assured people that the rest of the family was fine, and sat in stunned silence when I wasn’t on the phone.

The next day, I called the Army Reserves to remind them I was still available for duty. I think that was the scariest damned phone call I’ve ever made. I did not want to go on active duty. I had been on inactive status the previous two years and was planning on getting out. But I was a captain in the Reserves, and I had an obligation, so I called and said I was still in and would go wherever they needed me. It was a few months before they called me back and asked me to anywhere, though. When they finally did contact me, the only place they wanted me to go was Germany for a three-week exercise. Apparently the Army was short on bodies to run this particular shin-dig. Most of the active duty units that normally participated were all in Afghanistan.

That was the only place I ever went for the Army after September 11th. I was supposed to go to Korea later that summer to fill in a spot at another exercise, but I was pregnant with Cassie by then and so sick all the time that I could barely stand up. So I called my Reserves contact and asked to sit that one out. Then the same day I would have arrived in Seoul, I ended up in the emergency room with a torqued ovary. My obstetrician had to operate on me while I was four months pregnant to put that puppy back in its place.

I left the Army Reserves not long after that. Between the scare with the ovary and other problems that cropped up during my pregnancy, I realized there was no way in hell I ever wanted to be separated from my child. I resigned my commission, wondering if I was a coward for getting out when I knew so many other women with children were going to war. Some days I still wonder.

I live a nice life, all bitching and moaning aside. I have two happy, healthy children and a husband who loves me. I have a nice house and plenty of nice things to go with it. I enjoy my work and my biggest worry is finding enough time in the day to accomplish everything I want to do. In many ways, five years after the terrorist attacks on September 11th, I’m still cocooned in my quiet little world. I wonder how long that might last.

***

Some silly artwork on a serious day. I drew these last night, just to goof off for a bit. The little witch reminds me of Cass.

Ugly toons, drawn 10 September 2006

The news was a bit of a shock this morning. Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, died from a sting ray barb to the heart yesterday while filming a documentary off the Great Barrier Reef.

I have to admit, this makes me more than a little sad. I’ve always admired this guy. He seemed like such a goof, but he really lived an amazing life. He was a man who knew what he wanted to do and he went out and did it. How many of us can say that?

It’s tragic that he died so young. Some might say he had it coming because of all the dangerous things he did – catching crocodiles, working with poisonous snakes, etc. But keep in mind anyone could die at any time. Is it really so bad that he died doing what he loved doing best? True, he left behind a wife and two small children, but this man could just as easily been hit by a bus yesterday as he could have been killed by a sting ray barb.

Everybody dies, but not everybody truly lives. I can’t remember who said that, but I do think Steve Irwin is one of the folks who grabbed life by the balls and lived it to its fullest. I’m sorry for his wife and kids, but I’m certain they have no regrets for him, just as I’m certain they’ll carry on by living their lives with the same kind of gusto Steve had. I wish we could all live our lives that way.

Here’s some artwork from this weekend. It’s another work in progress, and I’ll post the finished piece when it’s done. The character is inspired by a fairy tale about seven brothers who were transformed into swans by their wicked step-mother. Their sister changed them back by weaving each brother a coat out of nettles, but the coat for the youngest lacked a sleeve, so he was left with one wing in place of an arm.

The Swan Prince, WIP – 03 Sep 2006