Putting My Feet Up

"He shifted his weight from foot to foot,

but it was equally uncomfortable on each."

-- Douglas Adams, 

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Turkey feet 12-2-14

"Putting your feet up for just ten minutes a day can help."

-- Tania Alexander, 

"Ten Steps to Healthy Legs," dailymail.co.uk

My feet hurt a lot.

I don't exactly know why, but they do.

A couple of times a day (sometimes several times), I elevate my feet and ice them to knock down the discomfort. (We have more ice and ice packs in our freezer than we do frozen food.)

Anyway, putting my feet up helps.

Some.

For a while.

But the pain always comes back.

Yesterday I went out to the shed for a shovel, and when I opened the door I got a face full of severed turkey feet tied to a hunk of two-by-four sitting on the shelf.

Gross, I know.

But it got me thinking, dreamily, of taking my feet off when they're especially bothersome. You know, if I could just detach them right above the ankles and put them up on a shelf, say, overnight, so I wouldn't have to sleep with ice packs wrapped around my feet all the time. That way, when I put my feet up, I'd really be putting them up.

Although I guess having detachable feet didn't work out so well for the turkey. Because it's dead now.

Oh well. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Maria's Thumbs

"If you're feeling out of kilter,

don't know what or where,

find the sore spot and work it out."

-- Eunice D. Ingham

My footprints, with thumbprints 5-23-14

If you are lucky enough to have a good massage therapist, then you have a good thing.

If you are lucky enough to have a good massage therapist who is also skilled at Reflexology foot massage, well, then I don't even have to tell you what a good thing you have, because you already know it full well.

Maria, my massage therapist is all of the above.

I struggle periodically with some chronic health problems that nobody seems to know what to do with. But Maria can take one look at my face, and then get to work on my feet, and the problem at hand. 

She did it yesterday. She didn't fix the problems, but she was able to temporarily relieve my pain so that I could catch my breath for at least a little while, and that was all I could ask for.

Reflexology is more than just foot massage. It's the art of applying very specific types of pressure to very specific points on the feet that correspond to different parts of the body. So by working her thumbs across my soles, toes, ankles, etc., Maria can trigger a healing response in my stomach, my eyes, my liver, my intestines, my lungs, my shoulders, my hips, my sinuses ... pretty much anyplace.

And I don't even have to tell her where it hurts. Her deft little thumbs are like super-sleuths that search my feet for clues and apprehend the little culprits that are causing all the trouble.

There are nay-sayers out there who pooh-pooh Reflexology as hocus-pocus, or pseudoscience, or a psychosomatic placebo. Frankly, I don't give a fuck what they think. Science has failed me time and time again with its pills and potions and practices, which quite often have unpleasant side-effects that leave me feeling even worse than before. In fact, Maria's had to get me over reactions to medications that were supposed to "help."

Pooh-pooh if you want.

But I'm a believer -- in Maria's thumbs.

They're 2 good things.

A Walk Outside

"No one saves us but ourselves.

No one can and no one may.

We ourselves must walk the path."

-- Guatama Buddha, Sayings of Buddha

Self portrait 3-16-14

"When I'm in turmoil, when I can't think, when I'm exhausted

and afraid and feeling very, very alone, I go for walks ...

I walk and I walk and sooner or later something comes to me,

something to make me feel less like jumping off a building."

-- Jim Butcher, Storm Front

The snow and ice on the sidewalks finally melted, the impassable puddles finally receded, and the Sun finally warmed the air enough for me to take my first walk of the year through my neighborhood. 

Birds were chirping and singing, little boys were bouncing basketballs in driveways, mothers were pushing bundled-up babies in strollers. 

It felt really good.