I got the results of my MRI. My doctor thinks it may be a stress fracture of one of my ribs. Apparently, this is an extremely rare injury that is usually seen with pitchers and elite rowers. And perhaps moms of 2-year-olds? The treatment is simple, really. Don’t use my right arm more than necessary for the next 6-8 weeks and all should be well.

That night after my doctor appointment, I pondered whether what she was seeing on the MRI was a stress fracture or if it might have been the end result of my fractured back when I was 16. It’s along my spine, and I guess the whiteness of the MRI shows that something’s not quite right there. I know I should call my doctor to clarify, but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

In the meantime, I’m breaking rules. I signed up for a BodySculpt program at a local martial arts gym. It’s five days a week of butt kicking. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we do some sort of aerobic activity – kickboxing, stick fighting, etc. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we do strength training. It’s an 8-week program, and I’m really curious to see what I’ll get out of it.

I am being relatively gentle with my right arm. I’m doing a bit more shadow boxing and such, but I’ll be honest. The cardio part of the program, even with jabs and sticks and stuff, hasn’t caused me any discomfort. The strength training, however, hurts a bit more. I think I’ll just have to modify a little bit here and there to make sure I don’t exacerbate whatever is wrong.

The big drawback of the program is that class is at 6:30am. I’m getting up at 5:30am every morning to allow enough time to get a little breakfast and get myself to class. I’m also not getting home from rehearsal until 10:30pm, so it’s causing be a bit of discomfort since I’m tending to get to sleep by 11:30. I’m so very tired! I’m hoping to work out my schedule so I fit in a nap every day. That’s the only way I think I’ll make it.

This morning, I thought about withdrawing. I figured, “Hey, my back can’t handle this.” Then, I realized my back wasn’t actually causing me any problems. I was just feeling tired and looking for a reason to bail. Short of my doctor telling me to get out or any obvious pain coming from the experience, I don’t think I can or should use my back as an excuse. I can work with it, but I think I’ll harm myself more by remaining stagnant at this point.

This morning was our fit test. We’ll do another test at 4 weeks and a third one at 8 weeks. I’m looking forward to seeing my progress. I’ll share my measurements when I get them this weekend. Until then, here are my fit test results. I think these are all counts for 1 minute.

Triple-Kicks (kick bag sideways-tap foot down-kick bag sideways-tap foot down-kick bag sideways-switch): 20
Skip Knees (think running man with knees going into a standing bag): 70
Push-ups: 0 (to be fair, these had to be straight leg, all the way down and up. Lots of room to improve!)
Sit-ups: 24

I’ll check back in 4 weeks from now when we do our next test.

Today, I have had one of my most trying days with River. She has been exerting her independence in everything she’s done. “I want to wear my purple diaper! No, I want to wear underpants! No, purple diaper! Underpants! Diaper!” AAAARGH! Then there was the shoe debacle. She wanted the orange shoes, but threw a fit as soon as I went to put them on. Then it was the purple shoes, until I tried to put them on. We eventually got the orange shoes on, but it was a challenge.

Also on the list of “fun” today, she figured out how to climb out of her crib. We’ve been using it as a time out zone. It was super easy because she didn’t like to be in there, but couldn’t get out. No more. I put her in time out this morning, and shortly after I walked away, she was standing in the hallway telling me she climbed out. We even took a video this evening to show her in all her escape-artist glory.

Then I found her climbing on top of her riding ladybug to try to unlock the front door to go out on the porch. She hadn’t figured it out yet, but she’s obviously on the cusp of discovery. It would be fascinating if it weren’t so daunting!

On the nicer milestone front, River drew an excellent likeness of her daddy in his father’s day card. I’ll see if we can scan it in. She drew his head, body, legs and arms. Then she added a shirt, pants, hat and shoes. I helped her decide what to draw, but she did the actual artwork on her own. I think Doug enjoyed it quite a bit.

Well, the orthopedist is stumped re: my back. She says it sounds like it’s muscular, but that it should be getting better if so. Once they receive authorization, they’ll be scheduling me for an MRI to see if anything else might be causing my issues. I’ve been off anti-inflammatories for a little over a week without too much difference… or so I thought. I had a little bit of a headache tonight, so I took some Advil. My back is the least pained it has been for quite some time. I’m not sure if it’s the combo of me doing more of my physical therapy exercises over the past week or so and the drugs, or what. I’m going to continue with Advil for the next few days and see if the improvement continues.

Fingers crossed that I’ve turned a corner and am going to be rid of this pain for good. I’m so tired of not being able to breath and move properly.

Tickets for Utopia, Ltd go on sale June 16th. The prices will range from $12-$32 for the general public. I can potentially save you up to $4 per ticket if I buy them at our cast members price. I’m hoping to submit an order later this week, so let me know if you’d like me to pick you up a ticket. I need to know which date/time and how many tickets you want. I’ll take money via PayPal or as soon as you have a chance to see me in person.

The show is at the Bagley Wright Theatre in Seattle July 10-11, 16-18, 23-25 at 7:30pm and July 11, 18 and 25 at 2:00pm. I hope to see a lot of you there. We do have a guest room if anyone wants to come up or down for a visit along with seeing the show. It should be hilarious and ridiculous.

It got away from me. In my head, my last update was the day before yesterday. Wrong! It’s been a couple of days now, and I totally spaced doing an update. I just get caught up in doing other things. Or I get lazy? I’m not sure what prevents me from updating, but here I am!

On the River front, we just finished up our first session of swimming lessons. She has taken to the water quite well. Some days she hates to go under, and others she just goes with it. Her favorite thing to do is jump from the side of the pool, although I think she prefers sitting and sliding off her bum into the water. After the first couple of weeks, she started pushing away from me when we’re in the water. She hasn’t figured out just yet that pushing away = possible drowning, but we’re working on making that less of a possibility.

She received a little progress report at the end of the lesson, and the teacher said she is ready for the Advanced Tots class. I don’t think they actually have one, but it makes me proud that she’s already learned the basic things she needs to know. She goes under water well, reaches to the wall, kicks and even blows bubbles (sometimes… still working on that one). She can jump in from standing as well as sitting, although she sometimes plays “timber” rather than jumping. Someday she’s going to do a killer belly flop and change her mind about her approach.

Swimming has been fantastic. It’s fun to have her in the water. It’s fun to see what other kids are doing. It’s fun to be there with Mindi and Mary Kate… and their kids of course. I really enjoy it, and am looking forward to the next session in a couple of weeks.

This morning I went to physical therapy for my shoulder/back. I’ve been going for about four weeks now, and sadly am not seeing much, if any, progress. I’ve scheduled a follow-up appointment with the orthopedic doc to see if we can figure out just what’s going on and why it’s not feeling any better.

At today’s PT session, she did something just so that caused a flare up. I couldn’t breath for a few moments because it was hurting so much. By the end with some ice, things had calmed down quite a bit, but it was disheartening to have such a strong reaction after all this work. I guess on the plus side it happened while she was there, so she can get a clearer picture of what’s hurting and what causes it.

Hopefully, I’ll get some useful information next week when I have my follow-up. It’s just really frustrating to continue feeling this small pain. I guess part of me thought maybe something would happen and all of a sudden it would stop hurting. No such luck. Plus, it always makes me feel like a whiner to complain about something so small when other people are in there with major injuries they are trying to recover from. I know that’s silly. I shouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life not breathing deeply because I feel guilty for some reason. Still, an irrational part of me feels like I should just suck it up and deal. Thankfully, that side is not winning the argument.

We have a busy weekend ahead starting with a birthday celebration tonight and another tomorrow (while I’m at rehearsal… boo!). Tomorrow night, I’m going to my first ever Sounders game. Carla needed a date, and I was very happy to oblige. I’ll do my best to give you an update on my impressions of the game. Apparently, we’ll be in the “free food” section where we get to eat crap all night. Mwahahah! That won’t help my diet any, but it’ll be fun! I’ll try to limit my intake.

I also have Book Club on Sunday. We’re discussing Riptide by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. It’s a fantastic book that I find hard to describe. I mean, it’s about pirates sort of. It’s about greed. It has a little romance. It’s adventurous and interesting. I really enjoyed it and heartily recommend it to others. My copy is currently visiting Carla, but I’m happy to pass it along once she’s done.

Time to get up off my bum and play with River. She’s doing just fine without me, but I feel bad if I let her play alone too long. She’s taken to playing with her Elmo, telling stories right along with him. In fact, she uses the same inflection and timing. It’s pretty cute! Hopefully she doesn’t learn Elmo’s sentence structure, too.