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2009-07-02 - 3:04 p.m.

..backs...trees...apple hats...

Today has involved another appointment with Estelle, my miracle worker of a massage therapist. Following our trip to Europe, my back was in awful shape. I started going to a massage therapy clinic.

The first therapist noted that my spine was out of alignment. She pushed it back into shape, and cranked her knuckles down into my muscles. I came away with visible bruises on my back.

The next time, I saw Estelle. She checked out my pelvis and said, "Oh!" She ascertained that the right side was tilted forward and down, and the left side was rotated inward. "No wonder you have back pain!" she said. She persuaded the respective sides to move back into place.

In the past two weeks I've noticed some aches in my lower back, but I've also been much more able. I lift Susi with relative ease, and I don't feel debilitated. Yesterday, K and I walked about 12 km. Today I have lower back pain, but I'm still functioning well - especially after this morning's visit with Estelle. I just need to get in some more stretching, and some more core exercises.

***

And speaking of 'core' exercise. I arrived at work just in time to bound out into the forest with my new student and another student in forestry, in order to core trees. My new student is going to do some stable isotope analysis on tree rings, to see if we can measure changes in the trees in years with strong pineapple express storms. We went out and cored an alder and a cedar. We will go back tomorrow to do a douglas fir, a hemlock, and a sugar maple. If it works, we hope that we can reconstruct a 400-year record of storms hitting the Pacific Northwest. The whole idea fall firmly under the "way-cool" adjective in my book. It was fun to get out of the office, although I wound up serving as a very nice lunch for a bunch of mosquitoes.

***

Susi is almost 18 months old now - just another two weeks. And she's starting to take on characteristics of independence. She wants to feed herself entirely by herself, with her spoon. And now, she is becoming selective about clothing. There are some tops she clearly doesn't wish to wear, and some shoes wind up pitched on the floor within seconds of touching her heels. But she is most opinionated about hats. She likes them, which is great, because she is a hat person.

Interestingly enough, her favorite hat is a red cotton-knit hat from Harri3tspy, with a cute little stem on the top. She's our little apple (which is also quite good, because "apple" is one of her favorite words. and foods.) She wears the hat with everything. Everything. Of course, most baby girl's clothing doesn't really GO with red...and most SUMMER clothing looks a bit odd with a winter hat. So sometimes I feel like announcing to the people on the street who are smiling quietly to themselves, "I didn't dress her! She won't take the hat off!" But oh well. The hat makes her very very happy. Why mess with that??

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...they are just words, Suzi... - 2011-08-29
...the nature of doing science... - 2011-07-22
....what is your place knowledge? - 2011-07-21
...it's Friday... - 2011-07-15
...a small ripple on the big wave... - 2011-02-04

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