portents

Every time I'm writing something that proves significant in my life, I end up hurting my eyes or hands. It’s never on purpose, but evidently my subconscious plots against my progress. When I was working on my master’s thesis proposal, which ended up as part of my PhD writing samples, I managed to accidentally pour contact cleanser into my right eye instead of saline solution. That put me back in my glasses for a week. That same semester, I was working on a seminar paper that also became a writing sample, and I burned my fingertips right when I needed to be typing the most.

Since then, I've become accustomed to such things to the point that they don’t really stick in my memory. But these past two weeks, I’ve been working on what might become my first published article. It’s certainly the first article anyone has invited me to write based on a conference presentation. Last week, I managed to run into a doorjamb and whack my left pinkie, which is still vaguely unhappy. And earlier this week I somehow slept on my eyelids wrong, with the end result being that I woke up with my eyelids more or less turned inside out and one eye pressed directly against the cotton pillowcase. Much unhappiness and grossness has ensued.

(This also explains why I only went swimming on Tuesday this week. There’s no way I’m getting chlorine in that unhappy eye.)

I’m choosing to believe that maybe all this nonsense means that this piece of writing will also prove significant for me. We’ll find out.

some days, you surprise yourself

Today I swam for 30 minutes without stopping, 14 full laps. It was an awesome swim, and I just never felt like taking a break, so I didn't. I alternated crawl and my funky, wildly inefficient backstroke.

I don't really understand why I was able to go almost double my previous distance without the breaks that I was taking before, but I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth either. I had protein for breakfast instead of yogurt and fruit, so that's one thing that was different. And it suddenly occurred to me to make sure I was breathing all the way through, which is, you know, helpful. And I was burning off energy from a concert last night.

Whatever. It was awesome.

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Also swam Wednesday (30 minutes, not sure how many laps — 6?) and today (7). Would have gone further, but for the fact that I bruised the hell out of my left pinky and the resistance irritates it, and I need the finger to type the article that's due in 10 days.

I ordered goggles. It was time.

In other news, all the lab results came back and it turns out that I’m healthy. My cholesterol has dropped 45 points since we moved three years ago, down to 161. Blood pressure is good, blood sugar is good. No thyroid problems, no elevated hormones. That still doesn't explain the joint tenderness and general fatigue, so I need to have more blood drawn for more tests, but there's nothing Big and Systemic the matter.