Sun, Jan 06, 2008
Futon Flip
Posted to Exercise category
Yesterday my exercise was mostly the little bit of snow shovelling I did (good thing I got the path cut through that drift: it's snowing again this morning).
Today my exercise, other than the AM Yoga, was reorganizing my living room sofa, which is a futon. Because the futon is mostly stuffed with cotton, it tends to get packed down over time. The end where I always sit, next to the reading lamp, had become very hollowed out.
This morning I laid the futon frame flat and flipped the futon end for end, so I would be sitting on a part of the mattress that is still puffy. Then the frame didn't want to go back into sofa mode, so I had to drag the mattress off it anyway, reformat it, and drag the mattress back on. I think the problem was partly that the frame was stiff from never being exercised, and partly that I was asking the futon to bend the opposite way from what it was used to.
My hip is complaining a bit at the new state of things, which is probably a good sign. My pelvis is being held at a different angle than it is used to.
I should probably think about buying a new futon mattress and cover some time this year. The frame is metal and only a couple of years old, but the mattress is much older. According to GnuCash, the futon with the original frame was paid for at the end of June 2001, the new frame was at the end of December 2005. (I like having all of my financial records on-line.) One funny thing about the purchases: they were made in the same building, but to two different futon companies.
The original frame, which was wood, literally fell apart one day when I sat down on the sofa. The glue had dried out over the years and when some of the joints fell apart and the platform fell, some of the wooden members broke. Ordinary wood glue is really not designed for this climate.
Another change I made to my environment this weekend was putting another blanket on the waterbed. This tends to make it a little warm for the rest of me (even when I'm not having hot flashes), but this morning I could feel that the left leg was liking the extra warmth. I could feel the knots in my calf and hip, but they didn't tighten into painful cramps as they sometimes have done recently. They almost seemed to be relaxing a little.
I'm beginning to suspect that the one-leg-shorter-than-the-other business is a sign that I should visit a chiropractor. I think that hip needs a more drastic adjustment than Marti can perform. And I suspect the circulation in that leg is not really going to improve while the hip joint if out of position. The odd thing is, I'm not really having any lower back pain, which I would expect if the illeosacral joint was out of whack. Lower back pain usually accompanies the left-leg-too-short symptom and provides the signal that I need one of my rare visits to a chiropractor or physical therapist. I wonder what's going on this time that's different.
The sun's out again, but there are still clouds around the horizon. I think I'm going to do a little shopping before the weather closes in.