Quivering Palm
On Saturday, I had something going on with my back. I was on my feet for eight hours and about three hours in, my back started cramping up. The cramps were there, but they don't really stop you from doing anything - not that I could have just stopped in the middle of a work day and laid down - they're just uncomfortable. So I persevered.
Since my back muscles weren't pulling their weight, I started to get a grinding sensation in my spine and hips. Nothing dreadful, just a hey-that's-not-supposed-to-happen feeling. Work done, I headed home and laid down on the bed.
Carol offered assistance, asking if there was any part of my back that needed rubbing. I'm not one for massages, labouring under the belief that it is my knots and tensions that keep me upright and cranky enough to get anything done. The flow of massages in our house is definitely away from me, what with rubbing Carol's feet and the cats; and in kind of a perpetual loop between Carol and the cats where they both knead each other when the other is trying to sleep.
I'm unable to receive foot massages on account of giggling and squirming like a four year old whenever anyone touches my feet. Back massages are more dignified, but tend to devolve into me grunt-bellowing when they actually work. I would submit in this case, however, because I believed that my careful macrame arrangement of tense muscles might be unravelling at the expense of joints and tendons.
Carol has a bone spur on her hand. Very small, not obtrusive: a bony lump near the wrist at the heel of her hand. My guess is that it is some violin related deformity, maybe not. I could check her cello-playing twin's hand and test that hypothesis, I suppose.
Anyway, having agreed to let her rearrange the various tetris-blocks that make up my back, she placed her hand on my right side and pressed. Her bone spur sunk into a tender spot amongst the cramping muscles and stayed there as all the breath left my lungs. I was entirely incapable of breathing, or so it felt. This single soft spot apparently held the key to all my problems as all the muscles that had been protesting shut the hell up and calmed down. "Keep it there!" I wheezed. It turns out I could breathe, it just didn't register that I was breathing at all.
The whole rest of the weekend, my back was totally fine, not a twinge out of it.
Now if I'm remembering the artistic contributions of Jean-Claude Van Damme to the world of cinema correctly, the Touch of Death... or Dim Mak... is the practice focusing one's Qi energy into a single touch that can render an opponent helpless, paralysed or dead. Which leaves me a little worried that Carol's bone spur is, in fact, some kind of martial arts superweapon... I'm remembering, in particular that Carol picked up a glass to toast at Amber and Mark's wedding and it exploded in her hand... accident, or did an inadvertent Quivering Palm claim another victim?
Above: A guy pretending to know how to do that nonsense.
So if Carol ever offers you a massage, be sure to specify "Relaxed, but not actually dead."
Since my back muscles weren't pulling their weight, I started to get a grinding sensation in my spine and hips. Nothing dreadful, just a hey-that's-not-supposed-to-happen feeling. Work done, I headed home and laid down on the bed.
Carol offered assistance, asking if there was any part of my back that needed rubbing. I'm not one for massages, labouring under the belief that it is my knots and tensions that keep me upright and cranky enough to get anything done. The flow of massages in our house is definitely away from me, what with rubbing Carol's feet and the cats; and in kind of a perpetual loop between Carol and the cats where they both knead each other when the other is trying to sleep.
I'm unable to receive foot massages on account of giggling and squirming like a four year old whenever anyone touches my feet. Back massages are more dignified, but tend to devolve into me grunt-bellowing when they actually work. I would submit in this case, however, because I believed that my careful macrame arrangement of tense muscles might be unravelling at the expense of joints and tendons.
Carol has a bone spur on her hand. Very small, not obtrusive: a bony lump near the wrist at the heel of her hand. My guess is that it is some violin related deformity, maybe not. I could check her cello-playing twin's hand and test that hypothesis, I suppose.
Anyway, having agreed to let her rearrange the various tetris-blocks that make up my back, she placed her hand on my right side and pressed. Her bone spur sunk into a tender spot amongst the cramping muscles and stayed there as all the breath left my lungs. I was entirely incapable of breathing, or so it felt. This single soft spot apparently held the key to all my problems as all the muscles that had been protesting shut the hell up and calmed down. "Keep it there!" I wheezed. It turns out I could breathe, it just didn't register that I was breathing at all.
The whole rest of the weekend, my back was totally fine, not a twinge out of it.
Now if I'm remembering the artistic contributions of Jean-Claude Van Damme to the world of cinema correctly, the Touch of Death... or Dim Mak... is the practice focusing one's Qi energy into a single touch that can render an opponent helpless, paralysed or dead. Which leaves me a little worried that Carol's bone spur is, in fact, some kind of martial arts superweapon... I'm remembering, in particular that Carol picked up a glass to toast at Amber and Mark's wedding and it exploded in her hand... accident, or did an inadvertent Quivering Palm claim another victim?
Above: A guy pretending to know how to do that nonsense.
So if Carol ever offers you a massage, be sure to specify "Relaxed, but not actually dead."