How my therapy makes me feel pretty

  This is how a neck should look, apparently.           

       This is kinda what my neck looks like due to that stupid accident.

Which is why I was in severe and constant pain for almost 3 weeks and my right arm was in constant dance mode. My arm still jumps every once in a while and my neck still gets fatigued and a little sore but I am getting stronger. I even ran a couple miles on my treadmill with success. I think I am almost all the way back.

Therapy is down right redonkulous but necessary and I have graduated from 5 days in the Dr.’s office to 3 days a week. I still have to do my exercises/stretches/whatever you wanna call them twice everyday.  It’s getting harder to want to do them morning and night if it weren’t for the fact that they make me feel so pretty and I will show you why.

My Dr. uses the Pettibon System to realign the spine to it’s correct curves and angles. When he first said “Pettibon System” I immediately heard Bill Murray singing his famous “Star Wars Theme Song” And then thought -----“In a galaxy far, far away in the Pettibon System, inhabitants walked with perfect posture. The Empire was angered by this seeings how the Emperor is really slouchy and Darth Vader has to wear a big plastic suit just breathe and survive. The Empire plans to strike this system not with the Death Star and Storm troopers, nay, not even with a Sithe Lord, but with hover craft accidents and horrible office chairs. Will the Republic be able to save this peaceful and erect civilization from pinched nerves and the dreaded slouch?”

Anyway----- I had the pleasure of buying some of the torture devices for personal use at home. I am pretty sure that Chiropractors looked through a text book of medieval torture devices, tested them out and said, yes this will fix your spine!! Although I joke about it, I do believe in the Gospel of Chiropractic, I just find the practices to be a little crazy looking.

So here’s what I do twice a day(the way I talked myself into it today was to take pictures of myself doing it to show off my mad skillz in taking torture):

We start with a good lynching right in my hallway. 20 times.

 

 

 

 

 

I then get to be a queen with my weighted crown of power, my weighted sash of wisdom and my posture strap of beauty. I think it really accentuates the positive and I’m totally bringing sexy back. I wear this as long as possible. I’m up 15 minutes.

 

 

 

 

 

What’s this you ask? Oh this is the fun “Recurve”. I’m pretty sure this was used at Gitmo. All that’s missing here is watering dripping or being dumped on my face.

 

 

 

 

I lay my neck on the top foam bar and with that bottom one, I strap my head down. I lay on this for as long as possible without vomiting or passing out or both. I’m up to 11 minutes and I’ve even fallen asleep on it, twice. Maybe that just means I should be going to bed before 1AM.

As you may have guessed, this takes me almost an hour to do. I’ve tried reading, talking on the phone and watching TV upside down. All work well but I’d much rather just remain slouched all comfy like into my couch. It takes about 30 minutes at the very least to talk myself into doing it every time. But when I finally do it, I just lurve every second of it.

Don’t you just love therapy??

Confessional with Glamazon

It’s that time again. Time to let it all out. Kinda like going without a bra. Not that I EVER do that! That just wouldn’t be appropriate….

I confess:

• I often wonder why women wear shoes they cannot even walk in.
• I don’t care how rockin the shoe is. If they make you wobble with or without assistance-DO NOT WEAR THEM!!!
• On the way to The Pit of Despair my doctor’s office, I pass a billboard that says, “Can I kiss someone with Chlamydia?”
• I am so not kidding.
• I think the real question is would you really want to??
• I think that’s a little like saying, “can I kiss someone with a big gaping sore on their mouth?” or “Should I use the toilet paper I found on the public bathroom floor?”
• I’m just sayin.
• I forgot to put on deodorant today.
• I think I’m still okay.
• I checked.
• I think my flat iron died today.
• So I tried using my clothes iron.
• Man, that thing sucks!
• It takes me about 2 hours to wake up in the morning.
• It takes my children about .002 seconds to wake up.
• I have been known to call my home phone with my cell phone from my bed to tell my 8 year old she needs to get ready for school.
• I realized all the amazing jobs (not that I am really looking for one) I can get with my Associate's degree are pretty much all the same ones I could get BEFORE I got my Associate’s degree.
• Actually, the thought of actually getting a job makes me throw up a little in my mouth.
• I’m such a beach bum!
• With no beach.
• Unless you count the Great Salt Lake beach.
• But would you really want to??

Now go check out Glamazon and all the other confessions she induced with her coolness!

Personality take over

I am a Yellow.

Anyone who knows me would read that statement and say, “ummm…duh!”

I feel like I was getting some grasp of it the past few years until recently. Now all I think about is what will entertain me the most. Obviously, house work is not on that list. I have a couple of friends who call housework their ‘hobby’. It makes me want to vomit. I am pretty sure there is something wrong with them. I am still like my 8 year old, whining at the expectation of cleaning up after myself and everyone else.

Somewhere along the way I have lost any balance of Blue, Red(there wasn’t much there to begin with!!) and White and now the clown in me is completely taking over. I don’t think it helps that I am coming back from an injury that has left me inactive for weeks (man, I miss my endorphins!!)and having post-graduation depression (what do I do now??) and probably a bit(a bit?? Really??) of ADD thrown in for fun. The biggest chore I seem to be capable of handling is picking out the next movie to watch, what I should do on my wicked cool laptop or picking up the 900 page book we’re reading for book club (David Copperfield).

I gotta lie down just thinking about that To Do List.

I want to be the primo entertainer but I seem to have nothing on that front. I think my mojo really is broken! Anyone know a good mojo doctor?? Do you have any idea what it is like for a “Yellow” to have broken their laugh maker box?? You may as well call in Dr. Kevorkian at that point!

So here I am, hiding in my house doing the occasional load of laundry or dishes trying to come up with a good joke or wondering when it’s okay to start watching something on my beloved Netflix.

Not exactly how I saw the end of school being for me, but there it is.

I feel like I need to reboot my system and I really don’t know how! I felt like I was trying to before the stupid little accident and now I can’t remember how to do it or something. I kinda thought the accident was my reboot in a weird back handed kind of way. I saw it as my Heavenly Father saying to me, “You want something to cry about? I’ll give you something to cry about!” And I mean that with no disrespect. I mean He just gave me something to really think about. Something relevant. And I’m thinking there is something to learn from all this and I just can’t seem to get it! I just want to do what I want to do and everything else gets in the way!

Seriously! Am I 10??

I wonder if it’s safe for me to have the keys to the car and a debit card… I may end up in Tahiti with ElRey wondering who is going to pick the kids up from school!

I’ll pick you up on the way if you promise not to tell….

So here’s where you guys, my blogger buddies, come in handy. First, I want to know your color personality, if you know it. How do you keep yourself balanced? And how can I reboot my system without running away from my life in search of the next Fun Bus out of here. I’m sick of being in this limbotic (I totally made that word up) state and it may take a freaking miracle to get me out! I’m talking about a shirtless Bob Harper intervention kind of miracle, people!

I know the only person that can make things better in my freakishly big head (I mean literal size, not ego…though it may apply) is me but I just can’t seem to really grasp that for some reason. Maybe my “On” button malfunctioned. Anyone know how to fix it? Or better yet want to fix it for me?? I got a bunch of movies in my Instant View list I gotta catch up on. So just let me know when you got it working again. Thanks a bunch! :)

Movin’ on up

Every town or area was their ‘good’ part of town and their ‘bring your mace and lock the doors’ part of town. Whether this is a misconception of the naive or very real it doesn’t matter, it’s there. I grew up in a part of the Salt Lake valley where anything passed State Street was ‘way out west’ and not somewhere we’d go unless forced to. And Redwood Rd was just beyond BFE! Why would I go all the way out there?? Well, now Redwood Rd is a well travelled road for me and I live West of it *gasp*. I have come to realize the stigma of the west side was mostly a misconception. Yes, there are more homes out here with 3 or 4 cars parked on or around their property and 2 of them don’t work or are missing tires, one of them being parked on the grass and I have learned to never go to my local Wal-Mart at 11 o’clock on a Friday night because this is when many people in this area decide to take all 5 small kids for a fun filled trip to the happiest place on earth and too many tramp stamps on women who go by the name ‘Grandma’. But there are also beautiful parks, shopping areas, wonderful schools and great people and neighbors that go along with all that.

The funny thing about my neighborhood is that it is the opposite. It’s two subdivisions divided by a semi-major cross street. The West side of it is the nicer, newer area while the East side (our side) is the older, smaller and quirkier side. The West side has more homes where the lawn is mowed on a  regular basis, cars are actually parked in garages or at least driveways with enough actual parking spaces for the amount of cars the family owns and children actually play in yards, not the street. My beloved East side area has cars, and the occasional freaking RV, parked on the narrow street with men actually working on their car IN THE STREET, that only one car can drive down at a time, with the dillhole skateboarders taking up the middle of the road with their sport, small children wandering the neighborhood aimlessly without a parent in sight and graffiti painted across someone’s fence.

Don’t get me wrong, I have great neighbors! Some of the best in the world! I wouldn’t still be here if it weren’t for the economic downturn if I was truly worried for my family’s safety. It just so happens there is apparently a few buttwipes in the neighborhood that want to taint our little area. There are times when I wish I could just pick up and leave, buy some real land and build my dream home. I may not be able to do that for my family at this point but I can do it for this part of my family:

If you are relatively new to this blog, you may not know about these lovely ladies and our adventures of adding them to our backyard. It started here, here, here and here.

Well, these lucky ladies are moving on up to the Upper East side…of our backyard… They had a lovely home that ElRey built but in our attempts at making their space wider, drier and stop feeding millions of birds within a 10 mile radius, it slowly turned into this mess:

This happened after they moved but it wasn’t looking good over there. Which is why ElRey transplanted their coop over here:

We have that old shed that we don’t use so he attached the coop he made from scratch to it and turned it into some high end real estate for our egg laying sweeties. They seem very content in their new area and it looks better, too!

So while I may have to put up with the occasional graffiti, hoodlums and tramp stamps, I know I can handle it because I have some of the greatest neighbors on earth AND my chickens are the luckiest birds on the block!

Now, as long as they don’t go and get some crazy tramp stamps we’ll be great neighbors for a long time!

All is Well

As I look back at this post, I feel embarrassed. Not to say that my pain wasn’t real or relevant but that it is minor compared with what so many people are going through. So if you are one of the people out there suffering with chronic pain, cancer or any other very real physical trial, forgive me for whining. I got on that night just to say “hey, I may not be around for a bit because I got an owie, so I’ll be back when I can sit up straight” but when I got on,it was late and I couldn’t sleep because of the pain (imagine your head begin slowly severed from your body from the inside out….yeah, it was like that…) and just couldn’t see straight because of it and it all came out like “wah, wah, wah!” Again, I’m not saying it wasn’t real, it was very real and very awful! To the point of having rather crazy ideas of how to get some relief. But I seem to be on the other side of it, hallelujah! My doctor said it’s going to be up and down but I have a feeling the worst is behind me. I hope. Maybe some time soon, I’ll show you how awesome my therapy is and why I refer to it as “The Pit of Despair” (you know, from “Princess Bride”??). But for now, I need a break from it so let’s talk about something else.

On to awesomer things. Along with finding a will to live again, I have had some other great things happening. I actually finished up school with all of this and even came out with A’s! I haven’t gotten my math grade yet but I’m pretty sure it’ll be an A, so everyone get your food storage ready, do any repenting and look to the East, He may be coming soon!! It feels very strange to be done with all that for now! I really don’t know what I’ll do with myself! Probably read 5 books a week instead of 3 and blog more often than a couple times a month, I hope. Oh yeah, and maybe clean sometimes. And do stuff with my kids.

This happened, too:

Yup, I got Associated! And I’m hot. I survived the verrrrry loooong graduation ceremony, which I wasn’t sure I would be able to do, although this is how I felt after the 4 hour event:

Ignore the hideous shoes. I know, it’s hard. I can’t ignore them either. They are horrible but I was standing for 3 of those hours, so glad I wore them! Even though it was long and uncomfortable I was glad I went and walked. It just reminded me of what I have accomplished so far and that I really can achieve my academic goals. As we were standing outside, waiting to go in the arena, the faculty walked by us to lead us in. As they walked by I got all teary eyed and had the clear thought as though someone whispered it to me, “That will be you one day.” I was so empowered by that and excited for what is in store.

My parents took us to lunch afterwards and then that night we had a celebration with my family. I knew ElRey had gotten me something but honestly, I thought it was going to be a dress or something. No, he had all my brothers and my parents help, along with the assistance of his awesome sister, in getting me this:

So guess how I started my day on Saturday. That’s right, I watched Jim Gaffigan on Netflix on my laptop. In my bed. In my undies. The way God intended. Yeah, I’m totally using this puppy for important stuff.

Seriously, though! I couldn’t believe that ElRey and my family won my Give away from the beginning of April! They are so lucky! And so am I!!

Yup, things are looking up, way up! Is it wrong to sleep with my laptop??

Oh, and I will now be signing all documents as Ass. Mindi.

Why I Love My Mother

My mother is a special woman for many reasons. She is all that I want to be and yet never will be. I thought it would be fitting to tell you why I think she’s the awesomest woman on earth.

• She is willing to admit her mistakes like plucking all her eyebrows and painting on new ones high enough that she always looked surprised. Or the time she left my brother at the store when he was little.
• She has great taste in men being married to the coolest dude for almost 40 years.
• Never once has she said “that’s a bad idea”. Unless the idea was to get a perm or date that guy who had an obsession with my belly button and always brought up the importance of Unions for the working man or eating a whole bag of Oreos.
• She taught me that beauty wasn’t about how much make up you wore, or having all the right clothes, it was about who you are and how you make the people around you feel.
• She does a killer Shirley Temple impression.
• She comes to my aide  almost every time I call her crying.
• She has a hard time remembering movie titles so she makes up her own. It often involves a strange form of Charades with sound effects. Some favorites? “Indian, Wolf, Man and Solider” (Dances with Wolves) or “The Stone” (The Rock).
• She loves me through my bad decisions and cheers me on in my accomplishments, big and small.
• She laughs at all my jokes. Even the bad ones.
• She always knew amazing homeopathic cure all’s that no one else on earth knew about. When I was a child, I would not sleep under my covers because I was lazy enough, I didn’t want to make my bed in the morning. This drove my mom nuts! I also had reoccurring leg aches that would often keep my awake at night. My mom finally told me that my leg aches came from sleeping over my covers. Hook. Line. And sinker. I had to start making my bed.
• My mom showed the world that you can have 5 boys and 1 girl and survive to tell the tale.
• She is the best grandmother on the planet! The only thing lacking is grandchildren sleepovers at grandma’s at least once a month! 
• Lastly, she tells me on a regular basis that I really am the favorite child. Sorry, bros.

I truly am blessed with one of the greatest moms on earth! I love you, mom! You are everything I wish I could be! I think I stole that line from Bette Midler, but it’s just as true for me! Thanks for being my mom!