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stinky patch // 2003-08-29

my week has been uneventfully eventful. biked 46 miles with my mum on sunday, blah blah blah, cleaned out much of the closet on monday, blah blah blah. went for my first super-slow weight lifting workout at c's gym on tuesday and woefully hurt my back. blargh. i tried to wait it out for a day, but that pain has been unbearable, so yesterday i called my acupuncturist and got in for a blissful and strange appointment.

she first had me sit there my hands on a pillow and put a needle in the top of my head, and a couple in each hand. then she had me stand up and continually reach down to the ground as far as my pitiful back would allow with my arms dangling and come back up again. the whole while she was slapping my lower back with her palms in the most pleasing and wonderful way possible. after a few minutes i could stretch farther and it wasn't so agonizing. then she had me do a kind of hula move to stretch my hips out and get the qi flowing. she then took out the needles had me take off my skirt and lay face up on the table. she put in some more needles--including one just above my upper lip... strange--and moved my legs around for me, bending each one up to my chest and then pulling each one out straight as far as it would go. up and down, up and down. she finished by shaking both my legs for a minute until everything was loose.

so, i got up from the table, bent and stretched a few more times, this time more loosely, and she put a patch with a small metal nub under it on my upper right ear to push into the right point when my back hurt after i left. then she took some herbed-up sticky patches and placed them on my lower back, which made me quite fragrant. even more smelly, in fact, than the lilies that anika brought over the other day. stinky but delicious!

i am going back for another appointment in about an hour. i hope there's more slapping. it's a good thing all this works, seeing as how i'll be studying this shit when the fall quarter starts four weeks from now. see, i admit that i'm just a tiny bit skeptical, which i suppose is healthy. right?

in the midst of this whole back pain fiasco, though, i managed to make it to ikea with c to get the goods for my new office, which i created in a cleared out hole in the back closet. this is my dream office, what i've always wanted and now desperately needed for my upcoming schooling and for the freelance work i've been doing. take a peek here. isn't it lovely the way the desk matches the ibook? sigh...

and p.s., does no one want to answer my questions? do you think they'll be boring? or perhaps you've already done this already?

before // after