Swimming and walking fool

Oh my gosh, walking is hard! How do you people do it?

As I was taking a break from six or eight laps of swimming, my teacher said: How about walking? Actually, it wasn't really a question. I was eager to do it anyway.

With one volunteer under my arm on my left and the other on my right, i walked the 25 yards of the pool. It was really more like marching because then I can see and feel my feet. It was cool.

It was also exhausting. I think I was really grimacing because my teacher, who was watching, asked: Does it hurt? No, I told her, just tough.

Extra tough because I started with about six laps without the flotation belt and with minimal head-holding by volunteers. We wanted to try the hard stuff before I got tired. It worked.

I did some good almost-swimming, although whenever I feel water coming up to my eyes or over my face, I take a deep breath. Of course, it doesn't matter because the volunteer is right there to keep me from going under, but it seems like a dangerous habit.

Man down!

I hate the sidewalks of Falls Church. They are old and cracked and narrow and often have utility poles sticking up in the middle of them.

And that doesn't even mention the curb cuts, or alleged curb cuts. They often start an inch off the road and then they are so steep up to the sidewalk.

Normally, then, I always ride on the street. But today, I got to Little Falls Street on the bike trail and after deciding to come home on Lincoln Avenue, I figured I better get on the sidewalk. Otherwise, my little sister would yell at me.

I got up the curb cut, but as I tried to make it up the steep part of the curb cut to the regular sidewalk, there were issues.

My right wheel bounced off the curb. For a moment I balanced precipitously.

"Man down," I warned Claren, and then the wheelchair and I toppled on to our side into the street.

When I was a sophomore in college, I flipped a friend's car during a high-speed reporting trip down Route 29. We were all fine, but when the car came to rest on its roof in the median, I remember starting to panic because I couldn't undo the seat belt.

Similarly, when I hit the street today, I was trying and trying unsuccessfully to undo my seat belt.

I was still trying when this guy came up behind me and said something soothing and helped me unbuckled my belt and then pulled me away from the chair. His wife/girlfriend was pulling my chair upright and onto the sidewalk.

I was trying to show them how to unlock the engine, so the chair would be easier to move, but the guy would have none of it. Just sit still, we got it, he said. Finally, when the woman was struggling with the chair, he moved to help with it, and he said to the gal: Just help him sit.

Claren was just on the leash this whole time sniffing the helpers.

Even more than trying to unlock the engine, I was trying to pull up my pants. I wasn't quite mooning anyone, but as I was dragged away from the chair my pants started slipping.

Eventually, we got me back In the chair, and shooed off at least one driver who stopped and asked if we needed help.

You had quite an accident, the guy said. I didn't disagree, though I was totally uninjured (I am a little sore now and not sure if that is a result).

They waited to make sure everything worked OK once I started driving away, so I stayed on the sidewalk. After a block, though, I took to the streets.

You see why I hate the sidewalks of Falls Church.

The people of Falls Church, however, rock!

Taking a lesson from the Psalms

I want to be cured. I don't care if there is medicine involved or a miracle. I am just tired of being in a wheelchair (and yes, I was tired of it yesterday, too, just too tire to write this).

The Psalms usually make me feel less alone because I can always find someone in there complaining to God in some pretty severe language. And they come up with such ingenious reasons for being cured or saved or whatever.

The writer of Psalm 13 wants to be healed so his enemies don't see his death as a divine judgment against him. In 64, the writer says that if the evil people are struck down, then everyone will believe in God.

The writers weren't afraid of asking for violence either, which cracks me up. I can't even get to an elevator before it closes, and these guys are asking God to make their enemies' "children fatherless ... vagrant beggars, driven from their hovels." Or they ask God to shoot arrows at their enemies or cut off deceitful lips.

And whenever I think I am getting too terse with God, there in the Bible, Psalm 102, verse 3: "Turn your ear to me; when I call, answer me quickly." Even if I hypothetically call God a "son of a bitch," I think I am more respectful than that. (Not that I call God a son of a bitch, I can't write what I call him.)

My one beef with the Psalms is that they usually let God off the hook at the end, saying something like "... but you Lord are great and know what is best so I will worship you."

I think if I wrote a Psalm, it would end "I don't at all get it, God. For someone who claims to be powerful and loving, you don't act like it."

Bad genes not germs

I don't think I have the flu – swine or otherwise. Really.

It's just so hard to tell. Is that aching in my legs a result of swimming or falling or a seasonal disease? Damned genes or damned germs – which is which?

Work sent out an email ordering us to go home if we feel bat all ad. I always feel somewhat bad somewhere in or on me. Not sure if that counts, though.

After the email, I was less worried about my health, then about my appearance of health.

I know you are supposed to cough into an elbow (my nephew reminds me), but it is all I can do to not put my face through the computer monitor or fly into the desk when I cough. My germs are then sailing freely through the office, but Friedreich's ataxia is not contagious.

And I do cough. When I drink and the water goes down the wrong pipe ... When I don't drink and my throat goes dry ... When I talk loudly and it tickles my throat ... When I eat pretzels ...

I want a sign: I am not sick, just disabled. The wheelchair probably explains the disabled part so maybe just a sign that I am not sick or at least not contagious. But is that protesting too much?

Getting there

I was too tired to write about swimming last night. After all I had just swum 19 laps, three of them without a belt.

Also, one of the volunteers started letting go of my head without telling me. It was pretty cool.