Between Books Right Now

Last night’s episode of The Pitt asked the same frustrating question all of our aging parents ask: What’s gonna happen to the dog? I’m currently going through this with my folks – attempting to get them to move out of their cluttered dilapidating farm house Up North and into either a smaller, closer house with some assistance. But they just respond with “What about the dogs?”

My FIL? Same situation: old, dilapidated, house piled high with garbage and one very untrained, aggressive dog. He can afford to live alone anymore, and he certainly can’t take care of himself. His kids have offered him SO many options and offered to help MANY times. His response?

“What about Molly?”

On one hand, I understand both situations. No one wants to abandon their pets. But on the other hand? Stop adopting animals you can’t take care of.

I was supposed to teach 4.5 hours yesterday, but the studio double booked my shift and the training they’re hosting. Meaning, they had to bump me from the schedule after only 2 classes and moved the other instructor into my studio.

Meh. Not great (I got up at the ass-crack of dawn to NOT teach), but I got paid for the full day! Made it all better!

I have lower back problems. Mild scoliosis and arthritis aside, my iliopsoas feel like “two tree roots” (said by my lead Pilates instructor). It doesn’t relax. It just clenches into this rock hard chunk of meat in my lower back. This sucks because I’d like to do a Pilates roll up, but can’t. Not with my tree roots.

Very recently, I got a referral to a local PT in the area, and thought it would be great to talk to her about my lower back issues. When I got there for my first consultation and told her about the clenching in my back, she said, “So, how’s your pelvic floor?”

I paused and asked, “Could they be related?”

“Most definitely. All those core muscles are connected. Something hurts here, then it probably hurts there too.”

So. I decided to get both lower back help and pelvic floor therapy. And the two are definitely connected. First, she dry needled my back – four tiny needles went into my iliopsoas. I bent one of those needles because I have “really thick fascia” according to my PT. She attached a TENS unit type thing to the needles and zapped my back for about 15 minutes. And I’ve got to tell you – it was fantastic. It felt like the deepest, most accurate tissue massage I’ve ever gotten.

Then I got pelvic floor treatment. It turns out, I’m a LOT more tightly wound than I thought.

Your pelvic floor muscles are a lot more detailed than just Kegal muscles. There is a network of muscle tissues inside that originate on one bone and connect to another. One of those muscles is the iliococcygeus, which is a muscle connecting to your iliacus and your coccyx. Mine, like my iliopsoas, is tense and twitchy.

Which makes…some things painful.

Luckily, it’s not impossible to fix. Getting the muscles to calm down requires a lot of patience and gentle pressure (no, it’s not sexual – it’s like a pelvic exam but less spread-y and poke-y). I left the clinic feeling a bit sore, but not in a lot of pain. It just feels like I got fingered for twenty minutes.

As for my back? Major improvements already! I noticed my back didn’t feel as tight so I laid down and tried to do a roll-up. And…I got a LOT farther than I ever have before! I’m still a bit wobbly and I have more to go, but I’m incredibly pleased with the results thus far.

I also have some bruising on my back from where the needles went it. I’m calling it my tramp stamp.

My $DayJob involves a lot of tech stuff. I don’t do any coding, but I work on the sales side of tech. It’s busy and complicated, but for years it has run smoothly.

In the last few months, however, me and my other colleagues have had AI jammed down our throats. Corporate is BOMBARDING us with encouragement to “leverage AI in your daily workflow.” Then they throw questions at us like “How did you use AI recently? How did it make your job better/more efficient? Can you give an example or two of what AI did for you?” Which…fine. The truth there is that I use our coporate LLM to summarize docs and emails, and write out responses that I can’t be fucked to write myself. Of course, I don’t explain it just like that, but that’s the gist.

Lately, they’ve also been asking about how we use AI in our home life. How is AI helping? What would you need AI to do? Etc, etc. That’s where I got a teensie bit flippant with my responses. I said something like “I use it to write thank you notes and birthday greetings. I wish it would write my journal entries for me.”

Then I closed it with, “I used AI to help me write this explanation, too.” Because I’m an asshole.