I've got my karma comeuppance. The gods have punished me for making fun of T2
blisters yesterdday by giving me my own crop this morning. The thing about rowing
is, you don't get blisters in normal places like feet. You get them on your hands
because that's what grips the oar. For lagniappe you get what we call "trackbite",
abrasions on the backs of your calves where they contact the tracks the seat roll
on. And yes, I do realize that firm juicy hand blisters are not only painful but
sort of disgusting if you think about it too much.
I generally solve
that by not thinking about it too much.
Every once in a while I
reread Little Women, get to the part where Meg is proud of her soft, white
hands, and conclude it's a good thing I wasn't around in the 1860s. At least no
one has refused to shake hands with me yet, despite the blisters as well as the
ground-in oar-grip black rubber that refuses to come of in the shower and that
makes my hands look like a mechanic's.
The reason for today's
blisters is that I've rowed two consecutive mornings, which I usually don't do.
This is what I love about rowing a single: the freedom to restructure my workout
to fit whatever is going on in my life. Like this -- I didn't row Monday, nor did
anyone else who went to San Diego for the races. (Though I was sort of sheating,
since I didn't actually race. Rowed the double with Egret on Tuesday as previously
planned. Rowed today because we're going out tonight with Egret and T2 before they
leave again for Ireland and I'll have Beer and won't want to row tomorrow. Or
Friday, because tomorrow night we going to the rowing club's annual dinner /
meeting. (There are a lot of good things to be said about a club that only has one
meeting a year.) SO tomorrow and Friday mornings I'll sleep in a little and lift
weights or erg. Possibly I'll let Rudder talk me into rowing this weekend, though
I think the effort betrays a lack of understanding on his part of the term
"relaxing weekend". Relaxing is not a skill for which my husband is known, though
I admit I greatly prefer a guy who doesn't slow down to one who's vegetating on
the couch in front of a football game every Sunday.
This journal has
been a bit boring lately -- I'm not all that worried about readers, who can choose
to read it or not, but it's been boring even me. That's attributable to a
combination of two factors. First, I'm very happy with both my job (well, most of
the time) and my husband (ditto). We're not apart or sick or poor, we're not doing
anything eventful like moving or reproducing,and I'm not doing anything creative
like NaNoWriMo, so there's not much angst in my life at the moment. (Minor
irritants a-plenty, but little angst.) That makes the daily-activity entries a bit
mundane. Second, I've been busy as hell, so haven't had much chance to think about
the sort of essays I originally intended this journal for. Though I am hoping for
a bit more spare time after November, I don't really plan to do anything drastic
like divorcing Rudder just to spice things up. I won't give up keeping this
journal either, because I've never really had one before and it feels like just
the act of writing in one has some value. (I can't quite pin down why, but it's a
strong feeling.) In other words, I'm not really planning to change anything but do
want to apologize if I've been putting anyone to sleep.