The last two weeks have been hard. Which is why I didn't write last week. That was part of a social media self-imposed blackout for me. For the most part I'm taking a two week minimum break from most social media. I don't really consider YouTube social media since I never go through comments, so that eliminates most of the problem. I'm dipping my toes back into Instagram this week, but I'll be limiting my time there as well. I just need time away from the doom scrolling and negativity that comes from certain outlets. I think you know the main culprit in this, but I'll be kind and not name it for once.
With the injury to my ankle being worse than I first thought it would be, the recovery process has been brutal. Resting it and sitting around was very bad for my mental state, and got to a breaking point about a week ago. I won't go into the dark spiral fully, but I will say that it was a call to action. I did have to suck up that fact that I needed to rest my foot, but getting off social media was also a big help in getting my head on straight. I can give you a very good update on the foot. As of about the middle of last week, I'm walking pain free. I have also resumed walking the trail. The big lake trail and not the exercise trail. I'm still wary of that one because it has exposed roots on the trial, and even though I'm pain free, my ankle is not 100%. If I step on a rock and my ankle rolls a tiny bit, I can feel pain like a deep bone bruise. I have not began running again yet either. I'm going to take my time and wait probably another few weeks before I give it a try again. When I do, I'll be focusing on all those things I should have been focusing on before this all happened. Foot fall, stride length, body position, all that good stuff. The goal is to heal fully, learn from these mistakes, change my approach, and overcome in order to succeed. I want to show you a few pictures of the trail I'm walking now before I get into a little more on how I'm taking care of my ankle. This is the new trail I found.
You can see just how wide and flat it is. You get the added bonus of the great scenery, but this is what the trail looks like when I hit it at 6 in the morning.
Yeah, it's a bit scary, but so peaceful. There is no one on the trail at that time of the morning, and I can get in a few kilometers before the heat of the day.
Back to the ankle now. As you know, I've been wrapping my ankle. That is something I still do before I go on the walk. I have to make sure there is support for it. The first few days I wore spongy shoes to absorb any type of shock I might get, I'm now back to the minimalist shoes and they feel even better than they did before. I was icing my ankle every evening, but I've been able to cut down to just when I think I need it. Usually that's if I feel a dull throb in my ankle after my walk, which at this point, I' haven't felt in two days now. I plan on wrapping my ankle until after I start running again, so that is just something that is going to be a part of my life for the next month or so. It's ok, I've gotten pretty good at wrapping it. I do wear a compression sleeve the rest of the day after my walk and remove it when I go to sleep. So far this has been all working out really good, so I don't plan on changing it up until I have a reason to.
Right now my schedule is taking Monday as a rest day, with the rest of the week being trail days. I have added something into that schedule that I've been wanting to do for a long time, and that is throw a skateboarding day in there. I decided Saturday morning is the day for that. Skate Saturday is what it will hence forth be known. I was a little worried when I went out yesterday morning, once again at 6 in the morning, to the big church parking lot near my house. The fear of my ankle hurting was looming over me for sure, but once I kicked off for the first time everything was good. The good thing for me is that I ride a skateboard all wrong. I kick goofy footed and ride backwards. Most people kick with their front foothill keeping their primary foot on the back of the board to steer. I plant my right foot (bad ankle) on the mid front of the board and kick with my back foot which is also the foot I steer with. You see, it's a complete mess, but that is the way I learned and I don't think I can ever correct it, the good thing about it is, that my right foot (bad ankle) is always in a stable position, so I didn't have any problem with my ankle in the hour I skated around. I don't do tricks, never really learned, so it is all about cruising, so there really isn't a whole lot of danger to re-injuring my ankle, it's just about doing something that I've always loved doing, and that is just riding on a skateboard. I did have one mishap, when I lost my balance, and took a minor fall, but proper falling technique came back to me instantly and I only ended up with a small skate scuff on the knee. I'm wearing it as a badge of honor right now.
It's a small maybe quarter size raspberry, that does hurt but it puts a smile on my face. That is the thing about doing something that you love, the bad isn't really that bad, and the last few days have been about getting myself smile back. For a while nothing was making me happy, and I can say that little wound actually makes me happy, as masochistic as that may sound. It's not really about the pain, it's about how it happened. There is also the fact that tiny little raspberry won't keep me sitting down for days at a time.
A couple more photos before I get to Favorite Thing of the Week. The first is an ice cream I forgot to tell you about. I found this at my local grocer and it is made from avocados. It was really good, not keto friendly, but it is vegan, non GMO, and organic. They had two flavors I think but I went with this dark chocolate. It was really smooth and creamy, and can stand up with any traditional ice cream on the market, so if you can find it, give it a try.
The final picture is of the poor little Shnuggie. She has her occasional cheek swelling again, where that sack fills with blood. This is still a left over affect from her ear surgery. This time I got to it early and wrapped her up as soon as I saw it starting to seep, instead of waiting for it to rupture to take care of it. The latter usually involves the clean up of what could resemble a murder scene, so to avoid that disaster I'm hoping that it will all drain into the gauze and paper towels and I'll only have to treat and bandage it after with a minor clean up on her instead of all over the house.
She's not at all happy about it, but she's still cute though.
Time for FSOTW. That's right the song is back. I was torn between two songs, but I'm going to go with the fun one as opposed to the informative one this week. I just need that extra smile this week and this one provides it. I introduced you to Leo not too long ago. He's the one that does metal covers of songs. He took one of my favorite ABBA songs and put his metal twist on it, and it's just fun, so here is Frog Leap Studio with ABBA's hit song "Gimme Gimme Gimme".
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