A burning in my bosom...no really.

It's been several days since my last entry. I would like to tell you that it's because I've been busy climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro or something equally adventurous, but in truth it's because I haven't had anything particularly interesting to write about. My husband tells me that this is perfectly normal. He swears to me that there are people who go for days...even weeks at a time leading singularly uneventful lives and that they are actually okay with it. I say that's nonsense. I actually think that every day is packed with new adventures and insights. It's just that some adventures are more...well, adventurous than others. My adventures this week have centered around getting past pain and trying to learn to deal with my most annoying limitations. I hurt! My neck hurts, my back hurts, my elbow hurts (they say I have golfers elbow which is ridiculous because I don't golf), my shoulder hurts, my knee hurts. My chiropractor said that I have tendinitis. Everywhere. The doctor has suggested that I might have fibromyalgia. This is nonsense. I refuse to have that. It would be entirely too inconvenient. Derek says that I push myself too hard and then I pay the price for the next several days. I say if you give in to pain, it gets the better of you. Okay, there MIGHT be some wiggle room in there for a reasonable level of caution and sensibility. I just haven't found it yet. So my week has been spent trying to find that fine line between reasonable care and total capitulation. I'm not having much success. I thought I was, but Derek tells me that painting the kitchen and steam cleaning the carpets does not fall in line with the concept of "taking it easy". I think he's being unreasonable.

In light of my inability to stand straight without collapsing into a spasming heap, I have instead, taken to reading about adventures instead of living them. I've just finished reading a book called Percy Jackson and the Olympians. As it turns out, if you are prone to accidents, have dyslexia and are ADHD, the chances are good that one of your parents was a Greek God, thereby making you a Demi-God. Apparently the dyslexia is because your brain is actually wired for ancient Greek, so English is a bit confusing The ADHD is because you are, by heritage, a warrior and therefore find the average classroom a bit boring. That explains so much about my childhood! It's true that I don't actually have dyslexia, but the other two are a given, so I still think I have a good shot at being a demi-God.

Do you see what I've been reduced too by my enforced inactivity?? I have tried to make the best of an inactive week, but Derek insists that the definition of an inactive week does not include doing four photo shoots, photo editing, cleaning the carpets, painting the kitchen and cleaning the entire house. I say it does. There was so much more that I wanted to get done!

Anyway, after a very shaky start, today was fully redeemed because I got to go back to Crystal Forge and do some more glass blowing. This time Derek came with me to take pictures and cheer me on. Ed (the owner) had to leave for a while, leaving me to my own devices. This was good for me because it gave me a little time to just refresh my memory and fiddle around a bit. My first endeavor was a nice little paperweight. It promised to be quite lovely until I dropped in on the ground while putting it into the aneeler. It didn't shatter into a million pieces, so I'm going to take that as a good sign and wait 'til tomorrow to see whether it survived. My second project was another little oil lamp that started out quit nice and then suddenly deflated like a flat tire. At that point Ed came back and started working with me on a medium sized vase. The interesting thing about vases, or really any vessel, is that it takes a lot closer contact than a paperweight or a small oil lamp. You have to get your jacks right into the opening of the vessel in order to shape and expand it. Everything was going fine at first and then Ed instructed me to to start jacking the opening. I leaned in to position my jacks and started slowly opening them to broaden the mouth of the vase. I quickly realized that something was not quite right. Though I was definitely not actually touching the rod or the glass (I checked) my right breast was heating up uncomfortably. My hand was quite warm too, but not unbearably so. My breast was definitely the real problem. Ed, my instructor, has been doing glass blowing for over thirty years and I'm convinced he lost all feeling in his extremities a couple of decades ago because he seems completely un-phased by the heat. I couldn't figure out how he managed to lean over his projects and not jump off the bench from the pain. My breast felt like it was on fire. I arched my back upward , trying to pull my chest a few centimeters further from the glass before I spontaneously combusted. Now, some women have to ability to arch their backs and create a concave chest sort of a thing. I am just not one of them. My chest will never be concave. Ever. It got so bad I actually reached up with my left hand to cover my breast which, had I looked, would undoubtedly have been glowing as brightly as the forge. This was taking the phrase "a burning in my bosom" to a ludicrously literal level. It finally ocured to me that the reason Ed wasn't experiencing this discomfort was because Ed apparently doesn't wear a bra. I, however, do and this bra was apparently a different fabric than what I was wearing the last time because the fabric felt like it was ready to melt. In my instructors defense, he does always recommend that people wear only cotton shirts because synthetics do react badly to fire, but in my defense, he never mentioned bras! After finishing my vase mere seconds before my breast actually ignited, I fell back to a new plan wherein my breast would NOT catch fire and swore to go buy a nice ugly, matronly cotton bra before I tried to make any more vases. I actually feel better about my near incineration because I think it firmly qualifies as an adventure, thereby redeeming my otherwise uneventful week.