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Wednesday, June 3, 2009

"Nice Haircut!"

I got a compliment on my "haircut" yesterday! I went swimming at Wakefield, and one of the lifeguards really hadn't seen me much in the last year..... maybe I'd always been wearing a swim cap or a hat. It's not my usual pool, as I said before -- but this lifeguard used to work at Yorktown, so she remembered me. ANyhow -- I got out of the water (no cap) and she said "Hey, I like your haircut!" and I looked at her, and her face was all lit up like she meant it. I said "You really do, don't you?" I decided not to spoil the moment by telling her that it wasn't exactly a haircut by choice...... so I said thank you, and went away feeling great.

It made my day, you know? I realized after that that I have seen this haircut on black women before. I hadn't thought of it til I got the compliment -- maybe because the lifeguard is black. (Her hair's long & braided, though.) Here, I'll see if I can add some pictures from this past memorial day weekend when I was learning to row. (WeCanRowDC novice training weekend)






Sorry -- that's the best I can do for these pictures at the moment.

I had my two molars extracted this afternoon. It was simpler than I thought. I hope the spots heal well and no complications. I am not real happy about having the teeth out before they were dropping out of my mouth...... I keep thinking I'll get over it. It's interesting how that bothers me (not a LOT but sort of relentlessly; every time I think about it, I'm still not happy about it) while I was always fine about losing the breast. Maybe I owe that all to the doctor who showed me the MRI right away.

He showed it to me before telling me I needed a mastectomy. I saw it and wanted that bad boy OFF! and have never looked back. Now I hear about all these women with identity issues about mastectomies. Maybe more of them would be happy to be lopsided too if only they'd gotten to see the picture of the cancer first, and choose for themselves? There was not really an equivalent thing they could have done about the teeth -- I guess they could have shown me pictures of abscesses....... but it would not have had the same impact as the MRI picture of MY breast, all lit up like the 4th of July. The abscesses were always a possible scenario, not a sure thing.

Anyway. I went on a nice bike ride this morning before the extractions -- so i wouldn't lose a workout day. Might not do much tomorrow, but I'm told I should be fine by Friday. And even tomorrow, maybe........

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Chlorine

Just in case you guys thought i was exaggerating about the chlorine (I wondered, myself) Mom and I went swimming at Wakefield pool the next day (it was Yorktown that was overchlorinated) and I was fine, no breaks needed other than goggle fix breaks (think I need new ones) and maybe, you know, a break every third or quarter mile. (That's still recuperation, or lung stuff, I guess -- it's not as I was but it's reasonable, not like every lap or two like Thursday!) Also I developed a brown spot on my chin which crusted over the next morning, a chlorine burn. It doesn't hurt but it looks ugly. There were some other things too, a nick here, a sore spot there -- enough to corroborate it.

I wonder if I can get the pool people to warn me when they put in that kind of chlorine..... I am signed up for updates; they could just add chlorine updates to what they post. I'd love to go somewhere else when it's like that, next time.