--- Day 6/285

Walk: CPMC/PT, Paper Source
Distance: 2 miles, Much Flexing, Exercising

Aaron Shickler, Woman Reading, 1962, pastel on paperboard

Gone Little --- Day 6/284

Walk: 2 Challenges: Union Square/Scene of the FALL, Trader Joe's pre-Thanksgiving
Distance:  10 Blocks, ROM and Strength Exercises

Somewhere in her 10 week (so far) house arrest/knee operation recovery Ciwt must have slipped into a regression.  Into being a teenager - or resonating to stories about teenagers.  Little stories to be exact.  

She can actually relate quite well to the teenagers, adults, issues and community setting in Celeste Ng's intriguing Little Fires Everywhere. She's a few pages from the ending and has appreciated that Ng moves the book through complex adolencent and adult issues with intelligence and quite a bit of depth.  A friend told her she'd be curious about Ciwt's take on the ending, so now Ciwt is curious too.

Then there are the 'girls' in Pretty Little Liars - Aria, Spencer, Hannah and several other names she finds her real teenage self distant from.  Here come the actresses' actual names - Sasha, Troian, Shay, Tammin to name a few - which Ciwt can't relate to at all.  But the names thing is easy for Ciwt compared to all the other aspects of the characters: the perfect make up, the totally chill (or whatever) shoplifting and fluid sex, the parental contempt, and the evilness of course.  You can take a look at them above - age 17 (would you have guessed?) - carrying the coffin of their equally vampy and luscious 16 year old friend  murdered a year before.  The depth of the story continues from there.... 

Unlike the other Little, Ciwt is not close to the finish of Liars.  Not by a long shot.  She has watched episode 1 of the 1st season.  There are 8 seasons altogether.  Will Ciwt's regression continue?  Will she return to her 'mature' self?  How many seasons might she watch? Will her knee have healed by then?  Will she start dressing like the Little girls?  Only time will provide these answers to Ciwt and her readers.  She does know one thing: the Little Liars binge was recommended by a seemingly terribly sophisticated and very English woman (wife, mother, grandmother, business owner, the works) who is actually older than Little Ciwt and has watched all the episodes.  

Morning Pedal --- Day 6/283

Walk: CPMC PT, Hood for Thanksgiving food
Distance: 2.3 miles, Hard PT, Pedal 20 minutes, some exercises/flexion

Okay, Ciwt, up and at that pedal machine!

Next week Ciwt begins with new Physical Therapists because her current ones are moving to an inconvenient location.  The new ones are a Russian husband and wife team who specialize in Pilates as well as PT.  Ciwt keeps thinking of all those Russian Olympics coaches, just the general Russian approach to training.  Incredibly focussed and demanding.  She has images of standing ultra straight, stomach more than in, gritting her teeth, strettttching her knee way, way beyond where it can go - and then going further. Like Now!

The Town House Redux (and Great!) --- Day 6/282

Walk: No, Rest
Distance: Up/Down (2), Pedal (2), Asana/Exercise/Flexion (3-6).  Finis for today/Whew

When she went back to Minneapolis in August Ciwt took her iphone camera to the her grandparents' city house.  The Town House where the family would roller skate in the ballroom on Christmas Day (see CIWT Day 355) and my grandmother would keep everything very formal and on schedule the rest of the year.

Ciwt was so happy to see the house in such sparkling repair.  Not a chipped brick or yellow blade of grass, and the cream colored paint positively glowed.  Some teenage or young college boys were enjoying each other's company on a new patio off the dining room; the young energy felt great! The family obviously loves their house.

Of course, still being a teenage boy about cars, Ciwt had to check out the garage, a separate, two-level affair where the shiny cars never had a speck of dust.

  .

It looked clean as a whistle too, and Ciwt hopes the boys' completely cool cars are sitting inside.

First Comes Driving --- Day 6/281

Walk: Clay Theater (Novitiate)
Distance: 9 blocks, Up/Down, ROM Exercises/Flexion, moderate 

So, today Ciwt received the one 'gift' of her injury: the coveted Disabled Parking Placard.  With it 'properly displayed'  from her mirror she is eligible for things like: having her car refueled at self-service rates, parking in designated disabled spaces, even parking at meters indefinitely.  Now if she could only advance from her pedal machine to more agile car clutch movements..

PS - About Novitiate, if you have ever experienced an agressively repressed teacher, like a few of those at Ciwt's boarding school, you will break out in a cold sweat just watching Melissa Leo walk into a room. She doesn't have to say a word, but then she does and gets even more scary.  A darkly complex woman; such excellent acting - by most of the cast - but especially by her.  Best Actress Oscar Nominee for sure.

Seat with a View --- Day 6/280

Walk: CPMC PT, The Hood, Golf Club
Distance: 3+ miles, 1Hour Rehab, Up/Down at Club and Home - (Probably sore/swollen tomorrow,
                but worth it for freedom on a beautiful day

View Out Her Window as Ciwt Pedals, and Pedals, and...

Home Work --- Day 6/279

Walk: No, Rain all day.  Research for Tour
Distance:  2.5 hours various exercises/asanas/pedaling/flexion (the usual)

Ciwt, Exercise Schedule Over Art Research Notes, Calendar Above on Bedspread, iphone, 2017

Something Else --- Day 6/278

Walk:  PT and other things in the hood
Distance:  2.5 miles, Tons of Flexion exercises, Yoga asanas too

Gees Bend quilt by Arlonzia Pettway

The majority of Gees Bend, Alabama residents bear the surnames of the white people who once owned their forebears -- Pettway, Young, Bendolph.  "We all got slave master's names," quilter Arlonzia Pettway explained. "We all was something else." 

That 'something else" in her her great-grandmother, Dinah Miller's case, was a young African woman who was abducted and brought in bondage in a slave ship.  Miller also brought her knowledge of free style ("My Way") African quilting which was handed down - along with oral recollections of antebellum history - to subsequent generations.

As Pettway explains:  They was in slavery.  They worked all day then they'd go under the pile of brushes, and set the log down to sit on and make a quilt.  The slave masters didn't allow them to piece a quilt.  They didn't want them to do nothing, they didn't want them to learn how to write, they didn't want them to have no beautiful quilts, they didn't want them to have no correct language.  That's what she told me.