Category Archives: health
Further Adventures In Meatless Meats
Today, three more options for mixing it up with some meatless options that have passed the husband test (or, at any rate, the MY husband test: ymmv).
Earth-Grown Zesty Italian Meatless Balls (ALDI)
A while back, I ordered Earth Grown’s frozen “zesty Italian-style” meatless meatballs from ALDI.
I’m embarrassingly fond of meatballs, and thus of the idea of frozen meatballs (aka “meatballs without all the work”)—but as a general rule, they could definitely use some help in the nutritional profile department, especially where saturated fats and cholesterol are concerned (D has hypercholesterolemia, so I try to watch those for him).
As such, ALDI’s frozen meatlessballs seemed like they might fit the bill. With no cholesterol and only 1g of saturated fat per 6-ball serving, not to mention a nice fiber boost and a good dose of healthy fats, they definitely come out ahead of both ordinary and all-turkey meatballs in the nutrition race.
Flavor-wise, they’re not really what I’d call zesty. They’re more mildly Italian-influenced than anything. That doesn’t mean, though, that they’re not tasty—just that they’re what one might describe as “good minglers,” like the friend that makes the whole party work without making it all about them.
I lightly browned my meatlessballs in olive oil for a couple of minutes, then simmered them in my favorite tomato-basil sauce while I boiled up some spaghetti (the suggested cooking time, conveniently, is 10 minutes).
D ate them without complaining, and I like them enough that I’d be happy to eat them any time I want a meatball fix, whether with pasta or in a sub.
Edit: I should note that D can detect turkey meatballs at first taste, and won’t eat them, but seems to find these acceptable. Even if he didn’t, I’d still buy them for myself. After a particularly grueling rehearsal, the only thing better than a good meatball sub is a good*meatless* meatball sub with a greatly-improved nutritional profile.
Overall: 8/10. Nice texture, pleasant mild flavor, decent nutritional profile.
Simple Truth Meatless Crumbles (Kroger)
I ordered these on a whim, but I was surprised how well they work.
Personally, I don’t care if my meatless dishes are obviously meatless—but D is kind of a meat-and-potatoes guy. He does like the desi chana tacos I make sometimes, but that involves a fair bit of planning, and I don’t know that ground green chickpeas would work in pasta sauce.
Enter Simple Truth’s frozen meatless crumbles. At $3.99 for a one-pound zip-top bag at my local Kroger, this stuff is less expensive than grass-fed ground beef, but stacks up really well in terms of utility in recipes.
Here’s a look at the nutritional profile from fooducate.com:
Pretty decent overall—and hecking wow on the protein front. Most people probably don’t need to worry that much about protein, but it can be important for dancers to track. As a male ballet dancer with a standing weight of around 160 pounds, a job description that involves lifting adult humans, and a less-than-optimal meal planning strategy (cooking with ADHD, y’all), it’s good to know about concentrated, easy-cook protein sources.
Like Earth-Grown’s meatlessballs, Simple Choice’s crumbles do contain soy and gluten, so if you’re sensitive to either or both, please be aware.
Of note, an entire cup of these crumbles is a LOT: it may be one serving, but it’s more than I typically use for one portion.
I make my taco/burrito recipe with about 1 to 1.5 cups of the crumbles and a can of beans (and, of course, onions and taco seasoning), and the resulting volume of taco/burrito filling is comparable to the same recipe made with 1 pound lean ground beef.
Each batch of taco/burrito filling makes about 8-12 tacos or 4-6 hefty burritos, depending on how many veggies I have on hand that I can add. Thus, while the stated 1-cup serving of Simple Truth’s makes crumbles includes nearly half the protein required by statutory person needs in a given day, you might not find yourself eating that much at a sitting.
I’ve found that the best way to prepare these is to lightly brown them in just enough olive oil to prevent sticking, then add whatever else you’re planning to add. They take only minutes to cook, so they come in handy when you’re starving and you want tacos NOW.
So far, the best batch of these I’ve made went like this:
- Brown chopped onions in olive oil. Feel free to add a little wine (I used cooking sherry).
- Lightly brown 1 cup of meatless crumbles in a pan.
- Add 1 can of black beans.
- Add taco seasoning (and water as called for on the taco seasoning package) to taste—I the equivalent of two packets of taco seasoning; one for the crumbles and one for the beans.
- Simmer everything for a few minutes, then serve.
D doesn’t even seem to have noticed that these aren’t made of meat, so score another win on the husband test.
Simple Truth Meatless Chorizo (Kroger)
I’ve saved the best for last, here, assuming I haven’t already written about this.
Simple Truth’s meatless chorizo is sold in link form, and holds its shape well enough to slice.
While I can absolutely imagine browning or grilling an entire link of this stuff and serving it in a bun (or a couple of grilled soft corn tortillas, loaded up with corn and black bean salsa and shredded cabbage, or even kimchi), so far I find myself slicing it up, browning it, adding whatever veggies I’ve got handy, pouring on some egg whites, and turning it into a killer egg burrito.
Prepared this way, each link makes two substantial burritos—one for D and one for me—or a burrito for now and burrito filling for later. It’s also fantastic served on tostadas, though that adds an additional hit in the saturated fats department.
I wouldn’t mind this chorizo being spicier, but its flavor profile is delightfully complex, and heat is easy to add.
At $3.99 for a pack of four substantial chorizo links, this has become a weekly staple in my house.
Oh, yeah, and it comes with the usual advantages of plant-based sausages over meat-based ones, as you can see from its profile on fooducate.com:
I’ll try to review each of these options a little more thoroughly in the future, but for now, I’ll close by saying all three of them have received D’s stamp of approval for meat substitutes—which is to say, here’s eaten them without apparently realizing that they’re meatless—and that the Simple Truth chorizo had better stay in production, or else I’ll … IDK, be very sad.
DancerLife: Food (Part 1)
Upfront disclaimer/disclosure thing: I am definitely not a nutritionist, as you’ll probably realize if you read the rest of this post, which is mostly about stupid food-related mistakes I made last season. This post is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical condition, nor should it be taken as advice, unless the advice is: If you have questions about feeding yourself as a dancer, maybe go ask someone who really knows their stuff.
I’ve written about food before. Probably a lot. I like food, though I struggle with food sometimes. I also generally quite like eating[1].
- Except, apparently, when I don’t. I’ve recently experienced a baffling lack of interest in food itself: I’ve been in this place in which I would be perfectly content to live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or really whatever requires the least thought or effort, day in and day out.
On the whole, I’ve felt like I’ve had a pretty good grasp of basic nutritional science (hard to get through a Bachelor’s of Science degree that includes Anatomy & Physiology without understanding at least a bit).
I’m sufficiently equipped that I mostly manage to steer clear of trends based on junk science or poor data and to regard with equanimity the ones that might, in terms of their originators’ ideas about science, be based on shaky logic, but which still work well for people in practice because they’re motivating in whatever way and manage to get the various nutrients in.
What I haven’t had, as I discovered over the 2019-2020 ballet season, was the slightest shade of an idea as to how to actually feed myself for performance while dancing 30 hours per week, teaching about six hours per week, and driving an extra 80-90 minutes per day 2-3 days per week between those two gigs.
This was especially difficult on days when I left my teaching job at 8:30 PM and didn’t arrive home until after 9, chronically underfed (though I usually didn’t realize that) and with little time to eat, shower, prepare food for the next day, and wind down before I had to be asleep.
To a great extent, this was my own darned fault.
I extrapolated as follows:
- P1: I have a fairly sound working knowledge of basic nutritional science.
- P2: An awful lot of the nutritional advice I know how to find runs contrary to basic nutritional science.
- P3: I am broke and can’t afford to go see a nutritionist.
- Therefore, I should just stick with what I’m doing.
Or, well, something like that.
Yes, y’all, I am an idiot. Sometimes, anyway. Even often.
I think I also wasn’t sure who to ask: like, let’s be frank. Dancers are mostly paid what is known, in the technical language of economics, as “bupkis.” Or possibly “peanuts.” (In fact, since I have volunteered at events where one of the perks was free access to peanut-based trail mix, I can literally say that I’ve worked for peanuts. Hmmmm.)
Regardless, dancers be broke, and qualified nutritionists who have adequate knowledge of the nutritional requirements of full-time ballet dancers be … not cheap. (Nor should they be. They train for years to master their specialty, just like we do.)
So you had better believe that when I learned that LouBallet’s MindBodyBalance program was hosting a Zoom-based nutrition workshop with an actual qualified person who actually understood things about how to feed dancers, I jumped right on that enroll button.
Anyway, today, Becky Lindberg Schroeder of Lindberg Elite Nutrition (she’s also on Insta!) gave us a really solid talk, with time for discussion, about how to feed ourselves for performance as dancers.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I realized I’d been going about things … well, not all wrong, but wrong enough.
The two most important things I’ve been doing were basically:
- Not eating enough
and - Not eating often enough.
Somehow, I felt like I shouldn’t be eating during the 5-minute break between class and the beginning of rehearsal. I would usually surreptitiously scarf an apple, but I felt like I shouldn’t.
Why?
Honestly, I think I just noticed that few of my fellow dancers shoved a snack into their faces during that interval. Outside the studio, I’m fairly resistant to peer pressure, but life inside the ballet studio is different, especially as an apprentice who doesn’t feel super confident about his place in the company.
Now that I’m writing that “out loud,” of course, it seems kind of dumb.
You can’t stuff yourself with a huge breakfast before class if you want to get through class without, at best, being miserable or, at worst, puking … but if you eat a lighter breakfast at 8:30, by the time class is over at 11:30, it seems entirely reasonable to assume that you’re going need to top up your fuel tank.
If you try to hold out until lunch break at 1, you’re likely to be hangry before you get there. (Regarding which: yes. On days that I’ve failed to eat any kind of snack at all, I’ve usually been deeply hangry before lunch break rolled around.)
Becky’s suggestion that we eat every 3-4 hours made that all make sense. In fact, it makes so much sense that I’m now wondering how I failed to grasp it before. Then again, that’s why she’s a high-performance nutritionist, and I’m not.
Perhaps even more importantly, I don’t think I really understood the effects of chronically low blood sugar on both performance and body composition.
Becky showed us a diagram illustrating the point that the range in which the human body works best falls between 80 and 100. My fasting blood sugar is rarely higher than 70 (I forget what the units in question are right now, sorry). I’m impressed if it’s 72; the one time in my life it was as high as (GASP!) 74, I wondered if I’d randomly awakened and eaten something in the middle of the night and forgotten about it.
Anyway, <70 is low. The typical response that garners during a medical exam is basically, “Cool, no need to worry about diabetes!”
But it turns out that when your blood sugar level is low, your body really does burn muscle and hold onto fat. I kind of knew that: we’ve all heard of “starvation mode.” What I didn’t know was that your body doesn’t wait around for a couple of weeks before heading down that road.
So, in short, I probably wasn’t doing myself any favors by avoiding carbs in the morning.
This certainly explains why I’ve felt better on the rare morning that I impulsively threw a donut into the mix because I happened to stop for gas, or had to use ACTUAL SUGAR in my coffee because I ran out of stevia, or whatever.
If you’re starting with basically an empty tank, putting anything in it is going to help. It’s not like you’re body’s going to ignore fuel simply because it’s not Eleventy Octane Super Premium Ultra Plus, Now With Scrubbing Bubbles.
Your body, at that point, just wants ANYTHING. And if you don’t give it something, it’s going to assume that it should hold on to its emergency stores and tap the muscles instead.
That might also explain why basically surrendering to chronic disorganization, purchasing an immersion blender, and just making huge smoothies with some protein stuff (usually pasteurized eggs) and a handful of trail mix (peanuts and almonds … protein and fat in one happy little package) for breakfast and packing more of said trail mix to eat with lunch correlated with an unexpected drop in my body fat percentage.
Obviously, without a controlled experiment, causality is danged hard to determine–but in retrospect, it seems like maybe one way of accidentally starving myself was worse than the other. The one that gave me some carbs, protein, and fat, while still not ideal, was probably less bad.
I also made the mistake of thinking that my other frequent snack choice–inexpensive protein bars, because broke–was somehow … not good enough. Again, that seems silly now. The protein bars in question may be fairly processed (though they’re still mostly made of things that are recognizeable as food, albeit in small chunks), but they do the job of being quick and easy to eat when “quick and easy” are probably the most important criteria. You might have the best apple in the world, but if that’s all you’ve got, and you can’t finish it in 5 minutes, it’s not going to do the job.
Anyway, the most important takeaway for me was that I need to eat more, and to eat more often, than I did last season. Well, that, and to not eschew nutrition in bar form, because that’s often going to be my best bet.
My breakfasts, snacks, and lunches were uniformly underpowered last year (I’m not going to say “too small”), while my dinners were … spotty. I didn’t have time for a full meal between rehearsal and teaching, so by the time my classes let out, I was both incredibly hangry and in no position to drive for 40-50 minutes without eating.
Since I would, inevitably, have also run through the woefully-inadequate supply of food I had packed for the day, I typically resorted to drive-through dining, but usually (in an effort to reduce the artery-clogging effects of fast food) I’d get the smallest meal I could find.
Then I’d be mad at myself when I was starving at 10 PM, or wonder why I was so hungry at 1 AM that I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep without eating something.
You guys. In retrospect, I’m really trying to figure out … like … how I didn’t figure it out -.-
Part of the problem was my tool set. Basically, I was whacking away with a hammer, mentally screaming, “Why is it so hard to saw through this log???!!!!” I kept focusing on how to eat better at dinner time, when I would’ve done better to just eat a little more and a little better across the whole day.
Anyway, one of Becky’s smart, actionable suggestions was to literally write out your daily schedule (not too obsessively: sometimes lunch break is at 12:53; sometimes we get really into rehearsal and at 1:30 Mr D looks up and goes “OMG, sorry, you guys! I haven’t given you a lunch break!”) and figure out how to feed yourself around it.
Which … oh, my G-d. That’s brilliant.
Becky’s presentation also introduced Team USA’s Athlete Plates[2]–three useful visual guides to adjusting nutrition for the demands of your day. They’re less about telling you specifically what to eat than suggesting how to proportion your meals to keep yourself well-fueled. This is exactly the kind of information delivery I’ve been yearning for: visual, so you can use it at a glance, but with lots of deeper information readily available.
- You can find PDF guides to the Athlete Plates, along with lots of other great information about nutrition for athletes, on Team USA’s Nutrition page.
In short, I came away from this workshop with a much better sense of how I, a broke-ass dancer with ADHD and time-management challenges, can make a plan to keep myself well-fueled that actually fits into my life.
So that’ll be Part 2 of this post … because right now it’s dinner time, and I’m hungry.
This Cognitive Dissonance
If you’ve been around long enough, you’ll know that I don’t write about current events that much. I figure there are enough people out there who are better at that than I am, and thus I mostly stick to writing about ballet.
But today I’ma write about Coronavirus … again.
I’m in a weird place with this thing. On the one hand, I’m healthy AF, young, and on the surface I look a lot like someone who could easily be walking around like, “Eh, I don’t need to worry about this that much.”
On the other hand, my respiratory system—which at the moment, knock wood, is only mildly annoyed about the horror that is tree pollen—is a gigantic baby that freaks out completely at the least possible provocation.
Like, I’ve had pneumonia five times.
FIVE. Times.
I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve had bronchitis.
Ordinary ‘flu knocks me flat for 2 weeks, minimum (this is why I get flu shots, y’all … well, that and herd immunity).
And every novel respiratory illness that comes down the pike carries with it the potential for serious career setbacks or worse.
And yet.
I’m not a chronically ill person who *feels* sick most of the time. I’m a chronically ill person person who feels great most of the time, with occasional bouts of shattering illmess, some of which are terrifying.
So right now I’m walking around in the world (or, well, in my house, mostly) with part of my brain not even really thinking about this whole COVID-19 sitch, and another part occasionally going, “F**k, what if someone brings it to D’s work?”
D, btw, works in healthcare. He’s a physio, but currently works in a nursing and rehab facility, so there’s a real chance that such a thing could happen.
This doesn’t mean that I’m constantly panicking, or indeed panicking at all. Panicking won’t help. But it does mean that I’m using a lot of energy talking to my brain, trying to remind it that we have plans and stuff for things like this. That sometimes bad things happen no matter how well you plan, and that we need to stay rooted in the here and now because panicking now won’t help if something does happen.
And though it’s mostly working, my head is still in a weird place sometimes.
Anyway, life is uncertain, and the only constant is change. I’m not the best at actually practicing Zen, but I do find that even if the tools are a little rusty because you keep forgetting to actually use them, they’re still there in the garden shed when you need them, and rusty tools are better than none.
So, anyway, that helps with the cognitive dissonance a bit, as does giving myself room to feel uncomfortable.
Such is the weirdness of this mental place that it’s very hard to write about.
Also, I’m super tired, so I’m going to close here for now.
Oh: we also bought an electric jellybean—I mean, a Nissan Leaf 😊 It’s actually quite lovely and the interior is very roomy (you could fit about 5 dancers in it and still have room for a large dog behind the rear seat). I quite like it. This one’s a 2013, so the range is pretty decent. D plans to use it as his main commuter, since he works close enough to be well in range and can charge it at work. It’s a cute little car and comfortable to ride in.
It’s bigger on the inside.
It’s Complicated
So, given the fact that you’re on the internets, chances are that you’ve heard about this whole COVID-19 thing.
Resource hoarding aside (I’m looking you, single dude who lives alone and who just bought 17 cases of toilet paper), the United States actually sense to be doing a sensible, public-spirited thing and closing a lot of things down for a bit in an attempt to reduce transmission of the virus.
And I’m all for that, but at the same time it’s kind of weird and surreal.
The company’s off for the next couple of weeks, and we have no idea what’s going to happen with our last show of the season right now (Cancelled? Postponed? Performed via livestream, in HAZMAT suits?).
We did class this morning and didn’t rehearse. Starting tomorrow, we’re technically on hiatus, though we’re trying to find out if we’ll have access to the studio so we can do class together.
I genuinely had never imagined this particular outcome. It’s a weird place to be. Not bad: just weird.
I guess we’ll figure it out, going forward, a bit at a time.
Meanwhile, my teaching job is moving to an online format that’s going to be … Interesting. I’m not at all certain how I’m going to make that work, given that my house is not danceable and my data plan is utter crap. But I’ll figure something out, anyway … If we have wifi at the studio, maybe they’ll let us look in and use it for streaming.
So that’s where we are in mid-March, 2020. Things are up in the air.
My class notes today were, in short:
- Turns in 2nd: really snap that second shoulder around
- “Always finish grand allegro with a double tour, if you can” (Not sure how practicable that is, but I like the audacity of it 😁)
- Don’t create extra work for yourself
That last one pertains to a couple of things I’m working on: first, unnecessary accessory movements that require additional adjustments to balance, placement, etc; second, keeping things engaged in the right ways so the body moves as efficiently as possible.
Not rocket surgery, but worth contemplating from time to time.
Lastly, (I think) I’m done setting the choreography for “January Thaw,” so I’m planning to start polishing it next week, and I’ve started work on a new piece that I’m developing through choreographic improvisation as well.
The new piece is longer (almost 6 minutes) and a bit more complex in terms of both mechanics and artistry, and I plan to take advantage of the extra time in my schedule to really crack away at it.
I don’t have a title for it yet, but the music is Chopin again. I’ve got some rather decent video from last night, so I’ll post that sometime soon.
Okay, I Can Do This
I stayed up way too late writing, nodded off at 4 AM, promptly had a really dumb nightmare* and woke right the heck back up.
Since then, I’ve been stupidly lying here in bed trying to go back to sleep and getting more and more stressed out.
So you know what? I’m going to get up, wrap a couple of gifts I actually somehow forgot I even bought, play Sims 4 on D’s computer, and maybe go back to sleep later, and maybe not, and generally not stress about it, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you can’t sleep.
Also, happy holidays and all that 🎆
*So about the stupid nightmare: it started out as a kind of fun dream about a party, then I realized it reminded me of a ghost movie** I’d seen and immediately segued into being a nightmare about those ghosts
**a ghost movie that doesn’t exist IRL, btw 😑
Random Extra Post: WTF
I’m having a very up-and-down first week back, and I want to write a little about it. Mostly about the body image end of things.
Yesterday, I felt like I looked like a stocky-but-fit[1] dancer. Today, I think I look like an elephant seal attempting to dance[2].
Besides my clothes, nothing much has changed. I’m not super into the particular pair of tights I’m wearing (I have the same ones in a smaller size and I love them, oddly enough).
I’m working on doing the cognitive-behavioral stuff to try to alleviate some of this: reframing my thoughts, etc. But it’s tough.
Objectively, I am the chubbiest guy in my company. Meanwhile, I’m super-duper lean by Kentucky standards. It creates a unique species of cognitive dissonance: the people amongst whom I spend most of my time are almost all leaner than I am. Spending 4 hours in the car every day isn’t helping.
Anyway. This is really just kvetching, to get it out of my head so I can get through my day without imploding.
I really wish I understood why I feel like this sometimes, so I’m working on observing my thoughts and my circumstances to try to figure it out.
Also, last night I dreamed that I was sentenced to jail for one hour, but I can’t remember why. The jail in question was more like a locked group home for adult screw-ups, but it had a lot of books, so that was good?
Anyway, that’s it for now. I think I’m going to write about balancés, the hardest thing that’s actually easy, tomorrow, before returning to my meditation on first position (the easiest thing that’s actually harrrrddddd) next week.
- Fwiw, ballet stocky is not really stocky in any other context, except maybe Twink Night.
- Don’t worry, my terrifyingly judgmental body issues are me-specific … I think other people can look great (or awful) at any size, but I can’t seem to extend that to myself
Yes, This
I’m working on a post about some of the stuff I learned in David Reuille’s masterclass, but for the moment, check out this post by Circus Out Of Joint:
I’ve been lucky to have ballet, circus, and gymnastics instructors who understand the differences in the ways hypermobile people perceive the world and in how our bodies work (versus those of people with average mobility). They’ve done a great job helping me build habits of sound alignment, teaching me what to engage and disengage when, and guiding me towards beautiful ways of moving that won’t destroy my joints.
That doesn’t mean I’m as good at looking out for myself as I should be, though. Circus Out Of Joint discusses some of the ways those of us with hEDS can advocate for ourselves in class, along with some of the challenges that we face in doing so (like, when should we ask our six million questions?).
Unstrung
It’s funny: when we speak of someone being “unstrung,” we typically mean it in the sense that a harp or a piano that has been unstrung is usually having a pretty bad day.
We don’t typically mean it in the other sense—that a bow (the old-fashioned kind made from wood and/or horn and/or bone) should be unstrung regularly, lest the tension of the string ruin its strength.
I think I’m experiencing a bit of both right now.
It’s deeply unpleasant to miss a week of class. By day three, I begin to suffer from the sneaking suspicion that I’m losing my figure if I eat at all (please note, if you’re new to this blog: this a criticism I apply solely to myself—I’m not generally prescriptive about dancers’ bodies, unless the dancer in question is me). My history of anorexia is still, essentially, history … but I’d be lying if I failed to admit that its voice speaks louder when I’m forced to sit down for a while.
This is complicated by the fact that my internal mirror, my mental representation of my body, is updating slowly: that I’m starting to see myself as this rather athletically-built kind of boy, possibly the sort that runs to fat by current professional ballet standards (though perhaps not by any saner standard in the world).
Likewise, I begin to feel frustrated: I know I’ll have to work back into my body a bit; that ballet in particular is an art that demands constant practice. If I miss class for six days, I, my director, the audience, and even the spiders in the stairwell will know. And I’ll really, really know. My deep rotators are, by this point, slowly morphing back into deep potaters (though I am at least feeling well enough to do simple turnout exercises now, provided I do them lying down or in small batches).
And yet it would be impossible and unhealthy to dance through the illness I’ve had this week—I might have milked a few more classes out of myself, but it’s probable that for every hour I strained to charge forward, I’d pay back a day in interest. The show must go on, but at the same time it’s stupid to feck about with a fever and an aggressive infection that has already colonized your upper respiratory system and is eyeing your lungs. If you have to do a show and you don’t have a second cast, you do it; if you’ve got a slow week of class and rehearsals, for goodness’ sake, just take a minute and heal.
Now is no time to get sick—at least, not sicker than I have been. If there’s a good week to take a hit from North Tonsilia, for that matter, this was it: next week is PlayThink, then it’s tech week for Weeds. This week we had fewer rehearsals than usual, and none that were unusually demanding. There was time to sleep and recover.
Time to sleep and recover also means time to review video of Tenebrae and think about work and consider how to move forward.
It’s still a little weird to think about myself as a professional dancer and as a nascent choreographer. It’s really weird in this way that it’s not as weird as it once was. I’m starting to think about the long game; to consider strategies for working as much as I can for as long as I can. It doesn’t seem as ludicrous, anymore, to think seriously about choreographing projects and so forth.
In that light I should think about trying to avoid, say, choking to death. I sliced up some steak to eat with a salad today (now that I can eat salad again :P), but I failed to account for being pretty much unable to breathe through my nose, still. I wound up aspirating a longish piece of steak in the process of trying to bite through it, and D had to perform the Heimlich maneuver. Obviously, it worked: out came the steak, and after a few minutes I was able to go eat my lunch, which I’d literally just started.
Still, it gave me pause. I’ve managed to choke on things before, as one does, but never so badly that I couldn’t sort it out myself. It was less scary than one might expect: like, the initial feeling was, “Oh, I’m choking, I should sort this out,” followed by futile attempts to somehow dislodge this strip-o-steak, um, psychically or something?
The problem being that by the time I staggered into the living room where D was, I was kind of redlining and started to panic as I realized I couldn’t remember the universal sign for “choking,” which apparently is not instinctive :O
That said, I was still able to make a faint gurgling hiss somehow: apparently that, combined with the usual hand-waving that I do when I can’t find words, prompted D to realize that I was choking.
The actual experience of being Heimlich-ed was interesting: there was a moment of, “This isn’t worki—” and then all at once it had worked and I was holding a disgusting, slimy strip of meat in one hand. Weird. After that there was a brief episode of the physical rage that’s my universal response to physical threats, but in a particularly helpless-feeling fashion that made me sit down on the floor and say some colorful words.
And then I realized it was just that—the same reflex I always have—and that I was fine and D had basically just saved my life by correctly reading a particular form of interpretive dance that I do when my language coprocessor crashes.
Which, in retrospect, is really rather funny. So now I have another amusing story to tell at dancer parties, which are basically the only parties I attend, about how interpretive dance saved the day.
You guys, I swear my life is not normally this interesting.
You may now proceed with the obvious jokes related to choking on huge meat, biting off more than I can chew, etc.
Attack of the Tonsils
Last night I kept choking on water (and tea, and everything else). That should’ve told me something.
Here’s a quick recap of this week!
Sunday:
It’s fine. Everything’s fine. It’s just allergies. With a fever. Because that happens all the time.
Monday:
…I’m feeling much better! (Hack, wheeze.)
Thursday:
That word, “Better.” (INCONCEIVABLE!)
Thursday Night:
Also, that part where I said I wasn’t running a fever? Yeah, well, I was wrong.
Today:
Dr. B ordered a shot of prednisone and a round of antibiotics. I was actually still running a fever this morning, and was apparently a thermonuclear reactor last night when I was sleeping. Hmm.
Evidently, that repeatedly-choking-on-water thing is sometimes a sign that your tonsils have decided to annex the greater portion of your nasopharynx in the name of Prussia.
Goshdarn imperialists!
On the upside, my lungs (though fairly annoyed by the repeated coughing fits induced by my tonsils’ aggressive assault on South Pharyngia) have chosen to remain diplomatically neutral. Which is to say that they’re slightly wheezy, but we caught this before “slightly wheezy” could develop into “a goop-filled colony of Upper Tonsilia.”
Also on the upside, the medrol injection has started doing its job, which has both reduced the pain in my throat and made breathing, coughing, and drinking easier.
Provided, of course, that I don’t attempt to do all three at the same time.
Yaaaaaaaaay!
Probleme
So it turns out that my stiffness and disorientation on Saturday was the prodrome of some kind of aggressive respiratory infection. Like, mostly functional on Sunday morning, fever of 101F and raging headache by 9 PM Sunday evening kind of aggressive
The recycled status of this picture does not make it any less accurate a representation of my current health state (so, zombie with a side of gay? or…?)
As such, I haven’t been in class all week, though I did go to a tech session for Weeds last night. We were shooting video for projections, though, so there was no serious dancing involved … mostly we hung out on various street corners looking mildly threatening, but definitely more threatening than a dance number from West Side Story[1].
- You guys, I love West Side Story, of course, but can we agree that some of the gangland dance numbers are, well, less than intimidating?
I am almost certainly skipping class tonight as well, because frankly nobody needs to try to dance when they can’t actually stand up, and none of the people in class who remain able to stand up need my germs.
C’est la vie. Sometimes you win; sometimes the microbes win.
Basically me at the end of rehearsal on Sunday. (Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com)
danseur ignoble 