Opus the Spy Redux

It pains me to admit this to myself, because this was at the top of my to-do list as far as career moves, but I can never be a spy.

Because I’d give up every state secret including how much the Bush family paid Satan for those two terms in office if my captors only did one thing to me.

And that’s to lock me in a room with some armed thug assigned to keep me from stretching or exercising in any way. If I so much as attempt one calf flex, he will clamp down my leg. God only knows what they’ll do if I try to do laps around my room or get on the floor and go through a series of spinal rolls or hamstring pulls.

So much for all those years of training, when everyone thought I was majoring in advertising. Sorry, Dad.

At times there have been good reasons to stay put. The day or so following laparoscopic removal of an ovarian cyst as big as a pear being one of them. Eye surgery is another. It’s a little harder to get a bead on where to stick the syringe if I’m doing neck rolls. Or having the stomach flu so bad that even turning over in bed caused the room to spin (the only partially amusing tidbits about that episode were that I threw up on a nurse, and follow-up care included Husband having to medicate me in a way that, shall we say, takes care of his end of the marriage vows for the next hundred years or so).

But after a year and several months of stressing the importance of daily stretching and exercise – even when I’m in pain – by my physical therapist, he’s now asked me to cut it back to every other day. Just for a week, as a test, because there’s one little part of my back that’s being stubbornly unresponsive. But it’s only three days in and I’m going berserk. Stiff as I am when I wake up (The hallmark of fibro is morning stiffness, like not being able to bend your fingers, for one. Husband and I call that “squirrel hands.”) I still want to stretch. Out of a hot shower, I want to stretch. Getting up from a chair…getting out of the car…after a stressful day at work…and it’s psychological, I know. Like when you’re trying to quit smoking (actually I wouldn’t know this, having never smoked) you see cigarettes everywhere, and when you’re dieting (this, I know a little about) you see oatmeal raisin cookies and jars of Fluffernutter in your dreams. I want to stretch doubly on my off-days just because he told me not to. Damn it.

But he’s often been right before, so I might as well listen. Sigh.

“Just don’t think about it,” he said.

Yeah. I’ll get right on that.

It’s weird. I got used to a routine. Walk, stretch, do a bunch of exercises. Three types of leg lifts, abdominal crunches, pelvic tilts. That’s in the morning. Walk and stretch again at lunchtime and then again at the end of the day. Heat and ice as needed, special, more intense yoga-type stretches if I’m out of alignment. Now on my “off” days (today being one of them) I still get to walk, but after stepping off the treadmill, I feel…strange. Ungrounded. Like I’m hanging on the end of my seat, waiting for that final resolution chord of the sonata. No stretching. So what do I do? I mill about for a while, feeling odd, or if I feel tired, I lie down for a few minutes, or sit and do a crossword puzzle, or, if at work, just go back to whatever task I was doing before, again, feeling like I’ve forgotten something.

I hope that it works. If not, an alternative that’s been bandied about is a cortisone shot into the joint, which I would really rather avoid.

OK, so for this, I’ll try to put up with it.

Made me good and grouchy for work this week, which coupled with a deadline, made me someone you really didn’t want to be around. Even the Prince of Darkness laid low (or at least a little lower). I was amused to find out that the ring tone on his cell is the theme from The Exorcist.

And that’s another thing. Not the ring tone but the existence of this guy at all. I’m on deadline, pumped full of Motrin, and I get yanked off and given no more than twenty minutes to proofread a 20 page document that has an even tighter deadline than mine, and it’s work that His Damienship should be doing, as he is one of the cast of characters involved in the project, but I’m put on it because I’m a good proofreader and he’s got other things to do. Now, despite all the mishegos of my body, I’d been nice to him that day. I said “good morning” when I came in. (He snubbed me.) I offered to get him coffee when I made my Dunkin Donuts run; he declined, wanted to go out himself. So after I finish the proofing (One of my favorite typos: “trouble shooting” (space between the words) instead of “troubleshooting.” Takes on a whole raft of amusing connotations.), he goes into my coworkers office, asks if she wants a bagel or something because he’s going out, and he doesn’t come anywhere near my office.

This defies my whole blueprint of how human beings – especially human beings who are supposed to be working together in a small space to achieve a common goal- are supposed to act toward each other.

But “supposed to” gets us in a whole heap of trouble, doesn’t it?

The same way I was “supposed to” be perfect. “Supposed to” stay healthy. “Supposed to” be a spy.

So maybe I can still use that training yet. I’ll get so good that I’ll never get caught, so my captors won’t even get a chance to torture me. Or, if I’m double-crossed, I’ll be so fit that I’ll bust out of my dank underground cell and live to exercise another day.

Or return to my deep cover existence and find sneaky ways to upset The Prince of Darkness….heh, heh, heh…