The Forefoot of a Camel

I think most moms will understand what I mean when I say that I am pretty good at taking care of everyone else but fail miserably at taking care of myself most days. I’m always making sure every one’s stuff is clean and accessible even if it means I realized at the 11th hour and then was in a mad rush to get it together. What ends up happening is we get where we are going and the boys look great and I’m standing there realizing I haven’t even looked in the mirror yet, let alone brushed my hair. Or we get to one of the boys’ games and they have all their gear and I have the team snacks, but I didn’t have a chance to grab sunglasses or sunscreen for myself, which means I’ll be squinting and burning for the next 1 1/2 hours. It’s just another day when the boys arrive at a birthday party ready to have a great time while I stand there sweating from the mad rush to get the boys ready and get there by 11am and then feel faint because I haven’t eaten yet. So suffice it to say that over the weekend I’m often so focused on getting all the boys’ copious amounts of laundry finished that I usually don’t have time to do any of mine. Then, until I finally get a few minutes to get a load going when I know I’ll also have time to get it out before it all rots in the washing machine for days on end, I’m scrambling every single day to find something to wear… if not clean, then clean-enough… cleanish.

Today was one of those days when I needed to put on something for my physical therapy appointment, but all of my yoga, stretch, or running pants were in a pile needing to be washed. So I had to go to my closet and pull out one of my ill-fitting pairs that I save for these occasions. The pair I put on were on a pair I’d found on clearance for $5 a couple years ago, and it only took me wearing them the first time to realize why… they just don’t fit right in the hip or pelvic region. I usually just wear long tanks with it, but I’m low on clean tanks too. I was forced to grab a longish tank that BARELY covers a sufficient amount of the top portion of my pants, and off I went to PT, tugging my shirt down every time I sat and then stood back up.

Wouldn’t you know it, my physical therapist decided to add another exercise for me today since I’m “doing so well!”, and, after an ultrasound treatment for my neuritis and a cupping treatment to loosen some scar tissue from the back of my leg where the tendon was operated on, there I was getting handed off to the newer therapist who’s younger than my daughter and likes to stand very close while I’m doing my exercises. “Lie down here,” she says, “and put your feet in this furry sling.” I do as she says and realize that of all the days I could’ve worn these pants and now anyone walking into the room is getting an eye full of lumpy crotch. “Let it go, Gina. Not everyone notices crotches like you do.” I tell myself. 

“Ok, Gina, now you’re going to do pelvic lifts, and you’re going to pull your butt off the table and lift all the way up until your belly and hips make a straight line with your thighs; you’re going to hold the position, hold onto this bar with your hands, pull the bar down to your belly and hip area, lift your arms back up to the starting position, and then lower your butt and back down to the table again. You’ll do that 10 times. You’re going to do it very slowly and hold it at the top each time. Ready? Go.”

So I lift, lift, lift, and I hold it while I bring the bar down with my hands. I cannot bring myself to look at her, because she is super close to me, she is about 3 inches taller than the shelf I’m making with my body, and she is standing at my hip area, and with these pants on doing this exercise, I have got the most obnoxious camel toe that might be found anywhere in existence. My $5 nightmare is pulling up, up, up, as I stretch my back, and there Ms. Camel Toe sits at the top just elevated and on display. It’s like there are 3 of us in the room. Me, the PT, and… HER.  I feel like I should make some sort of introduction, “Have you met…?” Or an apology… “I’m sorry I brought her with me today…?” I don’t know. I just close my eyes, wondering why the PT is still standing there so closely, wondering if she has also lost count, wondering if it’s like driving past a terrible car accident from which you can’t look away. I can’t look at her or it, but I know what she sees. I gasped and cringed the first time I saw a reflection of myself wearing these pants and realized the horrific sight. I would have thrown them out immediately if not for how SOFT they are and how I can wear long tanks to hide the problem… When I have clean laundry, that is. Somehow I survived the 10 reps and spent the next hour hoping we could somehow forget what just happened. She handed me off a little while later to someone else, and I couldn’t be more relieved.

In keeping with my life’s destiny to run into the quirkiest, most interesting individuals, I found myself now getting some lessons on the pilates machine (that is to be part of my recovery from leg & foot surgery) from a 70 year old man who’s been practicing and teaching pilates for over 30 years. He looks 20 years younger and is clearly a nerd of his field… meaning someone who is so intensely interested in their field that they quite easily wade into the most tedious details without trying all due to their habit of naturally segueing into educating others about something they consider to be a little known fascinating fact. I work with engineers every day as part of my career, and, within a small margin of error, I can immediately determine their particular expertise almost at first glance… electrical, mechanical, structural, etc… they each give off a “thing”, and they can go on forever about their topics. I imagine this is true for most people in their individual fields, and I, for one, have a real appreciation for what I affectionately consider to be nerd-speak. Even Jose, who is one of the worst things I can imagine being - an Accountant, gets sexier to me every time he talks spreadsheets.

It was somewhere between my Fountain-of-Youth-Pilates-Therapist 1) showing me which 5 points I should be focusing on in my movements for each set on the pilates equipment and 2) using my own hand to press into various areas of my core to ensure I was engaging the correct muscles when I included a kegel at each full extension of the set that SOMEHOW we ended up on the topic of the difference in a woman’s kegel and a man’s kegel. I hadn’t previously been aware that men did kegels too; I will admit that in my ignorance I thought this was strictly at female thing. I made the mistake of admitting as much, and I found myself following him down the bunny trail of describing with hems, haws, winks, whispers, awkward facial expressions and hand gestures as he tried to describe two different ways of releasing bad bacteria from a man’s prostate… yes, that was another segue… from activating correct core muscles during MY kegel to how a man activates HIS muscles during a kegel, to how one of the ways you can get inside a man’s prostate is by… me… ahh… um… assisting… him… (wink wink, *clears throat* bug eyes and head nod, etc) and the other way was when hyperbaric pressure creates an opening which then allows something to happen that I don’t remember because all I saw was his hands demonstrating something that looked a lot like he was really enjoying massaging someone’s balls… shoulders up, quieter, higher pitched voice, looking both ways and then back at me, *clears throat*… So, yeah.

Now before anyone reading this thinks, “Oh, the horror! Oh, how inappropriate! Oh, he was clearly perverted and should have known this was an uncomfortable topic!” Let me say to you that in actuality this was all just nerd-speak from a 70 year old who LOVES his field and found in me someone who would entertain his chattering on about a topic he realized through my own volunteering of information that I did not know. He was not a man talking to a woman but rather one nerd talking to another, less-informed-on-the-topic nerd, and we could have been sitting over coffee with medical charts for reference… except that I was lying down on the pilates machine looking up at him in ill-fitting pants waiting for him to have me start the next exercise sequence… so, yeah, a little awkward, BUT… I will still just take it as a compliment that I seemed open to the information he had to share and that we had an interesting conversation I never thought I’d have at a physical therapy appointment for my leg and foot. 

Either that or it was just conversation inspired by the forefoot of a camel in the room.

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