all knotted up

Tonight I feel slightly frustrated. After I finished physical therapy, I sat down and tried to make some jewelry. But after about a month of not making much of anything, my fingers were clumsy and refused to cooperate with me. Every little, delicate thing I tried to make ended up bigger than I wanted and badly formed. Finally I gave up after beating on a few pieces of copper sheet. That I can do. Whacking something with a hammer doesn't require one to be precise.

I've not washed my hands yet, so my fingers smell like a combination of latex from the resistance bands and pennies from the copper sheet. It reminds me of when I worked retail. At the end of the day, my fingertips would be black and stinking of old, dirty change. No matter how many times I washed them through out the day, within an hour they'd be filthy again. One reason why I rarely carry coins on me, now. I've seen just how nasty they can be.

I've been in physical therapy for nearly a month now. I like to ignore problems until they go away, which rarely works and usually makes things worse. I've been ignoring my painful joints since I was about 20 years old until I realized how weak I was becoming. So now I have to contort myself in various ways using latex bands and a squishy ball. The exercises range from the mundane to the ridiculous. All of them hurt like the dickens. As soon as I get used to the exercises, the physical therapist adds more reps and new things to do. I'm pretty sure she's in league with my dentist and they meet in secret each week to discuss new ways of torturing me.

But this friday marks the end of my weekly visits to her office. I get to go from once a week to once every 3 weeks, though still doing the cursed exercises every day at home. I know eventually it will all pay off. But as I curse and grunt and bend myself into each new position, it seems futile at times. Especially when I sit down and my hands won't even let me shape wire properly.

I guess I'll go wash the stink off of my hands and throw my pity party in bed. I have a date with two Tylenol PM and a cup of tea. My fiance will be home soon, and I'll get him to rub out all the knots, and the welt on my stomach from where one of the resistance bands slipped off the doorknob and snapped back into me. Hey, those suckers HURT when they do that.

Tomorrow I'll be feeling better. I'll just sit down again and make my hands listen to me, to the shape of the pliers against my palm, and the sharp gleam of the copper wire until something beautiful comes out.