Ow

[naomikritzer]

First, thank you to everyone who suggested music, either in comments or by e-mail. That should keep us busy for at least the next year.

It was a really nice winter weekend here. Saturday was perfect outdoor skating weather: sunny and just cold enough that the ice wasn't melting. Molly and Kiera have a gymnastics class at a nearby park, and that park also has a skating rink (and even some pairs of loaner skates) so after I was done grocery shopping, I went over there with my own skates and met Ed and the girls.

None of us are very good skaters. Ed never skated as a kid, and is learning with borrowed hockey skates. Kiera shuffles, and Molly does very rudimentary skating. I can go forward and backward, and once upon a time I could do an extremely simple spin, but I can't anymore because I lack the flexibility.

When I fell on the ice, all I was doing was skating forward. I hit mostly with my knees, and managed to cheerfully call out "I'm okay!" before lapsing into "oh....oh....ow...." After a few minutes, I was able to make my way in to the warming house, but in addition to bruising my knees, I had strained what feels like every muscle from neck to hips.

Lyda says that until she was 30, falling down was no big deal; she'd just get up, brush herself off, and occasionally nurse a bruise for a day or two. Then she turned 30, and suddenly she couldn't bounce back nearly as quickly anymore. Although when I was talking about this with Ed, he pointed out that I was comparing my fall yesterday to falls I had while downhill skiing as a teenager -- and even packed snow is a lot softer to fall on than ice.

When I fell on ice last winter, my bad knee had just finally gotten back to normal, and falling on it messed it up all over again. This time, thank goodness, my knees are really tender where they're bruised, but it doesn't hurt to walk. And the pulled muscles mostly feel like something that should be all better in a couple of days.

Comments

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

I don't think being thirty has anything much to do with it. I fell on my butt ice skating this winter. My neck was a bit stiff the next day. But I distinctly recall similar results when I fell as a teenager. I've heard this business before about this changes or that changes when you're past thirty. Sure, I've noticed some changes. I've also gotten fat (20 pounds overweight), do not exercise five hours a day like I once did, and have definitely lost flexibility. Taking all of that into consideration, I'm rather impressed that I feel pretty much the same as I did at sixteen. :-) We do wear out, but not THAT fast!

[servant-of-clio.livejournal.com]

I tripped on my front steps this winter--no ice even involved--and scraped one knee on the concrete step, badly. It hurt like crazy! I wouldn't underestimate how painful that scraping / bruising can be.

[yankee-in-texas.livejournal.com]

I definitely don't recover the same way any more. It su-ucks. But my theory is that I have accumulated all sorts of little injuries, and now when I fall down or hurt myself, I am piling injury on injury. So the knee that hurts because of the recent surge of plantar fasciitis (which I can't spell) which I first got after I had a blood clot 15 years ago* hurts even more because I fell on the ice. The other knee hurts from falling on the ice too, but not as much.

*15 years ago. Oh. My. Maude.