Panic in the dining room roused me from sleep. A dream delayed my waking and disorientation delayed my actually getting up, and apparently I was still half asleep when I extricated myself from the covers: the first foot on the floor skidded forward from underneath me, the other leg was still in the bed, and down I went, all my weight on the folded joint of my hip, making me gladder I'm not older or weaker. Calling to Blake all the while, I found my feet and made them go, found the dining room switch and light flared out, found the covers of the cage and yanked them off. Supporting myself on the back of a dining chair, I was on the hinge side of the cage door when I opened it, and so when Blake fled the phantasms in his cage, he flew away from me and landed heaving on the hard floor. I limped to pick him up and tried to cuddle him, but he wouldn't make himself so vulnerable as to close his eyes and present his head for petting. We sat, waiting for his breathing to slow, his pulse to calm, his posture to relax, his plumage to fluff enough that I could not see his eyes from behind, waiting for me to see if I still worked. I crooned to him and gradually his crest lowered. I was quite ready to go back to bed, but he did his various Cockatiel Evasive Maneuvers to avoid stepping off my hand onto his perch.
More cuddling, more crooning, more maneuvering, until I was merciless. He stood on his perch, leaning down to look at whatever monster had arisen from the floor, in a scared little stance that made me feel crueler, and I turned down the light for him to settle down for a minute before I recovered him and returned to bed. I don't know how long he stays awake after one of his nightfrights, but I was awake for a long time.
This morning I was surprised to find myself almost not sore, and not bruised at all. But it's a reminder to keep up my bone mass density.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
Later, actual exercise, two 20-minute stints on an Precor EFX elliptical, 5' warm-up, 35' at 20/20 incline and 12- or 13/20 resistance, 15' with two 2-pound handweights, and then 3' cooldown.
Back extensions, except not because while my sore hip made itself obvious during the elliptical, it hurt doing this.
Ab crunches on a weight machine, 100 x 75 pounds.
Not that this dress would have been appropriate for Sunday anyway, since it wasn't quite warm enough, but I could not zip a dress I bought in fucking July. I wore it, it's white linen so I dry-cleaned it, and Sunday I could, in fact, zip it, but it was obviously (to me) too tight. RDC disagreed and said that dry-cleaning can shrink things, and I don't know if that's true but it's why I keep him around, but I cannot have expanded in volume that much in two months. Can I have? Everything else that I bought in July still fits--including the Perfect Skirt and the closely-fitting pants with the silent s. Grr.
The Perfect Skirt is nearly perfect despite the middle seam down the front. This dress's seaming was hard to tell from the picture on the J. Crew sales site, and its center seam was nearly enough for me to return it. Now if I return it it will be because I'm inflated and therefore not allowed (and immoral, and probably impossible since it was an end-of-season)