Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Derby career on hold.

As you can see my garden has been an attention hog and taking up all my blogging lately, which doesn't say much considering the scarcity of my posts lately...I digress.

So here is some more news about roller derby. I haven't been skating for the past few weeks? Month? due to experiencing pain in my left knee. This happens to be the knee that I injured when I was 13, doing of all things, roller skating. June 23rd I went to see an orthopedist and then had an MRI on the 26th. My biggest fear was the MRI would show something was torn and I would have to have surgery, thus putting skating on hold indefinitely.

Today I got to see the MRI results, which by the way are really cool. If you've never seen one, it looks kind like they turned your leg into a loaf of bread and you can look at different slices.... Good news is, nothing is torn! However, I find the diagnosis oddly comical:
Chondromalacia patella.
Or in layman's terms: Runners knee. Ha, do they know who they are talking to? I don't run. I wish I could. I see people running all the time, saw a lot of MIT and Harvard students running along the Charles yesterday as I drove my car. I wish I could run, but I just get bored and out of breath. I realize this term is really due to this being a common injury for runners, but with the reimmergence of roller derby, they may want to consider changing the term to, "skaters knee".

If you are feeling sympathetic and would like to see what symptoms and conditions constitute this diagnosis, I found this page is pretty much spot on: http://www.revolutionhealth.com/conditions/bones-joints-muscles/knee-pain/symptoms/chondromalacia-patella?

If you actually took the time to look at that page you'll already know what needs to be done to cure myself of this ailment. Rest, anti-inflamatory drugs, and some good old PT. Hopefully my knee will be good as new soon and I can get back to skating in a few weeks.

In other derby news, the New Hampshire Roller Derby is really coming together and we are participating in a couple of scrimmages! Even though I won't be skating in any of the upcoming events, I hope everyone will spread the word and come out and support these wonderful women. Look here for details: New Hampshire Roller Derby




Psssst, exciting garden news to come! :-)


Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Now with a few less weeds









With the help of Philip, I managed to tame some of the weeds in the garden last weekend. I stopped by to take these photos and was pleased to see how my peas are just a mess of purpley-pink blossoms, and I discover my first wax bean! I also found a few more suprises growing in my garden. My day lilies have broken through and a small patch of mushrooms crept up by the fence.

My lettuce is bolting and its now time to find some summer lettuce varieties and re-seed. My yellow "Jerry" tomato has a few blossoms and one of the zucchinis has tiny buds developing too. The nice warm weather and frequent, to almost regular rain showers are boding well for the little garden. I hope to spend some more time during my 3 day Independence Day weekend tidying up a bit and hopefully planting some lettuce, carrots and bunching onions.