Arrggghhh.

Michelin MC!

Does anyone remember me writing, lamenting, I guess, about some health problems I was having? If there’s nothing I hate more, it’s when people talk about their health — harsh, probably, but seriously, don’t we all know someone who from the moment you encounter them, is telling (or worse, showing!) you in nearly nauseating detail, about their bum left knee, their aching back, the phlegm in their throat, the drip in their nose, the surgery they had last week, and oh, yeah, they’re having a hemorrhoid flare-up.

Unless we’re brimming with it or dying from it, talk of our mostly mundane physical foibles and failings, really, in my mind, just shouldn’t be done.

And, I’ve tried mostly to keep my mouth shut about my own recent, um, challenges, though I did allude to them in my All Signs Point To Stillness column, I wrote that I was having a problem that needed to be taken care of to avoid surgery. I was no longer allowed to do any kind of serious weight-bearing exercise — no running, walking, biking, or using machines even. The ways to take care of the problem involved a predicted 14 weeks of physical therapy, yoga, stretching, and swimming.

I’ve started the yoga — beginner’s class — and have been having therapy three times a week, and am stretching every day while my cats laugh at me behind my back. I also get to have a lot of fun having “ice therapy” which is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more painful than I ever could have imagined!!

I had also started swimming, several times a week. Losing myself in the water for first five, then 10, then 15 laps at a time. Afterwards, always rewarding myself with a dead man’s float of nothingness.

[The other day, while swimming, I spotted a big bald eagle was perched in the big wire transfer stand (if that’s what they’re called) not too far from the pool, and I was transfixed. Eventually, I got to see him fly away. He was stunning.]

But I digress. So, I was getting into a groove of being in the water and starting to actually enjoy it.

So what happens? My doctor says I have to stop swimming. It’s creating too many problems.

I already can’t run, bike, walk, or even use an elliptical machine. Now I can’t even swim.

Well, okay, I exaggerate a bit: After two weeks of non-swimming, I can try it again and then come to him for a check-up the next morning. If he gives the green light, I can go back to my swimming laps-a-lalooza, beginning with three laps only, adding two for every day that nothing “goes wrong.”

In the meantime, the lack of exercise is turning me into the Michelin Tire Woman.

Oh, um, maybe the six cookies I inhaled yesterday have something to do with it too.