Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I woke up very late yesterday and then did fewer of these stretches and exercises than usual.

Today, however, I was up at 8 (which is in the range of my current "normal" pattern), sat with my anti-SAD light (which tends not to happen if I sleep late), and have done wrist stretches and exercises.

I am doing well enough that it may be time to stop, or at least pause, the OT visits:

( boring numbers )

It has also been a few days since I used the brace on the right wrist at all, though I'm carrying it with me if I go out for longer than a walk to the supermarket, and having it in reach when I sleep.

I am still sleeping with the other wrist braced and propped up, because leaving that off for more than a couple of days leads to wrist or elbow pain. Sleeping with both wrists in those braces is like sleeping with fingerless gloves on, and can be warm enough to make it hard for me to fall asleep, even naked and without even a sheet to cover me. (Adrian's room is cooler, so sleeping with both braces on when I'm in that bedroom hasn't been a problem.

I went to the gym this morning. When I got done with my cardio, one of the new trainers commented that I was doing well. I said something to the effect that I always do the cardio first, so I have the weights ahead of me as a reward; if I did the weights first, I'd never get to cardio. She noted that it's also useful warm-up, which I acknowledged. Then I did my first weight exercise, and she said something about my having been making a lot of progress in the last month. I pointed out that I've been going there for several years, and said that I wasn't making progress, just getting back from having been sick.

Then I thought about it a little more. Progress from two months ago counts, even if it's not where I might have been in an ideal universe where I wasn't sick for a month, and perhaps where I was a little more diligent about working out when traveling. And I feel as though I'm making progress on other scales, like actually going to see people, and having gotten a very encouraging reply to an email I sent yesterday about possible work. So I went back and told her "I shouldn't put myself down, I am making progress" (though I didn't include the reasoning above).

The measurable results of the weight work are incremental, and not monotonic: an extra 2.5 pounds on this exercise, but not up to what I'd been thinking of as my fairly stable level on that one. But I know I feel better when I work out, and my partners say they can see the muscle. Certainly, it comes in handy when someone asks me to carry her walker up the subway stairs because the elevator is out of service, and I've got a sack of groceries in one hand (she could climb the stairs using the handrail, but not get the walker up with her).

( some gym numbers )