Twelve years ago I came to Finland for the first time and I had my first cabin experience. On R2's birthday this year, we went to the cabin to celebrate it. Thankful that we're still given time together on earth. The temperature was a bit colder than usual, but the sun was shining so brightly. I brought my snow shoes with me so that my legs wouldn't be stuck deep on some parts of the thicker snow while walking towards the cabin he he...The temperature dropped down to around -14'C during the night, but we had a gorgeous sunset and a full moon to enjoy.
I've made a short video clip. I deliberately didn't erase the actual sound of the video despite the fact that I did add the music so that you can all hear the crunch crunch of the snow below my snow shoes he he...We walked across the frozen lake and at the end of the clip, I was trying to make a hole on the frozen lake. Thankfully it wasn't that hard to do since the weather had been kinda warm. I remember one time we went to the cabin and it took R2 at least half an hour to dig into the ice and it was around 15 cm thick. We had to make the hole big enough to get some water for the sauna. FYI, at the end of the clip, I threw away my gloves since they got wet when I tried to get rid of some icy bits to make the hole bigger ha ha...
What else has been going on in my life? Well, the recovery process is still continuing. I've been exercising more regularly than normal, doing more stretches as well at work during recess or behind the till. A funny thing happened the other day. I had some brown kinesio tape on my wrists and both arms and a customer said, "Do you have problem with your skin or something? Why do you have so much band-aid?" LOL!!!
Oh yeah, I've also bought a foam rollersince I thought it'd help. The last time I met one physiotherapist, I got to try her foam roller on my back and it felt good. I've been using it a few times now. The only thing that my body doesn't like is the fact that in many poses, I have to hold my body weight using my arms and my wrists don't necessarily like it, but at least now I know how to do a self-massage for my lower arms that are pretty effective. Lesson in healing: better collect as many "weapons" as possible so that you can combine them all as you move forward in your healing process. This also means you've got to learn from different people and do lots of trials and errors since what works for you may not exactly work for someone else.
I haven't been blogging in a long time, have I? It's always harder to get back on track once you haven't been in the flow of things for a long period of time. It's almost like going back to your exercise regime or starting a new one after a long break. My tennis elbow problem is still under control, though depending on the days and what activities I've done and the kind of exercise I do, there can be more symptoms (pain, tightness, etc.). I know for sure that I still can't handle the normal amount of work, so I've talked to my bosses about it. It's a long road to recovery, but I'm positive about healing.
A friend of mine had the same problem and it took her two full years to recover, but even then she warned me that it could happen all over again if I were not careful (maintaining the right posture at work, doing enough exercise at home). So I've been doing more exercise and I've walked more (instead of riding my bike) these days. The arms don't like certain kinds of exercise movements, but I'm only able to find out about it afterwards, so it's a bit of a trial and error in terms of trying out different kinds of exercise programs. A FB friend posted this video in her newsfeed and I tried it right away. My left arm was giving me a full-blown headache when I was doing this (didn't happen with the right arm) and I actually felt a bit nausea as well (just like what she described in the video), but I felt so much lighter afterwards. She's also uploaded lots of other videos (a few others I've also tried).
I've also been massaging my back and shoulders with the massage stick I got as my birthday present last year (as per my request). It's been helping me a bit, too. I've been using at least two rolls of kinesio tape, since for some reason my skin doesn't like it when I use it in the sauna, even though some people can keep them on in the sauna with no problem whatsoever.
Anyway, a few weeks ago someone asked me what language I used in my head to think. I answered, "English, Finnish, and Indonesian." I use Indonesian the least these days compared to English and Finnish, so my Indonesian is getting rusty. I noticed this during the Skype call I made to my mom about a week ago. I struggled in finding some words and only the English and Finnish words came out (along with the image of the words I wanted to convey to her) LOL!!!
The weather has been pretty warm these days (nearing or a little above 0'C), though there's still oodles of snow everywhere. Here's a photo I took a while back. I received some long-stemmed roses, but my vases were all too short, so I ended up having to use a Lion King pitcher for them ha ha ha ha ha...
