Chilblains and Other Unintended Consequences

I made fifty-two trips around the sun without ever hearing about chilblains. This year I found out all I never wanted to know about that condition, firsthand, or actually, first foot. The name “chilblains” itself sounds preposterous: "What? Refrigerated brains?" It sounds like something found in kidney pie, another troublesome term.

So, here is my tale of woe, so that you can remain chilblain-free for all of your days.

I wear airy shoes as much as I can: sandals, mesh shoes, and sneakers with holes drilled in them for ventilation. Old sneakers, of course, with pretty much all the sneak gone out of them. My feet get hot. And sweaty. And stinky. Oh, yes, I am a walking, talking, fungal funhouse, even though I have a very high level of foot hygiene. Even my wife says so, and she sees lots of feet and toes as the owner of The Arkansas Yoga Center. One usually does yoga barefoot.

I wear this airy footwear year-round, usually with warm socks that wick the wetness away. I wear regular shoes when it’s too cold or wet. I like to be comfortable. I do get some strange looks, mostly in winter, and my father used to think I was slightly mad until he got cellulitis from athlete’s foot fissures. Now he and I are the geezer patrol with our sandals and socks. Real babe magnets.

That’s the set up for what happened on January 10th when I set out on my trusty Raleigh to bike the Scull Creek Trail in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The temperature was 48 degrees, with sunny skies and a light northwest wind. I dressed in appropriate layers and put on a pair of Smart Wool socks and my leather sandals.

I set out for a refreshing trip on the trail. A couple of miles up the trail, I noticed that my toes were getting colder than expected. In the bright sun, I looked down at my dogs and noticed that this particular pair of socks was threadbare around the toes. The wool had long since migrated into the lint screen of my dryer, leaving the elastic threads to pretend at protection. I subsequently retired these old troopers.

I soon pulled off the trail near a bench, got off my bike, and sat down to rub and warm my toes. They were somewhat numb and also a bit painful. I apologized to them for rushing the sock selection, squeezed them a bit longer with my bare hands, and then got on my bike and pointed it homeward. I wound up stopping another time to repeat the warming routine. This made them a little less numb, but a tad more painful. I finished the return trip at a slower speed because I realized that the wind was exacerbating the problem.

I was relieved to make it home, a little miffed with myself, and quite eager to warm my frigid phalanges. It was then I made the crucial, ignorant, miscalculation. Wearing worn socks was regrettable, but I’d had much colder feet and toes before. And I had just the solution. I thought.

NEXT: "The Bag Mistake"

Meandering Morning Musings

First thing after getting up this morning, I was about to launch into a half hour of streamlining. Then I remembered one of my waking thoughts and listened to it on my Olympus voice recorder: “I spend nearly all of my time doing what amounts to errands, and very little time doing high-level things: processing, creating , reading, writing, conversation. What’s that all about? I mean, my time is pretty much all under my control. This is a big part of my dance with time."

Well, Dave, guess what? You can choose differently! Yee ha! That's good, if embarrassing news.

Embarrassing, really? “What fools we mortals be.” “Progress, not perfection.” So, let it go or I’ll womp you with more platitudes.

Uncle!

So, I’ll initiate the day with one or some quality engagements. I’ll start with reading a bit from The Happiness Myth. 12” on the timer with a cuppa chai.



(A bit later) Yes. I read Jennifer’s chapter on how shopping has become a national pastime, replacing the function of many of our prior social interactions. I feel fortunate to live in Fayetteville, which continues to improve opportunities for relatively casual social connections: the farmer’s market, the multi-use trails, parks, public library, coffee houses, Ozark Natural Foods, etc. I think Wade Colwell was right when he said at the Scull Creek Trail dedication that it would become "the social backbone of our community."

In terms of personal happiness; or flourishing as I'm fond of saying, I now turn to what I can do next, and then the rest of the day, week, month, life. How do I go about living this day. Right now in my life, I have a large measure of independence; of freedom and autonomy. This is a mixed blessing in that it requires more decisions in proportion to this independence. I accept the challenge. What choice, right now, do I have, after all? I can choose to begin, continue really, creating routines in my life, and/or “enrolling’ myself into situations that do that.

What are the “large rocks” right here and now? I’ll begin with continuing my weekly review, David Allen’s system for inventorying one’s complete collection of obligations, projects, plans, and the like: “Do, Delete, Delegate, or Defer.” I haven’t completed this exercise fully since I moved into my new digs here on Leverett. I predict that doing so will promote peace, prosperity, and play; and certainly foster flourishing, fun, flow, and fulfillment. And not only for me, because I’ve found that my experimentation and example send ripples out into the larger community pond, and some actually pick up the rhythm of those wee waves.

I'm choosing to post these excerpts from my journal as practice in writing and publishing. I'm uncomfortable inasmuch as these snippets are not exactly the profound and useful thoughts to which I aspire. I'm also not taking the time to polish much, or to present a comprehensive and authentic picture of my life, one that would show the more focused and productive elements. Good, I say. I get to practice presenting less than my usual persona.

Flossing By Tossing

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 11:01 AM I cleared the kitchen table of books. Peace promotion.

I tossed a few things into the garbage as I went about clearing my dining table of a couple dozen books and such. A few old Amazon.com padded envelopes that I’d been saving to use again. “I rarely ship anything and they’re gathering dust.” A pair of tattered work pants on which I was going to try to iron a patch. “These inexpensive pants have served me well and this doubtful patch would only give them a brief extension.” So, without undue remorse, I gave them the heave-ho.

The intent of the mini-project, after all, was streamlining, and it applies to projects and proposed projects and stand-alone tasks, actions, and the like. The key, or at least a key to experiencing abundant time is to energetically and aggressively toss things from my life and mind. It reminds me of Thoreau’s injunction (included with some of its context):

"Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail."

http://www.geocities.com/thoreaulogy/08sep.html

I don’t aspire to Henry’s level of simplicity, but the principle beckons me.

A tranquil evening in the foothills of Mt. Diablo near Danville, CA.

Concentric Kelp on Half Moon Bay, CA

With all of our internet connectedness these days, I find that there are still periods when it’s just not worth the time to make it happen. Andrea and I are in the middle of a business, family, and revitalizing trip to the Bay area of California. I’ve been off the internet and clock more than I’ve been on in the past 5 days. We met initially in 1984 in Sonoma County, 40 or so miles north of San Francisco, and she lived from age 12 to 20-something in and around Palo Alto and Davis.

There is much I could report, but I’ll be relatively brief. I find the dry air, cool nights (and days in San Fran) agreeable to my body. The population density is more than I like, but buffered with more open spaces than one might imagine.

I saw a number of kelp floaty thingies on the beach at Half Moon Bay where we spent a night with Andrea’s dad and his wife. I made a sand doodle with them. I don’t think the sea gulls noticed.

Waking up at the Crack of the Comfort Zone

Left: Canine Comfort Zzzzone.


6:10 AM. Begin simply: simply begin. Or, as Neil Fiore recommends in his book The Now Habit, “practice starting." I got up to pee this morning around 5:50 and, as I had last night, asked myself if I might just get up early. Lots of good reasons for doing so, I reckon, one of which is my upcoming planned trip to see my folks and to fish down in Louisiana. My dad gets up before the sun, and we can have unimpeded conversation then. When I fish with Mike Hebert, we get up at about the same dark hour. So, I’m getting a head start in shifting my sleep schedule.



And so here I am pecking away at the keys, our cat Honey purring on the doormat, the fan bringing in some of the post-storm, 67F degree air as the mockingbird tells it like it is. I can imagine being back in bed, falling back to sleep, on my back to black. A pleasant daydream. As it is, I’m feeling a little crapulous after drinking more last night than I think and experience as beneficial to body and mind. “Habits,” I’ve heard, “are excellent servants, but terrible masters.” I’m working at changing that particular habit. Part of that change work is observing what is so about it without moralizing. A primary question about that, or any habit, is “does this behavior enhance my joy and well-being?” In this case, the answer is along the lines of “not in the current configuration.”



This early morning waking and writing is outside, or at least near the border, of my “comfort zone.” Habits are part of the border of The Comfort Zone; the Default Doldrums. What else might I do today that would “enrich life,” as Marshall Rosenberg says in Nonviolent Communication? I notice that I’m quoting other people, and that I also have a thought that maybe I’d be better off telling my own truth. And another thought that telling my own truth is not just my truth, since, after all, I have as much in common with the rest of humanity as I have unique to myself (never mind the exact proportion). I could put that in better and more accurate words, but for Pete’s sake, it’s early, and this is my journal. It also makes sense that quoting others is similar to having a conversation: In their absence, I’m letting the other participants have a say by weaving their words into my text as they occur to me.


I could post these musings to my blog. I think I would be risking something. The thing at risk that comes to mind prominently is my report about drinking more than the experts and I think is wise. I’m concerned that someone will read this and it will disqualify me from something beneficial. I don’t have any particular thing in mind, but something like a job or some other opportunity, maybe being President or mayor.


All the same, what I write here is genuine, and I suspect that a kind of risky honesty, with myself as well as others, is a key ingredient in changing for good. I am going to post this. It’s not like The New York Times subscribes to my blog and is eagerly waiting to broadcast my intemperance. Or that my habits are particularly egregious.


Check out the chart below. I got this data after I checked the spelling. I don't know enough about the details to be comforted or discomforted by them. At least now we know that there were 17.7 words per paragraph.

Learning to Make & Manage Web Sites

I've got another iron in the fire these days, and more fish to fry on that fire. Part of me would rather have fewer of both. At the same time, I appreciate having the fire, the fish, and all the rest, including singed eyelashes. The latest project is learning how to make changes to the website at The Arkansas Yoga Center, my wife's business at which I'm employed as the B.T.S. Director. More on what that title means in my next post.

So, I’m climbing up, and slip-sliding down, the learning curve: reading and applying Building a Web Site for Dummies, learning to use iWeb on the Mac, and scratching my noggin quite often. You can click here DavidFournet.com to see my draft welcome page. That is, unless you’ve already been there. I plan to quickly integrate and simplify the various web thingamajigs I’ve makeshifted together so far. It’s a bit befuddling, but worth the effort in order to create an easy and enjoyable experience for you, my fellow explorer.

Be well.