After considerable reflection and a 5 week layoff due to health, I made a pilgrimage to the health club last Friday in an effort to improve my knee’s strength, flexibility and mobility prior to my coming surgery. I know it was a good move, but Goodness! Things sure do fall apart quickly when you don’t attend to them!

Normally, I am a treadmill walker. It isn’t that I enjoy it, but I like it much better than the cross-trainer, and the treadmills at my fitness center have fans on them, which makes me look less like this:

However, I was told not to use the treadmill by my surgeon. He said I might fall off. Given my level of physical grace at the best of times, I think he made a good call on this one.

No, I’ve been using the recumbent bike instead. Which is great, but I am finding it frustrating to not push my knee harder than I ought to go. (No, I do not really resemble that lady. She’s in much better shape than I am.)

After so long away, I really want to move. I want to use up tons of effing calories! I want to mindlessly zone out scampering along on an incline! I no longer want to be a zombie!

Of course, the main benefit of returning to the fitness center is that I get to shower again. Sponge bathing, while covering the essentials, is ceasing to cut it for me. It adds a whole new level of difficulty getting in and out of a shower with a grossly unstable limb, though. I find myself gratefully using the special needs locker room (is that the equivalent of the short bus?) and sparing everyone else the sight of my hairy, scaly self. (Yes, I admit the finer points of depilation have gone by the wayside for the duration.) (I just made up the word depilation. Yay me!)

I am finding that more people chat to you when you use the bikes rather than the treadmills. I have already met a couple of new people and renewed acquaintance with several others who had assumed I dropped off the face of the earth. It may be the clunky hinged brace I wear now that draws them. Perhaps it’s magnetic! Or magic! No, just a brace.

But, whatever. I digress. I am back at weights, too, and that also is a bit of a shocker in terms of how soon things get wimpy. I’m building back up, though. Ain’t no one going to accuse me of shirking my duties, at least not until I can walk again!

Can I rest now, please?