Obviously I’m daydreaming about 6 minute miles and century rides and the kind of long brutal training days that leave you just a puddle on the couch blindly searching for calories to shove back in. (I paint a pretty, enticing picture of the sport, no?) I have been fantasizing about the kinds of weekends I hope I’ll get back to this summer, where I’m in the saddle by 6, ride till my legs are just about fully cooked, only to dismount and take off running, so that many hours and miles later I drag myself home zombified (undead smell included) just in time to eat and sleep and do it all over again Sunday. (Huh, swimming hasn’t factored into those fantasies…but I actually miss that too.)

I’m yearning for all of the above, and for jittery race mornings, and triumphant finish lines, and hell yes podiums; but having my mobility totally upended by crutches has scaled back my fantasies to some very run of the mill activities. And since I’m in the recent habit of list-making here, I thought I’d enumerate some of those formerly unremarkable, beautiful things I can’t wait to do again:

Walk my dogs

Usually Scott and I divide dog duties pretty evenly but with hudreds of pounds of furbaby to care for – both of whom were my idea – I’m of very little help in the canine department right now. Scott is handling morning, afternoon, and late night walks and park time all by himself and it’s so much work. I hate that he has to do it on his own and while he brushes it off I know it’s asking a lot and even impacting his hours at work. I let the dogs out in the front yard to bathroom some but it’s a small city yard and they need walks and park time every day to be happy healthy hounds and I’m of no use there.

That’s a lot of stress on Scott, but it’s also making me crazy because I love spending time with my dogs – that’s why I convinced Scott we needed them! Sometimes being the one who handles morning walks is stressful, and they always drag out their evening pee to much aggravation, but I hate that I can’t take care of my puppups. I have some friends who have been helping us out by taking them to the park, and I tag along with them and sometimes with Scott, but I end up needing as much help as Birkin and Daenerys so it’s no picnic for anyone involved. (I am however so grateful to Ralph, Chandler, and Andrew for their help. [And thankful to Birkin and Daenerys for being lovable enough to attract all these helpers!])

Walk to work again (listening to my books)

I live in downtown DC because I am a city girl (snob) who hates cars and loves the District. Between traffic and the Metro’s shortcomings, it’s practically as fast to walk to work as to drive, bus, or train, and so, I walk. Whether to my office – about a 40 minute stroll – or Capitol Hill – 25 minutes to the Senate and 40 to the House – I walk. And I use that time to be alone with my Audible books and podcasts and this very pretty city. I love that time to myself in the morning and evening. My job is all about networking and always being “on” (and that’s true too of my side hustle teaching) so walking everywhere allows me to decompress – to either get my head right for the day, or shake the day out of my head. And I get through so many books walk-commuting!

Now I’m taking Lyft to and from work. It’s expensive, it’s environmentally wasteful, and it gives me anxiety. I don’t want to be in a car with a stranger that many times a day. (Mostly men, a number of whom have been creepy and one was downright threatening meriting a formal complaint.) It’s harder to listen to my books over the noise of whatever talk radio drivel or top 40 banger the driver has blasting and these rides in no way afford the recharge/discharge alone time I so treasure. Every time I hit “request Lyft” on my app I feel immensely nostalgic for my previous commute – even for all the times I’ve had to do it in DC humidity, or rain, or wind or snow. I’d take just about any weather walking over the back of someone’s car trying to ignore the dulcet, misogynist tones of Steve Harvey and Howard Stern.

MY JOB

I live in the city because I love this city and I do my job because I love my job. I’m an attorney and lobbyist (making me everyone’s favorite person) and my work on average consists of 2-3 days a week on the Hill meeting with Members of Congress and their staff on different health policy issues. My days on Capitol Hill often call for hours of walking between offices, frequently hoofing it back and forth between the House and Senate (about a half mile each way) and then followed by receptions and fundraisers in the evenings. There are days I’m on my feet for upwards of 12 hours and easily cover five or six miles.

You better believe that is not happening on the crutches.

I’ve tried to make do best as I can with calls instead of sit-downs where possible – but my work requires relationship-building and that happens face-to-face, not over the phone. A few times I’ve crutched to one of the Congressional cafeterias and posted up for an afternoon and asked staffers to come to me. This isn’t a great solution though because staffers’ schedules are tight so they don’t want to leave their offices, and a lot of the issues I work on require more privacy than a busy lunchroom affords.

And evening receptions are out of the question as the only thing more uncomfortable than crutching long distances, is standing on one leg for an extended period of time. Sure it’s been nice to have my evenings back but the FOMO is real and I fear the opportunities I’m losing to get to know the Freshman class of lawmakers. Plus DC is still an old boys’ club so I never stop feeling the pressure to go the extra mile. (Not usually a problem by me!)

This predicament has been particularly cruel as the new Congress gets sworn in. Swearing in, or open house day as we call it, is a lot of fun – especially when the most women and most diverse Congress in our country’s history are being inducted. If my normal day is miles on my feet office-to-office and capped with evening events, open house day is that on steroids; double or triple the miles covered and fetes attended. And it’s awesome. (And the last one was less than awesome.) And I could not do it the way I’d looked forward to doing when my party won back the House.  (And the last two years have been hard.) Of all the times to not be able to do the job I love  this feels particularly vindictive.

Walk  around my neighborhood 

I don’t have to say much here, I said most of it above. My city girl love of walking extends to strolls around the neighborhood. Ok my neighborhood is a little shooty, but it’s also historical rowhome-y and beautiful. (And if you can make it just a few blocks west it gets much less bangbang-y.) I love walking in DC; it’s pretty, it’s healthy, it’s environmentally and fiscally economical.  I love that I can walk most of the places I want to go. Granted I define “can walk” more liberally than most of my friends – if I have the time I’ll walk up to an hour to wherever it is I need to go just to be outside in my city. Now my “walkable” radius has been reduced to about three or four blocks from my house. (Not nearly enough blocks to get out of shooty range!)

TEACH

I’m still teaching my Thursday morning bootcamp (or “bootcrutch” as one of my students named it) but I gave up all my spin classes, and I have to ask my bootcamp regulars  for a lot of help during class as I can’t demo moves or even set up my own bench or space. In my normal, non-injured life routine I get pretty worn down teaching 4-5 classes a week, waking up early to train other people, and I often find myself dreading the 5am alarm and wishing for more mornings off. Now I can’t wait till Thursdays when I have a reason to get up and out before the sun comes up. It’s absolutely been my favorite morning of the week through this recovery. It’s like an hour-long return to my old life before limping back home to this sedentary, lonely existence.

Open doors

Doors are my nemesis. Especially heavy doors, that open away from me. They fill me with anxiety. Sometimes I literally cannot open them and I embarrass myself trying and those are the moments I really feel helpless and like an angry broken animal. (And for the record, women have been much more courteous about opening them. I’ve had several groups of men just stare at me from the opposite sides of doors to restaurants and offices that I clearly could not manage. Chivalry’s not dead, it’s just female.)

Enjoy a snowday

We got actual snow in DC! Not one of our usual over-hyped underwhelming dustings. No, we  got ten inches of fluffy powder, and a proper snow day with school and office closures all around. (In addition to the less-than-great shutdown. #snurlough) People were so excited, posting fun videos from their snowy runs, playtime with happy snowdogs, snowball fights on the Mall, the Capitol in full winter mode, while I was at home sitting and eating my feelings, growing increasingly bored and round. (Hey I may at least resemble a snowman at the end of all this!)

Eventually I had to get out of the house so I insisted on joining Scott at the dog park, but the streets were bad so I also insisted we walk. (Crutch.) It’s only three blocks and I wanted at least that much activity. It was slow-going though and in no time my arms were screaming, because it turns out crutching through a foot of snow is tantamount to shoveling it. The powder weighs down the crutches every step and within a block – a very slow block holding up a very patient man and two less patient hounds – I regretted my hubris. But by then it was too late to turn back and I don’t know when to admit defeat anyway so I stubbornly persisted.

In the end I was happy I got outside and got to see Birkin and Daenerys loving the snow with a big group of their four-legged friends, but I won’t call crutching through it and feeling like my arms were going to fall off the same as “enjoying” a snowday. And as difficult as that was, it was leaps and bounds better than the next few days when the powder melted to slush and then froze over rendering leaving my house actually impossible.

Sleep

I know I said in my attempt to itemize every possible silverish lining that I was finally sleeping and oh how wonderful it was, but that’s over now.  I think I was just catching up on a long-accumulated sleep deficit for the first couple weeks, but now that I’m back in the black I’m also back to hours of insomnia. I don’t get enough sleep during my regular unimpaired life – about 5 hours a night at least during the week – but all of the training means when I do lay my head down I’m tired and I find sleep. The past two weeks my head hits the pillow and…nothing. I stare at the ceiling for hours. If (when) I wake up (several times) in the middle of the night, where I used to fall back asleep quickly, I’m back to wide awake contemplation of the ceiling. Several times I’ve given up and ended up just reading for an hour or two at 3am. (At least I’m making an early dent in my 2019 book list. [Everyone should read Where the Dead Sit Talking!])

My routine life

It’s really simple: I like my life. I like my job. (My day job and my teaching jobs.) I like my city. I like to train. Hell, I love all of the above. And I love how I make it all fit together day in and day out.

My routine is totally exhausting, with too little sleep and too many obligations. There are plenty of mornings I that I don’t want to get up before dawn to teach, and many days that I don’t want to have backtobacktobacktoback meetings in various far away corners of Congress. I’m frequently tempted to skip evening training sessions, or to run screaming from nightly work events* in favor of sweats and Netflix and a sensible bed time.

But I love the little life I’ve built, my career, my sport, my city, and I haven’t been able to live even one single part of that life these past six weeks. The luster of having my evenings back, obligation-free, wore off almost immediately. Maybe in a few months I’ll be longing for that free time again, but right now I can’t wait to feel worn down and depleted. I can’t wait to do so many normal, small, simple, taken-for granted things again.