Alright friends, the update:

1. My injury – torn achilles tendon that re-tears every morning after healing marginally during the night. This creates pain, scar tissue and swelling. Treatment: a lifetime of sleeping in a large “night splint”, which is a nice way of saying “huge uncomfortable foot coffin that at least you only have to sleep in”; three weeks (!) of no training as of last posting, so am already through a week of it; 6-day dose of ‘roids to bring down swelling, which I finally finished today (and which I think is responsible for my near-blackout this morning at the gym); 800mg ibuprofen horse pills for the next 30 days; 3 weeks of Physical Training, to gradually rebuild strength & flexibility; visit to the podiatrist, so I can finally figure out the proper shoe & stretches for my inordinately flat feet & over -pronating biomechanics; and, oh yeah, cross training. Like climbing on a Tony Little gazelle machine is a substitute for running. (If the alternative is sitting around and letting my progress deteriorate while sleeping in, I have a tough battle ahead to maintain motivation. Cross-training sucks ballz compared to the fun that is Running.)

2. My sickness – gone completely. Day and a half of bad congestion combated with Airborne, and then a few more mornings of sore throat, and I was back to full health. Lawsuit or no, that sh!t works.

3. My parents – Mom’s meeting their divorce lawyer on Thurs. Same day my dad’s flying out to LA so he can see some of his Iowa family, my sister and me & Wyf all in one shot. Going to be a weekend full of difficult but necessary conversations, I think. There are things that are going to be uncomfortable to say, but I don’t know if it’s possible to avoid them. (Aspiring conflict-avoider that I am, I’m still weighing out the possibility of not bringing up things like severe depression, hospitals, long-term care options, remarriage, and, ironically, conflict-avoidance behavior.) Really hope it goes well, but I think as long as it does actually go, we’ll all be better off.

4. Everything else – well, I have to say that this morning was one of Capital Tee Those Capital Em Mornings. In a good way. Which is interesting, especially given the above consideration.

For those of you who don’t know what that might look like, some characteristics of good Capital Tee Those Capital Em Mornings:
a. I slept really well last night, stirring only once when the Wyf got up to feed the baby (that was the dream version, in actuality she just went number one.)
2. I went to the gym, causing me to feel simultaneously proud for staying active and insecure for weighing only 168 pounds. (I’m slowly becoming aware that avoiding conflict in any aspect of life only leads to finding it in other “subtle” places like this.)
d. Birds were chirping, making me think of spring & blue skies & all the great weather that is to come in just a few short weeks.
1. I treated myself to coffee & bagel (w/ low-fat ‘shmear’) at that oh-so-lovable Noah’s establishment.
#. Work is going well, I’m producing things and actually feeling like I know what I’m doing, and am asking more questions to make sure I know what I think I know.

By contrast, here’s what bad Capital Tee Those Capital Em Mornings tend to taste like:
a. Slept like crap, sleeping only once for about 45 minutes, during which time I managed to dream that my penis had fallen off and my archnemesis/role model, Ben Stiller, picked it up & started playing chess with it – using it as a pawn, not a king or at least a bishop.
b. Alarm doesn’t go off in time for me to roll my fat lard-ass out of bed & hop-skip to the gym, so I spend several minutes just making sure my package is still in tact, and force myself to dust off the chess set before getting in the shower, where I proceed to get soap in my mouth like a six-year-old.
c. Homeless Guy #37B has taken a crap on the bus right before I get on, but the bus driver refuses to stop to clean it up, and we’re all smelling faintly of the Soup du Shelter by the time we hit the Embarcadero.
d. The boss has already left two voicemails with what are really two-to-four hour requests that need done “as soon as you can get them but hopefully they don’t take long at all, maybe by noon?”, and sent four emails about other subjects to which today was SUPPOSED to be devoted, making me feel like it’s all gotta be done and there’s no way I’ll make it home for the syndicated episodes of Friends (6:30 to 7:30 on Channel 2) that are the highlight of days like these.
@#$*&. The Wyf has called and said she’s “late”, and I pull up Google Maps to try and find her a shortcut around the traffic, and she’s all No no, I’m late, and I’m all, Yeah, I know, just give me two frikkin’ minutes to pull up the map, and she’s all, What, are you gonna search for someone that’d be a better father, lover & husband? Because that’s what I’d need right now, so go ahead, Google that and let me know where he lives, how ’bout that?, and I’m all, Y’know what, go ahead and go… wait… you’re late?

I think you get my point. So when you have one of the good Capital Tee Those Capital Em Mornings (boy I wish I had picked shorter clever nomenclature), you feel just awesome. You totally know what Jean-Claude VanDamme (or ‘VD a l’orange’) felt like in Kickboxer after he beats the second place guy to a pulp & knows he can take on all 7 feet of the column-humping, brother-paralyzing, girlfriend-raping Tong Po. You feel like you could throw one strategically-placed Flying Butt-pliers and he’d tumble like the approval ratings of a Republican incumbent.

What… you didn’t see Kickboxer? Don’t look at me, dude, you’re the cinematic idiot who hasn’t seen fucking Kickboxer. Rent it. Own it. Live it.