A small sample of my work

I had to write an email to the owner and the manager of my shop because I had a difficult client on Saturday. I decided that after removing all identifying material, it would make a good blog post. So tell me what you think of it, kay?

Heyla,

I was asked to send an email with details of my session, as a countermeasure to anything he may say. Just a few notes before I try to recall as much as possible: IF he's super sore, he totally asked for 'as much pressure as you can give me.' and I complied. I gave as much pressure as I possibly could, and more pressure than I've ever given to a client before, using elbows and knees and knuckles and tools to try to get him that pressure, but he wasn't satisfied. Another note: If he asks for the person I trained with recently (because he asked about my training, and seemed confused because I was initially trained in house, and then went to a workshop on Wednesday) please just tell him the teacher was Randy C* if he wants to contact him for a massage. That seemed to be what he was edging at. 

So when he laid down (prone, for more backwork), I did compressions upward and then focused on the feet. He said I wasn't giving enough pressure, and that he circled a 10 on the pressure preference chart for a reason. At this point I politely excused myself and got a tool to use, because I'd already been using as much pressure as my hands could comfortably maintain. I ran across C doing the same thing on my way back to the room, and we exchanged nods. I settled back down and began to dig in with the tool, and he commented (half surprised, half derogatory) 'Oh, that's a tool!' like I was cheating by using one. I made a vague comment of 'If it gets the job done...' and continued. He seemed content for a few minutes, before he admitted that 'It's not doing anything for me' so I moved on to Gastroc. and Hamstrings. I used a new move from Randy, putting him in figure 4 and digging in with my forearm and elbow around his sacrum and greater trochanter, before going down the leg with my elbows and fists. 

I moved on to the next leg, this time not bothering to do reflexology on his foot, and digging right into the muscles of his feet, gastroc. and hamstrings as I worked my way up and back down using fists, forearms, and elbows. He asked me to move on to his back, so I complied. 

While working on his back, I dug my knees into his gluteals and balanced on knees and elbows to target his erectors and rhomboids, working up and down the back several times, but not feeling the muscles release. At one point I asked about pressure, and he said 'I told you to give me all you got and I meant it. I need the pressure.' I climbed off and tried to ease into the loosening, but he complained that I wasn't using enough pressure, so I pressed with full body weight on my elbows, working up and down the sides of his body. Eventually, my arms began to hurt, so I switched to going up and down his legs with my knees, bringing his shin up to meet the resistance of my knee, and repeating on the other side. Deciding to at least try it, I lightly pressed my knees into his QL, adding pressure when he didn't complain, and then using my knees one at a time (to maintain balance and power) going up and down his back, but felt no change in muscle tissue, so desisted.

After I did all I could with my knees, I stood and used my heels and toes to dig into the shoulders, erectors, QL, Lat Dorsi, glutes, hams, and gastroc, to name a few of my targets. When I was beginning to work on the gastroc., he asked me to come back to his back, that it needed the most work, so I came back up and worked down the other side, this time stopping at the glutes. 

I turned him on his side and dug my heels and toes into his glutes, QL and rhomboids (both sides) before having him lay on his back. I thought some good stretching might help him, but even in stretching, he needed extreme measures. 

I mainly worked on his legs with stretching, though I began with another stretch from Randy's workshop, sustained pulling stretch of the arm, targeting the rotator cuff muscles and the Latissimus Dorsi. I followed that stretch with the traditional Hamstring, Glute, and Hip Opening stretches, but had to stand and balance his foot on my thigh to give enough pressure (essentially a mini-lunge). On the TFL/Gluteus Maximus stretch, I had to anchor his hip with my knee, and reach across his body and put a large amount of my weight on his shoulder to give him the stretch he wanted. I then incorporated another new stretch of the adductors by keep his leg straight, pulling it lateral from his body, and then tilting the foot downward for a good stretch. I repeated on the other side, and sat him up. 

During stretches he asked about why I entered massage (My family is largely supportive of massage, and being away, I missed it), where I learned my Thai (They taught us in-house), and when I got training (Oh, Actually, I just went to a workshop this week, by Randy C*. I learned a lot!). I can see how he was confused about the training thing, based on the conversation flow. 

When I sat him up, I used my elbow to dig into his traps, rhomboids, and erectors (slightly) while holding his hand for sustained pressure and easy access to the muscles (another new treat from Randy). He was unimpressed, so I leant his head forward and stretched his neck with my fingers (Randy's trick again).

I asked if I could get him some tea or water, but he refused, put on his shoes, and walked right out. I shrugged it off and cleaned up. I did everything I possibly could have to satisfy him, so any dissatisfaction he feels is likely from his own issues, not anything I did. It was quite a nice challenge, but today I felt my pressure gauge was a little off (I used a bit much accidentally), so it's not the type of massage I want to do more than once every 6 months or so, you know? 

I hope this report is detailed enough. If you need to ask clarifying questions, I'd be happy to answer. Thank you!

I have over 11,500 page views

but lets be honest, half of those were probably me. ;)

So, lots of incredible (both good and bad) things have been happening lately. I contacted social worker with recent changes, including MJ's lack of all medicine except allergy stuff (which we will also be testing to see if its necessary eventually), and her new boyfriend. Ms. B's response was so unexpectedly strong that hubby and I were shocked and a little offended.
She felt that with MJ's oversexualization, a boyfriend is beyond the pail, but didn't account for our overprotectiveness (which I corrected in the next email). She also felt that any medicinal changes should be thoroughly tested before being carried out, but later decided that if the pediatrician thought it best, and the school had no problems with MJ, then it was fine, but she still needed documentation.
She asked our opinion on contact between MJ and her mother, and though I was very conflicted, Hubby said 'We have to say what's best for MJ,' and we voted against it. Honestly, MJ has reacted so badly to her mother's name and her mother as a subject at all, that we just avoid talking about her except in the past tense, like 'when I was a little girl, your mom ______'. She likes those stories, but if her mom did something bad, she feels compelled to defend her mother's actions, despite it being completely unrelated to her. It's a serious concern, her aggressive yet obsessive feelings towards her mother.
Speaking of mothers, MJ informed me an hour ago that she is going to start calling me 'Mom' and Hubby 'Dad'. I think she was expecting an exuberant response, but I kept it neutral, and said 'If that's what you want to do' because of a bombshell Ms. B dropped.
Turns out, parental rights have NOT been terminated. Which means we can't adopt her until they have been, or until the parents sign releases agreeing to allow it (I seriously doubt Cin would be willing to). While they don't seem to be aiming to reunite MJ with her mother, it makes me worried, especially since they seem so reluctant to grant us custody. I sent a follow-up asking how we could ask for custody and what we would need to do to gain it. I was under the impression that if we continued to get along with MJ, that custody would come with time, but maybe I was fooling myself.
Which all kind of comes to this: MJ totally expects us to adopt her. She's looking  forward to it, and talks all the time about 'when you adopt me'. We haven't pushed it on her, and we don't constantly talk to her about it, because we want her to feel loved whether she's legally ours or not, but damn it, I think we both were expecting to make her ours eventually. So this was a heavy blow to me. Hubby is still confident that Cin will do something to mess things up for herself, giving us access to littlin', but I'm not so sure. I think we could easily light a fire under Sissie, and she could make some rapid-fire changes that will fuck up our hopes. Hubby doesn't want me to mention our response about contact to Cin until court either, so that her lawyer won't be prepared to combat it. I feel like that's underhanded and wrong, but possibly necessary to keep this from becoming a tug of war for MJ.

Ahem. Less serious topics:


I like that song alot. The beat and the voice are both things I like.
For Halloween, I decided days ago that I would be a fallen angel and MJ was supposed to be a bumblebee, but her costume was a little big on her. So today, she needed a quick costume for her daycare and we picked one up at the Walgreens right next to work. She ended up picking out a 'Dark Angel' so she could match with me (since I'm also an angel). I kept looking at a devil costume that I couldn't help thinking would be adorable on Hubby. MJ was very against it at first, until I came up with this scenario: But you see MJ, if I'm a fallen angel, and Hubby is a devil, then you being born a dark angel makes sense! You'd be our offspring!.... And then whoooo boy she was completely on board. So we picked up the costume later tonight after garnering Hubby's agreement. She was very excited to be our child.
In fact, she role-played it, and I played along (because it was an easy role play for me) calling us Mom and Dad, and 'trying on Daddy's horns' and 'playing with Mommy's halo' and stuff. It was totally adorable. I'm gonna have to take pics of Halloween at this rate....



MJ thinks that song represents her. I think she could be right. :) It all depends on her.
Her boyfriend is cute. He's all awkward and at the stage of just beginning to notice females, and seems totally sweet. I hope neither of them hurts the other. They call each other almost every day (on my phone, damn it).

MJ has a 3 day 2 night trip to a Camp for school this week, from Monday to Wednesday. We're nervous, but also excited for a little alone time. We have lots of plans for movies...

MJ and I went garage saling today. I bought four lovely little storage stackers for $2 (altogether) from an older, gossipy, yet sweet lady near my job. MJ traded the skirt she was wearing for a dress the woman was selling (it was weird, but I've done weirder stuff and MJ wanted the dress more than her skirt, so it was okay). We also got a brand new velvet coloring poster of a house in a tree for 25 cents. It was a good day.

We all had dinner together at a mongolian grill, but it wasn't the best place. I didnt like the way they cut up their veggies, but the quality of the food was quite good. Poor MJ got jalapenos thinking they were okra, and found it difficult to eat her food. My food was delicious. Hubbys seemed good, but a little spicy cause he also got those spicy things.

AFterward, we dropped MJ off at daycare again (she was begging for it) and went back to the haunted house we had to leave before because of MJ. This time we were able to go in the slaughterhouse, and it was really fun. I finished (leading) our first run through in 6 minutes. Unfortunately (for Hubby) it was at the cost of him getting shot in the butt with blood. I thought it was hilarious and litterally bent over laughing. Our second run through (we could go twice) I forced Hubby to lead the whole time and we purposely went the wrong ways to see what they had. The zombies were very touchy feely (not in a bad way) and essentially covered us in goop and blood. It was very fun.

After we got out, Hubby really wanted a shower, but I really wanted to go to a store to see people's reactions. We went to Walmart, where Hubby commented about us becoming one of those pictures in the 'only at Walmart' articles. People looked thoroughly freaked out in some cases, and just stared in others. I just smiled and talked sweetly (which made Hubby laugh all the harder) and pretended nothing was wrong with either of us.
Then we stopped at McDonalds, because I'd gotten hungry again. Some younger african american boys stared at us, and started asking what happened, where we went, did we do paintball, etc. I answered them, but Hubby kept saying it was probably sold out, so I gave up my advertising stint.
Then, despite Hubby's protests, we went to pick up MJ from day care (at 11 pm) still covered in gore. Her reaction was awesome. She frantically tried to avoid touching us, and started getting out of hand with her comments. Eventually I threatened not to let her call her bf tomorrow, and she immediately stopped her antics. It was a little scary.

And now I'm too tired to write much more. I can't think of another song that came out recently that I want to share, so I'll post this medium-interesting one. Goodnight!

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Let's start with Monday of last week. I was getting in my car after a very nice tutoring session with my student, and I konked my head. Really, really hard. I was dizzy, I got sleepy, and I felt totally disoriented. Remember, I'm getting in my car. So that's how I drove. I was SO relieved to give the wheel to hubby when we got to his job. I had a few close calls on the way there, and got distracted/forgot what I was doing quite a few times. It's a lucky thing the way there is essentially one right turn, one left turn, and one right turn, or I'm sure I would have gotten lost. Of course, even Hubby is hearing this for the first time, because I didn't really care when it happened, and it's only looking back that I can recognize it was a dangerous!Runa.
We're pretty sure it was a concussion. Surprise! You can get a concussion from any type of head-hitting, not just head on collision stuff (like I'd assumed). I'm still suffering effects like getting super dizzy whenever I'm sleepy, sleeping a little too much, being disoriented at random times, etc.
From Monday until Friday (the next incident) I suffered from bumping my toes, knees, ankles, shins, and hands on random things. I'm not usually THAT clumsy, so perhaps that too can be blamed on the concussion.
On Friday, they tried out a new floor cleaner at work. Lucky me, I got to slip right off of it and fall. I hit my left wrist and my left hip pretty badly. Badly enough that I went into shock afterward, and after my first client, I asked to leave. My owner allowed it, and even suggested a chiropractor (I've been looking for one for months). Hm. By owner, i mean the owner of the business i work at, not the person that owns me. That person is only Runa and Hubby, and Hubby only owns what Runa lets him own, like her heart. And apparently part of her brain, because she never really stops thinking of him.
Anyway, the owner immediately threw away the new floor cleaner, and I went to pick up the littlin' and see the chiropractor. It's funny how impressed they were with how quiet she was. We have discovered that letting her read books is the quickest and easiest way to get her to behave. It really reminds me of myself, which worries me a little, because I was definitely reading books above my level far too soon. She seems happy to let me set her limits though, since she knows I've read all the books she's reading, and know best what would be safe for her.
The chiropractor took a look, asked a few questions, popped me all kinds of ways and sent me on my way. It really is impressive how quickly you're seen and how soon you're out the door. My wrist no longer made me whimper, and my hip stopped hurting for the day.
Then we picked up Hubby, and went to eat at a steakhouse, I think. Because MJ wanted to go, and she'd been really good, so we felt like indulging her.
The next day, I was texted at like 8, asked if I wanted to work today, and how my wrist felt. I said I'd rather not work, but they could put me on call and I would hang around the area in case they needed me. Thankfully, business was slow (sorta surprising for a Saturday) so they eventually called to let me know that I wasn't needed, to heal up for work tomorrow. So I did. MJ and I went to Goodwill, bought some make-up for halloween (I got glow paint so I could always see MJ's face), then went and got the car thoroughly cleaned. It didn't take too long, and they did a decent job (I would have done better for the price though. You should remember I've been a car washer before, so I know how to do it properly, and they were fairly sloppy) considering we had a groupon that made it really cheap for us. I let MJ tip them, and we were off to pick up Hubby for lunch. We ate at a Chicken place that wasn't very good. Then we took Hubby back to work. I think from there MJ and I went to the library, got a lot of books, came home, MJ did the chores she didn't have time for earlier this week, and we went to pick up her friend (whose mom requested we take her, because she needed to work, and didn't have anyone else).
Intermission: This is an interesting song/idea. 'Angel with a shotgun' and no, it isn't country. :P

When we picked up Hubby, we set out to go to a cool Orchestra in the Air thing where an orchestra played popular (old) movies with clips from movies made by a Media group of college students. Then they were going to show Shrek, but the girls didn't want to watch.... either. They were blatantly talking loudly, kept calling back to us (we didn't sit together because there wasn't space) how they didn't want to be there, etc. So after the orchestra performance, and before the Shrek movie, we made them get up, put everything away, and went home. While walking back to the car, MJ was talking about how this boy that keeps messing with her doesn't know what he's messing with, that she's a demon child, a devil woman, etc. I listened for a few minutes, noting all the parents around and their slightly incredulous looks and silently agreeing with them, before I had enough and called back 'You may be a demon child, but you're certainly not a woman.' and MJ stopped her diatribe. Apparently Ally was very scared of me after that, because she asked MJ to ask me to turn the music up, and stuff like that. My anger was all the damage that day.
Anyway, I'm gonna do a time skip, since I don't remember any other major issues. Today, picking up MJ from school, her teacher pulled me aside and told me Ally told her mom a lot of things out of context (I'm saying it was out of context based on what MJ later told me) and her mom took offense. Basically, Ally convinced MJ to put her name on a paper they did together, and Ally put her name on MJ's. It doesn't really matter, since it was an assignment they did together. MJ also allowed Ally to put her name on MJ's homework (Ally didn't do hers, according to MJ) on the condition that Ally wouldn't tell anyone. So MJ is feeling incredibly betrayed that Ally broke that promise. The teacher therefore decided to separate the girls from each other. He wanted to relay the situation as he understood it, and wanted to understand. He really talks too much to understand a lot, if you ask me. I told him about a few incidents where MJ wanted to copy off of Ally because Ally was allowed to use a calculator, but that I'd already nipped that in the bud. He said it didn't make academic sense for Ally's mom to be upset they were switching papers, since MJ's grades are a lot better than Ally's are.
MJ said tomorrow is technology day, and she wants to take her tablet, but like I told her days ago, with no paper saying so, she wasn't going to take her tablet to school. She burst out crying, and I still wouldn't budge. Eventually the tears dried, and recriminations started. She said parents are supposed to not want to hear their children cry, and I needed to learn that. I turned to her and laughed. And said 'It's all in your head that parents don't like their kids crying.' She quickly gave up on using tears to sway me. Instead, she kept running away from me because I disagreed with her. So I left our front door locked, and talked to her outside it, where she couldn't escape. Eventually she calmed down, and we talked about a few misconceptions she has. Mainly her idea of having a house=rich.
When we got in, she had a whole other meltdown. Because she didn't finish her lunch, that made it her snack. But she didn't want the noodles from last nights dinner (yet another thing I had to talk to her about, not that it did much good. She's very convinced that as a kid, she doesn't have to be conscientious), heated up or otherwise. I told her it was fine to throw them away, but she'd get nothing else until dinner. She yelled out 'HERE!' trying to give them to me, and I simply looked at her and said 'No.' So she got up, brought them to me, and slammed them on the counter. I lost my temper a little, and asked her what in the world made her think it was alright to demand things of me, and then slam things on the door (i meant counter, but my words get jumbled when i'm angry), and she said 'That's not a door!' and I said that wasn't the point. What made her think it was ok? and (in my temper) I slammed the container down like she had, but a little harder. She flinched and ran away to her room and shut her door. I opened it and started to take things that she could play with out of the room. She was ranting at me while doing the chores I told her to do, saying things like 'You can't understand what I've been through!' and stuff like that. I shut her door for her, and went back to what I was doing. I listened a little, but mostly did my own thing.
When she came out, she said 'Runa, you make THINK you understand, but you don't know anything about what I'm going through.' and I looked at her. My reply was 'How can I understand if you don't tell me?' and the floodgates started at that. She told me all about Ally, and how she felt so betrayed, and that she wasn't her bff anymore, and they weren't allowed to be together, and how she never wants Ally to come over ever again. I just listened quietly before walking over and hugging her. After her tears fell on my arms, I went for a few tissues and handed them over. Then, feeling how hot her head was getting (and personally, it always calms me down to get my hair brushed), I went to get her brush and kept asking her 'What else?' and 'Tell me about _____' until there wasn't anything else for her to say.
In a side note, Tenshi decided to be nice and apologize to MJ for the mean things he said. He explained that he doesn't want another girl to like him when he already has a girlfriend. I asked if she was gonna like him, and she said only as a friend. I don't really believe that's going to last, but I don't mind letting her try.
After she'd ranted her fill, and tried once more to get the tablet for school tomorrow (and failed. Tears aren't gonna sway me), I asked what she wanted me to do with the noodles. I ended up throwing them out, and she ate the peaches she'd had leftover from lunch. She says she doesn't like peaches, and was jealous of the apple I was eating. Personally, I feel like they're interchangeable.
So that was kinda the last week and half for me. There's a few details missing, like how Texas CPS finally got in touch with us, and came the same day, and closeted themselves off with MJ for a while before leaving. Or how we missed her Therapy on Tuesday because it slipped my mind (and I was exhausted). Or how Momma called to tell me what she got MJ for Christmas (voice-locked diary with invisible ink, damnit. We won't be able to get into it....) and see how things were going. Or how MJ's mom called last night but I couldn't call back because MJ would hear, and if I left, she would likely go into a panic (did I ever tell you guys about her freak-out when we went to put the laundry in the wash last week? It was spectacular, and not something I wanna experience again, heartwarming though it was).
Today, I have decided to be happy. Her meltdowns, the traffic, my errands and chores, they will NOT stop me from being happy. That's my decision and I'm sticking to it.