Patellar tracking disorder

Sigh, and alas. I have been doing physical therapy now for about two weeks, for my knees, which hurt every time I get going in an exercise program. Turns out I have patellar tracking disorder, which may or may not be reparable. There are several things that I really hate about this diagnosis (no particular order):

(1) They suggest that I lose weight. This is annoying on two different levels. There's the obvious, not liking to be told to lose weight, and the secondarily annoying, which is that you are supposed to simultaneously stop whatever exercise made the knee start hurting.

(2) They suggest that I build up my quads, which annoys me, because my quads are already stronger than most people's (I can backsquat more than a lot of the women at my gym who are otherwise much bigger bad-asses than I am).

(3) They explain to me that this is often a hereditary misalignment thing, particularly since there was no trauma, and the various solutions may or may not work.

Anyway, the physical therapist is an improvement for two reasons. First of all, my GP just told me to take 2 aleve 2x a day...for the rest of my life, presumably? And, secondly, my GP described patellar chondromalacia, which is more of a symptom than a diagnosis. Oh, one more reason, which is that my GP said that the only alternative to the massive intake of NSAIDs would be surgery...which turns out not to be true...per se...

So, it's good to have a diagnosis. Some of my prescriptions include specific stretches, ice, and the graston technique (pictured above), which hurts. What's fun is that, at each session, there is a lot of sort of rough massage-style leg manipulation to determine what sorts of stretches I need to do. I think that part is the classic "physical therapy." I also get chiropractic pelvic adjustments. My very favorite part of the leg manipulations is that, since my quads are involved, I have to wear shorts and shave. Also, since I've watched the various manipulations, I've become increasingly aware of both how jiggly my inner thighs are, and how carefully I need to shave them. I considered telling the physical therapist, last time, about Emily and the German gynecologist, and the taking off of the pants. I decided that he might find it creepy. What he'd likely find more creepy is doing his job in Germany.

Warning! Not for children

So, a couple of weeks ago, I went to a book signing of Street Gang: the Complete History of Sesame Street. One of the stories I find myself telling over and over again is this: Apparently, if you buy a DVD of the first two seasons of Sesame Street, it comes with a warning label. According to Michael Davis, author of the Street Gang book, the scene below is one of the reasons for the label:



Other offenses include (1) a little girl sliding down a slide such that you can see her underpants, (2) as the nytimes article indicates, the "monsterpiece theatre" parody in which Alistair Cookie holds a pipe, and (3) a series of political activists appearing on the show (like Buffy there). What really makes me feel sad about this situation is the reality that we have done so much social backsliding since the '70s. Progress was made and then immediately snatched from our hands. There was also a lot of kidnapping/child molestation fear in the 80s, which is what made Snuffleupagus become real. They didn't want kids to think about a situation where they were trying to get adults to believe them and the adults couldn't see what was happening, which makes sense.

Anyway, the booksigning wasn't all depressing (although Liliana and I both had to hold back tears as the author read the script from the episode where Mr. Hooper died). I stood in line with a guy who has the same uncanny memory that I have and I shocked and embarassed my friends by breaking out into the following song with this strange man:



Hehehe, I forgot about Andy. Man, I loved that show. The stranger and I sang this song in response to the (false) rumor that Cookie Monster is going to be changed into "Veggie" Monster. We were remembering that there is already a veggie character. Apparently now Cookie Monster states that cookies are a "sometimes food." Fair enough. But, as the wikipedia entry points out, anyone who has watched Cookie Monster knows that he doesn't eat just cookies.