After the last two U.S. Senate seats were won by two Democrats, and while Biden was supposed to be declared the winner of the U.S. presidential election by the Senate, a bunch of deranged Trump supporters decided to rage into the Capitol building and stage an insurrection. Filled with delusional thoughts of fake news and a fradulent election simply because their side lost, they refused to accept the outcome of this election. And the worst part, aside from the fact that these idiots did this? The Capitol police did absolutely nothing to prevent them from coming in and storming through the entire building. If you have even a remote idea of how strictly security works at government buildings, you would know that the only way something this intense and big would’ve been allowed to happen would be if they were literally invited in with welcome, open arms. The number of photos I saw of police officers taking selfies with these morons was disgusting. I thought about the many protests around Black Lives Matter over the last 6+ years and thought… wait, so protesters peacefully protesting in honor of the rights of people of color were tear gassed and arrested, yet the White Trump supporters barely face any consequences for an actual insurrection? And don’t even get me started about how Trump has been encouraging and inciting violence since even before Biden officially won. It’s truly amazing to me exactly how much you can get away with in this country when you are white, and even moreso, a white male.

Anyone who doesn’t believe that this has anything to do with race — well, I want nothing to do with you and the delusional world you live in. If there is just one reason and one reason alone that the Republican Party of today is evil, it is that they are the one party of this country that is pro voter suppression, and that is ALL ABOUT RACE when you actually take a look at the data.

When I think about the way that we live our lives, I think that one thing we are never really prepared for is health issues. No one really anticipates what their life will be like if they encounter chronic pain, fall ill with an ongoing illness, or fracture their hip, requiring surgery and recovery time. When I was young, my mom used to scold me for lying in certain positions on the couch with my neck awkwardly positioned, saying that I may not know it at that moment, but that position for my neck would cause major issues for me when I was older, and she didn’t want me to have issues with my neck later on. The issue is: you don’t know you will have pain … until you are in pain. You don’t know how susceptible you are to anything until you are unlucky enough to fall ill for whatever reason.

With cubital tunnel syndrome, previously, it was only known to affect people who were affected by direct trauma to the elbows. There’s really not enough data to understand why some people are more susceptible to it than others, even when they exhibit all the same behaviors every single day; it’s unclear if genetics play a role here.

My PT said that as long as I do not experience sharp, burning pain in my elbows, arms, or hands, at this point, it’s really about continuing to do nerve gliding/flossing exercises, icing 2-3x a day, and trying my best to not perform actions that will exacerbate potential pain or cause flare-ups. Now, it’s about pain and condition management. So in other words… what does this mean? Am I supposed to have these pains, random flare-ups, hand tightness, and dull elbow pains forever…?! I thought I came to PT to get cured?! I’m not really sure what my next step is supposed to be. I’ve been told that cubital tunnel could take weeks to months to go away. After speaking with people who have suffered from carpal tunnel, which is closely related, some took over a year to fully heal and feel “normal” again, with PT exercises, stretching, splinting, and thankfully no surgery.

This just feels pretty hopeless right now, and I feel sad and frustrated.

My good friend is due to give birth any day now. She’s actually supposed to be overdue, as the baby’s due date was this past Saturday, but hey, maybe the baby wanted to wait to come out after the Biden transition was officially approved. Who knows.

Last night, I dreamt that my friend was in labor, and I went to the hospital to go meet the new baby and see how my friend was doing post-birth. Instead of arriving at the hospital and greeting my friend with her baby, I was greeted by my friend in the hospital lobby without the baby anywhere in sight. It appeared as though she had already given birth. I asked her where the baby was, and she said she already came out, and that she was fine. But she wanted to tell me that when she got admitted into the hospital to give birth, at the same time, she saw my brother get admitted into the hospital. Apparently, he had gotten into a serious car accident, and the doctors said that he remained in critical condition.

I was in such shock from this news that I didn’t say anything. I think I tried to open my mouth to say something, but no words came out. I immediately broke down crying, silently sobbing while my friend held me in her arms. In the back of my mind, I was thinking, “Where’s the baby? How is Ed in critical condition from a car accident when he’s supposed to be dead? Is he going to survive this time? What the heck is going on?!”

Back in 2013 when I finally forced myself to switch to morning workouts vs. after-work/early evening workouts, I had a memorable fitness instructor who taught my 7am spin/strength training course. She was a fitness fanatic obviously and loved running, having participated in a number of marathons and fitness competitions. She oftentimes talked about injuries, whether they were on her back, feet, but especially her “IT band.” Some days, she just instructed and couldn’t exercise with us because of her injuries.

If you are not familiar with what an “IT band” is, don’t worry. I didn’t really know what this connective tissue was called until she kept mentioning it. The IT band, or the iliotibial band, is a long piece of connective tissue that runs along the outside of your leg from the hip down to the knee and shinbone. If you do a lot of squats, barre, or running, you will notice that this tissue can get very tight and sore and will oftentimes need to be punched down or massaged out, likely with a long foam roller.

Well, seven years after learning about my own body and parts I didn’t know the names of, I finally injured mine. Since returning to the gym early September, I’ve also started running again. But I don’t think the running is really what set it off. It was likely the running plus some new barre exercises I started. I felt sore after the workout and sore throughout the day, but I thought it was just normal ‘new exercise’ soreness and fatigue. I realized it was far worse than that when in the middle of the night last night, I woke up to a burning sensation on my right IT band. It was so bad that I needed to put an ice pack on it.

Welp. These are the joys of getting older and taking care of that aging body.

Back in April, when we finally started wearing masks here in New York City, I immediately predicted that to wear or not wear a mask would become a political issue. Health should never be a political issue, but in this country with one of the worst and most incompetent leaders in history, I knew it would become one. President Dipshit refused to wear a mask in public. He said people could choose to wear or not wear a mask, but he personally would choose not to. So did his moronic VP, who was filmed being indoors at hospitals and not wearing a mask. And so people started saying that to mandate wearing a mask would be violating their constitutional rights. Governors across moronic states in the south refused to allow local cities and counties to mandate masks. People complained to their local officials, insisting that “masks are killing people!” These states’ infection rates continue to rise, and they do nothing to address the issue. Instead, they look back at New York for having high rates back in March/April. Well, hey, peeps — that time has passed. New York is in a pretty good state now; we’re actually reopening, and our rates are going down. Yours, on the other hand, are not. Are you going to hold yourselves accountable or continue your denial, or worse, blame states like us?

It really is like George Orwell’s book 1984, except now, we’re in the year 2020 in the midst of a global pandemic, and stupid Americans are making up their own “facts” and selfishly getting other people infected and ultimately killed.

Many times during my life, I’ve felt embarrassed to be American. But now, I really think I’ve reached my peak in terms of feeling ashamed of how senseless my country is. There is really nothing applaudable that is being done on the national level now, and now, not only are we the laughing stock of the world, we are also literally killing people at a rate that is just obscene.

I’ve never enjoyed fake pancake syrups. In this country, they are primarily made of high fructose corn syrup, which is probably one of the unhealthiest things you can consume, a sign that America is too cheap to spend money on real cane sugar, but would rather stuff American bodies with fake sugar to lead them to an earlier death. Aunt Jemima was problematic for me as I started learning more about American history and realized that the face on the bottle of Aunt Jemima pancake syrup was a caricature of the “black mammy” archetype, a black female stereotype of the American South who worked as a slave in the home of white families and nursed white babies. The bottle, the brand, the company, were all racist symbols that were being embraced here in the U.S., long, long after slavery had ended. It was sad to constantly see this in grocery stores and even in my own family’s kitchen.

When I worked at a digital marketing agency years ago, I was asked to work on the Aunt Jemima search engine marketing campaign. I looked at my manager and said I didn’t feel comfortable working on a campaign that promoted a racist brand. She gave me a funny look, said it was “just business,” but respected my wishes and reassigned it to another colleague. Unfortunately, race is part of everything, and no, to this day, I do not believe it is “just business.”

This week, we’ve learned that finally Pepsi Co., which owns Aunt Jemima under Quaker Oats, is now finally waking up to the fact that their caricature is racist and has announced they are removing the caricature from the brand and doing a full rebranding “to make progress toward racial equality.”

Ummmmmmm……

LATE MUCH???????

It took decades upon decades of systemic racism, black lives being shot and killed with no one to be held accountable, and finally the recent murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd, for this brand to wake up? It’s so convenient, isn’t it, for brands to act all faux “woke” with their performative allyship, as long as it helps their bottom line… to make more money, to profit off of their faux progressiveness.

It’s infuriating.

Last night, I started watching the Netflix 4-episode series When They See Us, which documents the Central Park Five incident that happened in the late 80s in New York, where five Black and Latino teens were (wrongly) convicted of raping and beating a white female jogger. Although I knew the story at a high level, I read more about it last summer, around the time this series came out on Netflix, because it was discussed during Trevor Noah’s The Daily Show. At that time, I actually had no idea this incident had occurred.

I only got through one episode, but it was hard and painful to get through. To think that kids can be tried as adults… what… simply because they are Black or Latino, is just beyond comprehension, that people in the legal system can force children of color to admit to wrongdoing that they haven’t even committed is just disgusting. The justice system in this country is unjust; there’s nothing that works in favor of people of color. It’s even worse to think that the original prosecutor who worked on this case, to this day, still thinks she was justified in all she did, is even more hideous, especially given that DNA tests showed that none of these five kids actually committed the rape. Her justification for this? She said they weren’t only guilty of rape, that they committed other crimes.

Wow. Not everyone learns from their mistakes or is even willing to admit to making mistakes. And that’s what is wrong with society, and in this case, white society.

For the last week, my hands, wrists, and most recently, my elbows have been acting up. It’s likely from all the stress I put on these parts of my body from my computer usage, whether it’s for work, video editing, or just internet browsing, but either way, it’s not great. I’m 34 years old, supposedly at the “peak” of my life, and I’m already getting arthritic symptoms in my hands that seem like early-stage carpal tunnel. I do all the things you’re supposed to do: exercise, take breaks, stretch, walk around… and then I have this. My video editing has increased in hours since the quarantine began since I have nothing else to do with my free time, so why not edit more and produce more material? But that’s clearly had negative ramifications for my physical health.

My Dynaflex power ball that I usually use to exercise my wrists and forearms has not been helping; if anything, I think using it has exascerbated some of the pain. I’ve been icing, elevating, trying to rest as much as possible, but you kind of need to use your hands, right? Having weak wrists and elbows is not a great thing, and having tight hands is not comfortable at all, to say the least.

In tumultuous times like what we are currently living in, the subconscious has a tendency to go one of two ways: erratic and tumultuous as well, or calming, comforting, peace seeking. It seems that my subconscious has chosen the latter and has served me up dreams of puppies for comfort and cuddles.

Last night, I dreamt that someone rang my bell, and when I went to answer the door, a large woven basket with two little dashshund-poodle mix puppy siblings in it. I was confused, as no note was attached, so I brought the basket of puppies into the apartment and closed the door.

I debated whether to keep the puppies, and in the meantime, I figured I would enjoy them and their company. I picked one up and placed it into my lap. She immediately looked up at me with innocent, sweet eyes, and then proceeded to pee all over me. I could feel the warmth all over my lap.

Chris and I joined a friend and her colleague in the protesting here in Manhattan yesterday for about four hours. We marched for about 60+ blocks, chanting, kneeling, attempting to make a statement about racism and police brutality. It was thousands of us; all the way down to Foley Square up to the 90s on the east side of Manhattan. It’s sad and infuriating that the news doesn’t seem to want to cover peaceful protests and instead focuses on a few bad apples that have to ruin it for all of us.

The most emotional moments of the protests for me were when we would put our hands up and chant, “hands up; don’t shoot!” When you hear thousands of people at the same time chanting that statement, over and over and over again, it just breaks you. It makes you feel their pain. It’s our pain, a shared pain, because oppression of one group is an oppression of all of us, especially those of us who are not “mainstream” looking or white. I felt so choked up the first few times chanting this. I could not even imagine being in this situation in real life, hoping to not have my own life lost with a senseless, needless shot of a bullet.

Then again, I suppose if you do not care about other people, about human rights, this would not break you. You’d just insist this isn’t about race, that this is about “tribalism” and that we’re all violently protesting. And you can go shoot yourself in the mouth if you really feel that way.