blind insight

Ommmmmmmmm

I just walked out of a yoga class, nearly in tears. With a brief interlude for Birkie fun (and it was really fun), the past several weeks have been hellaciously busy. I've had one deadline after another, and now have barely a week to try to prepare to argue two different, complicated cases before the Tenth Circuit next week, out-of-state. To say I'm a little stressed would be an understatement.

Steve, too, has been working crazy hours and dealing with impossible deadlines. We decided this weekend that yoga and other stress-reducing practices need to figure more prominently in our lives. As a first step, we planned to take a yoga class at our gym tonight. I've taken other classes there and have liked them all very much - each class I've attended has used some variation of traditional, flowing vinyasa style yoga, which I like because it blends relaxation and athleticism and has significantly helped my balance and seems to have had a beneficial impact on my problem hips and knees.

But from the moment we walked into the studio tonight, I wanted to turn around and leave. The room was so dark when we entered that I couldn't see to find a mat or a spot, and had I been alone, without Steve to help and guide me, I would have either tripped over someone, walked into a support post, or simply been unable to function. Then, when we sat down, the instructor asked me something - I think whether I had done yoga before - and I nodded and smiled. She gave me a strange look and said something I couldn't understand, and when I simply smiled at her, she looked at me even more strangely. Finally, I said to her, "I'm sorry, I'm deaf, and I won't be able to hear you." In response, she looked annoyed and moved away.

When class began, it consisted of a good fifteen minutes of sitting cross-legged and breathing. Steve loves this part of yoga, but it is not at all my cup of tea - I want to move, to flow from breath to breath and posture to posture, not to sit still and try to keep my back from slumping or aching while I strain to understand the instructor's muted near-whisper.

Finally, it seemed we were going to begin moving. But all around me, everyone was doing something different. The instructor turned on some yoga-y music and started sliding around in various stretchy poses, but no one else was doing what she was, or anything else with a discernible pattern. It seemed we were supposed to be doing something, but since I couldn't hear the instructor over the music and couldn't follow any one else's lead, I had no idea what that something might be. I got more and more tense - just what you expect from yoga, right? - and then finally decided I had to get out of the room.

I stood up, told Steve I would see him at home, and started to leave. Except I couldn't see well enough to find my damn shoes and sweatshirt, so I went back to my mat. I sat there for a moment, trying to figure out what was going on. But people were still engaged in a random chaos of motions, and I just couldn't stand it anymore. I poked Steve in the arm, dragging him out of his relaxed state, and had him find my things for me. Then I left the room as quickly as I could, barely restraining myself from slamming the door on my way out.

I couldn't get out of the gym fast enough. As I wove my way through the weight machines, though, I decided that I had to say something about the experience. I stopped at the front desk. The girl there must have sensed my obvious distress, and listened patiently as I told her that, while I might well be the only member who might be negatively affected, this particular class is terribly inaccessible for someone with hearing and visual limitations. She was kind and receptive, promised to talk to the instructor and the manager, and apologized for my bad experience. I was glad I brought the issue to her attention, though everyone else in that class probably loves it.

When I walked out, I suddenly let go of all the tension that had built up in the studio, and over the past several hectic weeks, and I started sobbing. I walked through the parking lot and around the corner to home, gasping and weeping and snuffling. By the time I reached the house a few minutes later, I had sobbed out all the pent-up frustration and was calm again.

Now I'm going to turn on one of my yoga tapes, with the volume up at the level I need, and try to relax.

UPDATE: Having done my familiar yoga workout, I feel much better. Steve just got home and said the instructor talked to him after class to find out why I left, and was very apologetic. Steve also said that after a 5-10 minute period of free-form stretching, the instructor went through a fairly traditional vinyasa, balance, and yoga stretching routine, which I would have liked. So I'm going to try it again next week, arriving early enough to chat with the instructor for a few minutes about my needs, and to get a spot directly in front of her.  Steve really loved this class, and we'd like to do yoga together, so I'll give it another shot.

I'm fine, thanks. How have you been?

I have decided that this blog (and, by extension, those of you who read it) is like an old college buddy. The kind of friend with whom you can lose touch for months, even years at a time, meet up for a beer in an airport lounge when one of you is passing through the other’s town, and resume chatting as though not a day has passed since last you met. So, yeah, I’ve been busy. With work, and houseguests, and work, and skate-skiing, and work, and climbing, and work, and taxes, and, well, work.

Steve and I are spending a lot of time these days fantasizing about knocking down walls and remodeling our tiny, boring kitchen into something less tiny and more fabulous. For financial and other reasons, I expect we are a year or so away from taking a sledgehammer to the drywall, but we have come up with a pretty snazzy design concept and have priced out some materials and appliances. At least in theory, we’d like to do as much of the work as possibly ourselves (realistically, mostly Steve’s-self, since I’m rather lacking in the construction- and design-skills department. But I can paint!). This should be a challenging and possibly even fun endeavor, although I’m a wee bit terrified about how long it might take, and how we might survive being kitchenless for many months.

Other than work and kitchen-dreaming, we have been skate-skiing as much as possible. We leave Thursday for the Birkebeiner, and hopefully will reap the benefits of all this training. If you’ve been following along at home, you may remember that my plan was to ski the entire 51K Birkie race this year, on classic skis. For reasons of weather, wax, and gear, too mundane to explain, I have skied classic-style only twice this season, while I’ve been skating almost every weekend since November. A few months ago, I could barely go for 10 minutes without gasping and dry-heaving, but I’ve now skated 20K or so twice in the past few weeks, once in bitterly cold conditions for which I had the entirely wrong wax. And so, come Saturday, I will be attempting to skate the 23K Kortelopet race, the same one I classic-skied last year. This feels like the right challenge for me, for this year, and I’m very excited about it. It also means that the Freiburger clan will not have to sit around waiting for me to finish the full Birkie, since they are all skiing the Korte and I would almost surely be finishing at least 4 hours behind Steve’s Birkie time.

Speaking of cross-country skiing, did any of you see the men's 4x10K relay last weekend? Where the Italian skaters crushed the field and snagged the gold on their home turf? Just, wow! Very inspiring and intimidating, and extra fun to watch now that I understand the sport a little bit. On the other hand, curling? I watched for a good 15 minutes the other day, and I still have no idea what's going on. It seemed to have some resemblance to a retirement-home shuffleboard game, only slower-paced.

In addition to the exciting physical challenge ahead of me, this weekend’s Wisconsin trip offers a special post-race treat: fried cheese curds. Perhaps not the most cardio-conscious foodstuff, but well worth skiing 23 kilometers for!

I'll be CI-ing you, but not so soon.

I apologize for the recent disappearing act. Believing I had reached a brief lull in my case load, I volunteered to take on an extra appeal. My case load immediately took insult, and let me know quite forcefully that it had no intention of lulling. The extra case, however, turned out to be quite fascinating, and gave me an opportunity at last to explore the intricacies of federal sentencing in the post-Booker* universe.

In the midst of this un-lull, I have also been trying to figure out what coverage my insurance company will offer for the cochlear implant surgery, and what my out-of-pocket exposure might be. I wasted hours of time going around and around in incomprehensible circles with customer service reps and hospital lackeys, and had to break down in tears in order to get concrete answers to my very simple questions. Ultimately, the answers to those questions turned out to be equally simple: my share of the surgery will be quite a chunk of change.

Steve and I have weighed pros and cons, examined the budget, and compared options, and we’ve concluded that the potential benefits of the CI are well worth the expense. The question thus becomes, when to go under the knife. I have Tenth Circuit arguments scheduled for early March and early May, and don’t relish the prospect of facing oral argument while still adjusting to a new mode of hearing. Nor am I eager to undergo the surgery during the summer. Although my CI-veteran friends assure me that the surgery-related downtime is minimal, I hate the thought of losing any climbing, triathlon, or other outside adventure time to recovery.

That takes us to autumn, or possibly early ‘07. I had anticipated having a significant schedule conflict this fall, but it now appears that has been eliminated. As eager as I am to proceed, I think Steve and I both will have more time to focus on the post-surgery learning process a few more months down the road. Because success with a CI depends in substantial part on the user's commitment to doing hearing exercises and undergoing regular mapping sessions during the months after surgery, it seems wiser to do the procedure during a slightly less chaotic stretch of time.

In the meantime, I return to the clinic on March 1, for a final round of testing and an initial consultation with the surgeon. I also have to undergo a CAT scan, so that the surgeon has an accurate map of my inner ear. Once those steps are accomplished, I hope we’ll be able to schedule the surgery.

I’ll keep you posted!

*United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2006) (finding mandatory federal sentencing guidelines unconstitutional and excising certain provisions of the Federal Sentencing Act).

More About Innocence.

I have more to tell you about the CI process, mostly on the subject of Why Insurance Companies Drive Me Crazy. But first, I wanted to alert those of you in my neck of the woods to a project I've been working on for the past couple of weeks:

I screened the film and met with the panelists earlier this week, because I'll be introducing the program. The film is extraordinary - powerful, moving, upsetting, and in some ways exhilarating. The panelists come to the issue of wrongful convictions from many different perspectives, and their discussion should add an important element to the experience. If you can, please try to join us tomorrow night at the Starz Film Center. If not, the film is playing through February 9 in Denver, and is also playing around the country. For more information, visit www.afterinnocence.com.

Incidentally, I'm still watching InJustice. I still think it's garbage television. But, as the commenter masquerading as Judge Justice Alito pointed out, it does have the potential to raise public awareness about the huge flaws in the criminal justice system and the very real problem of wrongful convictions. Also, that ex-cop-with-a-conscience is really cute.