ow :-(

I think I may have really messed up my knee.  It's a stabbity pain in the upper part of the kneecap, slightly to the inner side.  This is a new pain for me, there's an adjacent area where it often aches but this is different.  It's been pretty constant since Monday morning.  Stairs, oddly enough, are just fine, but walking hurts.  I suppose on the stairs I'm not bearing weight on that leg at the point where it hurts to bend it, whereas in walking that's when I'm pushing off against the ground.  I'm trying a couple of days of ibuprofin and icing throughout the day, hopefully that will help.  Right now there is an icepack tied to my leg with a giant orange organza ribbon as that's all I could find in the office to affix the icepack, so at least that's slightly entertaining.

I don't think dance class last night made it worse but it certainly didn't make it better.  Another dance class tonight, but then I'll definitely rest it on Wednesday and Thursday.  I suppose I could try a knee brace, but I'm a little leary of those, having read that they can give you a false sense of security since you don't feel the on-going damage happening.  Pain happens for a reason, I try to tell myself philosophically.

Edited to add:  I did some googling of knee anatomy.  The best way to make an already painful knee feel squickier is to look at its anatomy, I can tell you.  Anyway, my best guess based on the location of the pain and my muscular tendencies is that it's the quadriceps tendon and possibly the patellar tendon that hurts, probably caused by my regular ilio-tibial band issues and exacerbated by knee-pounding dabke in shoes with little support/poor stability, and I'm doing the right thing with the ibuprufin and ice, and a knee brace wouldn't really do much for me.  That's my theory, anyway.

I do think the Pedini teaching sandals I bought will enable me to deal with the linoleum floor on Monday nights.  It's taking some adjustment though, the heels are squishy enough that the first time I went into a shimmy in them I almost fell over backwards.

pretty horsies

Bring on the dancing horses!  (the camera wanders a bit at the start of that last one, but it's worth waiting to see the details of the horse's costuming)

Funny, looking through the comments (I looked at a bunch of videos)--some people seem to have made it their business to go to every Arabic and Indian horse dancing video (and some of the Mexican ones) and make accusations of cruelty.  They don't seem to have hit the Western dressage videos, where the horses snuffle and snort and swish their tails just as much.  I guess if it's in a ring in a fancy costume it's beautiful dressage, if it's in a village plaza or a tent or somebody's backyard it's cruel to make a horse do something against its nature.  Well, at least it's not just belly dancers who get racist and ignorant comments.  (not that I'm defending every third world horse dancing video on YouTube, some of them did not look that great, but some of them clearly showed relaxed horses focused on doing their jobs for their people, not scenes of cruelty)

my dream home

( a whole stable of pegasi! )