“Sing, Sing a song, Sing out loud, Sing out strong"

I have no dry needling stories for you today.  Because I did not get needled last night.  (That's true no matter how far in the gutter your mind might be right now.)

On Thursday night my therapist had done "manual joint work" which may as well be called "let's try to rip your shoulder out of socket and send you on your way!"  Apparently being in a cast and having your arm completely immobile for over 3 months does bad, terrible things to you.  My bicep is now like a brick inside my arm.  Also, when you don't move your muscle, your joints don't move either and sometimes they do what mine has done which is seize up like a man trying to show his friends he can pick up a golf ball with his naked butt cheeks.  (Did y'all hear about these drunk guys at the golf club acting all crazy?  One of my bosses is a member at this club.)

Basically, the tendons in my shoulder won't move and my arm muscle wants to remain a brick.  So on Thursday, my therapist had me lay on a table while she climbed up on a stool so she was above me, then she leaned on me with all of her body weight while she crushed, pulled, twisted and yanked my shoulder joint in various directions.  I am proud to say I only teared up but didn't full on ugly cry right there in the therapy place.  But carp, that hurt!  Then she said I am not responding to normal PT techniques (which should shock no one who knows me) so she wants to stick needles directly into my bicep to make it "let go".  I think that sounds awful, but it's also awful barely being able to floss my teeth because I can't lift my arm.  I've never craved flossing my teeth so much in my life.  I would also love to be able to put a necklace on because I am a jewelry FREAK and can only wear really longs ones that I can slip over my head with one arm right now.  And I cannot wait to be able to sleep in my bed instead of a chair which I've been doing for almost 4 months because I can't move my arm to get comfortable.  (I know, woe is me.  I am grateful for that comfy chair, but my bed would be kind of awesome.)

She was going to poke me Friday night (again, didn't happen no matter how dirty your mind is and no matter what you're thinking) but she asked me how I felt from the joint work on Thursday night and I told her the weight of my bra strap was about to make me cry because my entire shoulder was one huge bruise and she said I needed to wait to be poked then.  So it was a poke-free-Friday-night for me but I will get poked on Tuesday.  So I will tell y'all about that then.

But yesterday I mentioned Friday Afternoon Song in my office and all of you wanted to know if I sing like a canary.  And I do.  If that canary was born with some odd genetic mutation that made it sing like the worst sounding canary in all of the world.  Y'all, I CANNOT sing.  Simon Cowell would tell me to get a lawyer and sue my teacher if I was taking lessons.  Singing is so not my thing.

The beauty of Friday Afternoon Song is that it has nothing to do with anyone in my firm singing.  Thank goodness, because I'm pretty sure the people that participate are probably not going to win a Grammy either.  In fact, the partner who started it comes in my office quite often singing but he likes head banging heavy metal music and he sort of whisper sings it and it's really not good to listen to and I can never tell what in the heck song he's even trying to entertain us with.

This is how it came to be:

One Friday I overheard this whisper singing partner telling one of the attorneys I work for that the song for Friday Afternoon was ____________ (I don't listen to heavy metal all that much so you can fill in any song you want to).  And the two of them went in the partner's office, pulled up the You Tube video of it and turned up the volume, waved their heads around in the air, played air guitars and pretend drums, and generally looked like fools doing that in a law office.

This went on for several Fridays and then my boss said, "hey, I think the Friday Afternoon Song should be ________ this week."  And so I asked what the heck the deal was with the songs.  And the partner said it was just a fun thing he started doing at the end of the week because it was Friday afternoon and he didn't want to work so hard.  He then said I could come listen that day.  So I did, but I played no instruments and didn't wave my hair around like a 1980's hair band.  And the two of them had their own little Friday afternoon tradition and suddenly the rest of our group was jealous.  I work for two partners and one associate who are all in different types of corporate law.  The associate is in corporate securities and we all sit in close proximity and talk about 8-K's, prospectuses, 10-Q's, etc. all day.  Trust me, we need to create some fun somehow doing that sort of exciting work all week.  It's like a replacement for taking Ambien non-stop for 40 hours a week in securities law.

Fast forward to now and it has evolved into kind of a big deal for us each Friday.  There are 8 of us who participate - 3 partners, 2 associates, 1 paralegal, and 2 legal assistants - and we get a minimal amount of work done from about 2 pm to 4 pm on Fridays.  And a few weeks ago, my boss did some sort of google search to find songs and clicked on a bad link, got a horrible virus, fried his computer and our IT manager spent the rest of the day trying to fix his computer.  My boss threw our entire group under the bus and the IT manager hates our contest.  But he can't exactly disable google for the firm, can he?  No, no he cannot.  So we continue.

The partner who started all of this comes up with a theme each week and we all go search You Tube and submit songs that are applicable to the theme.  Most of the time the theme is based on a current event or a holiday, but sometimes it's based on something one of us did. (Like when I tripped on my flip flop, flew through the air head first into the front door of a restaurant, crashed to the ground and broke my arm in 4 places, the theme was "shoes" so the title of the song had to have the word "shoe" or a type of shoe in it.  And one of the partners was texting one night, and walked into the front door of the building and broke his nose so he was used as the theme that week.  And I'm glad I'm not the only idiot in our department.)  Yesterday was National Doughnut Day so the song titles had to contain a breakfast food or drink.  I won second place with "Rubber Biscuit" by the Blues Brothers and I also won third place with Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" (which is a filthy song so don't go search for it if you're easily offended).

One week my boss (one of the associates) made the mistake of submitting a Simon and Garfunkel song and the heavy metal partner gave him such a hard time that we now all try to find at least one song by them to submit and dedicate it to my boss.  (Or maybe I'm the only one who does that....  I adore this particular boss and love to pick on him.)

We can submit as many songs as we want as long as they follow the theme.  Do you want to know what we win if we place?  Absolutely nothing.  But we have a blast playing along.

So I was thinking, should we start a song contest on here each week?  June has Words of Wisdom and we could have a song contest over here for a weekly thing.  All you win is bragging rights, or I could come up with a June-like reward (inflatable toast) that I can tell you is the prize but which I will never mail you so basically you just have bragging rights.  I know this song contest sounds kind of dorky, but it's really fun y'all!  Let me know if y'all want to do it and what day of the week.