Self-portrait with paper lantern, not balloon

I had to stay over in Rochester Wednesday night because of the blizzard.  On the way back I stopped to take a self-portrait

and I drove along Lake Ontario for a while to find a good spot that wasn't a farm, and it was very cold but I was a child in the moment, knees in the snow, face in the snow to check the camera angle, "and go!" running up a hill and having no idea how the shot would turn out, and wouldn't you know it, the paper lantern I bought at Target kind of worked as a kite but not a perfect one, dipping and twisting---

I didn't intend this metaphor.  All I did was go to Target for balloons and buy a paper lantern instead.  But the mind knows more than the person does.  Life is like running with a paper lantern.  You can run as fast as your legs can go, but the lantern does whatever it wants.  Its movement depends on so much more than your speed.

Still, while I was taking the photos, I thought if I could figure out how to run perfectly, I'd have the perfect photo.  But the lantern went all over the place, and I couldn't figure out how to take multiple shots at once on my camera because I haven't used it in so long so I only got one shot per run, and I did multiple runs trying to get this thing to fly, and I made changes to the way I carried my arms and the path I took and which side I held the lantern on.

I used the first pic.  It was the most honest.  There was no advance study; I just ran.  It's not the world's most perfect photo, but it turns out to be the most appropriate.

Dr. Westesson said today that I should schedule an appointment with him for trying the February blocks a second time -- an appointment with two slots so he can try multiple locations.  I think this will mean trying the ilioinguinal block again at the original point, a no man's land southwest of the bellybutton.  I'm not sure whether he will try a symmetrical block this time, both sides.

I started reading up on ilioinguinal nerve entrapment and got really scared and sad.  There are implications for pregnancy, for example, that I won't type any further about right now.  And all the diagrams are of men, which is stupid.  But I want to learn more about it to see if there's any observed link to diet.  I still have this feeling that if I could eat very simply for a long time, a year, my pain would resolve.

I'm hoping the results I had in February are repeatable even if the nerve block doesn't work long term.  I hope I feel the same relief, however short.  Knowing where the pain is coming from would bring part of this to rest.