Butts are funny things. Everyone seems to want to modify theirs It needs to be bigger, smaller, higher, tighter, fatter, or even phatter. We decorate them. We adorn them. The quest to find jeans that makes our ass perfect begins in puberty and lasts through menopause.

But not me. I just want mine to work.

As a runner, I use my gluteus maximus more than the average person. It is my engine, my propulsion. Without it, I don’t move. And when it starts acting up, there’s not a comfortable position in the world. So I trot off monthly to my happy place – Massage Envy – to meet with my favorite person of all time: Sterge. Sterge is a yoga-teaching-massage-therapist, who loves good ol’ rock and happens to be married to a classical guitarist. If I have an ache, he’s got a solution. And he’s not afraid to call me out when I’m not doing my part (“Kathy, you’re not doing the ice on your back, are you? Yeah, I wasn’t. Got me. ). Through Sterge, I have learned painful beauty of the Pigeon pose, the science of ice, where to find Blue Emu healing cream, and that I have a condition called piriformis syndrome in my backside. Sterge is my luxurious, educated, velvety massage. But with the amount of flare ups occurring in my hip I need to take it to the next level. But that’s ok, I know a guy.

Josh.

Josh is no nonsense, has fingers of steel, makes me cry on the table and limp home. He isn’t afraid; he doesn’t do luxury. Sometimes I think he drops the elbow from the third turnbuckle. But he gets results. My hips are limber the day after a Josh session followed by an Epsom salt bath. He has been working on my lower back and hips for the good part of a year.

But even Josh isn’t having the same effect on my hips that he used to. It hurts. I hurt. All day. Worse at night. I’m a walking Advil. My most exciting dream of late has involved a cortisone shot in the ass. A hip doctor is in my future, who, I’m sure, will use old people words like “joint degradation” and “bursitis”. I’m just not ready to admit it yet.

Anyone else have a nagging injury they just can’t shake? Or a sure-fired hip reliever? Maybe just an ass-sized ice pack will do.