Throw it Long & Hard

...good advice for any ball play (think sports, people), but not the best recommendation when it comes to one's back!

Last weekend, I threw my back out and I would up missing work this entire week. How did it happen? It's really such a totally lame story. *sigh*

My lame story (WARNING: You DO NOT need to read this!): For the last few weeks, my lower back had been bothering me, forcing me to almost always sit straight at attention on either the edge of my seat or sit cross legged on the floor, pinching and seizing here and there, makin' me feel generally old and really outta shape (that latter point has just been my reality for some time now). Well, last Saturday night, I'd refilled our 1.5 gallon Pur water filter dispenser and with it full to the brim, I'd opened the fridge and bent forward to stash it in its usual spot. However, there was this large bag of Idaho potatoes that had tipped over, well in the way of the dispenser's usual spot. [SIDE NOTE: Yes, a 15-lb bag of potatoes is ridiculously large for a 3-person household! yes, I know sweetness, I know now! I won't buy another one ever again (at least not until we have a couple more family members added to our lot ~ hee hee).] I''d asked my honey-man to please help me move the blasted bag of potatoes (he was standing right there), and when he squeezed in beside me to do so, I twisted myself out of the way, still bent over while holding the dispenser and WHOA! Did I twist the wrong way! Big pain crunching lower back pinch! - - not yet thrown out altogether, but on it's way... After the water dispenser incident, I was purty stiff, unable to turn at the waist or bend over deeply, slow to get in and out of bed and on and off the couch with extra care.

The next day, after the angel boy-O's mommie and step-daddy-O, had left and had made it back to California, my honey-man and the angel boy-O had gone swimming together and I was left to carefully tidy up 'round the house.

BACKGROUND INFO: We'd had a birthday dinner, all of us together for the angel boy-O and his step-daddy-O, who share the same birthday date that would come later in the following week (this week). We'd given both of them their birthday gifts that night, and for the angel boy-O's step-daddy-O, who we'll now refer to as 'Randall,' we'd actually ordered his birthday gift online to be shipped to Burbank, so we didn't have it with us to give to him directly. Instead, my honey-man cleverly designed a cool card featuring a picture of what he'd receive (two Playstation II cordless controllers), and he'd gift-wrapped the card in a heavily rock-filled box.

Okay, so this box we'd had filled with rocks to throw dear Randall off, it was left lying on the floor last Sunday, and not remembering the rocks were in the box, I bent over slightly to quickly pick up the box by a lid flap and waahlah! DOWN I WENT! I landed on my knees on the hard tile, back seizing. The rest of me then hit the floor, and writhing around, trying to find a position in which my back would quit KILLING ME. After what seemed WAY TOO LONG, I wound up lying in the fetal position on my right side, right arm extended out above my head, while I cried my eyes out. Both Otis and Owen had immediately ran over to investigate what all the fuss was about, sweetly meowing at me, "What the heck happened? why are you lying there? why are you crying?" Otis plopped down in front of me, sniffing my eyes and presenting his fuzzy tummy to cheer me up, and all I could do was lay there unable to move for about 10 minutes, before my honey-man and the angel boy-O came back from their swim.

Until yesterday, I couldn't sit up without having to hunch forward and couldn't even do that more than 5 minutes at a time, and today's the first day I've been able to prop up and lay back with the laptop, able to type two-handed... but I can't do it much longer. Only yesterday, I had to always have a hand free to keep myself propped up. Oh and on Wednesday, after I'd had the chance to shower, I noticed in the mirror that my torso doesn't sit straight on my hips... it's shifted about 2 inches to my right!? Totally freaks my honey-man out, big time.

So, over the last 4 days, not able to sleep all that well, unable to do just about anything, I've watched more cable TV than I have in the entire last year. Lots of HG TV and Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch. And it was either Tuesday or Wednesday, I watched VH1's Top 100 songs of the 90's, from #100, all the way down to #1... This, of course, made me feel like a total loser. The laying around doing absolutely nothing but vegging out has been driving me absolutely insane!!! Of course, at the same time, I'm most grateful I even have had the option of staying home without missing pay or the threat of losing my job! But man, the watching of TV has been maddening - - and trying to read? Hadn't been a successful effort until today...

Anywhooo, my lil' brother is here in town from Iowa, taking a break from all the mayhem caused by the flooding there. He arrived late last night and I haven't seen him yet and that's driving me crazy too! In the next hour, however, I should have some good meds to take, so I hope we won't have to abandon our 4th of July plans. More on that later... For now, though, my back is officially freakin' out some more, so I gotta stop this.