Ahhh, mi spina!

The title is another gem from Captain Admiral. It, of course, means "Ahh, my spine!" in Spanish. It is used when one is old, creaky, out of shape, and your spine doesn't work correctly but instead makes you walk and move like a crippled old man. Needless to say, The Captain was using this phrase long before I was but age has a way of catching up to us all.

Last Saturday, I spent about an hour pulling weeds out of our yard. I could have easily spent four hours doing that because we don't have a lawn exactly - we have nicely cared for patches of grass between expanses of exotic, virulent, vaguely grass-like weeds. I'm not OCD about much but when there's a weed poking out of an otherwise nice patch of grass, I get a little fixated. It's hard to explain but I get a deep sense of satisfaction when I pull a dandelion out by hand and the roots come up with it. it's weird but I like it.

Anyway, after picking weeds, I mowed, and then realigned the bricks that line our front flower bed. I came in for lunch around noon and suddenly became aware of a tight burning sensation in my lower back. Somewhere between the weed pulling and the brick aligning, I'd done something bad to my back. Real bad.

I'm not a back-trouble kind of guy. I'm not a person who suffers constantly and has to treat his lumbar region like it's loaded with nitro glycerin and because of this lack of experience, I am being a complete and total baby about the whole thing. I'm handling my discomfort with a marked lack of grace or cool. All I want to do is lay on my couch at home and do absolutely nothing. Except for a brief stint of mocking me on Sunday (poking me, calling me "cripple" and "little old man," etc.), Suzanne has been a real champ about this and has pretty much allowed me to not do too much for the last two days.

My chair at my office (where I'm sitting right now) is nowhere near as forgiving. There isn't any way to get comfortable really and I can guaran-dang-tee you I'm not going to lay down on the floor here. I'm not a germophobe by any stretch but I'm also not flat out stupid. (Trust me.) The floor here in not what we experts like to refer to as "clean" or "sanitary." Therefore, my back will just have to suffer so my immune system won't have to.

Anyway, that's what's up in my world right now. Occasional, slight numbness in one leg or another, walking all crooked and messed-up, being an invalid, having Suzanne call me Gimpy Joe.