Tag Archives: Have you got a bad back?

Back to the Bus Accident

Another actual image from accident. Generated with AI ∙ January 29, 2024 at 5:23 AM

There was one thing I forgot to add to the bus accident story.

Normally we get to the park-n-ride around 5-ish but because of all the waiting around we didn’t get there until after 6pm. Dinner is going to be late.

As we are exiting, this guy from the back of the bus heads toward the door holding a cupcake.

Not like the cupcake is wrapped up. It’s ready to eat. How did he sit on the bus for over 2 hours and not eat that cupcake? Was he high compliance and didn’t want to eat on the bus against the rules? Did he forget about it until just then? Was he holding the cupcake like that to save for later? Or maybe he was passing around cupcakes to the people in the back and this was the last one.

I should have tried to make a new friend.

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Collision

Actual image from accident. (Generated with AI ∙ January 26, 2024 at 11:57 AM)

This week my bus was in a 5 vehicle accident on the bridge.

This is my fourth time being in an accident on public transport.

Once, a truck tried to beat the lightrail. The truck lost. Bigly.

Two times there were merge incidents. State law: yield to the bus. Plus, it’s bigger than you are. (2010 merge incident.)

This time I didn’t see what happened. It seems like there was another collision on the bridge and we got caught up in the slow down.

We were all fine but if there’s an accident on public transportation the first thing that happens is the driver calls a supervisor to come check things out. In this case, we also had to wait for State Patrol to do their thing. We got off the bridge and pulled over to the side. I got home over an hour late.

Also actual image. (Generated with AI ∙ January 26, 2024 at 11:57 AM)

When we started braking hard I braced myself against the seat in front of me and after impact my wrist started hurting and I would die of embarrassment reporting my wrist booboo. Hilariously, (not really) during one of the merge incidents the driver had to brake hard and I was in a side facing seat and fell down and caught myself with one hand and my wrist hurt.

It stopped hurting and there was no damage and I didn’t have to tell anyone.

As I’m writing this I just remembered another single vehicle incident where the bus hit something on a different bridge and tore back some of the quarter panel. We had to wait and get on another bus and it was super crowded and I got home late.

But no one was hurt which is always the best outcome.

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Ma’am This *Is* Serious

I know what I’m about to tell you will strain reader credibility but for the third time since the beginning of the year, I have had an infirmity that kept me in bed for a few days.

I keep having issues with my back. I want to say all my clean living is for nothing but perhaps I would be a complete wreck if I didn’t do everything I’m doing.

My backpack was super heavy and I did something as I got on the bus — some combination of awkward bag holding, and awkward getting into the seat. When it was time to get off the bus I could barely walk. I hobbled up to the office and assumed I would shake it off.

I did not. I had to use the restroom which is down a long hallway and there was a point where I thought I wouldn’t make it. I felt okay sitting and that was about it.

Bob came and picked me up and I have spent the last few days in my bed desk, working from my laptop and hobbling around as needed. It’s terrible when I wake up but tolerable in the afternoon.

This morning I was in tears when I got up because I was all hunched over and unable to walk without hugging the furniture going on Day 4. I figured I was permanently broken and would have to quit work and cancel our vacation and never be able to clean my floors again.

I did what normally you should never do when you don’t feel right and I did a thorough online research project and learned that I was mostly approaching it right except I needed more patience and I needed more activity.

I did a 60 minute exercise class for tight low backs which was amazing. So I’m going to assume I’m on the mend and try to power through and move around more.

Other than cropping this is intentionally zero Photoshop.

One thing I’ve learned from being at home during the day more than usual the past several months, is that the strongly accented callers who want to warn you about your computer virus, call almost every day. No point in telling them to put you on the no call list. They don’t have one.

The last time I said to the woman: Seriously? There is no better way that you can make a living?

She said: Ma’am, this is serious.

The good thing about being trapped in a bed desk is I’m making steady progress on the Project of August. I’m slightly ahead of schedule but we’re out of town one weekend and I will take that weekend off rather than stress about writing on vacation.

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Husband’s Organizational Project

A few weeks ago I tweaked my back doing yard work. I can even remember what it was: those stupid hedge clippers. I do this every year.

While it is painful in many positions, it is especially painful when I sit at the computer so almost all non-essential computing has been eliminated. Also all but basic yard work. And no exercise except upper back and neck release.

I don’t know what to do with myself when I can’t exercise, write or do yard work.

I cleaned out the bathroom cabinets. I threw out a lot of stuff (like scrunchies with dead elastic and squeezed out mini-tubes of toothpaste) but I learned that most medications are good after the expiration date, even up to 15 years.

So, no new Photoshop tricks from me for awhile. But lots of dead pain relievers.

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Meat From A Van

Did I mention I bought new glasses? I’m trying to give myself time to adapt but I am very sad that I’m not liking them. I’ve never taken glasses back before. I don’t know what’s going on but it seems like there’s only a tiny focused part in the middle of the lens and I have to keep moving my head around to see. This is not going to help with my neck pain. Or poor eyesight.

A fun problem to deal with after the new year.

I’m back from the holidays. I had a stupendously wonderful time. I ate and drank in heroic volumes so it was nice to go 24 hours (yesterday) and eat nothing but soup and fruit so I would be ready for a second round (starting today.)

Did I ever mention that guy who came by with the box of meat? This was actually awhile ago but I was thinking about it the other day. When I searched my archives I came up with this truck full of meat story from 2001.

I think it was the end of the summer and this guy who looked pretty rough around the edges rang the doorbell and when I opened the door he was standing in the yard next door. He hollered that he had this box of meat for me and to just hang on while he carried it over. When he arrived at my doorstep he told me that he would be putting it just inside my door.

“No you’re not,” I said.

“I’m not supposed to put it down without an overhang.”

“I didn’t even ask you to bring it over here,” I said.

He then waved over his shoulder and told me that my neighbors had already taken advantage of this incredible offer. You know what? Almost every sales person who has ever shown up at my front door and told me that my neighbor (non-specific wave over the shoulder) has already taken advantage of this incredible offer.

He had boxes of chicken and boxes of beef. The van door was open and there was no refrigeration that I could see. He also had a flier about their great company wandering neighborhoods with incredible boxes of meat.

What I wanted to say was, “If I go in the house and google ‘meat from a van,’ am I going to get a whole bunch hits that say, ‘Best offer ever’?”

But instead I told him I didn’t want any meat and to have a nice day. To save you the trouble, if you google meat from a van, you will get numerous sad tales, many from elderly people, who bought crap meat from a van and there was no way to get their money back.

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Have You Got A Bad Back?

Ancient photo from the 70’s. I think the bus driver’s name is Roger. You can see him in the rear view mirror. He did lots of snuff which fascinated me at the time. I’m too lazy to figure out where this is. Some border.

I didn’t do NaNoWriMo but I did my own version which was a goal of 1000 words a day or 30K for the month. I made 31,500K. It wasn’t easy and they weren’t pretty words and a few times I was dangerously behind but in the end it all came out okay. These words are going to translate into a short story that’s a long story, I guess technically a novelette. We’ll see. If I keep talking about it I’m going to jinx it.

Remember months ago when I talked about this neck pain I was having?

It started in the summer and went on and on and I did what I usually do when I have a pain and I took some over-the-counter pain relievers and otherwise ignored it.

After three months I decided it was ridiculous to be in so much pain all the time and I consulted an army of medical professionals. They cracked and poked and prodded and massaged and were generally unimpressed with my problem.

I learned a few exercises and I think the physical therapy helped a little bit but overall I think it was just something that had to go away on its own and it’s still going away. I have a blizzard of incomprehensible health insurance statements (long bitter rant about health insurance omitted) and a few checks to write.

Meanwhile, inserted in a recent statement from my health insurance — a handout with “Tips to Relieve Back Pain at Home.”

#1 Give it time.

#2 Take over-the-counter medicine.

#3 Get Active again.

Yeah, thanks. I’d love to see the moron who drafted this form keep up with my yoga practice.

Here are The Toy Dolls (More here.) Performing Fiery Jack which sadly isn’t as funny as the recorded version.

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Pain in the Neck

I was going to use a picture of my Korean Taco lunch but it came out too blurry.

I’m suffering from August ague.

You won’t find it in WedMD but August ague is when you have a viciously bad attitude about everything and its the month of August.

I’m still searching for the cure.

I finally went and talked to someone about my neck pain. This has probably contributed to the ague. My neck started bothering me shortly after the World Cup and I figured it had something to do with watching 25+ hours of TV a week for a month. At first it just felt like I slept funny.

But it never got better and the pain became more persistent and started making normal life activities uncomfortable.

My strategy with medical stuff is to assume everything will go away by itself. Sure, if my head fell off, I’d pick it up and seek medical attention with some urgency. But generally I hate to go to the doctor. And I will tolerate a fair amount of pain without worry. So it took awhile to finally break down and do something about it.

It feels better now but not pain free. But it’s not so much burning and more like a gentle ache. Hopefully this is close to the end of it. The pain in the neck and the ague.

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Never Brag

One thing you should never do is brag about yoga voodoo on your webblog because guaranteed you’ll wake up with some weird new back pain the next day. The tightness fell into my lower back. Pretend I never mentioned it.

Last night I woke up at 3:30am and started the big head grind. What is it about the darkest hours of the night that makes the head churn into worlds beyond reality? I’m awfulizing about unbelievable end of the world, Bob leaves me and I have no money and no food type anxiety which even if it happens, worrying about it in the middle of the night isn’t going to help. Finally, at 5am I said “screw it” and got up and I wrote for about 1/2 hour and then felt like I could barely keep my eyes open so I shut off the light and ended up falling back asleep and then woke up at 6am tired. I was tired almost all day.

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