Ow.

So Thursday was exciting.

I had run any number of errands, gotten the paint to paint the stoffice, arranged for the contractors to do the floor (goodbye, money, I hardly knew ye)  made extensive plans to carry the stoffice on to the next stage, most of which involved Kevin and I moving heavy objects and tearing up carpet and of course all the painting. Then I got home, and while throwing something away in the little trashcan under the sink, I twisted or bent or something, and my back went THWANGGGGG!

You only have to have this happen to you once before you know what that sensation means. It happened to me for the first time at eighteen, when I was taking a ceramics class and doing a lot of hunching over the wheel, and has occurred occasionally off and on for the last fifteen years.

It wasn’t an immediate lie-down-on-the-floor-wherever-you-happen-to-be back going out, which is something, but it’s definitely a lie-in-bed kind. I can sit up for short periods, but it starts to hurt pretty quickly. I had to go to the mail place yesterday–the prints must go out! People want this stuff for Christmas!–so Kevin, who was working from home, was able to act as my chauffeur at lunch, while I laid the seat back with a hot pad under my lumbar region and prayed for death.

So, that adventure aside, I’ve been spending my days in bed with the collected works of Eva Ibbotson and Percoset. (Kevin had some left over from his abscessed tooth.) Ironically, I, who can drink one glass of wine and be tipsy, apparently have a much higher tolerance for opiates than Kevin—one of these knocked him into la-la land, you could have driven a steamroller over his foot and he wouldn’t notice—but while they make me somewhat high and render my conversational skills a bit erratic, they don’t do all that much for the pain. (Nor is it a “Yeah, it hurts, but I don’t care!” kinda thing. I still care very very much.)

Because it’s my lower back, standing is fine. It’s the sitting that kills me. It’s better today, although just writing this blog post has sent me into mild agony, and I’m off to take a shower.

I don’t think I’ll get to spackling the spare room today, though. Sigh.

Oh well, at least it waited until I was done with Dragonbreath art…

Originally published at Tea with the Squash God. You can comment here or there.