It's me. Sorry for no updates lately. I've been in pain for the last week or well, the last month really. May was not a good month. First (and I think I touched on this in the last blog post) I was doing a ton of yard work. Trying to get the brush cut down and cleared out to sow grass seed in the rough areas. I was using the weed eater, (in my flip flops and no gloves or goggles) Yeah, that's how i roll. Ignorant and wreckless. That's me. Anyway, we've got a ton of Virginia Creeper and Poison Ivy all over the place, and I'm hacking away at it with the weed wacker. Toxic poison plant juice is squirting all over me. And as if that wasn't bad enough, I set a fire two , no, three days straight and burned brush, limbs, and I even for good measure tossed some of the Poison Ivy and Creeper vines into the fire. Needless to say, I could've died. My lungs siezed up and no matter how much I breathed I was getting no oxygen into my lungs. An entire box of Benydril and two weeks or so later I'm breathing again. Chest pains stopped, and I don't think I'm dying now. As Bill Murray would say, "So I got that goin for me" So then as soon as my lungs were better I mowed the front lawn last Thursday or Friday a week ago. Held the mower bar down with my right hand to keep it on, while carefully grabbing and sliding my gazing globe and pedistal back out of the way about a foot with my left hand. Stepped back with my left leg and pinched my back nerve. It's called Siatica or Siatic back nerve, if I'm spelling that correctly. Which I'm probably not. I've always had that problem since a teenager. Every 6 months to a year I move one tiny little step the wrong way and it feels like my spine snaps in two. Like a red hot burning needle shoots through my lower back and it feels like you're trying to walk while you're severed in half. You literally can't fully feel your legs from the hips down. Just searing pain. Then if you're really lucky, your back will start having these psychotic spasms where you feel like every milimeter you move, (or don't even move at all) you have a needle sticking you in the spine so agonizing you can't move any which way to get it to stop. Nothing will make a grown person scream like a newborn baby quicker than that. I didn't have the spasms this time but I couldn't hardly walk for a week. You can't sleep unless you curl up a certain way on your side with your legs tucked under really uncomfortably and you can't relax your back or let it settle at all or it will feel like your lower spine is ripping in two. So one hour naps is all you get. I took muscle relaxers like Tic- Tacs. My back is a little stiff and it takes some stretching to get off of the bed but otherwise I'm better now. I'm basically pain free for the third day now. So I've had a major month.
On top of that those wonderful MORONS at Fed Ex managed to damage the one box that I really didn't need damaged. Oh yes, Silver Cloud (the appaloosa I worked so hard on) was on his way to the proxy shower to go to his first show this Sunday, and the box shows up crushed down on top. His ear is not only broken, but also missing, and he's almost missing a shoe. And since he's not gotten back yet (I'm guessing he'll arrive sometime today) I wont be able to get him repaired in time and sent back to go to that show, so now that wont happen. So I do need to get him home, repaired, and try and find another show for him to go to. I really wished he could have gone to Breyerfest this year somehow.
I did hear back on the charity painting for the Cop Week Silent Auction and was told the painting did well. They raised several hundred dollars with it, so that at least was some good news.
