fivecats journal

Loki Ghost
August 2005 Asheville, NC
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"When a news story falls through the cracks, our own Lewis Black catches it for a segment we like to call..."

(No, it's not "This Week in God" Are you sure you're paying attention here?)

Back in B(l)ack:

I went to see good friend zombiefodder Friday afternoon. It was a much more relaxed visit back to the place where I used to work. This time around I saw a small number of the people I used to work with (those who walked by his office and the only one person I hunted out -- ManiacLaugh). Missed seeing pilote, but found out all sorts of reasons why I Should Be Glad I No Longer Work There and caught up on some of the local gossip.

While I was there I cleared off one of ZF's cabinets so I could sit on it. Later, after the office had cleared out, he asked about my back.

"Since you hadn't blogged about it, I assumed it was getting better," he said.

No, it hasn't. I've just been trying not to complain about it a whole lot.

For the most part, the lower back itself isn't the problem. It's the seized muscles surrounding the pinched nerve and those similarly seized muscles running down my right leg and the still faintly tingling/numbing sensation in my right toes that are causing the problem. They manifest themselves either in occasional throbbing pains in the back, nasty muscle spasms in my lower right leg as soon as I wake up in the morning or, most frequently, with excruciating aches in my hips. These aches come during walking (anywhere from 10 to 200 paces) and must be responded to by crouching down into a fairly tight ball wherever I happen to be when it happens. This allows the muscles to stretch out a bit and for the ache to subside. From there I can walk, but, again, for an toss-of-the-dice number of paces.

Oh, standing cause the ache, too.

I'm doing exercises designed to help strengthen my back, but they're not the wonder miracle cure I was hoping they'd be. My return visit to the chiropractor last Friday helped a bit. While my back didn't crack all that much (I didn't expect it to) he did tell me that the tingling in my toes was due to an irritation of the pinched nerve and not the nerve being killed off. (Then again, if the nerve died off, it might not hurt so much. Hmmmmm...)

All of which comes back to the point that I'm Not As Young As I Used to Be and I'm Going to Have to Take Better Care of Myself. No, Seriously This Time. Really. And, No, I Don't Care How Lazy I Want to Be, I Just Have to Get Used to It, Dang it.

So There.

In the meantime I do a lot of sitting and squatting.

The white blur in image above is Seren's most elusive cat, Loki. Elusive, at least as far as my camera is concerned, that is. He's a hide-under-the-bed kinda cat until he remembers you. ("Aw, dude," Seren voices for him. "I remember you. I partied with you!") We tend to get remembered within the first day, which is good, but he still isn't too sure about a camera and the tripod.

And while I'm sure Seren wishes I'd done some post-digital editing to clean up her floor (especially since she scrubs her place down from top to bottom any time we visit), I'll claim responsibility for all of the trash there. After all, those are my shoes, too.

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