More Book Fair Stuff ... and the back

I went for the X-ray of my back. Doctor got the pic's and said, other than some scoliosis (which I THOUGHT I was luckily free of since I was checked almost every year since I was little -- does it suddenly appear?) which didn't mean much, I didn't have anything showing on the X-rays that would be bothering me.

Which means it's all soft tissue problems. So physical therapy is in order.

Not a bad answer, if you ask me. I'd rather have something that's fixable with work than something that is permanently disabling.

SO, since I was feeling marginally better yesterday, decided to go ahead and DO MY EXERCISES this morning.

Sure.

Remind me one of these days how DUMB that was.

Now It's going to take longer to get back to where I was because whatever I did (and by the way, the exercises this morning were mainly help for lower back problems) made me feel ever so much NOT better.

Great. Someone duct tape me to my chair so I don't do stupid things.

On other fronts -- I'm still working on getting my boxes of books ready for the two book fairs coming up.

Santa Monica is now just over two weeks away. Normally I'd have boxes already starting to form a wall in my front room (which makes the rest of the family and the cats rather growly at me as the boxes take up room to run...)

BUT - pain has slowed me down a bit.

AND I finally got my rear in gear and ordered dust jacket covers which didn't arrive until yesterday. So, knowing that they were coming, I PUT OFF boxing up books so I could cover them first.

Now I have to put in overtime getting the covers on and figuring out exactly which books might be of interest. AND which books to leave out for Sacramento (three weeks away) and not take to Santa Monica.

And remember I'm not supposed to be lifting boxes of books or even big stacks of them.

Right now, the pain is worst when I try to bend over and stay bent over to do something - like pick up books off the floor (where they NEVER are -- yeah right) or pet the cat, or pick up kid stuff...

And of course, baseball season hasn't exactly finished yet, but soccer season HAS started. Our weekly schedule now has something in the evening every day except Friday (and maybe will have something there too), with weekends being REALLY busy.

Plenty of time to get books covered and boxed up.

Yup.

As long as I don't really start to think about what's going on, I'm FINE.

FINE I SAY.

enjoy.

Great ... now what do I do?

Well, I finally dragged myself off to the doctor to see what was wrong -- I've had some pain in my lower back on the right side which started traveling down parts of my right leg then, starting last week, it meandered over to my lower abdomen.

I thought I might have appendicitis. Great.

The pain was really starting to be a problem.

As in, I found myself sitting (actually, more a sort of odd reclining pose that reminded me of some of the romantic / pre- Raphaelite painters ...you know -- that famous print of the Lady of Shalott by Waterhouse) on the sofa watching kids TV programs I'd seen tons of time before -- and not caring because at least if I was still, it didn't ache quite so much.

The doctor ruled out Appendicitis which is very good.

But I do have to go get an X-ray to see what the problem might be.

OF COURSE this happens just before a book fair. Book fairs mean boxing up lots of books and CARRYING said boxes from place to place.

Carrying boxes hurts.

Doctor says not to carry much of anything right now.

Yeah, this works.

So I'll get the X-ray the doctor wants (again taking time away from data entry that is lagging FAR behind what should be done) and see what the problem is. In the mean time, I get to take some anti-inflamatory stuff that seems to make me a bit slow (not helpful) and hope that what I type into the database actually makes sense later.

Wish me luck.