Sculpin

This would have been a fine year to actually get around to putting the plastic on the hoop house frames. Oh well. A few plants do seem to have coped very well with being stuck under a foot of snow, and when the snow melts enough that I can get a better look at things, I’ll probably write about them at greater length at House of Cranks. Any day now.

So, around November 8 or so, Josh and I took out about half of our driveway. It’s in full sun, a really beautiful exposure; assuming it’s not horribly contaminated (I will be sending samples for testing) it’ll be a wonderful place to grow tomatoes once we get another raised bed in there.

We hadn’t really intended to do so much that day. I’d thought of it more as a day for proof-of-concept than anything else. But we got into the rhythm of it, using crowbar, 4x4s and sledgehammer to tear it up and break it apart. It was a lot of fun, and incredibly satisfying. Man, were we proud. A good day’s work.

I was unattractively smug the next day about hurting less than Josh (who turned out to be pretty nastily thrashed), though I did wonder about the odd cramps I was getting on my left side. And then after a few days, ye gods, my glutes, what the hell? And my leg! And lower back! Agh! Well, now I have a pretty good idea what the hell. I was the one doing most of the sledgehammering, and I strained the living daylights out of my left psoas. This probably wouldn’t have been too bad except for the Wood Chip Incident a few weeks later, when I reinjured it by hurriedly forking a mountain of woodchips off the sidewalk. And, um, turning the compost probably wasn’t a good idea either. I have, in short, been a big idiot. Once again, “Work through the pain” is not a great idea. It all got worse and worse.

As it happened, I had a standardized-patient gig a few weeks ago in which I played a patient with lower back pain. About the third time I had to fake my way through some tests that were supposed to be normal, I figured perhaps it was time to talk to my doctor. Josh and I see the same guy. It was kind of fun to go in and say, “Hey, remember when Josh came in last month with a back injury from taking out the driveway? Well…”

The good news is, I probably haven’t screwed up a nerve or slipped a disc. The other good news is, I am loaded up with Vicodin and muscle relaxants. The bad news is, I may well be like this for a good month longer. I was way too optimistic about how quickly this kind of thing heals. (Doctor: “And when you go up stairs, try going up only with your right leg and pulling your left leg up after.” Cam: “So, uh, not back to Pilates all that soon, then?” Doctor: *wince**twitch* “Yeah, probably not.”)

Anyway, I think I’m on the mend. I was having pain spikes up to 8+, but now they only go up to 6, 7 at the most. Whee. I can get out of bed now with just yelping instead of shouting, and I’m a lot less likely to be stuck all twisted up. But I’m pretty grouchy and impatient about it all.

The psoas does a lot for posture and balance, so it’s not a great idea for me to go sliding around in the snow. Which hasn’t kept me out of the snow entirely — I can get by with Josh’s Yaktrax plus two trekking poles if I don’t go far. But I’m getting stir-crazy here.

At least Facebook’s “Pet Society” is truly riveting when you’re on opiates. I have been racking up a tremendous score.

And I chipped in with my mom to buy Josh a gift certificate for a Long Haul Trucker for Christmas, so there’s some vicarious out-and-about fun. I can hardly wait to see Josh riding it! Go away, stupid snow!

When we take out the rest of the driveway, some fine day, we’ll do it right. Have a work party. Pizza. Beer. Maybe drag the stereo out and put the new Pretenders album on it. Let everybody have a piece of the fun, and (I hope) nobody have a piece of the ouch.

These are my links for November 24th through December 11th:

• Austenbook – Pride and Prejudice as a series of Facebook messages.
• Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply – A decent source for oystershell lime and other amendments that are hard to find at the garden store — often in really big, fairly cheap bags. (Start a buying co-op for soil amendments?)
• Transporting Broiler Chickens Could Spread Antibiotic-Resistant Organisms – “Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have found evidence of a novel pathway for potential human exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria from intensively raised poultry — driving behind the trucks transporting broiler chickens from farm to slaughterhouse.”
• Design*Sponge: Paper Holiday – Gift Wrapping – Nifty, frugal ways to make a gift look extra fancy.
• You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations – “Our patience with forming interpretations and reinterpretations of others’ behaviour is not unlimited. The time comes when we lose interest in trying to understand, and conclude that another person is behaving in a way that is simply unacceptable. This paper explores the narratives that go with immoderate indignation, even for those best versed in the idea that they should attempt to understand the perspective of the other.”