I hurt my back last week. No, wait. That’s not right.
I meant to say “My back hurt me last week” and hasn’t stopped. I might need a tourniquet.
Backs go out and seem to enjoy it, as if they’re on vacation. I’ve never met a sore back eager to fix itself.
I’m so very done with the old remedies: voodoo, leeches, chiropractors and other primitive cures. These have proved of limited value, so I tried modern versions of the snake oil stuff: crystal gazing, tarot readings, visualization, meditation and chakra adjustments.
Aromatherapy surely has a role in 21st century medicine, but not for spines, vertebrae, sacroiliacs or actual pain. So I’ve gone back to the new primitive remedies: Aspirin, Aleve and Advil marinated in Bourbon, Beer and Brandy. My back still hurts when I’m conscious.
A sore back usually starts as a thin electric band of hot misery that runs along the belt line, east to west, no wider than an inch but of sufficient pain to provide weeks of feeling sorry for myself. My sympathy gambit is of limited value given I’ve an audience of one. She shall remain nameless.
The worst 15 minutes of my day are mornings when I get dressed, or try. I don’t bend good no more, given my lower back’s refusal to cooperate with twisting or installing things on my feet. I’ve gone a week without socks.
And since I’m no longer a county employee I resent being sidelined for even a day if I don’t get paid sick time. The pain has recently moved from the belt line into a deep pocket of a thick, bruise-like wad that rents spacious quarters in the northwest neighborhood of my right buttock.
I’ve suffered far worse, but I was young then and able to tolerate bourbon by the bucketful. Some day I will take it by the teaspoon. Come that day I shall weep.
And in years past my injuries eventually grew tired of all my whining, and moved on to other victims, delivering headaches to students taking final exams, and fractured kneecaps to professional athletes.
I started feeling better a few days ago, although not yet to the point I could put socks on in the morning or get up from a chair without a fair amount of gasping and clutching at things to grab onto. But still, better.
The day I turned the corner was the same day Trophy launched a backward reverse half-cartwheel off our slippery back deck, then landed on it. The upshot was A) a night of soreness extremis for her right arm, B) a visit to the emergency room and C) a diagnosis, complete with X-rays and a cast-like splint, of a fractured radial bone in her right wrist.
It’s not as funny as it sounds, though would make a fine Hollywood comedy about a guy who can’t dress himself with a wife who can’t feed herself with a dog that can’t walk itself (cue laughter). And because of the holidays it’s too late to phone in orders for Oxycontin and morphine patches with my shady friends in Redwood Valley.
Plus, most of the bars will be closed.
Dinners have become minor comedy acts of their own. We are both inert 16 hours a day and don’t burn up enough calories a day earn a bowl of Cheerios for dinner, and there’s no milk anyway, and neither of us can drive to Raley’s.
So I organize a nice bowl of potato chips sprinkled with Fritos, and Trophy contents herself with a pint of Haagen Dazs ice cream. But with her shattered right hand she can’t manipulate a spoon, and she looks like a three year old trying to feed herself using her left. I don’t laugh (in her presence) at the irony of being free to eat her favorite meal but incapable of doing it.
Headline Of The Year
Annnnnd, just it time for inclusion in the much coveted “Headline of the Year” competition, comes this Dec. 31, 2024 entry from the ever-ridiculous Eugene Robinson.
Robinson’s photo atop his UDJ column has him stroking his chin in a manner very much like Socrates once favored, and his grave, sermon-like words can be compared with those of Solomon, though not favorably.
Now, my favorite for headline of 2024:
“We cannot abide Trump’s wish for a compliant media”
Of course. That would require Robinson and the rest of Big News to apply their lips to Trump’s buttocks while simultaneously licking Obama’s boots. It can’t be done.
Eugene baby, it’s better you stick with the party that owns you.
(Tom Hine notes that graffiti continues to wash over Ukiah, and among the latest targets is the fancy “Great Rail Trail” sign on Clara Street. TWK wonders what it will require for the city to wake up and deal with it.)
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