"Puppet wrangler? There weren't any puppets in this movie!" – Crow T. Robot
Another rainy day, although this one I didn’t get to spend at home. All things being equal, I think my back and related discomfort might be a little worse today; certainly, I wish I was seeing my spine doctor this Friday instead of next. But, despite that, it was an okay enough day overall. Albeit a pretty unexceptional day all around.
Then again, any Monday that’s actually a Tuesday is already one up in my book.
Another quiet, and rainy, day at home. I took Monday off, mostly just to burn off some remaining vacation days, and I used it to do nothing more exciting than mail out copies of Kaleidotrope to contributors and subscribers. Did you know the US Postal Service has a new customs form that you only have to sign and date once? Thrilling details, I know!
Otherwise, I spent the day mostly watching some television and doing a little writing. Then again, I slept in until almost 11 o’clock, so it’s kind of amazing I got anything done at all.
Hey, it’s my day off.
And while I don’t want to jinx it, my back and surrounding discomfort seemed marginally better today. I’m keeping my doctor’s appointment in two weeks even if the pain disappears altogether. But it’s nice to think I might be getting a little better, or at least back to recent-normal.
Just a quiet Sunday at home. Overnight, the weather turned into fall. I finished the New York Times crossword for a change, watched a bunch of episodes of Sports Night and The Office, helped my father set up a couple of new bird feeders in the backyard, and this evening watch Funny People. The movie was okay, but I think Keith Phipps described it best as “refreshingly unformulaic, but a rambling mess.” I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a film to be more formulaic…which was almost sort of a welcome relief after last night’s Resident Evil movie.
I wrote a little bit, too, but not nearly as much as I was hoping to. And I found myself more interested in a completely different story than the one I’d been working on, the one I was hoping to get into shape for a submission deadline at the end of the month. I’m off from work tomorrow — just taking a three-day weekend, planned over a month ago — so hopefully I can do a little more writing then.
I felt better for most of today, which I spent mostly putting together copies of Kaleidotrope for mailing, which I expect to do on Monday. (One of the benefits of taking the day off.) I also bought myself an exercise ball, which, despite only looking a little like it does in that picture when inflated (with a pump that looks nothing like the one in the picture, there or on the box), I hope will help me with exercising my back.
This evening, I watched Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the second movie in the franchise that for some reason keeps on going. I can’t say I really liked it all that much. It had a few good moments, mostly when it actually lets Milla Jovovich be a bad ass, and the film ends interestingly enough. But overall, I found it aggressively mediocre more than anything else, and it didn’t suggest any reason to watch either of the next two sequels after it.
So I went to the doctor today, and I guess the good news is, it seems like the back is the most likely culprit for the renewed and varied discomforts I’ve felt this week. Because of the placement of the disc, and the surrounding nerves that can be pinched by the bulge, there’s all sorts of radiating pain and mixed signals. I’m not particularly enjoying this, and I think I even preferred when it was just sciatic pain or feet that fell totally asleep, but it’s easy to mistake this for something other than a problem with the spine, even when there’s some accompanying discomfort in the lower back.
I want to reiterate that this could be much, much worse, and I’m not strictly speaking in pain. I’m not bedridden or incontinent or paralyzed, and I’m not even all that terribly inconvenienced by this. I’ve just had more (and different) discomfort since about Tuesday.
So today I called my doctor and scheduled an appointment. Of course, it meant that I had to leave work early, since they wanted to fit me in today, which was a little awkward, since I’d already planned on taking Monday off. (It’s a three-day weekend, just to use up some remaining vacation days.) And despite being a rainy day when lots of people were out of the office, I’d probably could have found plenty of work to do.
Then again, yesterday’s Forgotten English desk calendar page was “zouch,” meaning “an ungenteel man; a bookseller.” And lord knows, I don’t want people thinking my momma raised no zouch.
But still, it’s good to know that I don’t appear to have a bladder infection. Don’t worry, this post won’t get more graphic than that, beyond acknowledging the existence of my bladder, and that it was one of the things we tested for today. Too much information? Well, let’s pretend like this paragraph never happened, then, okay?
Anyway, after that, I scheduled an appointment with my spine doctor…which, unfortunately, isn’t for another two weeks. My main concern, beyond what I do between now and then, is that he’ll just want me to have another MRI before we discuss anything, which means it could be the end of this month or even next before we get down to actual treatment. And, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m concerned that there won’t be much, if any, treatment to discuss beyond referring me to a surgeon.
On a happier note, though, I’m preparing the latest issue of Kaleidotrope for mailing to contributors and subscribers over the weekend. And SFRevu had a lot of nice words to say about the issue already. And you still have an hour — provided you read this before midnight EST on October 1 — to use the promo code “KAL102010” to get a free e-book copy of the issue at the Kaleidotrope website. Just scroll down to the bottom of the front page, add the e-book option to your cart, and then enter the code when checking out via PayPal. One-day offer only!
