I was truly feeling my age on Monday when, after I attempted to set down a tub of water collected from the "initial" shower running just inside the front door (which I was going to deposit on our front lawn grass to be a super water conserver), I felt a pop and some pretty intense low back pain. I took some naproxen and went to work but the pain got acutely worse over the course of the morning, where I was having a hard time getting up from my desk chair, sitting comfortably, or bending forward. I was hobbling around like an octogenarian and really cursing middle age (Thankfully, I didn't have any active labor patients wanting waterbirths!). I was able to take more naproxen when I got home and basically, in between phone and labor calls and time admitting labor patients on L&D, spent a night on a heating pad and it feels a bit better today, but the going is still rough. I don't think I've had a back injury or pain this bad since I had some tennis tournament-related spasms in high school (and I had two unmedicated births)!
The forty year old's bedside table must-haves:
(Naproxen and a new neck wrap I got to help with my work-induced neck /nerve pain from daily electronic medical record use)
Niall has come down with another cold, prompting another round of COVID testing (still negative), and had to stay home with me today as he was wheezy, coughing some, and cranky, saying his throat hurt. On little sleep from my call night and with my spasming back (and him wanting to be picked up and held), it has been a pretty terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. We are working on sick care for tomorrow or until he's well enough to go back to preschool.
I did take him to the Post Office with me to ship some Christmas packages, a task which I had planned to get out of the way today in advance of what is amounting to be a busy on-call weekend and upcoming week, but it was fairly disastrous (he was masked of course, but I was still feeling a bit guilty and self-conscious about taking him out of the home; pre-COVID I wouldn't have given it a second thought). First, we arrived 30 minutes before it opened (I didn't realize the hours started at 10 a.m., so we had to go home and then return). I grimaced lugging in my box of gifts as my back was acting up but didn't want to make two trips from the car with the toddler in tow.
Once inside, I spent about 15 minutes trying to fit my gifts into various packaging sold there and taping them up, only to find that I had somehow lost one greeting card that was supposed to be included in one box. I braved a fairly long line (with Niall [not having ever been in a postal office in his short life] yelling "I'M BORED! I WANT TO GO!" over and over and whining; I have no idea why this P.O. can't do some sort of self-checkout station!) only to get to the front and be told by a grouchy and unsympathetic check-out person that I should have used priority flat-box packaging because the weight of my (already packaged) gifts added up to some pretty hefty shipping bills even at the "cheapest" ground shipping rates. However, if I chose to change the packaging, I'd have to open but still pay for the Ready-mailers I'd already labeled, re-package and re-address everything in flat-rate boxes, and then get BACK in line (at the end to wait again) to pay. Needless to say, I basically just grossly overpaid and got out of there. In my haste, I believe I left my Trader Joe's reusable shopping bag of bubble wrap in there as well.
Sigh.
Lessons learned:
1. At the advanced age of forty, it's just not worth it to save shower water, even when your state is becoming "droughtier" by the year and the earth is dying. Your back, comfort, and quality of life may just be worth more.
2. ALWAYS go for the flat-rate boxes (and avoid going to the post office with a toddler, at all costs). A subscription to Stamps.com (which I've heard advertised on various podcasts and might eliminate trips to the post office) may be in my future.
Here's to a less-terrible, less-horrible, better, possibly good day tomorrow!
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