This Is My Life

Looks like I won't be around much even if I want to be.

I hurt my upper back a while ago. I went to the doctor's yesterday and he put me on some medicines to help control the pain and control the muscle spasms I was having in my shoulder. He told me that I had hurt a vertebrae in my neck and that the pain was spreading down into my shoulder. Makes sense.

So I'm on two medications; one to control the pain (essentially just a slightly more powerful Excedrin, nothing special, no worrisome side effects) and one to control the muscle spasms, a drug called Flexeril or something like that.

For the record, Flexeril knocks me on my ass. I took one last night and went to sleep. I took one this morning and am having a lot of difficulty keeping my eyes open almost 10 hours later. I am so tired that I find it difficult to care that I've gotten absolutely nothing done today.

Unfortunately the pain medication is doing almost nothing for me. It hurts to turn my head, to sit up, to stay still to long or to move too much. I can't really remember being in so much pain in my life. Yesterday I was stiff and thought of not going to the doctor's since I seemed better, today I'm in pain.

I was already told once today to "get over it" by someone I thought might give me sympathy. Oh well; I'll just have to remember not to expect sympathy from them and not to extend any to them when they're feeling under the weather. (They apologized later but sometimes it's just not enough, at least not right away when I'm still angry. I'll get over it soon enough.)

That all being said, I'm going to sleep again. So tired.

Returned from Western New York to find that our house didn't burn to the ground, nor was it robbed in our absense. This makes me feel good; my paranoia is sated for yet another day.

WNY was nice, but I'm glad to be back home. I like hanging out with friends, but sleeping in my own bed is almost better. Being in a place where I can walk around without pants IS better. No offense folks. I just don't like pants. I think society would be better if we did away with them.

What? Me, feeling punchy and a bit tired? Nah. Why would you ask?

I've decided that I'm going to spend less time online. Of course, it's going to take a little time to tell you that I'm not going to spend time here, but so be it. I did a brief calculation today and realized that I probably spend a minimum of three hours surfing the net. That's three hours separate from when I surf during work. I get up in the morning at 5 am, putz around online until Maria gets up at 6:30, come home after dropping her off at work, and read blogs for an hour or two.

That right there is time I could spend being productive.

So today I made a commitment that, starting this Wednesday, I will go to the SPCA at 8 am, when they open, and help with the trouble dogs. One dog in particular, Roscoe, is having a lot of problems with kennel aggression, or in other words, he really doesn't want to be locked up all day so he gets pissy with anyone trying to put him into a cage.

Well, how would you like being locked in a cage all day with maybe a half hour outside all day? Not pleasant.

So I'm going to go there in the mornings at 8 am to take him out while they clean the cage. For an hour we'll play outside; he loves his toys. I'll work on teaching him that arms aren't chew toys (yes, it's the same dog from this post the other day), and generally get him adoptable. At the end of the day, when the staff clean the cages before going home for the night, I'll be doing the same thing. The staff are all afraid of him. Me? I think he's a big baby and just needs to get rid of all that pent up energy he has, along with some decent socialization.

So it's a start. One commitment that will pull me away from the internet, one of the biggest time sinks in my entire life. If I don't comment much, don't write nearly the amount I have been, don't miss me too much: I'll be out trying to have a life, instead of just writing/reading about it. I don't know how well that's going to work, but it's worth a try. I'll still be around, just not nearly as much. An update every other day, perhaps?

1) If you would vote for me, I would appreciate it. However, I'm not too concerned either way, so if you've got other stuff to do, feel free to skip this. To see which entry you're voting on, come to my LJ and scroll down a little; I haven't been updating much lately due to other stuff.

2) Sick day today. Curling up on the couch with the dogs, and I don't plan on doing anything else, except maybe letting said dogs outside once in a while. I'll be fine, just have a headache and achy body. The two chronic pain things I've got going on are both acting up today. Wonderful.

3) Recently, my friend Brett asked what I'm going to do now that LARP USA is out of business. It's a good question, and I just don't know the answer. I'm trying to consolidate my 1,001 ideas into two or three goals, and finding it harder than I thought. I know I want to learn Arabic, master the language, and maybe be a translator, but that's a long-term thing instead of a crazy idea. I like crazy ideas, and need one to follow.

So, do you have a crazy idea you think I should follow? Become a rock star? A movie star? Maybe I should go back to being an art model, full time? Should I open a wacky-yet-needed web business like zombie survival kits? How about if I open a restaurant? I've seen people on Kitchen Nightmares; I don't know if I'd make it as a business, but I'd do better than them!

Hit me with your ideas. I need a muse!

Forgive me for not really being around the past couple of days. Maria's parents were here all weekend, and we were out of the house quite a bit, or busy playing games with them while they were here. They're good people, but when they come here to visit it's up to us to entertain them, which takes a lot out of me.

Now that that's done, my class for the day is over, and I did my homework that's due tomorrow, I'm going to go take a nap. A long nap.

Wow.

I just did a 15 minute Wiirkout (yes, I AM going to use that as my "Wii Fit Workout" shortened phrase, because I AM that big of a dork) focusing on strength training.

In 15 minutes my body felt as though I took all the workouts I've done up until now and smashed them all together. My legs are weak, my arms are tired, and even my abs, which I didn't think I worked that hard, are quivering.

I guess I should do it more often, so that I don't get this tired in 15 minutes. I'm honestly amazed at how exhausted I am. I feel good, but really, really tired.

The way I gauged whether I should do a specific exercise or not was by how much I hate it. The more I hate it, the more I should do it, because the reason I hate them is that I feel tired/they make me work hard to do well on them. So that means I need more work on those exercises.

Ends up, I hate them all, and so have to do them all.

For lunch, I'm going jogging in my living room. I need something that won't kill me, and I'm way better at aerobics than strength training, which doesn't surprise me at all.