Yep, there are things you usually don't share with others because they're either too absurd or too embarrassing or both. Fortunately or unfortunately my life is an open book, so I figured I'd let you in on three of the ways that I either significantly worsened or re-injured my aching back in the last week:
1) Getting overwhelmingly tense while laying on the couch competing against my husband watching Jeopardy's High School edition. And here I thought I wasn't competitive, but my rock-hard muscle fibers told a VERY different story. I won't belabor the details of my win but will share that I correctly answered the question about Beowulf (literary geek that I am) AND I won final jeopardy that day simply because I bet more conservatively than my husband on a topic that neither of us had a clue about despite our combined 47 years of education (including three advanced degrees). Yet all of the high schoolers answered it correctly. I'm not sure that this is something to brag about but it's all I've got.
2) Slipping on one of my son's Little Golden Books that somehow wedged its way under a massive pile (and I mean several metric tons) of laundry in my bedroom. I surfed halfway across the room on that bad boy before coming to rest in a heap on the floor that was close in both size and disarray to the original pile of laundry. Malina heard the commotion from across the house and came running, asking "um, mom, why would you do that when your back is hurt?" Excellent question. This is why I'm safer in bed than in any other square foot of my own home.
3) Trying to open a cheap bottle of wine with a cheap corkscrew so I could enjoy a glass (or whatever one does with cheap wine) while watching Saturday Night Live after editing my book all evening long. I'm not sure if the wine or the ice pack helped more, but the combo seemed to work. For a while at least. The front desk clerk at the hotel found it quite amusing and just a bit tragic that I finally limped all the way down there to have him open it for me.
Life is far more amusing that anything you could make up, don't you think?
