Category Archives: Ice Skating
Random Monday
There was a huge, full moon rising tonight as I was coming home from work.
I wrote a blog post for work this morning and have a (much-delayed) deadline for a guest post for my friend Jenna’s blog tonight, so I am nearly out of writerly mojo at this point, so, bullets.
- Despite my dislike for mornings, I managed to meet friends for breakfast before work today – and I wasn’t even the last one to show up. Good company and bottomless coffee made for a nice way to start the day and took the sting out of the early start.
- I won free suite-level tickets to tomorrows Caps-Panthers games via Twitter. Yay, Internet! Go Caps!
- I’ve got my regular tickets for the Caps-Jets game on Thursday and am going to try to catch a little bit of the pregame warmup to get some pictures for one of my Minnesota nephews, who decided to adopt his dad’s hometown team once they relocated to Winnipeg this season. I am doing this despite the fact that he makes his mom send me trash-talk via email.
- Wednesday is my ice skating lesson – the next to last of the session, I think – and I am not sure my back is up to it. I hate both the idea of losing the money I paid and backsliding on the progress I’ve made, but I also don’t want to hurt myself in some permanent way. Fingers crossed that in two days time by back feels awesome and makes this decision easy.
- My neighbor Maggie, whom I know only via the Internet, and her husband have invited me to a little shindig they’re having on Saturday – and I’ve decided to pretend I’m not someone who is terrified of showing up to parties alone, and am actually going to go.
- Despite having a ton of UFOs (unfinished objects) lying around, I’m starting a new knitting project – a felted sleeve for my Kindle. My friend Julia, in researching covers for her new Kindle, discovered that the model of case I have is the likely culprit of all the freezing/crashing/battery life issues I’ve been having with my Kindle, so I am making my own replacement.
So, that’s my week – plus work, of course – in a nutshell. Enough to keep me busy, I think.
In Threes
Unfortunately, not the only mouse in my house.
You know how “they say” things come in threes? I’m not sure I ever really believed it was true, but the past day or so has convinced me otherwise.
It started at my ice skating lesson on Wednesday night, when I leaned over to pull the guards off my skate blades and felt my lower back pinch uncomfortably. It hurt, but I decided I just needed to get moving to work it out and so I took my class as planned. Unfortunately, by the time I finished, I could hardly sit down to get my skates off. The drive home was excruciating – I was seriously in the worst pain of my life. (And I say this as someone who has had sciatica off and on over the years. Unicorns and cupcakes compared to this.)
So, with my back killing me, just imagine how my mood was improved when I got into my apartment and discovered my heat was broken. For the third time this winter.
I took a giant handful of ibuprofen and headed to bed, grateful for my electric mattress pad, which both kept my warm and heated my back. It did not, alas, heal my back overnight, and – since I could barely walk – I opted to stay home from work.
As it turned out, however, I was not the only one at home. I was in bed reading when I thought I saw something move and looked up to find a mouse looking at me from atop the throw pillow I’d tossed on the floor the night before. I screamed – first in horror, then in pain – as I attempted to get out of bed and… I don’t know. Kill the mouse? Capture it? It ran off and vanished under the cedar chest before I had to figure out what, exactly, to do.
As I climbed gingerly back into bed, I started to laugh in that hysterical way you do when it’s all just too much. When you’d rather be crying. Because seriously? My back was jacked up, my apartment was cold, and there was a goddamn mouse in my bedroom. Enough already!
Fast-forward to today… Two visits from the landlord later, the furnace is working, the mouse-access holes are plugged, and the bedroom is full of tiny poison pellets. Sadly, there was nothing he could do for my back, which is slightly improved (like I can sit up enough to watch tv, which I couldn’t yesterday) but still absurdly painful.
So that’s my three. Not only am I converted to the truth of this old adage, but I’m also more than happy things don’t come in fours.
