Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Tonight I'm finishing up another orbit of the sun. Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday (mostly on Facebook, which seems to be more the place for that particular sort of communication AFAICT). I guess this'd be a good time for a status check-in, huh?

2012 has gotten off to a pretty miserable start. I'm exercising my proclaimed-by-me right to pick as many different "start of the year for the purpose of declaring trends or counting omens for the year ahead" dates as it takes to get one that looks good, and hoping that things pick up from here so I can write off the first two months of Gregorian-year-2012 as not counting. As it was, I didn't have an especially good day, nor a worse one than other recent days, and as long as things start to improve from here, I'm okay with that.

So how have things been going lately? Well ... I appear to have done something to my back (though it's possible that I didn't do anything to it and something just went wrong randomly), and have not been able to stand up for very long at a strech, nor sit more than a few minutes in most of the chairs in the house, nor bend over without excruciating pain. I can lie in bed, I can sit in the recliner, and I can stand for a little while. I figured a few days of being very careful would take care of things, but alas, no -- it's been weeks, and I've missed three Homespun Ceilidh Band performances. (You know I'm in bad shape if it's bad enough to keep me from a gig.) A few times it's felt like it's been getting better, and then something has happened (like pushing myself far beyond my too-fatigued-for-this-to-be-safe point dealing with a Mom-emergency, and falling on my ass as a result) to set me back. I think I'm feeling some improvement now, at long last, but I'm sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

At its worst, after the aforementioned fall^[*] moving my hips and lower back hurt so badly that I went around on crutches for a few days, until my arms and shoulders hurt worse than my lower back.

On top of that, I've been dealing with Mom-stuff ... Mom fell again, after my mysterious back pain started, and I had to call 911 for help getting her back up again. The following night, I had to call 911 again, this time to send her off to the hospital with blood glucose levels off the scale (her meter tops out at 600 mg/dL). Sheepie came over and helped get Mom's bedroom into a state that it wasn't insane to consider Mom coming home to -- actually Sheepie did the vast majority of the work, since I was having so much trouble moving; I mostly folded the many loads of laundry (since I could do that standing upright, unlike loading/unloading the washer & dryer, which required bending too far). I've been telling Mom that she needs more help than I can reliably provide, especially while my back is messed up, and sometime after her doctor said he wanted her to go into a rehab/convalescent facility for a few weeks in hope of healing up completely before her next mishap (she's strongly opposed to this idea -- no surprise), she finally started agreeing that she needed more help here. My sister recruited someone to come here three days a week, and we'll see how that works out -- whether it's enough, and how long Mom needs that. Her first day was yesterday, her second will be tomorrow. So far, so good.

There's also stuff I should write about regarding money, my house, and other things, but I should probably do that in a whole 'nuther entry (if I manage to get around to posting again soon (I keep intending to ...)).

In more positive news, I've at least gotten a little composing done while I've been on my back -- I'll post some sheet music and/or MIDI files soonish.

Now if only I could figure out why a tromba marina costs between $1000 and $5000, and how many tries it would take me to build one with my meager carpentry skills. (It's only got one string, and can be built without any curved surfaces -- shouldn't it be a lot cheaper than a guitar?)

Anyhow, as usual I've got lots of things I keep meaning to write about that I keep failing to get around to actually writing. Maybe if I make a birthday resolution in place of the new-year resolutions I didn't make this year, I can convince myself to get these things written. But, ah, don't hold your breath.

Anyhow, thanks again for all the birthday wishes! Here's hoping that a bunch of them come true and my year starts looking brighter and less painful soon!