September. The beginning of fall. The air starts to cool, and there’s a different smell in the air. Pumpkin spice everything gets hawked. People start to make chili and roasts and warm apple pies. But not here. We had a couple days somewhere in the middle where I thought we might have some relief, but it was short-lived. Still, whether intentionally or by circumstance, we stayed busy.
Everything started out nicely enough. We had a three-day weekend that we tried to leave mostly unplanned. We had friends over for a delightfully informal dinner, wherein we tried one of my new favorite side dishes – Hatch Chile Creamy Rice Casserole! I like working in the kitchen, and I even like the smell of chiles roasting in the oven. But I do not enjoy peeling the skin from said roasted chiles one tiny little bit, and I still thought this casserole was worth making.
The kids had been asking and asking Sean to re-teach them how to roller skate. Plus, Maya had a skating birthday party to attend and wanted to practice up a bit so she’d feel more comfortable. I hung out and helped get skates on feet, but owing to my messed up spine, I chose not to actually participate. They seemed to have fun, and at least Maya was willing to skate around the rink on her own by the end of that first outing. When she went to her best friend’s birthday the next weekend, she was able to participate without as much worry, which is nice.
We had been battling a slow drain / weird clog situation at our kitchen sink. We had deployed a plunger, a plumbing snake, hot water, even mild cursing, but to no reasonable avail. Well, apparently the clog moved downstream in the plumbing chain, which we found out later when water started gushing from our washing machine’s supply line as I was running a load of laundry!
We eventually gave up and ran Drano through the line, and even that took a couple tries before the clog mercifully resolved. The two (semi-)grownup Woodses were so relieved. Maya and Ian were mostly just curious about the new disaster.
We managed to get cub scout Ian his uniform together so he could dress properly for his September pack meeting. He got to race minnows! His minnow was funny. It took sort of a meandering approach to traversing its swim lane, and Ian was sure he’d lose. Then all of a sudden, that minnow darted to the end and back again, almost too quickly for us to follow. He won the race. Then the kids got to field test every variety of popcorn they’d be selling for their fundraiser. Ian was so thoughtful; he saved some of his popcorn so that I could try all the flavors as well.
We took the kids to the Alamo Drafthouse to watch the “Gran Turismo” movie. Our two little gamers seemed to love the notion that a regular gamer kid could get to be a real race car driver! Also, while anyone who’s watched the underdog makes the grade trope, knew what was coming, it was all new and amazing to the kids. There were audible cheers. They were genuinely uplifted. It was fun to watch.
Maya learned that she got one of the speaking parts in the musical her after school choir group will be performing in December. They’re doing a school-age adaptation of “Seussical” and she’s going to be Mrs. Mayor. On the day the parts were announced, she was very put out because she had her heart set on being one of the cats. She came around though and now is back to being excited about the whole production.
The kids had outgrown the tie-dye shirts that we had made for father’s day a few years back. Sean may have <ahem> outgrown his as well. And because they were father’s day gifts, we hadn’t even made one for me. Sean spent maybe a week or so getting all the variously sized t-shirts ordered and washed and ready to go, and then we spent an afternoon trying our hand at different tie-dye patterns. Maya’s and Ian’s turned out the best – our figuring is that dye distribution is a little easier in a smaller shirt. We each have another shirt or two that we didn’t get to because we ran out of both stamina and appropriately colored dye.
Ian has been learning knife safety as part of his cub scouts training. As a third grader, he’s currently striving for his Bear rank, and these knife safety and usage skills are part of a unit called Bear Claws. Ian knows how to sharpen his bear claw, safely transfer it to another person, and even do some introductory whittling with it. We don’t let him keep his pocket knife in his room, but he’s definitely getting better at safely using it. Maya, who’s historically been afraid of knives, has been willing to chop a few things with my kitchen knives and has even expressed interest in learning the same skills that Ian is learning.
One weekend, Sean willingly woke up super early and drove all the way to Hye to the Garrison Brothers Distillery, maybe an hour and fifteen minutes away from us to be there when they opened the doors so he could buy a bottle of the very limited release of their Cowboy Bourbon. Sean is patently NOT an early bird, except for Disney park days. Apparently he’ll also get up early for hard liquor – who knew?!
He arrived around 8:20 (they had opened at 8 that day) and was greeted with literally a mile-long car line. The release was 9600 bottles, so I think he was feeling pretty good about his odds. Each car was only allowed to purchase a single bottle per adult occupant, so it seemed likely he’d get his bourbon. Further down the line, he heard from a video crew who was on sight shooting that Garrison actually only had a thousand bottles to sell that morning; the rest had been distributed to retail establishments. At that point, it became less of a sure thing.
The folks at Garrison Brothers have this down to a science evidently – the intrepid bourbon buyers don’t even have to exit their vehicle to score their bottle – so after a little over an hour of creeping along in that car line, Sean had his Cowboy Bourbon in hand and was on his way back to Austin. We don’t know when they sold out, but as Sean was leaving, there was still a huge line of cars so no doubt the thousand bottles were sold.
The bourbon acquisition was on a Saturday. That Sunday, it was a hundred stupid degrees outside. Sunday night, a weird freak storm blew through – we got emergency warnings about 2-inch hail and high winds. In Round Rock, that hail was legit – people had car windows and house windows shattered. The car dealerships took lots of damage. At our house, there was some rain and high wind. At one point, we heard a sound like a branch hitting our roof. It was dark, and with all this mess going on, we didn’t really want to go out and examine things right then, but we did see a biggish branch – trunk maybe the size of my forearm – that likely blew into our roof.
Imagine my astonishment on Monday morning once it was light outside. I was blithely making my coffee, not paying a great deal of attention, when I finally looked up to see that a huge branch had crashed into our roof. It definitely damaged one of the gutters and may have messed with some of the roof a bit, but for the size of the limb, we’re probably lucky that’s all that happened. Sean took the morning off and sawed the limb up to at least get the weight of it off of our roof.
I have had a “bad back” for a while. I initially just took it as a sign I was getting older; these things happen. But it seemed like it was getting worse as time marched on, and one day (this was several months ago), I leaned over to pick something up from the floor and felt an intense pain that I’d like very much to never feel again. Over the course of minutes or hours, I don’t recall, that pain dwindled, but it was just another sign that I needed to get my back looked at.
I had X-rays that seemed to show disc degeneration. The orthopedist I was seeing said he wouldn’t make any recommendations without an MRI, and insurance wouldn’t pay for an MRI unless I had tried an 8-week course of PT first. My thinking was that the PT would be good for me regardless, so why not. I did the PT, and while I feel stronger, it didn’t fully mitigate the pain (and I already knew that disc degeneration was irreversible, so I wasn’t surprised). By that time, I was deep in the throes of summer vacations and back to school planning and all those things, so it wasn’t till September that I managed to schedule an MRI.
Sure enough, as seen in the x-ray, there’s lumbar disc degeneration – one disc is completely gone. There’s one nerve pinched, but for the most part, the nerves are undamaged and have plenty of room. Given all this, the orthopedist doesn’t recommend surgery, no spinal fusion, anything like that. This isn’t really a treatable condition apparently. It’s a little frustrating because the post-MRI visit was so abrupt. I think I need to keep doing PT and avoid lifting heavy things. (“Don’t move a couch,” the orthopedist chuckled.) He directed me to another office that could do some sort of injections to help with the pain. He recommended I get a relationship built with them before the pain is severe.
Mentally, I need to find a constructive way to deal with this. Already, every time I turn around, I see another thing I cannot do because of the pain it will cause or the damage it might do. This is all happening at the same time my middle-aged brain is losing track of things and my middle-aged eyes are adapting to a newfound farsightedness that seems to evolve on a daily basis. I’m worn down.
Everything in me wants to preserve what I have left of my spinal function, but I’m a little vague on how to do that. All that orthopedist wants to talk about is pain management. I’m not sure what kind of health care professional I need to seek out to obtain solid advice, but so far, I’m just trying to common sense my way through it, which I fear will only take me so far.
Anyhow, it’s not like I’m bedridden, so hopefully there’s hope. And in the meantime, both kids had really good parent teacher conferences, they seem to be enjoying their extracurricular activities, and we’re all excited that it’s finally, finally managed to cool off a little now that we’re a week into October.
