Saturday, January 30, 2010

Half Back


















Scott whips the yard into shape.

Guess what I got for my birthday? A pulled muscle in my back. Yippee!
Spent the last half of Thursday and all day yesterday regretting my lack of adequate sympathy for people who live with aching backs all the time. Because it is no fun, nosiree, no fun at all.

Fortunately after a day-and-a-half of popping pills that didn't help me get comfortable, and ordering others to cook and wash dishes because even a short while standing just about made me pass out (though I managed to get groceries yesterday and remain upright at the checkout counter while the clerks hand-wrote two rainchecks for a little old lady ahead of me and I swear it seemed to take forever), I awoke this morning as good as new. Woo hoo! It is good to be able to whiz through the kitchen again without thinking about it.

People with chronic back pain, I salute you for your stamina.
Me, a tiny bit of discomfort and I'm good for nothing.
Scott's back goes out and before you know it he's up and working through his pain.
Not this chick. I take a pill and go straight to bed. Wuss.

So I've gotten a lot of reading done in the last day or two. Good to a Fault, by Marina Endicott, is a novel set in Saskatoon. It's about a single woman who runs into a family-filled car while making a left turn at an intersection. It turns out the family is living in their car, on their way to Fort McMurray to find work. The resulting trip to the hospital brings a diagnosis of cancer to the young mother, who ends up having to stay there for laborious treatment. Since the rest of the family has no place to go, the woman takes them home and, when their father abandons them, starts looking after the three children and their bitchy old grandmother. It's a big change for her but she does it well, falling in love with the children so much that she's prepared to keep and care for them after their mother dies, as she's expected to. And that, my friends, is all I'm telling you.

Good to a Fault is one of the Canada Reads books this year. I have been unwilling to put it down since the first page, so that might tell you something.

And now that I'm feeling human again, I can get back to carrying out a few of my plans for the week that had to be postponed, like getting more of Emil's things moved over here. He came for birthday cake on Wednesday and never left, due to a cold. He's been snuffling and blowing and coughing ever since, but may be on the mend today.

3 comments:

  1. I love Canada Reads, but I'm not sure I can read a book with such tragedy. Fantasy is my friend these days.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lorna,
    It isn't tragic at all! Quite the opposite.
    I don't like reading tragedy either, so you can trust me on that.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh no, sorry to hear about the pulled muscle. Take care not to make it worse. I need to find the time to read more.

    ReplyDelete

Leave a message here or email me at stubblejumperscafe@gmail.com, home of the snow and land of the wheat!