What the Heck?

I left work Wednesday, running a little late for my chiropractor appointment, and went to my car. It was parked in the gravel-and-dirt parking lot behind the building, where employees are supposed to park so that patients can have the good parking spots in front. This parking lot does not have trees. It also is not near the building. This is what I found when I got to my car:

Here's a closer look:

I said, "What the heck???"

It's as though an entire flock of birds stopped mid-air to hover over the back of my car and bird-bomb it. And neither of the cars next to me was hit, except a few tiny drops of excess splatter on the one to my right.

How does this happen? Was it one bird on a horrible rampage? Was there a loud noise that scared the... you know... out of a flock of birds? What the heck was going on over my car???

I didn't have much time for contemplation or mystery solving, because I had to get to Dr. Magic Hands.

When I got home, I grabbed my camera and got pictures.

Thankfully, overnight we had some rain, so it washed away the worst of the white and left all those little yellow dots that don't want to come off, even with the gas station squeegee. Still, it's better than it was at first sight.

But that's not the end of the story, because Thursday the Corporate Communications department communicated with all the employees that we could get a FREE CAR WASH!

I called the lady on the email and told her my shocking story, and she said that God must be apologizing to me. She might be right. I went to her office and picked up my car wash card (valid Monday to Thursday):

I don't know what an Average Joe Express Car Wash is, exactly, but I'll be finding out soon. Probably Monday.

Pain in the Butt

I have one.

You know how some famous people only have one name? Like Cher or Madonna? My pain has one name too: Sciatica, and she's doing me wrong.

The pain started over a week ago, on the Friday that's my first date of the month with my chiropractor, Dr. Magic Hands. (I allow myself two visits a month whether I need them or not, which I always do, but they're usually for my stiff neck - kind of an Old Testament thing.)

I told Dr. Hands (not his real name) where it hurt, a couple inches below my waist on the right side, and he said that was my sacroiliac joint. Having taken Medical Terminology and Anatomy & Physiology, I actually knew what he was saying and how to spell it. He adjusted me, and I felt much better.

But I didn't stay fixed. The pain was back by morning and, over the course of the next week, it moved downward where it lodged in my gluteus muscle and the back of my thigh and knee, with the occasional shooting pain along the sole of my foot (the WORST!).

This past Friday (no date with Dr. H.) I googled sciatica treatment and found a link to WebMD, where they said to go see a doctor if it hadn't gone away in a week. So I called Kaiser, and they sent me to their urgent clinic to see one of the doctors who used to work at one of my work's clinics, so that was pretty cool seeing someone I knew.

She gave me a prescription for Vicodin and a muscle relaxer. I'm only supposed to take the muscle relaxer at bedtime, and I think that's a good idea. I remember a guy I used to work with a really long time ago, after he hurt his back doing judo, he came to work after taking muscle relaxers. He called them his "happy pills" and decided he'd better go back home after a couple hours of doing nothing at work besides floating around a couple feet off the ground (or so it seemed to him).

The Vicodin, though, is another story. Everybody keeps warning me about this medication's addictive nature, but I'm not sure I get it. They take quite a while to start cutting down on the pain, maybe an hour or more when I really want it NOW. Over the weekend, I spent most of Saturday and Sunday sleeping on the couch. On Sunday, since the sciatica hurts the most when I'm sitting, I decided to skip Sunday School and just go for the 10:00 service. I got up at my regular time, did the normal morning routine of shower and breakfast, took my meds, curled up on the loveseat for a little nap, and when I woke up momentarily, church had already started. Darn! Missed it. The next time I woke up, it was 3:30pm, and the day was mostly gone.

Other people get La-La Land on Vicodin. I get knock-out drops. Where's the fun in that? Just as well, I suppose, because I won't be tempted to abuse them.

I'm hoping this pain in the butt disappears just as quickly as it arrived. Permanence would be an extremely bad thing.

Departing Words

Not mine. In spite of my lack of recent blogging, I'm not going anywhere.

These departing words are from Michael "Flathead" Blanchard, from the obituary he appears to have written for himself, which appeared in the Denver Post on April 12, 2012.

Blanchard, Michael "Flathead"
1944 ~ 2012

A Celebration of the life of Michael "Flathead" Blanchard will be held on April 14th, 3 pm 8160 Rosemary St, Commerce City. Weary of reading obituaries noting someone's courageous battle with death, Mike wanted it known that he died as a result of being stubborn, refusing to follow doctors' orders and raising hell for more than six decades. He enjoyed booze, guns, cars and younger women until the day he died.

There's more.

I love the defiance this describes. I can't quite relate (except for the stubbornness), but there's something compelling about someone who lives life on his own terms instead of meekly showing up to do what "they" tell him to do.

Life coaches, success instructors, and motivational speakers often encourage their audiences to write the eulogy they would like to have delivered at their own funeral. Then they're told to live in such a way as to make that true.

It looks like Mike did just that. Unfortunately, it doesn't look as though I'll get a chance to meet him after I'm gone. Such a shame...