The Post of Christmas Past (bc I could've written this exact post a year aog.)

Wow! It's been almost two weeks. I'm not sure if that's the longest I've gone w/out posting, but if not, it's close. Those cookies I baked were practically the death of me. While my back has been much, much better since October, 7 1/2 hours on my feet baking (and a few more cleaning up after) proved to be too much for my poor vertebrae. My assumption is that the tissue in that area is inflamed, and so I'm back in pain. (Back in nerve pain. Not good.)

The last two weeks have been a blur of keeping the girls on track with school & holiday functions, shopping, wrapping, cooking, scrap booking.... I'm sure very similar to whatever hubbub your own family had going on. In the midst of it all my back has not been happy. (Much like last year, huh.) So, my blogging is what has suffered. It's unfortunate, as I've had many things I'd like to write about, but just don't have the energy. If I wasn't cramming on finishing the scrapbooks for the grandparents I probably could've pulled off a post or two, but it just wasn't in me.

Suffice to say, we have been having a very "normal" holiday time. And that is good. I was an extremely good girl, as I got a new bike from DaddySpeak. (That or he wants me to get off my fat arce! I'm going w/good girl.) My parents gave us our tickets to Hawaii for this summer (they are taking us all on a trip). Crazy of them, but I'm beyond grateful. I also got a balance board for the Wii & Raving Ravids to go with it. This is leading somewhere, can you guess? We opened gifts w/my parents Christmas Eve. Got home, put the girls to bed, blah, blah, blah...Little got up just as Santa was about to come. Ack! So to kill some time, and make sure she was really asleep, I tried out my new Wii game. It was fun as all get out. I played for about an hour I guess. Then Santa came to visit & I went to bed. Next day we did our family gifts, and hung out in pjs. I realized I wasn't going to get to play w/my bike if I didn't get moving, so I took a quick spin around the block. I haven't ridden a bike a 3 years (since I hurt my back) if not longer. I'm sure I woke up some muscles that have been sleeping for quite some time. Obviously, I'm feeling a bit better if I did these things, right? About an hour after we got to my mom's, my back went into a spasm. It did this in such a huge way, and involved so much of my back that my entire body twitched as it went into spasm. The day went down hill from there. I had my muscle relaxers w/me, so I took one. I suppose it helped some, but mostly I felt like it made me groggy. By the time we finished dinner I couldn't stand to be upright any longer. W/in an hour of that, I couldn't stand to stand, or sit, or just generally be, any more. I declared myself done & we went home. I took a vicodin & got flat. Much, much better. I went to bed & tried to get to sleep, but I could tell the vicodin was wearing off, so I took another muscle relaxer. I'm still really, really sore tonight, but I am better. Slept till noon (groggy from muscle relaxers) and did pretty much nothing all day. Got coffee w/a friend & then went to dinner w/family friends. I was actually pretty good at that. (Hello Zinfandel!) I'm still "uncomfortable", but I can at least find positions to get into now. I'm hopeful that I'm past the worst of this now, and I can get back to my usual routine. Hopefully.