The Sinking Mattress of Pain

"So what is this?" you might ask...  This, my friends, is how I spent the vast majority of my day today.  Laid up on the couch with the remote control, a 500 count bottle of Ibuprofen (Yes, I realize that it is not securely locked in the Fort Knox medicine tackle box, but seeing as I how I have no foster children at the moment, I thought I would leave it out in the open within arms' reach.  I am such a rebel that way.  Take that, CPS!), a heating pad, and an ice pack...

I've known for a couple of years now that I really do need to get a new mattress.  I've had the same queen-sized, double pillow top for about 15 years now!  And being single, no amount of mattress flipping is going to help get rid of the Grand Canyon-like crater in the middle of my bed from which there is no escape.  I can't tell you the last time I got a comfortable night's sleep.  Actually, I take that back.  It was last month when my sister and I spent the night at my grandparents' house, and I slept on an air mattress!  Best night's sleep I've had in a year!!! 

I'll admit that the thought crosses my mind every night around 2:00am when my back is in knots and I can't get comfortable that I really do need to take the money and get a new mattress.  But every morning when I get up and start moving around, the kinks in my back magically disappear, and I completely forget about The Sinking Mattress of Pain.  That is, I completely forgot about it until last week when the little kinks in my back somehow progressed into Giant Knots of Burning Fire that have only gotten progressively worse as time goes on.

I knew I was in trouble when I got to work one morning and the tele-recruiters were doing laps around me.  You see this picture of the overweight elderly woman on a walker?  That's not me!  That would be a fairly accurate depiction of the women who were passing me on the way into the office.  So yeah...  It's pretty bad.

I left work this morning after one hour of torture.  I couldn't even bring myself to go tell my boss in person that I was leaving.  I emailed him.  I didn't think that I could tell him that I threw my back out in bed and that my butt was going numb with a straight face.  Ordinarily, I would probably mess with him and make him as uncomfortable as humanly possible just because I'm a little snot that way.  (Fortunately, everyone at the office gets my sense of humor so surprisingly, I haven't been fired for it.  ;-)  Today though, I was hurting too much to think quickly on my feet.  Heck!  I hurt too much to be on my feet at all!  So I emailed him and ran crawled out the back door.

I made it home, and then did what any other self-respecting woman would do in my situation.  I called my Mommy.  (Yes, I realize that I do that a lot.  In fact, I do that so much that I have now created a blog label entitled "I Called My Mommy" for easy accessibility.  ;-)  I had good reason though!  This is a first for me.  I've never thrown my back out before.  My mom, on the other hand, does it all the time.  I just thought I'd go straight to the expert to see what works best to make it stop hurting!  I very much appreciate her advice, because it seems to be helping a bit.  I do not, however, appreciate her laughing at my sister and me because she is moving faster than we are right now.  Christy is about 98 weeks pregnant with twins, and I (as Ka-Diva put it earlier today) have a "broken" back. 

I made the mistake of mentioning that I can see how a cane would be useful at times like these to my mom, but politely declined when she offered me one of hers for the weekend.  To me, a cane is like a fanny pack.  Yes, they can be incredibly useful, and I often secretly wish I had one, but those are just two of those things that you let your mother be the proud owner of.  There is no amount of "bedazzling" that could make either of those things "young or hip."  I might be getting old enough to throw my back out in my sleep, but I refuse to admit that I'm old enough to use a cane or a fanny pack. 

So as I lay here like an invalid, alternating ice packs and heating pads, and single-handedly keeping the makers of Ibuprofen in business, I can only hope that I'll be able to move enough to go to the furniture store and replace my Sinking Mattress of Pain soon.  As it is, I've decided to take up residence in the nursery on the twin-size bed.  Watch me get a placement call too!  Those calls always do seem to come at the worst possible times.  "Sure!  Bring me a 9-month-old!  But you don't expect me to be able to carry him, right?"  ;-)