I hurt my back.  I hurt my back while I was sleeping, which is the lamest way to hurt your back ever, and not nearly as oh-jesus-christ-that-must-have-hurt-so-bad-impressive as the last way I hurt my back, which was by slipping on ice and falling all the way down the stairs.  I have no idea how this happened, only that sometime during the middle of last night, I woke up with a twinge between my shoulders and thought about buying a new mattress.  Being a side sleeper, I then rolled over to my other side and fell back asleep.

And now it hurts to breathe.

I can take shallow breaths okay, but deep breaths – and that includes yawning, sneezing, or sniffling, which is just great because the weather is beautiful and that means allergies – cause a deep, stabbing pain in the middle of my back that knocks all the newly-acquired wind right out of me.

Thankfully, I made myself go for a walk before noon today.  I knew that if I waited until later, I’d think myself out of it by imagining what could happen if, while walking under extreme back pain, a rapist started chasing me.  Or what if my back pain was really reverse heart attack pain.  Or it got way worse and I never left the house and just got fatter?  But I went for a walk and none of those things happened (although I am not ruling out the heart attack, because ohmygod this really, really, really hurts so bad, you guys, I am not kidding and I don’t know what to do other than sit here and moan about it).

Also, a squirrel is living on my bathroom window ledge.  I figured out he was there because in addition to having breathing problems right now, the back pain makes it impossible to stand up straight.  I noticed the outline of his ears as I stood hunchbacked over the toilet, trying to make the goddamn thing stop running, already.

This is what happens on my days off.

PS – Although I was recently told that the only good thing about Tumblr is porn, I’ve never gone looking for it so I wouldn’t know.  I do know that I started a 365 project with it, and that a new recent favorite because it’s an actual blog instead of a re-blogging vehicle is Things I Ate That I Loved.  (Even though it’s existence confirms my suspicions that I’ll never be able to write a book because, according to blogs written by People Who Know About This Sort of Thing, I am not Jewish, I don’t live in New York, and I have never worked in publishing.  So balls.)  I also skimmed through Coke Talk, which is kind of meh but at least partially blew my mind today:

“…This sort of confirms my suspicions that Justin Bieber is really the empress from “The Neverending Story.”

DUDE.  You are so right.