Oy, my aching back

So after blasting everyone for complaining that their lives are nothing to write home about, today I'm finding myself kind of at a loss as to what to say. Probably this is because I didn't sleep much last night, and now I'm just hanging on for a couple more hours until I can go home and lie down for awhile before dinner.

Last fall I tweaked my back while foolishly attempting to ride my bike straight up a little path I knew was too steep, and it's been bothering me off and on ever since. Now, in addition to the pain in my back, I sometimes get this dull shooting pain in my leg, as well – that was what kept me awake last night. Looking up a definition of "sciatica" just now I came across this picture, which illustrates exactly what's been going on in my back and leg lately. The pain is in my lower left back, and shoots all the way down my left leg.

It's not like it's totally debilitating – sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse – but for the last couple of weeks I can feel it pretty much all the time if I think about it. Last night I took a long warm bath and did some stretching, which didn't help even though it usually does. I went to bed at ten and tossed and turned, trying to get comfortable, worrying that what was happening was not related to my old injury at all but to an enormous blood clot that must surely be muscling its way through my major arteries and heading toward my brain (I have a somewhat irrational fear of strokes, because my grandmother died of one when she was younger than I am now). Finally, at around 1:30 I got up and took some aspirin.

Probably moving all those bricks last weekend was not much help. It was funny – when we first arrived at the place (me and Mr. A and his brother, who is always up for helping us with heaving lifting and other down & dirty projects) and saw them all stacked up against the fence, I sort of scoffed and said, "No way is that 600 bricks. That's gotta be, like, maybe 200." They don't look like much when they're just sitting there. But after we moved and re-stacked them (in two loads, so as not to overtax the truck's suspension) I came back around to thinking that the guy's estimate of 500 to 600 was about right. And they really are beautiful bricks – nicely weathered but not chipped or broken, and no mortar.

Plus, I haven't mentioned this yet but we also moved about 80 to 100 heavy old oak fence posts that were languishing in two big piles out behind the barn of the vineyard at the end of our road. They were hand cut (I'm guessing) in the early 1900s and most of them are about six to eight feet long and between eight and twelve inches square, very rough, rotted down to points on one end, and very, very heavy. The vineyard manager said if we could haul them away we could have them, so we spent a few hours moving those, too. They'll be perfect for when we move the fence farther back from the house this winter – they're already old and weathered but still fairly solid, and will blend right into the landscape.