Reasons to stinking love stupid Monday

A month ago today I was wondering if I would ever be well enough to work again. This morning... I'm wondering how I will possibly manage to work today. My back is the worst it's been in the past year. I did a few things over the weekend that could have done it... changed the stinking litter box... carried groceries in from the car... swept the kitchen floor. I don't know which one of those did me in but I have been up all night in some unholy pain. I can tell that a disc is compressed because there's a white hot pain in place that the two bulging discs are located... and the muscles that spread out from that spot are in spasm, wrapping around my sides. It's unreal. This is the way it hurt in the very beginning and why the doctors initially thought I was dealing with kidney stones, because of the wrap around pain.

Nevertheless, I need to dig deep and find a few reasons to love Monday, because it's Monday and that's what I do.

The Giants won the Super Bowl. I wasn't *really* pulling for either team, I thought, but I found myself really appreciating Eli Manning and really unimpressed with Tom Brady so I guess, subconsciously, I wanted the Giants to win... and they did... so that was cool.

I wasn't entirely riveted to the game. I kept switching back and forth between that, How I Met Your Mother reruns and the 25th Anniversary Les Miserables Concert on PBS. I'm well-rounded like that. It was an entertaining evening for me.

I finished reading Michael Oher's book (perfect for Super Bowl Sunday, right?) and it was interesting to see how they took dramatic liberties with the story for the movie. It read like he was incredibly bitter toward the screenwriter about portraying him as ignorant. He also was really bitter towards his mother, which I get in a sense because she basically abandoned him and his siblings but... it was uncomfortable to see it in a book. It was a good reminder to me to avoid bitterness in my writing.

The past month has been less tough than I thought it would be. I have thanked God for every day I have been able to work and I am so grateful that He has given me the strength to do what I had to do. I prayed in the early, early morning hours last night when I was struggling to sleep, struggling to get comfortable... and I asked Him to show me what I need to do today. There's such a fine line between "taking care of myself" and "being weak". I feel guilt either way I go... so I have to trust God to show me the right way...

My heart is so heavy for the parents of Susan Powell. First their daughter mysteriously disappears while her husband is on a "camping trip" in a snowstorm in the middle of the night with two preschool kids. I'm not saying he was lying but... come on... and then yesterday the husband kills himself and the two kids. I can't imaging the grief and heartache they're feeling. Whatever load you're carrying, there's always someone who has it so much worse.

My blood pressure is 134/84 this morning so it's better. I am learning that my blood pressure is really not related to the amount of pain I'm in... something that doctors have been writing it off as for a year... for me, the fact that it stayed high when I was sedated for the procedures in March and April... and stayed high during my two procedures in December ... shows me that it's not stress related, it's not pain related... it's high because it's high and we need to treat it accordingly. What we're doing ain't working.

Austin is aggravated that I won't take him to school today. He's still tired from the weekend even though he slept most of the day yesterday. I'm just glad he's going to school. He's heading out for the bus stop now.

I don't know how well I did with this week's RTLM but I gave it a shot. I hope that you find more/better reasons to love Monday in your own life! Love and hugs!