February 3, 2014
7:29 p.m.

My wish for everyone today is that they may never have to experience back pain.

Ugh! What a waste of a day. Having to lay flat is boring, even if you do have something good to read, and trying to blog that way is a little awkward.

I'm a bit tickled, I must say, that my t.v has an option for blind viewers on it. I can set it, and it tells me what action is taking place while I listen to the dialogue. That way I can actually lie flat and still "watch" t.v.

What a great option! I discovered it quite by accident (because I never read my user manual when I got the t.v.) by bumping the button with my elbow while adjusting the blankets on my bed one night. Then, of course, I had no idea what had happened. At first I thought it was part of the program--you know, that there was a narrator or something. Then, when a rerun of a show I watch regularly came on and it continued, I still thought maybe Comcast was trying something new. I changed the channel, and no other programs were doing it. I switched back to my program, and I was still getting a play-by-play of the action. It finally occurred to me that I had done it somehow, and I began checking out the buttons on my remote control.

I am not unfamiliar with modern technology, but when it comes to the television, I'm strictly on/off, channel up/channel down and volume control. I don't watch that much t.v., really, and the one in my room is almost exclusively tuned to TNT, because I turn it on at night to drown out the voices in my head so I can (hopefully) get to sleep. TNT is "all drama all the time". I like that stuff. Between midnight and, say, three a.m. you often get the drone-like voices of the lawyers on "Law and Order", which can--if I don't get caught up in listening to the story--blah blah blah me away.

Of course, that night I got completely caught up in the story--who wouldn't, when you not only hear the dialogue, but also: "He opens the door slowly, and peers cautiously into the corridor. Suddenly, a shot rings out, and he ducks quickly back into the room."

How awesome is that?

Anyway, back to the remote control. Buttons, buttons and more buttons. I pushed a few, checked out what they did, tried another remote (I have three!!!) and then another, and I could not figure it out!

What the heck, I thought. I turned off the light, lay down and listened to stories. It's not like I was going to go to sleep anyway, ya know?

After a couple of evenings of trying to figure the thing out, I enlisted the help of my son, Sam, who knows all. Or so I thought. He did the same button pushing I did and came up with no answers.

You'll be happy to know I finally figured it out, and it was so simple that I'm still shaking my head over it. So today, I put the feature to good use, because I've been kind of worthless all day.

It's sad, you know, how a little pain--okay, a lot of pain--can make me think uncharitable thoughts about the guy who thought the coffee cup on the floor of his van was more important than the traffic ahead of him, aka ME. When you stop for a red light, you expect the people behind you to do the same, but on that June night in 1994, the guy behind me just kept on coming. BLAM!

That's been almost 20 years ago, and thinking bad thoughts about a guy who never intended to hurt me is just not nice. So, shame on me.

I just wish it could have all been solved with surgery, but such was not the case. I can be thrown back into stiffness, limping, foot-dragging inflammatory pain by cold weather, by a small misstep or slip, or by nothing at all that I can figure out. It makes it hard to walk, hard to sit--even hard to lie flat. My feet burn due to radiating nerve pain. It frustrates me. Boo! Hiss!

Okay, I'm done complaining. I'll have a chocolate chip cookie and all will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

To all--good night!