Sciatica you B@#%$!

1. Just because everything has been going so well (sarcasm) let’s just make it extremely painful and near impossible to move. I thought I had it licked last night but today that’s a big fat no. I feel really useless now and sad for Hubbin because he needs someone to give him some support.
2. August is usually the most useless month for me. It’s hot and often smokey, or eventually smokey, and I find myself just hiding until it’s over. I don’t think I can do that this year.
3. I had to get dressed in a hurry. The neighbors discount lumberjack is back. Last winter in the worst possible part of a freeze he started showing up after dark and cut down a mountain ash that was absolutely gorgeous and kept the sun from shining in my bedroom window. He got the saw stuck in the tree. It took several consecutive days/nights for him and a friend to chop it down and weeks to clean up the mess. Today he’s back because a great time to cut down a massive pine tree (with a grossly undersized chain saw) is a Sunday when it’s a million degrees outside. He’s climbed the tree and routinely standing on the branch he’s cutting. Every thud is terrifying. Now I’m hiding in the basement and hoping this time he doesn’t drop a tree on my house. Some very heavy stuff is hitting the ground. I can’t watch. I don’t have any grief for the neighbor. She keeps to herself and acts minimally friendly when she has to. She did come by the house a couple of years ago and suggested we had a homeless person living under the blue spruce in my front yard because she’d spotted a tarp used to cover firewood next to the house. That was odd. When I was wearing ruts circling the yard during covid she started doing the same thing which was cute. She’s an attorney. Something about that profession makes people a little socially awkward or maybe it attracts people like that. In any case, I do not want to tangle with her over property damage. Another thump, ugh!
4. I need to go to the store before Hubbin gets back from Pup’s. I dread shopping. $70 every time you go and 2 days later everything is gone again. Sunday is the worst. Shopping when you are light-headed and wobbly is really bad.
5. I put on my Levis, the Man pants that actually fit. If I cinch the belt tight, kind of “Euro fit”, my back doesn’t hurt quite as bad. Wimmin britches make no sense. You lose weight and end up pooching your belly out to keep them up. Order and size smaller and the crotch is now somewhere between your knees. I got thinner, not shorter. Truth be told I do think my adult sons patting me on top of my head has squashed a little height out of me. I used to wear a 33-inch inseam and now a 30 seems a bit long. I think it’s some kind of conspiracy against midlife women. The better you do the more you get messed with.
6. Case in point, the “Karens” have made it so you don’t dare stand up for yourself on anything.  I don’t think entitled racist behavior should get any tolerance but now there are cameras everywhere and you don’t dare be weak, challenged, grumpy, inattentive, or at all assertive, or before you know it someone is going to make an example of you. The argument is it’s just tit for tat. Other groups have been treated this way for ages and they are just exposing the disparity. I can sign off on that. What I can’t sign off on is baiting people who maybe have other issues and then editing what you get so you can get paid to brutalize a problemed person. We tell kids that bullying is bad but is this any different? We say people should be empathetic to those who are suffering from mental illness, on the spectrum, or challenged in some way. The midlife female gets no slack. She can work, support your needs, stand aside for most of her life when it’s time for promotions, and be the object of other people’s desires (until she’s not) and then just take it when there’s nobody else left who is safe to abuse.
7. Another case in point, if you are middle-income and have worked all your life so that you don’t have to rely on others for support why is it ok to take it from you? Two of my friends have houses full of relatives who have effed off their whole lives and now they have to support the effers. One is caretaking and stuck at home while her spouse works to keep a roof over two sisters and several extended family members (and their boyfriends) while they can barely keep food on the table. The other hides in her bedroom and has to lock food up and silverware lest their extended family consumes everything. You let people live with you (because where else can anybody live) and don’t have the right to own a spoon and fork.  So against my problem with a total stranger living free for 6 months in the house I bought and paid for because the state says I have something I don’t deserve I still think MY problem isn’t so bad because at least I can get my boys to live in the places I bought and pay some of the freight. Still, what could we do? We looked at selling our assets and they take a huge chunk of that too. I have spoons and forks I can call my own.
8. Then, another friend has a guy with the big C. She’s stuck in a travel trailer with a sick person and doesn’t even have a room to go to for a reprieve. It’s not like she doesn’t love him and do right but life was not supposed to play out that way. They were going to sell the house and set out on great adventures. Now they’re both trapped in a mobile version of a care facility.

The thumping has stopped and I better get out of this dark place. We’re out of bananas.