Today was a rough day for me. Chronic pain means I almost always exist at about 2 on the nebulous 1-10 pain scale, but it spiked today, and I consequently had trouble coping with basic life and work situations.
To top it off, a loud old man chose today to make demands. He drops by every couple weeks to request some odd piece of information, and refuses to learn how to navigate the web himself, so he TALKS IN ALL-CAPS IN REAL LIFE WHILE ASKING US TO SEARCH WHATEVER ODDITY HE WANTS. I think @generikat has also written about this character requesting the phone number of a business that had been out of business since the 1980s, but I can't find the proper post at the moment.
Anyhow, today he wanted us to find a diagram for disassembling a snowblower. Yay. I felt like shouting back some very nasty words at the shouty old man, because I'd say today rose to somewhere around 6 on the ol' vague pain scale, and that made it very difficult to tolerate this geezer's loud and semi-incoherent demands.
Coming soon to a northern hemisphere near you! Image credit
He had the make and model, so that helped. Unfortunately, Miss T, our new librarian, was the first to offer to assist him, and he was less than satisfied with the information she found. I very easily overheard what he was seeking thanks to his volume, so I had a go at google-fu as well. Turns out even the manufacturer's website had three different links for different serial number ranges within the same model number, so that might explain some of Miss T's difficulty. Now that he knows what info we need in order to have a chance of finding what he needs, maybe progress will happen on another day.
I really don't like the reminder about impending winter, though. Two back injuries seem to have given me a bad case of climate-influenced aches, and the cold nights are already taking their toll. I now dread the seasonal shift, because it means a step up the pain scale for day-to-day life plus the extra burden on my back shifting that white **** out of the way. Drop your La Niña probability prediction and precipitation percentage in the comments for a 100% upvote!
Setting aside that gloomy forecast for the near future, though, I survived another Saturday shift in the end.
Now I need to go start a fire soon so I can roast hot dogs and marshmallows and such with some friends while I try to unwind and relax. At least I haven't had to handle another episode of alcoholic family chaos this week. Progress on that front? I dunno. I'm having trouble feeling optimistic when the bottle is a bit of a temptation to escape pain even for me at times. Thank God I seem to have sufficient self-control to resist that kind of self-destructive response.
Ahh, Mr. S., such a peach...any time he came in it triggered both my mirth and annoyance buttons, for it was almost like his amplification modulator was permafried. Hopefully you get a reprieve for a bit.
I hear you on the auto immune flu-like ache front though, I shall miss the symptom reducing warmth, but I’ll take it if it means we get at least 187” of floof this winter!!!
You had any luck with TENS? It's done me pretty good but I got myself a chiro grade one from a chiro in Newport years ago that is more powerful than the handheld ones. I also got a ultrasound machine from him that combined with the TENS does a combo treatment that is pretty intense. Curious if it might be of some help to your back.
Sometimes aTENS unit helps, but this is more of an all-encompassing flu-like ache. When COVID first hit, I made some snarky comments about how half the symptoms listed basically describe what I live with every day.