Mrs. Hillbilly Mom Will Waive Filing For Workers' Compensation

On Saturday, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom could barely hobble around. While her knees felt surprisingly spry, she was down in her back. That's what my mom used to say. Down in the back.

I noticed while sitting on the bleachers at the local junior college for seven hours, waiting for the science fair to end, that my back was sore. Stiffening, maybe, in the arctic cold which I suppose kept the heating bill reasonable for that field house. You'd think that the body heat of 300 participants, along with that of the plump parents and sponsors, would have raised the temperature a few degrees. Maybe it did. I shudder (like I did all day with cold) to think of the temperature without the body heat factor. Even my ample layer of adipose tissue did nothing to insulate my mostly-without-a-thyroid body. In fact, as I commented to my old Basementia Buddy, "The lady behind me is jabbing her knee into my ribs. I'd tell her to knock it off, but I appreciate the warmth."

I figured I had just tweaked my piriformis muscle. I didn't know the name of it at the time. I only knew that two days later, when I was trying to find out what the not-heaven was wrong with me, going by where my pain was located and how I could pinpoint the area with a pointy finger. And I found this wonderful website that can show you your body parts, and click on the Actions in blue, and MAKE THEM MOVE! Sorry. You can take Mrs. Hillbilly Mom out of science teaching, but you can't take the science teaching out of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom!

Friday night, I noticed that my sore back was getting sorer. It hurt to lay down in bed. It hurt to get up from bed. Perhaps I'd strained something when I carried a couple of non-folding metal chairs out by the rail as Basementia Buddy suggested to get us away from the mob waiting in the bleachers for the awards ceremony. Surely it would loosen up once I got moving the next morning.

It did not. That pain was so painful that I was crying. Boo-hooing. Lightheaded. Near to vomiting when I moved the wrong way. Standing was torture. Sitting was nearly torture. Walking was hobbling. But I had to go to town to the bank, because Farmer H left two checks in my purse. Reimbursement checks from work for something he had never told me he bought. Probably on the credit card.

I did not want to take medicine so close to my regular prescriptions. I popped an acetaminophen, regular strength, and woke up The Pony (don't go feeling sorry for that little beast, it was already 10:30) and told him he had to ride to town with me, just in case I became disabled. I asked him to put my socks on for me so I didn't have to bend over. Just one step above clipping my toenails and pulling my oxygen tank through the casino. He offered to drive, but I told him I could not stand tensing up with fear. Not that he's a bad driver, of course. But he was just along in case I became unable to drive. I put the seat heater on maximum, and off we went.

The seat heater helped make the pain less painful. Didn't cure it. But took away the nausea. We made it to the bank. To Pizza Hut to pick up a Personal Pan for The Pony, a condition of his company. At Save A Lot, The Pony offered to go in and get my stuff, but I was not up to fretting over him buying the wrong items. I found out toot-sweet, as my best old ex-teaching buddy Mabel says, how much that seat heater was helping. I was nearly yelping with pain when I came back to T-Hoe.

Of course I got the seat heater going again, and felt up to walking a few feet into the exit door of Country Mart to get some lottery tickets out of their machine. Again, The Pony offered, but I did not want to explain the tickets I was after. On to the gas station chicken store for my 44 oz Diet Coke!

I DID allow The Pony to go in and get it for me. "Just a tiny bit of ice. And get me a Black Pearl and a five dollar Frenzy ticket. Country Mart was out."

The Pony took his ID just in case. But was not carded by the clerk. "Which one was it? The old stern one? The light-brown-haired kind of masculine one?"

"I don't know who usually works there. But that doesn't sound like her. She's the one who has something on her arms."

"Something on her arms? Like...tattoos? What do you mean, something on her arms?"

"You know. Sores. Like eczema or something."

Huh. That's a new one on my. They HAVE been advertising for help. Anyhoo...back home we went. I made super nachos for my lunch. The pain returned. The Pony laid out some Thera-Gesic for me to rub on my back. I rifled through the cabinet and found an old prescription that had been my mom's from the dentist. At least two years old. But who was I to worry about expired painkiller? I took one and rappelled down the basement stairs holding onto the spindles in the banister thingy that blocks off the floor hole to the basement. After two hours, that pill worked and made my back merely sore. At 6:00, I took my regular aspirin and an hour later an ibuprofen.

This morning I woke up fit as a fiddle. A fiddle that might have been dropped in the road and run over by a 20-mule Borax team. But much better.

Oh, and that five-dollar Frenzy ticket that The Pony bought me won $100.

The sun even shines on Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's back some days.