It’s not that I don’t love you; it’s just that it’s hard to sit upright at the moment

As I’ve mentioned here before, one of the legacies of my pregnancies is chronic (mostly) low-grade back pain that periodically decides to make itself known.  I’m in one of those painful cycles right now.  I’m certainly not in agony, but sitting upright for any extended period of time is painful.  More than that, even though the pain is fairly tolerable, I keep worrying that I’ll do something — some movement or lack of movement — that will instantly transmute tolerable pain into complete immobility.  I’m therefore constrained more by fear than by discomfort.

The net effect of this problem is that I’m able to sit at the computer only at brief intervals throughout the day.  This wouldn’t necessarily preclude reading and writing (in byte-size chunks, you might say), but for the fact that I’ve got the whole family at home.  I’m usually hauled away from my self-indulgence within mere minutes of sitting down.

After two days, I’m beginning to feel a bit more stable, so I’m getting more optimistic about computer time.  It won’t be until the end of August, though, that I’ll have the house back to myself for periods greater than ten or fifteen seconds.  I’m counting the days….  I think the dog is too.  While it’s lovely that the neighborhood kids congregate here, she feels that the safest place is huddled in the furthest corner under my desk.