What a Grouch
Well, I’m still making good progress towards being a grouchy old man. I came home from the grocery store to a yard full of kids playing ball, and within twenty minutes or so I felt compelled to ask them to “go play ball in someone else’s yard”. I normally would have put up with it for a while longer, but my neck is out pretty bad again and I didn’t sleep at all last night.
Let me back up a little, yesterday when I got up I threw my neck and shoulder out just in the act of getting out of bed. That’s pretty depressing. I suffered all day at work, and when I got home I had no intention of doing anything but going straight to bed. However my dog had a severely swollen face. Just on the right side. My first thought was an insect sting of some kind, but I wasn’t sure if there wasn’t a chance that it was an abscessed tooth. I fed her a couple of crunchy treats and she wasn’t shy about eating on that side so I figured bug bite it is and gave her a couple of benadryl and figured I’d wait and see if the swelling went down. Of course I stayed up a couple of hours to see what the effect was (it didn’t seem to change at all) and didn’t get to bed until about three. I had a previously scheduled appointment with my chiropractor that I was looking forward to at nine so I didn’t expect to get a lot of sleep, but what I actually got was almost no sleep. My neck felt like it was being de-boned every time I moved. I took a couple of aspirin and got out the heating pad and if anything it made the pain worse. Well after I got out of the chiropractor’s I decided to take the dog to the vet (she’s doing nicely now, some anti-inflammatory pills some antibiotics and eighty-five bucks later). Needless to say that by the time I got home I was dog tired myself and starving, so I went to the grocery intending to stock up on hot pads and Doan’s pills, which I did. I was looking forward to a light snack and some rest only to find I had a yard full of kids whooping and hollering. Not hurting anything but all the same, I don’t have kids and I was very tired so I pulled a Mr. Wilson on them and asked them to “go play ball in someone else’s yard”. What a grouch. Most days I’m not at home when they’re out there and it doesn’t bother anybody. They don’t get up to any mischief and it’s probably a pretty good crime deterrent to have a yard full of kids. And of course I did the same sort of stuff when I was a kid, private property is pretty near invisible to most kids. But sometimes when you get just a little older, there’s nothing as important as a nap.