Even When I am Unlucky, I am Lucky

My weekend got off to a nightmarish start.  For some reason, my neck got stiff starting on Friday and I could not work it out.  By Saturday morning, it was agonizing.  We went to the urgent care where I got x-rays, a shot of pain meds and steroids.   I'm now on a course of NSAIDs and steroids.  I know people think steroids are evil, but when I have needed them, they have done a great job in relieving serious swelling.  The problem got so bad that I could not swallow.

Living the Dream?

I must admit to being a bit of a hypocrite lately.   My absence from blogging has been the result of having too much going on.  In the past few years, I have moved slowly away from my objective of living small, swayed by the comfort of a growing salary and the obsession of amassing as much investment income as possible.  My house has been neglected, my health and my husband's health have suffered, and I've rationalized it all with the thought that "Of course what you do is hard, that's why they pay you so much money."  The other truth is that I've gotten careless with spending that money because I had more of it than I ever had before.  Luckily, I have come to my senses and have been gifted with an opportunity to jump off the corporate merry-go-round, and get back the the place where I had originally planned to be in my mid-fifties.

A Nightmare of Clutter

I missed a lot of blogging time last winter.  My work got crazy and I just had no time.  Unfortunately, what started as a dream job turned into a nightmare culminating in 12 hour work days.  A few actually stretched out longer than that.  Try as I might (and I tried hard), I could not get my work-load adjusted.  The result was that long days at a desk led to a repetitive stress injury -- in both my left and right arms.  I developed ulnar neuropathy along with some carpal tunnel thrown in.  The nerve irritation triggered problems in my neck, shoulder and upper back.  Early in December, I had to stop working for three weeks so that the nerves could calm down.  I worked part time until mid January, and am now back to full-time.