roasted back pain

It began the morning I rummaged my way past Christmas decorations to the freezer and reached deep in the bottom to select a roast for supper. Because the lid does not stay up by itself, I pushed up on it as I stretched down to the bottom. For several minutes I reorganized frozen packages of food searching for the roast. Bad move.

By the time I left for work, my back was screaming to stay home in bed.

No time for bed. The calendar overflowed with activities for work, school, church and friends Somehow, in spite of the pain shooting up my back, I attended the banquet, went shopping, visited the open house and the first and last half of activities double booked Sunday afternoon and Monday evening. Anytime I want with anyone else, I let them drive. I double booked my morning medical appointment to include mentioning my obvious backache.

During those days, each time I came home, I dropped whatever I was carrying and collapsed onto a stiff mattress until it was time to go to the next event. By Tuesday morning g, with medication, I was moving more freely, but our house featured a “drop-and-run” decor and I could not fine my key ring with the electronic time cared. I decided my after work task was to clean house.

My daughter, home 10 days from college and deep into wedding plants beat me to it. She called me at work, “Mom, there is no place for my clothes.”

I winced. Her last summer home and we had no room for her – not even after she filled the back of our van with wedding gifts, furniture and extra clothing and moved it to her future home. She still had a closet filled with wedding clothes, attendant gifts and reception favors.

I quickly, mentally reviewed our cluttered home, “Okay, gather up everything on the library table in my room and move it to the attic. We’ll put wedding purchases there. WE all need to take care of the stuff we have been dumping everywhere; I could not find my keys this morning. It is past time to clean-up.”
My back ached at the thought of the evening’s task.

That evening I gathered up the heaps of mail and newspapers that had been read and abandoned – everywhere, except in the trash can.

I moved out wedding purchases from my daughter’s closet and shoved them under the library table in my room. I crawled deep into my closet, sat on the floor and sorted out shoes, wrapped birthday gifts and boxes of momentos. I found items and appliances I did not remember. Some went into my betrothed son’s huge, hope chest. Others went out to the dumpster barrel, but most of it was re-arranged and carefully stored in my bedroom. I sorted through papers, answered the mail and looked for my keys.
We did not find them anywhere, not even under the couch cushions. We did however find time to make and bake food for the wedding and haul them to the freezer. And my husband built deep shelves above the freezer using an old science fair display. Under the bottom shelf he added a wooden hook to hod up the freezer lid.

Everything on the floor found a place on the new shelves I stood there admiring my new, improved freezer room and wondered why we had not done this years and years before.
By Wednesday noon, I was moving much more freely when my daughter stopped by to visit me at work. A co-worker asked if she had found the keys.

“Oh yes, I forgot,” she reached inside her handbag. “I dropped them in here after I drove you Monday evening.” They never were lost in the clutter.

Oh well, the house is clean again and I have some shelves over the freezer and a way to hold its lid open without stretching out my back.


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