December 06th, 2018

The reason for the boo-boo face here is not a sore throat which I now realize looks like what I meant.  It's not.  My issue is a sore neck.

When something is really annoying, we often say instead that it is a pain in the neck (or other parts of the anatomy but for today's purposes, we will stick to neck)  For example, "there is a mosquito in this house dive bombing me and I cannot seem to get rid of it!  What a pain in the neck!"  While yes, I do mean that mosquito is very annoying, I do not literally mean that the mosquito is, in some way, causing my neck to hurt.

This time I actually do mean that my neck hurts and dang it is so annoying!

I guess I slept wrong.  Isn't that usually the culprit?  Although that does beg the questions, how does a person sleep wrong exactly?  For someone as sleep deprived as I am on a regular basis, any sleep is good sleep.  Even if I were able to find a way to sleep incorrectly, (still no idea what that means),  it would still suggest that I slept at all, and sleep is a good thing.

Perhaps it means that during sleep I was positioned incorrectly. Ok. I suppose I can see that happening.  Finally keeling over into dreamland after too many nights in a row of not and just collapsing into an untidy heap.....sure. I could have been positioned incorrectly as I slept.

Regardless, earlier this week I woke up with a sore neck.  If something happens to my right or left that requires my attention, I must turn my entire body to the right or left to observe whatever it is.  It's not difficult to turn my entire body, just annoying.  

In my normal day to day routine, it's not THAT big a deal.  Oh there are a few things that are irritating. For example, I find it impossible, at the moment, to cradle a phone between my ear and shoulder to have a phone conversation while ironing (multi-tasking y'see) and at the end of Pilates class when we are "rolling our neck gently side to side" to release them after all the other torture we put our bodies through during class, I had to fake it because my neck wasn't doing anything side to side for love nor money.

The only time it is really an issue is driving.  I don't drive much, as we all know. But the situation does occasionally arise that I am required to drive.  Grocery shopping is a driving trip.  Not because of distance...it's less than two miles away. But because I do not want to carry that many bags of food for two miles.  And if I bought ice cream, it would be soup by the time I got it home.  And while I am waiting for my ankle to heal, I am finding myself opting to drive other places, like to the museum, which is also roughly two  measly miles away.  Under normal circumstances, a perfectly lovely walk.

Driving requires the ability to turn the head left and right for safety sake.  I am forced to turn my entire body which is not easy within the constraints of the safety belt and while sitting down,  to see to  if someone is barreling down the road toward me with the intent of running the red light and smashing into my car.  If it's going to happen, I want to see it coming.  I'm weird that way.

Drivers in Florida, which doesn't necessarily mean Florida drivers as we have a LOT of tourists here, are notorious for being sketchy drivers.  Being a defensive driver has never been more important to me than here. Fortunately, it's a pokey sleepy little town, even during tourist season, and not a high traffic arena.  And yes I meant arena.  Sometimes driving here is so crazy I hear circus music playing in my head while observing something crazy doing on and I deduce that it MUST be a circus show because it would make No sense in real life.

Ok I'm over that. Moving on.  I have tried heat.  I have tried cold.  I have tried stretching.  I have tried Alleve.  Nothing is fixing it.  I can only assume that eventually it will go away on it's own. But meanwhile, it's VERY annoying, this pain in the neck of mine.  I find myself moving in the strangest ways trying to unkink whatever is kinked to fix it and if anyone was watching me they would think I was crazy.

Somebody cue the circus music.