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left-handed asswipe
Monday, June 2 2025
setting: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
Today was a normal workday, which I was going to try to do as best I could despite my injured back. I'd moved to the laboratory beanbag in the early hours of the morning, and getting up from that without running into the painful limits of what my back can do wasn't easy, partly because I'd partly forgotten where some of those limits were. But eventually I was up and doing things like feeding the cats and putting together the clothes I would be wearing. For some reason Gretchen got up, which she almost never does as I am preparing for work. But she'd just remember that she hadn't plugged in the Bolt, whose battery was so depleted I would have to take the Forester. Since the cab on the Forester is taller, I thought that would be easier for me to get into and out of anyway given my temporary handicap. By then I realized that putting on my socks was not going to be easy, since bending at the waist while reaching would be forbidden by the new limits of what my back can do without experiencing excruciating pain. So I had Gretchen put my socks on. That might've been the first time someone other than me put socks on my feet since I was a very little boy. Milestones!
Getting into the Forester was an unexpectedly painful process. The problem came when I first sat in the seat; something about the left hip-hugger triggered the pain, though I was able to adjust the seat with the controls to get it so that my posture was just a little outside of the "pain zone." This allowed me to drive, but occasionally when I'd hit a bump or go into a curve, the motion would push me into the pain zone. Interestingly, though, my body seemed to adapt to the new reality, "realizing" these slight encroachments were not me trying to do something I shouldn't. And so the pain zone seemed to retract a bit, as if by magic.
Once I got to the office, getting out of the Forester wasn't painful, and when I got to my desk, I found that my normal sitting position was perfectly comfortable. I had to remember, though, not to reach out or down for anything, particularly the teapot on the floor. To obtain hot water for tea, I needed to squat next to it with my knees doing all the work of getting me to the appropriate level. I also had to be careful not to sit back too far in my seat; any time the angle of my body with respect to my legs declined towards 90 degrees, I'd be approaching the pain zone.
At some point I took my first poop since returning from the Adirondacks, and, since I was at the office, there was no ass blaster to make it easy. I had to physically wipe my ass. This was the first time in my life that I've been so disabled that I couldn't wipe my own ass, at least not in the way I was used to. Like most people in the West, I wipe with my dominant (right) hand, not the left hand that people in, say, Arab and Indian cultures prefer. But when I attempted to do this, the necessary flexing of my lower torso would've intruded too far into the pain zone. But if I flexed the other way and used my left hand, it was doable. It felt very strange to wipe my ass with my left hand, which had none of the muscle memory for how to do the job. The process took a little longer, and eventually I was satisfied with the results.
I had a brief meeting this morning with the project manager Ron, and just to get it out of the way, I told him that I'd slipped and fallen down some steps at the cabin and "tore something in my back." Ron was very sympathetic and knew all about back problems, as he'd done considerable damage to his earlier in his life when he was an ironworker. His problems had been with the disks between his lower vertebræ, at least one pair of which had to be surgically fused. He knew all about the pain and range of motion issues I was experiencing, though he was pretty sure that, because it was based in the muscle, it would heal up in a matter of weeks.
Later at a mostly-weekly developer meeting, the CEO saw the open-mouthed look of agony on my face as I went to sit down and somehow verged into the pain zone. I explained how I'd slipped and fallen down some stairs this weekend. This, of course, reminded the CEO of Kevin, the guy he insists is my doppleganger, whom Ron says has been walking with a crutch for weeks now. The CEO seemed to think it somehow was related to both of us being vegan, that perhaps we don't heal as quickly. That was absurd, of course, because I'd only just been injured. But his intention in saying this was just to be humorous.
Our conversation at lunch (its king being absent on Mondays) was mostly about my back, but then switched to the shenanigans the guys get into when they go on work-related trips to installations in distant places like El Paso, Texas. They had a picture of D, the young IT guy who is a regular in the lunchroom court, drinking directly from the tap of a several-gallon beer dispenser.
After work, I returned home and took Charlotte (Neville didn't come) on a walk up the Farm Road. I didn't feel like I could walk on anything but a nice solid surface, since a walk in the forest would force me to twist my back occasionally into the pain zone as I ducked branches or stepped over fallen logs. About halfway up the road, Charlotte suddenly darted at something she'd seen off in the distance. I looked to where she was running and saw a large black object, clearly a bear, running off into the forest west of the Farm Road. I was sure Charlotte would tree that bear, since she could outrun any of our local wildlife except perhaps a deer. But when I got to Charlotte, who'd only made it to the base of the escarpment, I could see no bear in any of the trees overhead. Unlike any of our other dogs, she wasn't even barking. Had she let the bear escape up the escarpment?
The little walking I'd done off-road to look for the bear further acquainted me with the painful limits of what my back could do, so I got back to the Farm Road as directly as I could and walked back home.
I made some rice and had plans to microwave some pouches of pre-made Indian food, but then Gretchen asked if I wanted her to pick me up mushroom tacos from the Garden Café. so I said sure. I would only end up eating one of them and leaving the other two for lunch tomorrow.
Then I took another nice hot bath, benefitting from all the heat collected on what had been a gorgeous sunny day.
Throughout the day, I'd been making further improvements on my system allowing me to easily create sets of smart-phone-friendly buttons to control device_features in my ESP8266 Remote system. I even had ChatGPT take a swing at further refining their styling and ended up with nice responsive buttons that take on different shades of color to reflect whether they are in the process of changing state or have already successfully done so.
I'd been taking acetaminophen to help take the edge off my occasional pangs of back pain, but I hadn't noticed it providing even so much as a placebo effect. Then today at some point I read that acetaminophen doesn't really work for lower back pain, so before I went to bed tonight I took a dose of ibuprofen instead.
Charlotte, not far from where her bear pursuit ended in the wetlands just west of the Farm Road. Look at that huge twisted tree trunk! You can see the bottom of the escarpment on the right. Click to enlarge.
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