Life is a combination of magic and pasta.

I felt cranky during a lot of it but I think most of that was still fear that my back is going to go all wonky. However at the moment I am feeling more "worked the muscles" achy rather than "oh shit the back's going to go at any moment" achy so it's a start. I bought a little notebook so that while things are still fresh in my mind, I can document what I did there and try to document my "homework" Today I did this

5 forward bends - I have no problem touching my toes with my fingers, fortunately
5 back bends - those made the lower back pissy right away so we corrected that with
10 more forward bends
10 minutes on the recumbent bike with 3.5 resistance. My back didn't like this so when done, I got up and bent a few more times
30 straight-arm pulls with the rubber band
30 bent-arm pulls with a tougher rubber band
10 sit-stands with a small medicine ball
10 stand-touches with a small medicine ball (tough!)
10 stand-hover with a small medicine ball (really tough!)
3 sets of 10 bridges on the bed with a ball held between my knees. 

Lying down exercises suck. I mentioned that. My back doesn't like lying down though it's less bad with my knees bent. Since I was wincing midway through the bridges because the mid-back started aching again, he had me do 10 minutes with a big heating pad on my back which helped some.

Rather than doing the homework which is mostly all stuff lying on my back or stomach, this weekend I'd like to get to Planet Fitness so I can do more of what I did today instead. On Monday morning I have the woman that assigned the exercises so I'm going to ask if I can have more standing things (and maybe some sitting) rather than lying exercises.  

I don't see myself doing this for a long time even though insurance pays for it. I'm hoping to stick it out long enough to build enough of a habit to it more on my own regularly. It's kind of annoying that the PT people are doing three or so of us at the same time because I don't feel like they pay enough attention to form. I also seriously need to work on eating better (read: less) so that extra weight isn't affecting my back so much either. 

If you have photos hosted on photobucket and you haven't yet gotten the email scolding you for using them on third party sites, go immediately there and back up your pictures. See article for details. It had been getting worse and worse for months with the absolute WORST glut of pop up, pop under and pop over ads to even see your pics or do anything. I had a sneaky feeling they were going to try something else so the other day I did the frustrating process of downloading them all (at least the ones I give a crap about) and backing them up on a flash drive and uploading them to google photos. Then this morning I got THE email.



I had already deleted my photos from their site before this so I had the great pleasure of going to their site and formally deleting my account. In the "reason" field - I cited their hamhanded extortion tactics and also pointed out that I have spent hundreds of dollars in their print shop having artwork, cards and gifts made and that I will never use their services again. I hope they go under.

In other news, PT went well enough. No real answers on the evaluation but hopefully they can make me stronger. The woman noted how flexible I was which sure, sounds good, but flexibility without strength is what keeps knocking my back out. So FIX me. I was also wishy washy about wanting to incorporate use of the pool. I don't object to being in the pool, it's all the annoyance of wrangling myself into the suit and then struggling out of it and smelling like chlorine. We'll see. Have another appointment this coming Friday afternoon and I have homework which I need to start doing this afternoon