Breaking My Back... Again

Well, break is almost finished, and my back is hurting. It hasn't slipped into crisis mode yet, but I am pretty much dreading the inevitable at this point. I have to get into my exercises to help strengthen my musculature. Of course, that does nothing for the pain right now. At least I can get out of having to throw people down on the mats tomorrow afternoon. It may also get me out of some of our ALICE training tomorrow morning - at least any of the running parts.

I am thinking that this is just going to be the way I do things from now on, and I am not really all that happy about it, but I have to get used to this way of life, I guess. Fortunately, I can do most of my essential job skills without having to move much, but I can't do all of them. I have worked out a compromise with my school and the facility that I work in about what will happen with music therapy when I am incapacitated. Apparently I was the center of several contentious discussions - that I was not allowed to be part of - that ended up being decided in my favor. 

According to things I have read about herniated discs and all that is happening in my back at the moment, stress contributes. Of course, the other things that contribute include being overweight (check), lifting things (check), and arthritis (check). My pain doctor tells me that losing weight now isn't going to change things much, except it might make lugging myself around a bit easier. He doesn't think that there is much that will change even if I lose 100 pounds. I will still work on it.

Today, I have an appointment to get my passport renewed downtown at the big post office. I do not usually head downtown too much - it is pretty touristy and hard to get into parking and all that. Unfortunately, the post office that I prefer does not offer passport services, so off to downtown I will go. This appointment is necessary because I am planning on going to the World Congress of Music Therapy in Vancouver, Canada next summer. I am not in a big rush to get this done, but it is one of the things on my quest list for this year - under the topic of "explore places" - so, I will get this done and checked off my list. It is about the only thing I can get done right now. My house is a bigger mess now than it was two weeks ago. I still can't find my hammer, so my bookshelf isn't completed. It is waiting for me to hammer the back onto the shelf itself before I can pick it up and start to load it with books. The other three boxes are still upstairs in the kitchen. I will scoot them with my foot to the staircase, slide them down the steps into the piled up pillows at the foot of the stairs and then scoot the boxes into the library guest room. I have a plan, I just need to find the hammer so I have space in the library room to start another shelf.

Tomorrow is the start of our "regular" school year. We have two days without students before our newish schedule starts up. When we left a week ago, we did not have any information about the changes. I am hoping that we will have everything finalized by Monday, but that's not the way most people operate at my facility. Seems to be just me who wants to have everything figured out before we start things. It wasn't like that when I first worked at the facility, but things have completely changed over the past 15 years. Now, we tend to work on the "if you build it, they will come" philosophy rather than "let's figure out what we are actually able to do and then do that." I am more comfortable in a world where the latter philosophy is prevalent, but that's not where I work. I need to figure out how many more years I have until retirement from school service. I think it is five more years before I can tap into my full pension. I should probably check on that and then try to figure out if my back will hold up that long...

Growing older is not easy, folks, but I am happy to do it. 

Tomorrow morning, intern #34 and I will greet intern #35 to our facility. I am really hoping for the schedule sooner rather than later, along with the class list, so I can do the work of figuring out who will be working with whom and assigning groups to interns. I can't cross that off my list until I get information from someone else. Once that is finished, we can start our planning process for the fall semester. Everything hinges on that class list - intern caseloads, my caseload, individual schedules, and all that. Have I ever mentioned how much I do not like having to wait for someone else to share information so I can do my job?

My binders are not finished. I have printed out the pages, trimmed them to the appropriate size, and now I just need to laminate them and punch holes. After I get back from my appointment, I think I will work on gathering together the things that I want to get finished. I need some things for my new intern to work on while the senior intern and I are in physical behavior management recertification training. Laminating might be a good first step. Over the past week, I have bought some dry erase markers, found lots of visuals that I have made over the years, and rediscovered some old instruments. I have things to take to school with me tomorrow. I will need to gather it up and put it in the car so I can transfer it to the music therapy room. I want to get my desk and some of my cabinets moved over to my new/old office space in the next two days. I will have two interns to help, but I will have to do much of the work myself because I never ask my interns to do something that I cannot do myself. Let's hope the back holds up...

See you tomorrow - before I head out into the work world.