Day 36

Growing up, I was a bit of a tomboy. I can still remember my mother being furious with me after coming home with ANOTHER pair of pants (cordorouy, of course...) with holes in the knees from playing. And under those holes in the pants were scratches and bruises, a relatively constant existence in my younger years.

I still have the scars on my knees from one fateful summer day in the backyard. Wearing nothing but my Wonder Woman underoos and tennis shoes, I was running along the backyard sidewalk pretending to be flying in the Invisible Plane. Unfortuantely, I tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and ....well, flew alright. My aunt found me first, bloody and screaming, with both knees full of dirt and asphalt.

Now, just about everyone can think back and remember what their parents used for ailments and injuries when they were a child. Maybe it was cod liver oil. If so, I'm so sorry. Maybe it was Hydrogen Peroxide- again, sorry. At my house, Phisoderm and Neosporin ruled the roost. I can still remember the green Phisoderm bottle uder the bathroom sink, and the giant tube of slimy medicine always present in the cabinet. I still carry Neosporin in all of my own bathrooms, and never go on vacation without it.

Once I became a teenager, and skinned knees were fewer and farther in between, my go-to cure-all switched from Neosporin to Ibuprofen. It has since continued to be my partner and savior from pain and misery. It helped me through countless months of "I swear my uterus is falling out" cramps. When I broke my big toe 5 weeks from gradutaing nursing school, it allowed me to limp through those long clinicals on my feet. It has eased sunburns, sinus headaches, overzealous dental hygeinists, pinched nerves, overdone workouts, and let's not forget hangovers...I've never taken a prescription strength pain pill in my life, instead relying on my friend Ibuprofen to get me through wisdom teeth removal, a uterine ablation, and post partum pain when I could have sworn someone took a baseball bat to my hoohah when I wasn't looking...

Today I shoveled the driveway for an hour. An hour of physical excercise in itself is not what made me sore. It was the damn ice that killed me. It was so hard and thick that I wound up literally taking a garden hoe to it in order to get the ice to break up enough to shovel. That was definately a first, and I am sure I had some neighbors and passer-bys wondering what in the hell that crazy lady was doing hoeing her driveway in the middle of a snowstorm.

So this evening I am relying on my old pal Ibuprofen to allow me to actually stretch out straight in my bed tonight and hopefully be able to get out of bed in the morning. Cheers!