Pain In The Neck And Rent Me An ARK!!

This has been a horrid, horrid day. I went up to Halifax for our annual Weight Watchers meeting yesterday leaving Moncton at 7:30 am and getting home about 12 hours later. It was a fun, inspiring but very tiring day. I went to bed around 11 pm and must have slept far too soundly at one point because I woke up suddenly at 6 am barely able to move my neck and almost unable to swallow on that side!! I had this happen one many years ago at my mother’s place, but then it was strep throat and a gland was pressing on things. This time I had no sore throat (other than swallowing), no fever, no explanation!

I tried a hot bath, a warm cloth, a Magic Bag, Ibuprofen, a muscle relaxant... and was only mildly better by the time I had to leave for church. Nick and I were supposed to serve communion today and I had two complicated anthems that we’d been practicing for choir. We got to church and discovered that the couple in charge of getting the altar, the bread and grape juice ready had been sick all week and nothing was done... there weren’t even the supplies at the church!! Our minister decided to reschedule that part of the service for another time. I practiced the anthems with the rest of the choir and had a bit more mobility (plus lots of sympathy) by this time, so I decided to stay and sing. On the way home, I did visit the medical clinic in our area and he was just as baffled as I was. The only thing that he could recommend was treating the pain and using some of the deep cold rub which I asked Nick to apply as soon as we got home. Other than making me feel and smell like a menthol cough drop for a few hours, it did seem to help.

Somewhere this afternoon as I hunched over my colour pencil drawing to show the author tomorrow, it suddenly went from being a dull ache to being gone. We had a wonderful turkey soup/stew for supper which had been simmering all afternoon as the rain continued to pour outside. Our backyard had quite a few deep puddles, but the terra forming we’d done over the last 2 years to keep stuff away from the house seemed to be working... at least it was until 9 pm tonight!!

For the past 3 hours, Nick has been bailing out the window well that leads into my office, while I was outside trying to create an alternate path through one garden to lead out to the front yard and digging a little trench to lead the water elsewhere. We’d tried to hook up our little outdoor pump but nothing would come out of the hose!! I finally took a sharp, serrated knife and lopped the metal pressure end off the hose... and VOILA!! Water was able to come pouring out and down our driveway. With the pump working outside, the window well isn’t filling as fast. It just that with somewhere between 50 and 80 millimeters (2 to 3 inches) of rain today alone and us being one of the low spots on Highmeadow, there just isn’t anywhere for all the water to go and it is falling too fast to soak into the ground that has been saturated by 2 days of heavy rain!

Nick has finally gone to bed. I’m blogging and keeping and eye on the window well, bailing twice during the writing of this blog, but it seems to be filling more slowly each time. The heavy rain is supposed to tapper off around 2 am, but I don’t think I will stay up THAT long! I will bail once more before bed and just hope for the best. We have already moved stuff off the floor or out of the office...

So how on earth would you not go crazy with 40 days and nights of this??? After Hippos on Friday and Arks today, I sure seem to have animals on the brain!