It’s been a rough few weeks.  No, wait.  Hear me out.  I know you’ve had your shit, too. And usually my shit is pretty trivial, like football assholes and the bitch who stands behind me at the gym for way too long because she’s just trying to see how many calories I burned during my hour on the elliptical.  God, I hate her.

Okay, fine.  Now that I see that in writing, my problems seem rather piddly but it really has been a rather sucky last few weeks.  I will explain.

E needed new shoes so we went shoe shopping one Sunday about a month ago.  He ended up with a pair of dress shoes, a pair of casual work shoes, and a pair of casual canvas slip-on loafer things.

I’ll admit, we debated over the canvas slip-ons because we felt they were flirting with that “I’m a total douchebag” line in the shoe sand.  The Douchebag shoes did look cute with the khaki shorts he was wearing.  I told him to throw caution to the wind, try something new.  Go crazy.  If I can have magenta/red hair, he could have his brand of crazy.  Do you, baby.  Do you.  He got so caught up in the frenzy of the moment, he wore those fuckers out of the store and we even went to lunch at the Cracker Barrel.  Not one person mocked him.  Of course, it was Cracker Barrel on a Sunday but I felt the outing was a good test run.  A Friday night virgin run to the Cracker Barrel could have been met with disaster.  I’ve found the Sunday crowd much more tolerant of personal deviances.

But I digress.

It was about a week later when this crazy footwear lifestyle choice came crashing down around us.  E’s foot/ankle/pretty much entire leg area became incredibly angry with him while he was out of town on business.  E blamed the weekend time spent in the Douchebag shoes.  I mean, it could have been solely the Douchebag shoes’ fault but to be fair, E was gallivanting around the country, riding airplanes in plush coach seats and all the other Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous trappings, you know?  But because I’m a judgmental asshole, I still gave the Douchebag shoes the evil side eye every time I saw them by E’s side of the bed that whole week due to the pain they had inflicted on E, who was hobbling all around Seattle.  Douchebag shoes didn’t seem to have a fuck to give but I carried the torch of hate for them anyway.

Landon turned 18 a few weeks ago so to celebrate, we took him to Six Flags over Georgia.  E was scheduled to be back home on Friday so the plan was that the kids and I would pick him up at the Birmingham airport and drive straight to Atlanta for the Birthday weekend.  Due to the airline completely shitting themselves yet again, E re-routed to Atlanta and that’s where the kids and I had to collect his hobbly ass from.

Now, I’ve heard horror stories about the big bad Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.  E has discouraged me from flying out from there in the past, in fear that just getting into Hartsfield would eat me alive.  E was worried about me driving solo with the kids to pick him up.  My friend Kari recently wrote a hilarious blog post about making her way out of Hartsfield.  All this hullabaloo and the kids and I made it there, for the most part sane and unscathed, through Friday rush hour Atlanta traffic.  I didn’t even have to turn around to get back on track at any time.  I didn’t throw my phone out the window in a fit of rage.   Honestly, I think E and Kari may be pussies.  I’m not sure what other theory I can go with here but I still love you both.

I knew E was sporting a new shoe injury but I truly didn’t anticipate how bad it was.  Mostly because he’s a trooper and rarely complains, rarely goes to the Doctor and all that other potentially life saving nonsense.  If I would have picked him up at the Birmingham airport, we would not have went to Six Flags that weekend.  I wouldn’t have let him.  But there I was in Atlanta, watching my husband hobble to the back of the SUV to stow his luggage, thoroughly shocked he wasn’t being supervised by an airline employee, sitting in a wheelchair with an afghan over his legs.

I suggested that we postpone the Six Flags trip. E declined but it was obvious he could not walk around Six Flags so we decided to rent a scooter.  Shut up, scooters are bad ass.  He even had a little basket in the front.  Baby got front, y’all.

I can’t believe it but I did not get one picture of E on the scooter probably because I wanted to walk out of the park on my own two legs and not be forced to ride a scooter of my own.  Of course, my scooter would have been all black due to the slimming properties of that color.  No basket, either.  Baskets make me look fatter.

We were being troopers, scooting around the park as fast as we could, trying not to run over anyone, E ignoring my nursing home jokes, when a park attendant approached us and suggested we go to Guest Services to be issued an ADA pass for the day.  We didn’t have a Doctor’s note or anything, I guess we just looked pretty dismal all on our own.  We told the sweet chick at Guest Services what the ride attendant told us, she issued us an ADA pass for the day, and we walked (well, E scooted) away very thankful but confused.  Turns out, the pass would keep E from walking and standing in line so much and was pretty much like an express pass.  It saved our day and we got to ride every big roller coaster in the park.

And that’s how I got all fucked up.

I’ve been on lots of mammoth coasters, mostly over the last several years as I began to lose weight.  I beat back my panic attacks every single time.  Sometimes you can actually see outward signs that I’m fighting an internal battle with my head.  E and the kids let me know where the exit is when we get stuck at a standstill in a tiny ride que.  If I know the way out, I’m usually okay.  I hate being restrained to the point I can hardly move but most of the big rides these days have to have a restraint system like that.  Because safety.  I ride as a challenge to myself but to also teach my kids that fear can be defeated. Okay, maybe because I want them to know that I’m cool and totally not a pussy.  But mainly for the noble “You are bigger than your fears” stuff.

That day at Six Flags, I was totally not a pussy.  There were some really unique rides, types of coasters we had not experienced before.  I made it through the Scorcher, where you ride standing up.  Standing up!

I rode Superman (insert your own joke here), which puts you into a horizontal position so you can feel like, well, Superman.

That is some crazy ass shit, y’all.  And I loved both of them.  I walked away uninjured.  Then this one got me.  The Mind Bender is like a watered down Shock Wave, for you Texas readers.  In sexual terms, it’s pretty much vanilla, missionary style sex in the coaster world.

Mind Bender could sense I was going to diss it because somewhere along the ride, I felt my back tweak.  You know what that means.  Your back says “Oh, hell no, stop this shit right the fuck now” and because I was on a roller coaster, as vanilla and missionary as it was, I couldn’t exactly do anything to stop it.

I got off the ride and mentioned to E that my back wasn’t happy but I made it without any problems the rest of the day.  A few days later the back pain set in, on the center right hand side.  I took it easy, didn’t work out, babied the injury.  E bought me a heating pad (shut up) and it’s been priceless.  Pretty much, I’d take the kids to school, then come home and do as little as possible, attached to my heating pad.  The pain then seemed to move down to my lower back but it was getting better.  I resumed workouts but took it pretty easy, only burning about 300 calories each time.  I thought I was getting back in the saddle.

And then my ass started hurting.  Like my right butt cheek, right where your waist stops and your ass starts.  I whined to E.  I whined via writing to my friend Lulu, who’s states away and can’t do crap about it, but she’s been supportive and helpful.  We even contemplated producing heating pad covers for decrepit rockers like myself.  Cool covers with skulls and other bad ass symbols on them so we don’t come off so… pussy.  E pops my back every night and although that feels awesome, he really can’t pop my ass (I heard that, btw, and do you kiss your Mama with that mouth?).

After doing some research, I’m pretty sure I have Piriformis Sydrome.  Before you get all riled up and start a charitable foundation for me and apply for grant funding to produce a cure for this horrible syndrome, let me tell you what it is.  Basically, one usually gets Piriformis Syndrome by sitting on their ass too much.  That’s right.  I’ve sat on my ass so much the last couple weeks, I’ve pissed my Piriformus muscle, a muscle I didn’t even know existed, right the hell off.  It’s so, so angry.

So I’m going back in, my friends.  That’s right.  My ass is going to get the horns now.  No more fiddle dicking around.  Besides certain targeted stretching, which I’ve been doing, there doesn’t seem much else can be done except give it time but I want my ass back, damn it!  I have scheduled a deep tissue massage for myself this Thursday morning.  You’ll recall my last deep tissue massage did not go as planned.  As I told E about my scheduled massage, I could hear him laughing all the way from Los Angeles.

Totally unrelated, I’ve thrown away all of E’s shoes except for the Douchebag shoes.  It’s a surprise for when he gets back home.  He’s walked normally for a couple weeks now so he has no right to bitch.

Also, for those of you who guessed 2015, you can go ahead and cash in on your winnings for nailing the year that I eagerly and without hesitation paid good money to have my ass roughed up by a stranger.

Final words of wisdom, don’t sit on that ass of yours for too long lest you piss off your Piriformis.  Icy Hot isn’t an aphrodisiac and it isn’t cute.  It smells like that paste glue I stealthily consumed in grade school.  Learn from my mistakes.  And for God’s sake, put those white shoes and pants away.  It’s after Labor Day!  Have some pride in yourselves.  If yours weren’t packed away by the end of yesterday, you shame me and Jesus is crying right this very minute.

Have a good week, y’all!