![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Sometimes distractions get out of hand
Jul. 22nd, 2013 07:28 amLast night I was tired so I went to bed at a reasonable hour for me, around 1am.
But I had a flareup of sciatica. Took ibuprofen but it wasn't doing anything. No way to lie that didn't hurt, no stretching helped. I was able to sit, so I took up the book I was about halfway through, Truth in Advertising, by John Kenney. After two hours of no change I took a dose of acetaminophen. While waiting for that to work, I kept reading.
And the book took off. I chose it from browsing, and it turned out to have a theme similar to the book before last that I had read (man approaching 40, looking disparagingly at his life as he's lived it so far). I had chosen it partly because of the pull quote it uses on the front flyleaf, but it turned out that that was truncated before it got to the meat of it. Here's the full paragraph:
F. Scott Fitzgerald said that there are no second acts in American lives. I have no idea what that means but I believe that in quoting him I appear far more intelligent than I am. I don't know about second acts, but I do think we get second chances, fifth chances, eighteenth chances. Every day we get a fresh chance to live the way we want. We get a chance to do one amazing thing, one scary thing, one difficult thing, one beautiful thing. We get a chance to make a difference.
When another two hours had passed from the acetaminophen dose, I took another single ibuprofen. And finished the book. That was around 5:30am. I was finally able to lie down without pain, but was too keyed up from the book to sleep. I got up to feed the cats and have written this, and I feel like my eyes are too gritty to blink well, and my body is put together just off-kilter. You know, usual insomnia hangover. Not sure if it's worth trying to sleep now or just get up.
But I had a flareup of sciatica. Took ibuprofen but it wasn't doing anything. No way to lie that didn't hurt, no stretching helped. I was able to sit, so I took up the book I was about halfway through, Truth in Advertising, by John Kenney. After two hours of no change I took a dose of acetaminophen. While waiting for that to work, I kept reading.
And the book took off. I chose it from browsing, and it turned out to have a theme similar to the book before last that I had read (man approaching 40, looking disparagingly at his life as he's lived it so far). I had chosen it partly because of the pull quote it uses on the front flyleaf, but it turned out that that was truncated before it got to the meat of it. Here's the full paragraph:
F. Scott Fitzgerald said that there are no second acts in American lives. I have no idea what that means but I believe that in quoting him I appear far more intelligent than I am. I don't know about second acts, but I do think we get second chances, fifth chances, eighteenth chances. Every day we get a fresh chance to live the way we want. We get a chance to do one amazing thing, one scary thing, one difficult thing, one beautiful thing. We get a chance to make a difference.
When another two hours had passed from the acetaminophen dose, I took another single ibuprofen. And finished the book. That was around 5:30am. I was finally able to lie down without pain, but was too keyed up from the book to sleep. I got up to feed the cats and have written this, and I feel like my eyes are too gritty to blink well, and my body is put together just off-kilter. You know, usual insomnia hangover. Not sure if it's worth trying to sleep now or just get up.
