Staying humble isn’t usually a problem

Staying humble - with cats

Schrõdinger, checking in

…I have cats. There’s nothing like that gently authoritative paw on your throat to remind you that apex predators do live in your house – you just aren’t one of them.

This week, on the other hand, I managed to bounce from an office-borne plague to nearly immobilising myself with a cricked-up back, apparently brought on by sitting wrong (!). I’ve spent the last two days trying not to breathe too deeply and hobbling around the place at about a tenth of my usual speed, in the hopes of avoiding attracting attention from the muscles in my lower back.

That’s a bit of a SOB. Usually when I feel that bad, I’ve done something to earn it – fallen off a galloping horse, epically lost a fight… something. Managing to put myself out of order to the point where my colleagues are making golf cart jokes merely by sitting wrong is just embarrassing.

Staying humble part 2

Bandit, wondering what happened to the blanket

The cats didn’t mind in the least. A more-or-less immobile human having a pity party with books, tea, and blanket is a human staying still and giving off body heat. I’ve been napped on this past week to the point that when our company lawyer asked me how I’d ended up hobbling, I told him that going by the cui bono principle, I was blaming my cats. Not quite fair, as warm, sleepy, purring cats are the upside to being sick in my house.

Bandit is also the person in the house most likely to bounce from halfway up the stairs into the middle of the living room floor and then five feet to the top platform of his climbing tree in two jumps. The current theory is that he sold his soul for an immunity to gravity at a very young age. When you can’t actually stand up without swearing, that kind of thing is definitely a reminder not to get above yourself.

So, you may well ask, what was I doing while sitting (clearly) in the wrong position? Good question. I’m happy to say that my book review site is now completely updated, and I’ve even managed to tidy up some of the less necessary stuff here in my author site, which hopefully deflated the main menu from War and Peace territory to readable in a second or two.

The next project for sitting badly through is to finish up that novella that’s been hammering for airtime since October. (I have hopes that I won’t end up on painkiller for several days to get that done.) It’s very nearly there, and then, if I’m lucky, my brain will let me get dug into edits on Book 5 in the Cortii series.

Until then… here’s a toast to staying humble, and staying off painkiller.