Have a Cup

Things are proceeding, though not apace: the inspection was scheduled for this morning at 9:00 am, but the inspector called at 7:30 am, while I was in transit, to tell me that he had been up all night sick, he could usually work through being sick, but they were sticking an IV in him at the moment, and he was really really sorry. My agent said he was very apologetic with her, too. So, no big deal, we asked for an extension of the 5-day period, we rescheduled the inspection for Saturday morning, and I continue to take care of other bits (getting the last bits together for the mortgage; lining up homeowner's insurance; that kind of crap).

We may be looking at an early- or mid-April closing, which means my new place and my apartment lease would overlap for seven weeks or so, which is perhaps a little more than I'd like, but not enough to fuss about too much. Let's face it; I don't actually have a single thing packed yet, I don't have movers lined up (which I can't do until there's a closing anyway), and there may well be things I want to do in the new place that would be done more easily in an empty apartment. I'll take notes on that Saturday during the inspection, though offhand I can't think of much.

I am going to hire people to clean the place before I move in. I normally get squeamish at the thought of hiring people to clean my space--I've never done it, as a matter of fact--but I'm going to make an exception, I think. I may clean the carpet in the second bedroom (or tear it up). But I'm not going to do any painting or anything like that, and, even though I intend to replace the backsplash in the kitchen with handmade (by me) tiles, that's something that will have to happen over time, not something that can be done before I move in.

So, I'll try to ootch the closing date up a week or two--maybe mid-April or so--if it comes to that. The office people have already said it's unlikely the owners will let me out of my lease a month early, which means, fuck 'em, they'll get the keys at midnight on the last day, no matter when I move out. But none of this is all that important, in the long run.

For a complete change of subject, I had a new experience Tuesday: my acupuncturist treated me with cupping, rather than needles. The explanation of the supposed mechanism of action makes me roll my eyes--are you really going to claim that this procedure is drawing out unspecified toxins that are causing my back pain?--and it definitely looks weird. Did it "work"? Hard to say.

A year or more ago, I managed to figure out that I was most likely experiencing sacroiliac joint dysfunction, for which there are two treatments: (1) stab a needle full of novacaine into the joint, and, if it eliminates the pain, it confirms that it is a SI problem; repeat as necessary, because it won't stay pain-free, or (2) surgically bolt the spine to the pelvic bone. Neither of these necessarily works all that well, either. Needless to say, neither of these alternatives appealed to me at all, so I've been trying other strategies, mostly focusing on exercise and acupuncture. The January commitment to daily yoga was a part of that as well, and I was prepared to try physical therapy if none of these other strategies worked.

Back in September, my back pain was persistent, it often radiated down my leg, and I found myself taking ibuprofen nearly every day, sometimes multiple times a day. My initial exercise-plus-acupuncture effort at treatment (I resumed regular exercise after September, when my social life at the time kinda drew me away from it) definitely reduced the pain quite a bit, most of the time. Much as I personally liked the old acupuncturist, the one I started seeing in November/December seems to have done an even better job in further reducing or eliminating the pain. Since the beginning of this year, I've added a very small amount of yoga practice to the mix: I haven't stuck to the every-day part of the program, but I do it probably 4 or 5 days out of 7, and I've added some asanas to the original mix.

And I've gone from pain that sometimes shot up to a 6 (on a 10-point scale) and that was a least somewhat present at milder levels nearly all the time, to discomfort that mostly stays around the 2 range and often disappears completely. (The acupuncturist switched strategies/meridians a month or so ago, which made a noticeable difference.) I take ibuprofen or aspirin less often than once a week, maybe two or three times a month.

In other words, this strategy seems to be working. I rather doubt that any one part of it--yoga, exercise, acupuncture--would have done the trick completely, though of course there's no way to tell for sure. Frankly, I don't care. Sitting here right now, for example, I can "feel" my right hip--the whole joint, radiating very slightly down to my knee and around my back--but it's not stabbing pain, more of a very mild discomfort/awareness, mostly because I'm thinking about it, as opposed to the pain, which was unavoidable and intrusive. So did the cupping help? I have no fucking clue. On the other hand, if I go back to the acupuncturist and say, hey, this thing we're doing isn't working so well, he'll try something else, and it won't be any more intrusive than anything else we've tried, and it will be a fuckload less intrusive than a bolt in my hip, so, I say it's a win.