Laid Up

I'm still on the "inactive list" as far as one of my jobs is concerned. I'm back on for "light duty" at the other one, but only for about 5 hours of work per day. Of course, the physically demanding job thinks that if I've been cleared for 5 hours of "light duty" work, that the time should be split between the two jobs with 2.5 hours at each one.

I can see how they might think that as I'm sure nobody in the legal department has worked in the manual labor part of the company for many years (if ever) and probably assumes that "light duty" is similar to what they do. They are, of course, incredibly wrong on this point.

So today I faxed my "Report of Work Ability" sheet that the chiropractor gave me to all of my supervisors for both jobs. I included a note for the supervisor of the job I'm not currently at for him to give me a call when he got to work. However, it turns out he's on vacation this week as the call came from one of the other guys I work with.

He informed me that things are going fine there and that they are using "back" in their conversations as much as possible (referring to my back injury) and he thinks they might be up to using it about 1,000 times per night. I know they do this in good fun, and I'd be sure to chime in if it was one of them, so we laughed about that. He then told me that it looks like the company's legal dept. is sending a company nurse to one of my chiropractor visits this week.

I like to find the silver lining, and apparently he does as well, for we both jumped to the expectation that she'll be quite attractive and single. Helllooooooo, Nurse!!!

On other positive things that have come of this, my "mud room" entryway floor is the cleanest it's been in a really long time. I've found that I can wrap Velcro around my shoes and stick those dish scrubby pad things to the Velcro and use my feet to scrub the deep-down-dirt out of the linoleum, and then tidy it all up with a Swiffer Wet Jet...and no bending required!

Plus, I've decided that I should come up with a back brace that has a way to attach to a belt or goes through the belt loops so that it stays in place, and also has a pouch in back to slip in an ice pack. (I put this in here in hopes that someone else actually runs with that idea so that it's available if my back should ever go out again.)

Also, in my desire to not be useless, I've been thinking of ways to landscape "right" now so as to save myself from having to do future work. I have 20 railroad ties on my property that are waiting for me to move them to their permanent location in my grand landscaping scheme. I also have a stack of 40 or so bags of cypress bark. I'm not about to do anything with any of that until I've been cleared for work, but when I AM able to get back to the landscaping I'd like to attack the path I've been wanting to make. (This due to the huge half price Hostas I picked up that will go on either side of the archway. They should get in the ground before their roots get balled up any tighter.)

So my thought is this... If I were to take some of those floor mats that you find in the entryway to almost every business and apartment building (you know, rubber on the bottom and carpet on top) and line the pathway with those, the rubber should prevent a lot of the moisture from getting to any plant life underneath it - reducing the chance of "volunteer" vegetation poking out of the path. Plus, I'm hoping the sun's warmth would heat the mat enough for the rubber to torch whatever seeds are under the mats as they sprout. Then I can dump the bark chips on top of the mats and the thin bit of carpet should keep the bark from sliding out of place when being walked on, unlike what would happen if this was tried with landscaping plastic. Next, a little rock border to make sure the rugs stay weighed down and hidden, and it's time to add more plants to line the path!

I'm either so excited about this idea that I've wet myself...
or yet another ice pack has split open. Depends :)