For the last two weeks my back has hurt horribly bad. I mean, I typically always have back pain. I have scoliosis which has caused me quite a bit of pain since I was about 11 years old. Scoliosis is a hereditary spinal deformity. I have an S-curve as well as twisting at the top and the bottom of the S-curve. It's actually severe enough that I'd shrunk an inch two separate times while in middle school (my arms also measure 5'5" from fingertip to fingertip but I'm only 5'3"). So I've always had a lot of back pain and muscle spasms...but this pain felt different. And then a few days ago, the pain started radiating down my leg and that's when I finally realized that it was sciatica. :( It does seem to finally be letting up a little bit. Friday night I was up all night long. I could not get comfortable because of the pain radiating down my leg and none of my meds were helping at all. The only thing that really helped me sleep after that was laying on an ice pack. I'm still having trouble sleeping, but it's better than it was. It has definitely been making it hard to concentrate on anything.
Luckily I was feeling a little better today because we had plans to celebrate my (early) birthday with my family. :) My mom had purchased a Groupon for some discounted miniature golf here in town and thought it would be something fun to do for my big 40th birthday coming up. My parents stopped by about an hour before to get the food and everything set up at our house. My mom made meatballs and cheesy potatoes...my favorite! :) Then we all met over at mini golf. Since there was a 5-person limit per group, we broke up into 3 groups of 4. My dad played with my 2 nieces and Aubry. Then it was me, Johnny, Ashlyn, and my sister in another group. And then my brother-in-law, my mom, and my grandma and grandpa were in the last group. They didn't have any scorecards available but we didn't mind...we were just there to have fun. :) We picked a perfect day for it...the weather was mild and cloudy. There was quite a bit of wind that helped keep us cool as well. I went ahead and wore my mask so that the wind wouldn't trigger my trigeminal neuralgia pain though. Then after we were done, we headed back to our house. I opened my presents and then we ate dinner and chatted for awhile. My mom picked up individual ice cream cake cups from Dairy Queen...they're awesome! My grandma found them there last year. It's so convenient not to have to cut the ice cream cake. Just as we were finishing up getting mom's car loaded, it started pouring down rain. But at least it held off until then and it made for some really nice weather while we were miniature golfing. It was just a really lovely day and everyone had a good time. I took a few pictures while we were playing miniature golf. This is one of the pictures where I got *almost* everyone in it. My brother-in-law, Tyler, isn't in the photo and you can only see a little bit of my dad...but it's the best one that I got. My mom and sister took a lot of photos as well but I haven't seen those yet. :)
My birthday is actually in a couple weeks. That afternoon I'm going to go shopping with my mom and grandma and then we're gonna pick up McAlister's on the way back to my house. I really love their grilled chicken Caesar wraps. So I'm looking forward to that too. :)
Today was the first time we've had a group of people in the house and I was curious how Bozley and Nova would do...but they were great. They were excited at first, of course, but they calmed down pretty quickly after they said hi to everyone.
Oh, and despite Nova and Bozley not wanting to adhere to the whole "Nova needs to rest after surgery" thing, she seems to be healing well. :) Her incision looks good. They shaved a really large area of her belly in a perfect rectangle, but her hair is starting to grow back and it's less prickly now. ;) Biggest puppy news is that Bozley is finally eating his food! We've had such a hard time finding a food that picky dog will eat. Nova is on the food Bozley was originally on...Purina Pro Plan Sensitive Skin and Stomach. We've tried SO MANY different foods with Bozley. We found The Honest Kitchen dehydrated food that you mix with water to make a wet food...and he liked that for a little while. So then we tried The Honest Kitchen dehydrated kibble...and he liked that for about a week too. BUT...I figured out that it helps to feed Nova some food out of his bowl and then he'll eat it. LOL. He'll even eat the Purina food that he used to be on when I do that! So I've started switching up his food a little bit each week between the three types of food. I've been watching to make sure he doesn't get diarrhea or anything from the three different foods, but so far so good! Nova has never had a problem...she gets so excited when it's time to eat! She stands right next to me watching me scoop the food and then runs over to the kennel and jumps right in to wait for me to bring it to her. It's so cute. :) She has to eat in the kennel because Bozley eats super slow and she would eat all his food when she's done with hers if she wasn't in the kennel. :P We also stopped feeding them while we're eating. I started feeding them earlier so they're done eating before we get our food...since Bozley tends to be more interested in our food than his own. So I think that has helped a lot, too.
Now if we could just get them to not be so rowdy around the cats. :P