I have made it through today without muscle relaxants or pain meds. PT went ok, including dry needling. Tush is sore, but I'm walking with less of a limp and MUCH less pain. Tomorrow I plan to return to work... hopefully full time.

Once again Prednisone to the rescue. I HATE the drug beyond all reason but it is effective. We will just ignore the metric ton of cheese I've eaten recently or the pan of brownies that is almost gone.

Prednisone is absolutely a drug one has a love/hate relationship with. Good to hear it was a much better day.

I'm home finally. Got here Saturday eve. I had a nice trip down the coast after the day I left Eugene. I was counting on getting a campsite without a reservation near Coos Bay, which was not happening at all. I cried when the park ranger told me I was about the 15th person that day who had hoped get a vacant campsite. I was mad at my niece, mad at myself, frustrated, and I just drove and drove until I couldn't drive anymore, and checked into a Motel 6 at Gold's Beach just before midnight. It had a TV! First one I had seen in three weeks!

Everything after that went pretty well. If anybody ever wants tips about Brookings, Oregon, I haz them, good ones. Spent a couple days in Brookings, a couple of days in Eureka, camped overnight in the wine country near the Navarro River, came home by way of Healdsburg, a wine destination town. Lily has been glued to my side, which is sweet. And I still think of Java several times a day.

Thanks for your kind words. I don't get the niece, am not going to, and that relationship is done.

I spent the entire day today in bed reading, doing some more laundry, which I've been doing for days. I always have this burst of energy when I'm leaving on a vacation, and I need to reclaim some of that energy to get things done that need to happen before winter. Tomorrow maybe.

Speaking of winter, I decided to watch first ep of the last season of The Game of Thrones. I've had such fun reading stuff online about it. I have HBO, and there has to be an article somewhere on the essential episodes from past seasons. It would be fun to catch up while this last season is unspooling, but I'm not going to watch 60 hours of TV either.

I need to start going to yoga again, and to start swimming. I can't spend every day lying in bed reading, as decadently luxurious and lazy it is.

Does soaking in hot water help any of your pains, folks with pains? This is the seventh year of dealing with IC, Interstitial cystitis, and I'm more pain free than not, which is awesome. My go-to is always soaking in a hot tub. It's probably burning out cells in my brain like crazy, but it seems to help everything else. Curious if it's anybody else's panacea.

Does soaking in hot water help any of your pains, folks with pains?

I make a circuit through the warm, hot, and cold pools at my local (three blocks away!) lady spa, and then soak for a few hours in the warm pool while I read a book. It helps with a lot of my pain, which is why I finally gave in and bought a yearly membership.

A whirlpool helps with my pain some, but just a regular hot bath doesn't do much. (A whirlpool is on my mental list of things I will get when I am rich enough to own my own house and do renovations. Along with completely remodeling the kitchen so that I can actually reach things.)

Mmm sounds nice. The only places I know where you can do that are Harbin hot springs, which burned down, the Calistoga spa Inn, which changed its policy on day passes, and Breitenbush, way up in the Oregon Cascades between Bend and Salem.

Jackson Wellsprings kind of has that too, the hippie hot spring near Ashland. They don't have a cold pool but their mineral water is warm not hot, and then they have a hot pool that they heat up.

I'm totally into hot tubs and Hot Springs, but baths kind of gross me out. I guess because they're not deep enough or something, they seem inadequate, and then there's the annoyance factor of having to take a shower after you have a bath to wash off skin or dirt or whatever just soaked off your body. The private hot tubs here, it's mandatory to take a shower before you get in them, then I take one after also. Breitenbush dumps their water once a day and replaces it, which is how I got over the squick factor of people not showering before getting into their Pools.

The only thing that's going to get me out of this house is a hot tub, or maybe a movie, or maybe I'll just wait and go to yoga tomorrow morning.

Welcome home, Java! Sounds like mostly a lovely trip. And yeah, the Cat Java will be on your mind a fair bit for a while.

At the lady spa, it is mandatory to shower before going in the pools, and to shower after any scrub or massage service. And I shower after soaking, just so I don't smell like chlorine.