Sunday came upon me faster than I thought it would, I’d been waiting for it to come, but the excitement hadn’t kicked in cause the schedule was pretty full and there was always something ‘next’ to look forward to.  Sunday came though, and boy was I excited!  AAA (Amber, Aaron and Averie) took a nap after breakfast cause they were all knackered, when they got up, Amber and I got ready and headed out to Emily’s grandmothers house where we dropped the van off, hopped in to Emily’s car and set off for Ames, a town about 2 hours away from Cedar Rapids.

 

What was in Ames? Well, a Stephen Kellogg concert, that’s what!

 

If you’ve not heard of SK and the Sixers, you should think about checkin’ them out! They’re a little southern, a little rock and roll and much fun.  Their DVD cracks me up every time.

 

Shortly after we arrived in Ames and sussed out where the concert was being held, the 3 of us had dinner in Old Chicago (oh dear LORD that pizza was delicious – and happened to be located on S Kellogg Ave. which was a source of great amusement for us!) before we went on campus at the university and found the hall where the gig was happenin’.

The bar was smaller than I thought it’d be and after we said ‘Hi’ to Heather, we took up a spot right at the front next to the stage.

We watched both opening acts, the first one wasn’t so bad, but they weren’t great either, they were just ok – not really my kind of thing.

 

The second act, Sarah Watkins was very, very good.  It was the first time I came away from a concert with a CD from the opening act – that’s how much I liked her.  She wore cowboy boots and played the fiddle while singing at the same time and I enjoyed her music a lot.

By the time SK came on stage the place had filled up a bit and our prime location at the front had been snatched away from us as a couple of college guys muscled their way in front of us.  Amber quickly gave them a piece of her mind and the guy said he was sorry, apparently though, not sorry enough to move, at least not right away but progressively inched further from us as the night went on – I don’t blame him, Amber can be quite scary sometimes! LOL!

The concert itself was great, everything I’d hoped it’d be.  SK and the Sixers are great live and by the end of the night my cheeks hurt from laughing.  It’s rare I go to a gig and I don’t know the vast majority of the songs, but this time that was the case.  He did a lot of his new material off the album and I got to hear it for the first time – live.

‘Goose’ had split his finger the night before in Chicago, he’d spent a portion of the night in the ER but got stitched up and was ready to play – I have a feeling he was drugged to the 9’s and you could see at various points he was in pain but for the most part he didn’t let it bother him and his piano, tuba and other various instrument playing wasn’t affected in the slightest.

Boots also amused me during the gig, he spotted a guy in the audience that was a little over zealous in his love for the band and Boots was trying hard not to laugh at them.  SK’s fly was open for a good chunk of the gig until one of his fangirls in front of him informed him of it.

Speaking of the fangirls, let me tell you about them for a moment.  I guess cause we were in a small venue it made it easier to spot the crazies, but there were two girls directly in front of SK, so about 2 feet from him.

It was almost cartoon like and you could almost see the little love hearts coming out of them.  They stood gazing at him adoringly the entire time and really took groupies to a whole new level – I half expected them to bow down at his feet and worship him! Lol!

Non-band entertainment aside, the concert was great, we danced, we giggled, we heard new music and he did this awesome through the ages song mix thing where he sang Beyonce, Rhianna, the 1812 overture (for those classical musicians among us) and various other songs from the last century.  I loved it, came away with a T-shirt (as always) and his newest grooves on CD.

Monday was a day that made history in the chronicles of Las and Amber.  I took her advice! Agh! The sky is falling!!

Before I get to that, we started the day off with a trip to the Palisades State Park where we took a little walk up the trail snapping a bunch of pictures of little miss Averie playing in nature.

She kept pointing up and saying ‘tree’ and wanting to run off and explore.  It was such a beautiful park with great scenery and lots of picture-taking opportunities!

We spent close to an hour in there before we headed back in to Cedar Rapids for me to go get a massage.  The Cedar Rapids living social deal over the weekend was a ‘Skinny’ massage at 50% off which I decided to try out.  The site advertised a possible loss of between 1 and 3 inches after just one ‘wrap’ – who could pass that up with 4 weeks left to go to their wedding?

Amber and Averie dropped me off and I enjoyed a very relaxing massage – that was occassionaly painful as she hit points in my back that weren’t happy at me getting a massage!  The lady took my measurements before and again after, she said I’d lost 2.5 inches over the 3 places she took measurements from.  She also said if I keep drinking a lot of water over the next few days that there was a chance I’d lose more and drew little marks on my back to indicate where whoever measuring me should put the tape measure when they were measuring me.  Either way, I’d take any kind of inches lost for just lying there and relaxing really! LOL!

Amz had told me that the best time to go see the chiropractor is just after a massage (and after we got to the chiropractors office, he said the same thing).  It was my first time at a chiro, Amber has been trying since we met to get me to go get sorted out by a chiro and I’ve said no each time.  Don’t ask me why, cause I really have no good excuse!

Either way, better late than never I suppose, eh?

I talked through my back trouble history (spanning back 15 years so we took a while, leaving poor Amber stuck in the front room with a very patient Averie!), he had a feel (and told me he’s felt softer rocks than my muscles – and that was AFTER a massage).  He said he had an idea of what was wrong with me (sublexation?) and that he’d have to take a series of Xrays to see if there was anything he could do to help me.  He asked me to come back the next day, but Amber was working and I couldn’t get in to Cedar Rapids  (plus my back definitely needed a break) so we made an appointment for Wednesday and called it a day.

Tuesday I stayed home looking after little Averie while her parents went out to work.  We had lots of fun and she was a total angel – no kidding! She napped twice, ate all her food and played with Aunty Las and ‘melmo’.  It was great fun and she’s certainly come a long way from the last time I looked after her when she was fighting sleep with every ounce of her being!

Another first for me for dinner that night, when I tried Perogies for dinner (yummy) and I sat laughing while Averie ‘helped’ her mummy hollow out their pumpkins.  I wish I’d thought to grab the camera sooner than I did, because she was the most unhelpful that she could have been and it totally cracked me up!  Every handful Amber took out of the pumpkin and put into the bowl, Averie took 2 handfuls and put them right back in, not without taking a few bites of it first! Haha! Too funny!

Wednesday brought my follow up with Dr Harvey the Chiro God.  I wasn’t sure whether to be excited that he could cure me or terrified that he couldn’t.  I’ve suffered with back pain for so long now that it’s become routine and the appointment on Monday gave me hope that maybe I could get rid of some of the pain and as much as I wanted to cling to that hope a little, I didn’t want to be let down cause most of the Docs at home had said they couldn’t do anything for me when we discovered that the meds, physio and other treatments hadn’t worked.

When he opened his door he said ‘I know what your problem is’ and relief ran through me.  He showed me my X-rays and he didn’t have to tell me what was wrong with me, I could see it myself.  It’s never a good thing, when a person from a non-medical background can diagnose themselves from looking at an x-ray! Lol!

Either way he did a ‘test adjustment’ and told me how to find good chiro’s down in Houston, (which I did while waiting for my flight in Cedar Rapids for the record!).  He also told me that I have a medically perfect neck, which is rare and something he hasn’t seen in a long time.  He also told me that my head isn’t screwed on straight – to which I told him we all knew that already and not to tell Amber cause she doesn’t need any medical evidence for her argument!

The adjustment hurt a little, but he prepared me for it.  He told me it’d hurt during and probably after once my muscles cop on to the fact that things have changed in my back.  I’m a little achy as a result – funny enough on the opposite side to where I normally feel pain.

He did say that, left untreated, it could have become serious, life threateningly serious, so I guess I’ll add saving my life to the list of debts I owe Amber.  He also said that I’d have ended up with severe arthritis as early as 5 years from now and needing major surgery in 15 years which would have left me unable to bend much.  Scary stuff, I’m just glad I finally wised up and let Amber ‘bully’ me in to going to get sorted.  I hope this is the start of a nice recovery for me cause having a bad back isn’t fun and interferes with every day life more often than not.  I just wish Chiropractors were more accessible for people at home, I know at least I’d have benefited if my doctors had thought to refer me to someone like that when I was originally hurt.

When we’d finished with Dr Harvey, Amber and Averie dropped me off at the airport where I, while spending an hour before boarding, finally got around to making some pretty important phone calls, I called a dentist, registered and made an appointment, I researched Chiropractors nearby to my house and I made an appointment to go see my GP.  I also need to sort an optician but that can wait til I get home.

Home.

Now that I’ve left Iowa, it’s the only place I want to be and I’m impatient to get there.  I’ve missed Col, we haven’t talked a whole lot since I left and that’s unusual for us, he didn’t even know I had a chiro follow up this morning – we’ve both just been so busy and my signal is so poor in places up here that finding a time to talk properly has been tricky.  It does mean that I’m really looking forward to getting home for a cuddle though!

—–

Well, I finally got home to my hubby, the grin on his face when I walked up to the car in the waiting queue said it all.  In spite of being so busy and having so much fun in Iowa, I missed him a lot – we didn’t talk as much as we usually do and I’m glad to be home.

I got home to a seriously spotless house, he’d done the kitchen, the living room and our bedroom was immaculate! He’d pulled out the bed and wired all our ‘appliances’ through the proper holes in the bed,  the bed has holes in the shelf  for you to wire your electrics up through, so he connected our lamp, his phone charger, the stand alone fan and his laptop charger for when we watch TV online in bed.  He’d also tidied the entire bedroom and everything looked great.  It was so nice to come home to a wonderfully clean house!

Not only that but he cooked for himself every day that I was gone – it was great to see, it was even better when he told me that he lacked direction when I was away and he was glad I was home.

Since I got back, I’ve been suffering with my back aching.  I’ve been chewing painkillers, freezing ice packs and just trying not to aggravate it.  It’s totally turned my day upside down and Colin worked from home on Thursday and came home early on Friday, cause he insists I overexert myself when I’m at my most injured with my back, plus he knows I’ve not had tea for a whole week! LOL!

This weekend brings dinner with a friend we’ve not seen in a while, a lot of house and wedding work (apparently Col got a taste for cleaning and wants to keep the productivity going this weekend!) and a Grand Prix with Sam and Magz!

Until next time…