My fingernails are finally clean, though

I stayed home today because I can barely move.

I woke up yesterday, thrilled because I finally got to assemble my pot project - one I have been looking forward to for nearly a year. (I found this thingy at an antiques shop in a touristy little fringe town, but I needed to wait until spring to plant anything in it.)

I woke up eager to start, having aquired the plants in advance, Iwas able to jump right in. I guess my girlfriend wanted to play with dirt, too, because all of a sudden, we had decided we needed to have a flower bed in the backyard, too.

While she dug up the sod, I built my flower tower. (How you ask? Well very carefully, that's for sure! Har har... No really - its a cool little pole-like gadget that you basically string the pots on... I fell in love with it the first time I saw it.) Anyhow, she spent most of her time doing hard labor, whereas only a fourth or so of my time was spent doing any heavy stuff. If anyone should've been down for the count, it should've been her, not me.

Eleven hours and only one additional trip to Lowe's later, we had: my amazingly cool little pot project with at least twelve varieties of blooms, a few other freshly potted plants, and, of course, lovely a 15 foot flower bed complete with 3 gardenia bushes, one spiffy new hibiscus, and one formerly potted veteran hibiscus.

It feels great to have accomplished so much, but I really feel old today. I have this back injury from over 10 years ago (a herniated something - sound like an old person yet?) that still incapacitates me once in while, usually when I do something stupid. I hadn't thought I'd been that stupid.

Maybe 11 hours was a little stupid.

So here I am, where one hard day's work sends me hobbling stiffly toward the emergency pain killers...

Ugh.

But isn't it all so pretty?