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How Hurricane Isaias Helped My Back

October 11, 2026

Sometimes I come up with wild ideas. Jared would say this is another of those times. Not the craziest, but up there.

I’ve been on the rampage for optimizing my back situation, and next up was bedding. The following happened as a happy accident due to the storm from Hurricane Isaias, actually.

There’s nothing wrong with our actual king-sized bed for most people; the frame is a lovely gifted set my aunt and uncle gave us that matches the end tables and the dresser. My uncle painted it all to match and it is a lovely ivory. We have zero intention with parting with it.

And the mattress itself is an Ikea mattress we picked up in early 2022, that is one of the firmer spring mattresses Ikea sells, and it has plenty of life in it.

But, I am terrified of storms. Terrified isn’t the best word; it’s the nearest approximation. PTSD-level afraid is more accurate. When I was 10 years old a tornado destroyed a hefty portion of our neighborhood. A house less than 100 yards away from mine was picked up, foundation and all, and jumbled up into the middle of the road.

That kind of picture sticks with a person. I can still see that house sitting in the dawn light, in rubble in the middle of the road, today.

So, when the bad weather with Hurricane Isaias was predicted for Friday night, I was scared to go to sleep. We stayed up until nearly midnight Friday night, and then I set an alarm for 1:50 AM, so I could monitor the weather.

And, I woke up a few minutes before my alarm went off, and, not bothering the sleeping Oliver and Jared, made myself a pallet on the bathroom floor in our room, my go-to spot for storm sleeping these days when I am feeling skittish.

And, I was pretty startled at the comfort level. My hips felt great, as in I was unaware that there was any problem until I laid down on that bathroom floor on my pallet of blankets. I woke up several times, but only because the blankets shifted revealing the cold floor.

But I got to thinking about how good the “hurt” is when I lie down on the floor for my physical therapy exercises, and then I got to researching.

And as it turns out, maybe floor sleeping is not a bad idea in my particular case.

I’d had to trash my yoga mats recently because of cat urine (unfortunate things happened when our cats were unhappier in earlier times), so Jared and I made the trip to TJ Maxx yesterday and I found a PurEarth Harmony Natural Rubber Yoga Mat for $29.99. It’s extra long, too, which is perfect for having room for my pillow.

And last night, I set up this pallet at the foot of our bed for myself, laying out a quilt doubled up over the yoga mat, and a quilt to lie under.

And I did wake up several times in the night, but I discovered at 5 AM that was because I was still cold. Once I grabbed the comforter from our bed at 5 AM, I slept soundly without waking until 8:30 AM.

I’ve discovered several things with this two-night experiment:

First, I can absolutely sleep on both my sides. In the bed, it is uncomfortable to sleep on my right side in any way. On the floor, it is actually more comfortable to lay on my right side than my left, though I can do both in my need to turn myself.

For a little while, I was able to lie there with my bean bag under my right side. Not all night, though.

And at 5 AM, I could feel a difference— a slight twinge of pain, a good sort of pain not injury-like, in my sternum, like it had been stretched out the way it craved to be.

And, before bringing that comforter to the floor for myself at 5 AM this morning, I figured out that my hips absolutely need the unyielding support of a harder surface. We have a firm mattress, but it felt like a soft, unsupportive pillow— a hammock of sorts— to my fused hips in comparison to the yoga mat pallet I made for myself. I had to move back to the floor after trying the bed.

And somewhere in the night, I could feel a good pain twinge in my lower back, a twinge of feeling I don’t normally have.

And laying on my right side on the flat floor, my left lower ribs absolutely are activated in a way that wakes them up. In a way that for once doesn’t feel fingernails-on-a-chalkboard-cringe like the hanging from the Swedish ladder in my bathroom does.

And, surprisingly, it is not hard even at 47 years old with a lifetime of just turning to get out of bed, to get myself off the floor when I need to get up.

And even more surprising: I felt more prepared to move around this morning than I usually do climbing out of the bed.

The cold seems to be the main problem to solve. I ordered myself a twin-sized down alternative comforter and duvet this morning, along with a twin-sized 300 GSM fleece blanket to add as the base layer in place of the quilt I used last night.

We’ve got long-term plans for making this a better long-term solution, too: Jared has long found that his tailbone hurts on our current mattress setup. He frequently has to go to another room or the recliner in the living room to sleep.

And, Porter’s room is large enough to accommodate our king-sized bed.

So, a switch may happen between Porter’s bed and our bed. If we re-orient the bed direction in the room to another wall and make the bed switches, there will be just enough room for me to set up my nightly pallet on the far side of the bed and not obstruct a walkway.

The good thing about never getting rid of anything, and being raised with a “musical furniture” sort of mindset in which furniture is just moved around even between households instead of gotten rid of and replaced, is that moving this stuff around is no biggie, and comes naturally.

And I don’t even have to worry about a miniature nightstand for my new setup, because my Rough Cut Designs mini stool is perfect for just this purpose.

And so…a hurricane may have helped my back long-term. We shall see.

Jared thinks I have lost my mind, though.
There is No Untwisting

October 9, 2026

None of it is glamorous. The pain is always there. I suppose it always was; I just had to get to be about 47 years old to become aware of it. Thirty-three years post-fusion of two-thirds of my back and I suppose it’s normal that my hips hurt all the time. They do have Harrington rods drilled deep into them.

I still use the stationary bike I bought in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, when I could no longer go to the rec center to get on the elliptical.

It takes active effort to hold my right shoulder back at all times, all waking hours of the day.

But, my small, little, limited workouts these days revolve around these tools.

The block is for balance exercises; I stand on one foot on it for leg extensions.

The bean bag and I are new friends but we are quickly developing a hate/hate relationship; its twin lives in the bedroom, for sleep.

There’s nothing special about the ball; it’s a kid’s bouncy ball I bought at Ingles.

And the two-pound weights are simple, but a repetitive part of the day.

The beanbag came from happysew.com. I had no idea before about 4 months ago that there were whole companies that specialize in scoliosis physical therapy devices. This is one of them.

It is not a happy thing. I’ve described my back situation before, but my thoracic curve is also twisting my ribcage such that my ribs both twist and a hump to the right.

My physical therapist wanted me to lie on my right side with this bag under horizontal under the apex of the curve of the hump.

I adapted it so that the bag lies under the worst part of that side as I lie on my back, because the hump also is beginning to protrude under my shoulder blades.

And she didn’t tell me to do this, but I adapted the floor flies she taught me a good while ago to lying on the bean bag while I do them…I do about 50 reps like that. And while I do the reps and lie this way, my knees are bent with the ball between them. And while I lie this way, doing the reps, I do the Schroth breathing exercises my physical therapist taught me…breathing in on the down, breathing out very slowly, as controlled as possible, visualizing inflating my left side, on the up.

And, it’s always a painful-ah-yes-I-had-no-idea-my-body-was-ill-contorted when I first lie down in that position. My right shoulder blade protests, my whole left side burns as it hasn’t realized it was collapsing, under the force of the internal stretch.

As I get further into the floor flies, it becomes easier to manipulate my left shoulder blade to make it protrude, so that my arms are more in the alignment they should be.

And, the longer I do these exercises, the more aware I become that my body is severely contorted inside, in ways I am helpless to correct at all.

Tonight I did the bridge pose reps my therapist likes me to do, with the bean bag under my right shoulder. That was a new kind of….I don’t know what.

My body is contorted in ways that may be invisible to people who see me in public; I don’t know.

It’s such an integral part of who I am that I can hardly imagine how it’s not written all over how I move, even.

And my hips hurt. And my right shoulder hurts sometimes. And my left side screams in protest when I attempt to stretch it out.

And I don’t use my Swedish ladder bars in the bathroom for the other part of the exercises as much as I should. Because I also sometimes sit on my legs, on the floor, in front of the ladder, and hang with my left hand about six rungs up, and my right hand about five rungs up, and hang with my whole weight resting on my hands, and also do those breathing exercises to try to inflate my left side. And as I do it, I can frequently feel the twist of my left ribcage.

It’s sort of a feeling akin to fingernails scratching on a chalkboard.

And I have a stool I keep beside the Swedish ladder bars, and there is a resistance band tied to it, and sometimes I do the one that is the hardest of all…about five breath’s worth…where I sit with my right side to the bars, and hold onto the bar at arm level, and lift my left arm above me, holding the resistance band, and, pulling the resistance band down, I breathe out the Schroth breathing at the same time. About five of these reps is about all I can do.

But, when I stand up from the floor fly exercises with the bean bag, or when I stand up from the hanging from the bars, miraculously…my shoulders are somewhat even.

And, when I’m feeling super-compliant with my physical therapy, I attempt to sleep on my right side with the beanbag horizontal under me in the bed. That one is difficult because, as the curve progresses, it becomes more difficult to sleep on my right side.

And, sometimes…just sometimes….when I lie on that right side with the beanbag under me just long enough…sometimes I can more easily feel the bottom left of my ribcage, a part of my body that seems to have thoroughly checked out of the human feeling experience whatsoever.

And when I just can’t lie on my right side anymore, I move to my back and attempt to sleep in the same position in the bed that I sleep with the beanbag under me for the floor flies, with it under my shoulder blade and right rib cage. It’s not as easy to sleep like that as one would think.

And, when I’m depressed, it all falls by the wayside, and I sleep on my left side, the weight of the world falling on my left ribcage that is willing itself to painlessly collapse.

At any rate, my entire internal scaffolding structure feels like it has been tested to limits tonight. And I am twisted, and there is no untwisting, and the best I can do is maintain and know the difference between hurt pain and normal pain, because the normal pain is just a baseline living now.

And truthfully, I don’t think about it most of the time.
Four Dollar Jeans

October 5, 2026

I ended up unplanned at the Buckhead Goodwill on Roswell Road yesterday, where I scored some mispriced, I found out from the cashier, Mavi Jeans brand jeans in great shape for $3.54– $3.85 including tax. I got home and they fit me perfectly. I hadn’t counted on them fitting, but I was grateful at that point the universe sent a win. I’d needed some new jeans but it wasn’t in the trying-not-to-spend-on-credit budget.

It’s hard to find four dollar jeans even at thrift stores these days.

And so, in discussing the day last night, Jared said that in the future, whenever I need a mental health code word, all I have to say to Jared is, “four dollar jeans,” and he’ll know exactly what is going on. Because it does happen that sometimes lengthy explanations of what I need are not appropriate.

I’m not sure why it took us 21 years of marriage to figure out a code word system might be called for in some situations.

Four dollar jeans. My new favorite pair of jeans are the perfect symbol for a mental health code word in our marriage.
Simple Rituals, A No-Spend Game, and Simple Routines

September 30, 2026

I’ve been playing a game with our finances since Sunday: No spending until Thursday, October 1. Jared had to get gas on Monday, which was unavoidable. Otherwise, we’re on track for the goal.

I track our income vs. expenses and we have spent $39.28 more than we brought in in September.

Fail. Spending more than we brought in has been a thing since March of this year and I tried to turn it around drastically in September. And it was a win by comparison, but we still were approx. $40 more than hoped for.

I suppose $40 in the grand scheme of two out-of-state trips in a month is still a win. Especially given the comparison to August.

Despite the no-spend game, Jared and I walked the entirety of Hobby Lobby, looking for things to make a new jute bag version 2.0 for me with. Guess what? We walked out with nothing, because I decided my jute bag cannot be improved upon.

A win— the no-spend game continued. I decided the jute bag can come back into rotation for limited runs, and the faux leather bag I bought at Robinson Salvage is sufficient for days I carry heavier things.

I’ve been playing the game of “how minimalist can I get with my photo grear?” And then I put the three autofocus lenses I have on my camera this morning and sadly, I cannot part with any of my remaining autofocus lens. I have pared my gear down to what I desperately want to keep and— admittedly first-world privilege— I don’t want to get rid of anything else.

I woke up at 5 AM this morning, an hour before my alarm was to go off. That was a win too; I like to be up for an hour-plus before everyone else in the house is up.

A load of laundry has gotten done. The laundry that has been sitting in the machines since before we left for Grinnell has been done and put up. The bed was made. Abby and the cats have been tended to. The snacks bag that we toted with us to Grinnell has been unpacked. I have sorted through most of my closet and bagged up a load for Goodwill.

A new thing: The last several days, I have compulsively had to change out of whatever I have been wearing out of the house, in favor of something more lounge-like, to get things done at home during the day. Even when it means changing back into whatever I was wearing later in the day. It seems to be a new routine.

And whatever that bizarre new ritual is doing, it’s working: it makes me feel better about my life.

This change probably started about a month ago when Jared encouraged me to buy acutal pajamas instead of just sleeping in my leggings.

Soon, I found myself changing into my jammies between 7:30 and 8 PM, or whenever we got home. I actually feel myself relaxing over the hour or so I wear them before actually going to bed.

But also: I am in the process of painting the interior of our house, and I don’t want to mess up my better clothes. So, changing into something I don’t mind messing up is a natural extension of painting and working at home right now.

I do feel more relaxed at home when I am wearing more relaxed things though— I even take my socks off and wear my house shoes.

I don’t know if this is helping my psyche long-term, but I do know that I gravitated toward the bedroom between 9:15 and 9:30 PM last night, not even worrying about whether Jared was coming to bed, to read my book. And I slept all night, and I woke up this morning before my alarm even went off.

I’ve also drastically simplified my hair maintenance, probably alarmingly-so to most people. I’m using my Trader Joe’s 3-in-1 shampoo, body wash, and conditioner on it, and that’s it.

I noticed in Grinnell, with the monsoon-like rains, that my hair had more body after it had gotten wet and re-dried. I hadn’t taken my normal hair products with me, and I had let my hair air dry after I got out of the shower. As a girl with mostly flat, easy-to-get-oily hair, I don’t mind what most people would call frizz. I guess it was frizz. I brushed it out and it was wavy again after the fact, with the right amount of body.

But after observing how my hair reacted to the rain last week with nothing else in it, I tried an experiment yesterday: I went back to only squeezing my hair out after my shower yesterday to let it air dry without touching a towel to it at all. I didn’t comb it or brush it until it was completely dry.

I also emptied out the old Trader Joe’s rose water spritz bottle I had, cleaned and washed it out really well, and put some distilled water in the bottle.

Ta-Da! Same effect on a regular day at home. I let it air dry, combed and brushed my hair out, and spritzed some of the distilled water, and it bounced right up just like after the rain.

My hair has an entirely different consistency without products in it, for the better in my opinion. I braided it loosely for bed last night and made it safely into Day 2 without needing a wash. I just spritzed it with the distilled water this morning, and there was the right volume again.

Letting my hair go bare also highlights exactly how delicate my particular hair is. I’ve been far too hard on it over my lifetime, and it seems to love a no-heat lifestyle.

I’ve mostly settled into relaxing about being the parent of young adults now that we’re home and getting back to a regular routine. Liam says his boots are still perfect; the second winter coat I ordered originally meant for Liam has arrived and is now set aside for Porter. Oliver is back on the Gold Team for E-Sports and we’re working on getting into a homework routine— it took till seventh grade but he can no longer avoid homework, much to Oliver’s dismay. Thankfully, Jared tracks Oliver’s Infinite Campus regularly and hounds Oliver when there are missing assignments, because it would all fall by the wayside if left to me.
Parents Weekend: Life as a Helix, Not a Circle

September 27, 2026

I am drafting this at 5:44 AM Sunday morning, September 27.

Parents and families weekend was a whirlwind. It was a whirlwind schedule-wise; it was a whirlwind emotion-wise.

We have been to Iowa enough— and covered enough familiar geographic Iowa area enough especially this trip— for me to figure out that my emotions are a tangled mess every time I am here mostly having nothing at all to do with our child coming to college 900+ miles away from home.

We took Oliver to Iowa City yesterday and got off at the exit Jared took to get to the University of Iowa Hospital the morning I accompanied him to class because I was in the midst of a miscarriage, in September of 2005. I could remember the severe cramping as we came down a particular hill; Jared didn’t make it to class because we ended up in the ER that particular morning as I passed the “conception material” on that drive.

Thank goodness for my good memory; I remembered as we passed the Coralville mall that Scheel’s is a major sporting goods store. So, we left Liam with a perfectly great Columbia heavy down winter coat and a brand new pair of Keen’a boots so his feet will not be constantly wet in the boggy mess that is Iowa weather a lot right now. Porter will inherit the coat I ordered to have shipped home to send to Liam because his winter coat is not that great and I was able go cancel the original shoe order.

My baby won’t be too cold or wet this winter.

We left him with a tray-mat for his wet things, some more coat hangers, a Nerf gun to add to his collection for the ever-important Nerf wars that happen in one of the classroom buildings after hours.

He took us on a tour of Burling Library, including the completely silent 4th floor. Oliver got to thoroughly explore the jungle gym study area.

Liam took Oliver to his dorm room, and Oliver said Liam lit up when it was just the two of them. I’m beyond thrilled that they had that brother time— it means we did something right. Oliver got to see the entire Nerf collection.

We got to have Z’Marik’s for lunch in Iowa City, one of our favorite restaurants in Iowa City and Des Moines.

Liam wrote a whole paper while we were there, so we had down time. We took a ride to Des Moines on Friday night and Oliver got to see the state capital of Iowa at night, and we drove him by the nearby State Historical Society of Iowa where I volunteered in the Archives and Reading Room during my pregnancy with Porter— I helped them transition from Dewey Decimal to Library of Congress systems.

It is utterly incomprehensible, the amount of living Jared and I packed into the two newlywed years we lived in Grinnell.

And all this circles back to my self-adopted tagline “a girl obsessed with time.” Time loops over on itself when life intersects with geography over and over again.

It was like that in 2007 when we moved back to the West Georgia area after I had left in 1998.

It was like that in 2023 when we started going to church in Atlanta and I started spending more time in the city, having backed off city trips other than medical in 2008 or so.

And it had been like that coming back from Iowa to the metro Atlanta area, having been away from 2005 to 2007.

And now, here we are exploring our newlywed stomping grounds from 2005-2007 in 2026.

I’m introspective by nature. It’s who I am. And I don’t know if it has to do with having family roots across north Georgia from the early 1800s or if it is just my personality, but I have deep ties to place as identity.

And somehow, in 2026, after feeling most of my adult life like I do not belong anywhere— and worse, feeling like my most important moments have been geographically fragmented in ways I cannot describe any better:

In 2026, it occurs to me that the circular life circumstances are creating integration within my psyche in ways I couldn’t have planned any better if I had actually tried to plan all these geography changes out thirty years ago, which would have been impossible.

Throughout my life I’ve had odd twinges that a higher power was looking out for me; this coming-together of time and place across my lifespan feels like one more instance of cosmic gifts.

I asked Oliver if he could imagine Jared and me living in Grinnell and he said, “Um, no.”

Jared got to see many of the people he would like to have seen if given the opportunity in Grinnell this weekend.

Liam is fine; I worry but it is my job as mom. We met some of his good friends and their parents and I exchanged contact info with one of the moms. He is starting to think about next summer plans and is utilizing as many resources as possible.

And so: we are on the way back to our lives, leaving Liam to his.

This morning as we approached Highway 218 to turn south on I-80, all of a sudden it was 2004 and it was just me and Jared in the car on an early morning drive to get me to the airport in Moline for an early morning flight.

And briefly Friday night it wasn’t Friday night at all; it was a late Wednesday night in 2006 when we were heading back to Grinnell after handbell choir at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Des Moines.

Maybe time and geography are more like my curvy, scoliotic, rotating spine in my life— more like a helix, circling in on itself but never quite meeting in the same spots over again. Not a circle.

How Hurricane Isaias Helped My Back

There is No Untwisting

Four Dollar Jeans

Simple Rituals, A No-Spend Game, and Simple Routines

Parents Weekend: Life as a Helix, Not a Circle