What a day (and a half)

I knew this was coming, but yesterday, my car wouldn't start. Thankfully I have AAA, so the tow to the mechanic was free. I have a great repair shop, whose only downside is that they are too small to have anybody around to give me a ride to or from work. Mr W's dad was nice enough to lend me one of his cars, and my plan was to ask my coworker to help me get my car this afternoon.

Unfortunately, she was out today, so I ended up dropping off the borrowed truck and taking the bus to the repair shop. I have been lucky to not need public transit often, but it always reminds me of my first year of college, when I lived at home and took a bus down to Cleveland State University for classes. It started to rain a very cold rain about 5 minutes after I got into my car, and I was grateful for not having to do my car-getting in the rain.

At 170,000 miles, I asked the car guy, "when is it time to buy a new car?" He said my car is doing fine, has lots of life left in it, and that they'll tell me when that tipping point is reached where putting any more money into the car is a bad idea. It's good to have repair people you can trust.

The other thing that happened today is that I got the results back from the x-ray of my lower back. I had gone in on Friday, because my lower back starts to hurt after I stand for a while, and it's gotten to the point where it doesn't feel like I can stretch it out anymore to make it feel better. As these things go, they left a message on my home answering machine yesterday, which I didn't get until after the office closed.

It's so hard to read anything from "we've got the results from your x-ray, give us a call", so I tried hard not to read anything into it. The verdict: a low degree of bone degeneration (i.e. arthritis) in my hip, which I knew about and doesn't bother me, and what they called "mild scoliosis". Huh. As in a mild curvature of my spine. The recommendation is to get started on physical therapy and go back in a month or so.

Mild scoliosis? My initial reaction was something like, "That's awesome!" out of relief as much as anything else. It's been named and now is a dealable thing. I was thankful, but it's been a busy day and a half.