Finish Lines

My life feels like a series of mini finish lines at the moment. As all these wonderful things loom in the future, I am attempting to marathon it out, mentally, until I get to them. People say that you should just stop and enjoy the experience you are going through and don't wish for the future things overly much. I think people are stupid. :) If you can find me one person out there who is working in 12 hour shifts in a high stress, high intensity job who is also trying to deal with eating healthy (no, Louisiana, everything does NOT have to be fried or put into a cream based sauce...whole grains and steaming veggies is a positive thing!) and deal with a lower back injury at the same time, and they love it, then I would love to talk to them.

However, until such a person is found, I will continue to marathon. Thursday is generally crew change day, so that is one of my countdowns. 96 more hours of working is gone for good. Since my hitches are generally 28 days, the first 2 weeks are ok, the 3rd week is pretty demoralizing (poor Adam having to talk to me on the phone), and then the 4th week passes by pretty well until about 2 days from getting on the helicopter. Then time crawls. Every morning (well, 4:30 pm for me) I am so excited because most of a day just disappears while I have slept. I also have longer countdowns; the day I get off the rig (7th of Feb!), my last time I have to leave Adam to fly to work (Feb 15), tentative, almost 100 percent leaving date (March 17), moving home (March 24), and then I think I am going to just relax after that, even though there are more exciting things coming up as well.

Back things. I have been in pain for a good while now, and officially understand that I am not invincible. I have spent most of this hitch on the rig trying to find a good balance of pain killers to take, the most comfortable position to sleep in, exercises that won't leave me limping afterwards, etc. I can actually really sleep in any position, it is just getting up and dealing with moving afterwards that is the problem. I have a trainee out here doing all of my heavy lifting which is nice. It means that even though nothing is getting better, at least it is not getting worse.

Our crew change is on a different day for the next couple of weeks. Tuesday, which is the glorious day of tomorrow, however tomorrow only marks the end of 2 weeks and 5 days, out here, so this next week is my last on the rig (unless the drs say I can come back). It will probably be a tiring day, because I will be on tower for approx 16-17 hours or so waiting for my relief to get here. Just another tiny finish line in my world of finish lines.

Random coolness of the day: Foam Rollers! We have two on the rig and I've started using them. They kinda help. http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=9911

Love you guys,

Becca