Hope You Had a Happy Fourth!

Did you miss me? I've been a little busy lately, but I'm back.

Speaking of "back," that word has been on my mind lately, because my husband is dealing with that mid-forties standby, a bad back. In the last 15 years, he's hurt his back a few times. There was the time he had to pluck our son out of a slide at Discovery Zone a little too vigorously. (Did New England have DZs? Virginia and Texas did--they had nice indoor play areas for kids, but then they ran into financial trouble and--oh, never mind.) A few years earlier(pre-child), he went down a water slide at DisneyWorld and the water stopped coming out of the little jets, so he was pitched out of the slide. That's just plain weird. But in the past he's always recovered pretty easily, usually through exercise or walking.

This injury wasn't so dramatic. It came from cleaning out the basement--a little too vigorously. Lifting too many boxes into a dumpster in too short a time can apparently cause a twisted or wrenched back. He's seeing a chiropractor, but still in a lot of pain. Walking isn't good, and standing is hell. That meant our Fourth activities were somewhat constrained. We saw a couple of movies (sitting is okay most of the time for him) and we did take our son to the beach with a friend, where Jim stretched out on the sand while I watched the boys. Beautiful day, and with hotdogs and hamburgers from Foote's in Salisbury. Check it out if you're ever in that neck of the woods.

I love Salisbury State Beach--only $7 per carload for a daypass, with lots of parking, bathrooms, and sand. I would call it "undiscovered"--at least perhaps compared to Crane Beach--but then that would mean I was hallucinating the hordes of people who were there this weekend. So maybe "under-discovered" is the right word. In the spring, when it's nearly empty, it's an awesome place to fly a kite.