On Sunday July 8th I pulled a back muscle, possibly through coughing, since I wasn't doing any lifting. I've always had aches & pains, including arthritis, but I find back pain hard to deal with, it's so central & seems to affect every other part of the body. It's not possible to annex it like I do when my foot is hurting. One must hold their body differently when walking & sitting, it throws off my center of gravity & makes me clumsier than usual. I also discovered back pain makes me very, very irritable. It's not completely gone now, but it's much better than before & I'm able to do things. After not being out of the house for 10 days, I'm trying to make up for lost time this week.
So yesterday I went to the library because I was out of books. I had been reduced to reading old issues of National Geographic I'd gotten at book sales. At any time, the library is like being in a bakery, all sorts of delectable things I can't wait to sink my teeth into. It was even more so yesterday & I ended up with 2 bags of books, even when I cautioned myself that carrying all of them to the car might be painful. But it wasn't too bad & now I'm happy with a tall pile of books on the shelf.
This afternoon, there was about 2 dozen barn swallows gathered on the roof of the building next to mine(a townhouse under sporadic construction). At first I thought they were sparrows & then realized they had the sickle shaped bodies of swallows. Some were taking off and landing, others were just hunched up against the light rain, one tried to get lucky, but the female flipped her wing and knocked him off. They nest in the garages of my apartment complex, but I've never seen so many altogether like that. I'm wondering if they were preparing to migrate? Some birds start their journey in the middle of summer, and perhaps barn swallows are one of them.
The couple that I kittysit for is going out of town this weekend, so I'll be playing with their 4 cats again. They get a lot of attention regularly, so they are very affectionate & outgoing. I'm going to spend as much time as possible at their apartment, which is about 5 minutes from mine. I'm looking forward to it.
