Injury Update

Well, my back is better, my neck, shoulder and head are better.

But I woke up yesterday morning with a little tweak in my ribs... nothing major just annoying, the same kind of tweaky "hmm, that hurts" kind of feeling I've gotten several times before when I've taken a tumble, it always goes away.

Well, it normally goes away. I figured I'd just bruised something, but by last night I was beginning to wonder if I'd popped a rib out of place. Sleep last night wasn't as plentiful as I wanted it to be.

Last night and this morning just the tiniest fraction of an inch in the wrong direction (and the wrong direction seems to change depending on the time of day, angle of the sun, direction of wind and barometer reading...) and I'm going "Holy shit that hurts!" instead of "hmm."

I don't know what I did, the painful rib isn't floating around enough to be popped out of place, and it doesn't hurt enough to be cracked. It almost feels like the rib tried to pop out of place, bruised all the connecting tissues and stretched them like old underwear elastic, and then settled in to wait for me to get lively again. There's just the barest hint of what might be a bruise where the rib comes to the sternum. Or it might be the crappy lighting in my bathroom, hard to tell.

So, I didn't ride today, and probably won't tomorrow. We'll see how it feels, and all that. Instead I worked on grooming that I've neglected, getting Monkey's mane and tail back into shape so he doesn't look like so much of a hobo.

Of course, I braided his tail only to realize that I didn't have any bands. So I trekked to my car and dug in my backpack to get a hair tie. Luckily I still had a black elastic in there or Monkey might be sporting a purple scrunchie right now. But he looks better now, tomorrow I'll take the hand clippers out and do his bridle path, and some scissors to trim his tail and mane into something a little more even. His tail is growing out nicely, if it's not braided it brushes the ground, but it's not as full as I might like. I'll probably trim it back to his hocks to where it's fuller and let it grow out again, try to keep it from breaking off as bad. I'll probably trim the base of his tail, too, it's looking a little frizzy. If I'm going for beautification I might as well go whole hog and trim the fuzzball at the base of his tail, too.

As soon as it stays nice for a while, Monkey boy is getting a bath, too. He's all dusty in his undercoat. He probably won't enjoy it, but he'll get it anyway.