Well, gosh. Being injured sure is boring.

At least it's gotten to "boring" rather than "dear Frog what did I do to deserve this??"

The massage therapist I visited today for a placeholder chair massage put her hands on the left side of my back and said, "Ooooooo. I like a challenge." As a result of her leaning on me with her entire body weight concentrated behind her elbow, which was on a knot in my rhomboids, I can now move mostly without pain.

I'm still weak on that one side, though. Which sucks, because I keep thinking of things I could be doing. "Maybe I'll go wash the car," I think, then realize that no, washing the car takes two good arms. "Oh! I could put up those shelves," I muse, before remembering that putting up shelves, especially overhead, requires two good arms. Then, before I know it, I'm halfway out to the shed for a pair of secateurs so I can trim back the sage, but....I can't bend over for another week or so.

Thank God for the beloved Plumcake. Her line in this week's Monday Hotness (on page two, and good Lord, why am I not surrounded by a rugby side from New Zealand, all doing my heavy lifting and shelf-hanging and sage-trimming for me??) about a Methodist from Lubbock getting a tribal tattoo that suits him had me laughing so hard I scared the cats.

Design*Sponge has also saved me from frustration this week, as they've posted a DIY tutorial on making your own custom roller shades. I had been talking about this earlier this week with a pal at work, but neither one of us could find a good source on how not to screw it up.

The fine folks at the farmer's market had gobs and oodles of fryable green tomatoes this morning. They're not normally a beginning-of-season treat, but with as hot as it got as fast as it got, a lot of local tomato plants are giving up the ghost. Fried green tomatoes got me thinking about shrimp and grits, one of my favorite eats of all time. I would make a cream sauce with a few bits of chopped fresh tomatoes, mix in the bacon, and serve that over the shrimp (piled atop the grits, please, and not stirred in), or do it like a local restaurant does: Bake the grits as though they're polenta cakes, then add shrimp and tomato/cream/bacon sauce. NOM.

Speaking of how hot it's gotten, it's weeks like this one, where 88* is a relief, that get me remembering cooler days spent in other places. Although I've never been as hot as I was two (or three?) summers ago in Montreal, it's much more fun to be hot in a place where everybody speaks French and there are cute film-makers to flirt with under a tent. And then there was the Labor Day weekend in Kentucky, on a houseboat, with Friend Pens the Lotion Slut, the Marvelous E. and her hubby, and one more couple who shall not be named. Anyway, despite the drama of a planned meltdown, that was one of the best--and coolest--late summer weekends I've ever had. Hence my current lust for ditching the house and living on a houseboat.

And finally, to cut the drudgery of one-handed counter-wiping and laundry-folding, I've been listening to a new radio station online. It's out of Dallas, it's public, and it's called KKXT. You can listen online for free, but I hope that if you find yourself doing a lot of that, you'll make a donation. Damn fine indie radio right there, folks.