ALLLL of July! ...in one wee post. if by "wee" i mean "immense." which i do.

holy insanity balls, guys. work has taken over my life and rendered my blogging life completely nonexistent. i hear that some people blog during something called "non-work hours," but i'm having a hard time making this a reality either. i virtually never go straight home from work at night, so by 9pm or whenever i do get home, i'm ready to veg on my couch and catch up on some dvr, and pretty much nothing else. i figure you all are practically rending your clothes in despair over this turn of affairs... or, um, the ACTUAL scenario, which is ME moping around despairingly because i miss blogging and knowing what's happening with all your lives.

so! we have a lot to cover! Stuff That's Happened But I Was Too Busy Working To Write About It:

1. if you thought that having ultrasound wands stuck up my bum to treat my tailbone was awful and/or hilarious, JUST WAIT until i tell you about the new therapy i'm getting! my previous therapist felt i needed more specialized treatment than she was able to give, so she referred me to a place that was more focused on the spine and pelvis. and in women's health. which, to make a long story short, involves an "internal release" of the muscles around my tailbone. YES. INTERNAL. IT'S EXACTLY WHAT YOU THINK IT IS. as in, every time i go in for a session, it's like going to the gyno, except actually kind of not as bad, since there's no speculum involved.

but yeah. i go once a week at 7am to have a physical therapist reach up into my ladybits and maniupulate my tailbone FROM THE INSIDE.

2. however! it's actually going REALLY REALLY WELL. it was so incredibly awesome when i went to this new place for my first session, and my therapist nodded and said "oh yes, we see this a lot" and knew a) what was going on and b) how to treat it. as someone just baaaarely scraping the surface of having chronic pain, i can't tell you how encouraging this was. and it's WORKING, too! i'm getting better! at this juncture, i would let her jam lit firecrackers up in there if she told me it would help.

3. but because i can't ever be normal and just not hurt myself for any extended amount of time, last week i threw my back out while getting into my car. i know. i freaking toss myself recklessly around a pole several times a week and hang off of it upside by my ankles, yet getting into my stupid car i torqued my back all weird and it seized up over my right shoulder blade and was basically full of awful. i spent a day and a half in fairly crippling pain before fortuitously heading to an already-scheduled appointment with my phyiscal therapist. i explained that i'd apparently pulled my back, and described to her how i'd done it, and she goes "oh! sounds like it's your ribs."

in my head i was like "dude, that sounds NOTHING LIKE my ribs. i just described muscle spasms over my shoulder blade." but before i knew it, she had me leaned over to one side so the muscles on the top of my shoulder could contract and relax, and... huh. wait. hey. i appear to be... all better.

apparently you can get your ribs stuck out of alignment. did you know this!? i guess it's actually pretty common. and EFFING PAINFUL. according to the interwebs, if it happens on your left side, people can think they're having a heart attack. i believe it, because owwww.

so anyway, i'm fine now. my i did end up ACTUALLY pulling a muscle in my back because it spent 30 hours seized up and spasming, but man, compared to the pain & immobility of ribs being stuck in the wrong place? a pulled muscle was FIIIIINE.

4. on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, i continue to have insanely good luck in winning blog contests. i have NEVER been the kind of person who randomly wins things, so this has been very! very! exciting! for me. first i won that gorgeous necklace from bead up in nilsa's contest; then i won these sweet pans from kim's contest (and STILL have pics languishing on my hard drive from the post i never got around to writing about that) and then recently, i won another csn prize from liebchen, which i finally just redeemed this week. (i bought a new handbag and some new luggage, since i decided to throw mine away after the bedbug debacle.) it's been fabulous. i love winning things. next up: the lottery.

5. i have to believe that my charity project must be putting out some sort of good karma into the universe - totally explains why i'm getting so lucky with these giveaways, right? ('cause that's totally what karma's about, yes? having more stuff? no? oh.). anyway! to keep on track with that, i give you july's charity: the environmental defense fund. BP may have finally stopped the major leak in the gulf, but the scope of the cleanup efforts makes my head hurt. if you'd like to contribue to edf's efforts to fund the gulf restoration, you can do so here.

6. and finally, i have a very lovely boyfriend. for our 1-year anniversary, he organized a little weekend getaway to the homestead, which is a freaking gorgeous resort waaaay the heck out in rural virginia. we hiked; we did archery; we played golf; we soaked in natural hot springs. it was one of the hottest weekends on record (heat index of 107. 107! with 1283765 perecent humidity!) but it the weekend could not have been better.

and so now it's practically august already, what the hell. i have a new roommate moving in tomorrow and trips out of town for the next six (SIX!!) weekends in a row. speaking of: i'll be in montreal for one of those weeks in august, my first time in canada (aside from the time a few years ago when i walked across the border at niagara falls). anyone have good recommendations of Things I Have To Do In Montreal?