Well, I'm surviving. In pain tonight, but surviving. I went to the chiropractor yesterday morning, and she said that I didn't break anything, but did bruise my vertebra and strained a few muscles in my neck and shoulders. And she said my ligaments are crabby. I liked how she put that - 'crabby'! Worked for me.

So I'm to continue icing, not move my head to any of the 'extremes' in any direction, and no shoulderstands in yoga, or anything else that would strain my neck. Like I want to do any of that right now, anyway! She did say that I can get on the treadmill and do cardio, though, as long as I take it easy.

I am SO glad I have the Tempur-Pedic bed now, too! I wasn't very comfortable sleeping because of my neck, but my low back felt fabulous when I got up! If it weren't for the neck, I would have bounced out of bed!

I rarely take any kind of painkillers, but tonight I stopped by the grocery store on the way to work to pick up some aspirin. Got to work, and was going to take some, and I realized that the box had been taped shut. Decided that was okay as long as the bottle was unopened. Of course, it HAD been opened, so I'm not taking any of them and I'll be exchanging the bottle as soon as I get out of here.

Thought I would make it through the night here at work, but I don't think that's going to happen. First, no aspirin. Second, my shoulders are REALLY stiff and sore. So I'm going to wait until my colleague comes in - right now I'm the only person taking French calls, so I'll wait until he gets in and can take over. And I can muddle through another hour and twenty minutes. I may only get one or two calls until then, anyway.

In other news, I FINALLY went to the casting place this morning and signed up - I think I forgot to mention that I met with my life coach on Friday morning and we set up some pretty ambitious goals for me to hit in the next few months. One of the things I told him I would do was to go down to this place today and sign up. I had a great excuse NOT to go with the injury, but since I have NO other time to go this week, and I talk with him again on Friday, I went anyway. And it was really easy, and now I'm signed up and it's done. And I should have done it months ago.

After I signed up there, I went to Quizno's for lunch and tried one of their new lower carb flatbread sandwiches. Okay, not the best option for an O, especially considering it had bacon and guacamole on it, but I gotta tell ya - it was SOOOOO GOOOOD! And I had a coupon that expired today, so I even saved a buck on it. I know that part of it was that I wanted to try these lower carb sandwiches and see if I reacted to the flatbreads like I do to other breads, and part of it was I was feeling sorry for myself because of my neck. And I had a coupon and didn't think it was a good idea for me to be lifting my cast iron pots to be cooking lunch, either. So Quizno's it was. Won't be doing that again for some time, though - I did, of course, react to the bread, but it didn't bother my tummy at all, which most bread tends to....

On the way home, my AC stopped working. You know it's bad when you get OUT of the car into the 90+ degree heat of the San Fernando Valley and it feels like a cool breeze compared to what it was like INSIDE the car. I was DRIPPING sweat. So the car will go into the shop in the next week or so to get that fixed. Blah.

I'm looking forward to going home shortly.

Friday I spent most of the day running around doing errands, and I got a LOT done, then I napped for a few hours before going out with Mike to hear some blues for a couple hours. Had a cosmopolitan and some thai food (shrimp wraps, since it was about the best option on the menu), and a few bites of some chickeny dish with cilantro that Mike let me try. We had a good time, but I was glad to get home and go to sleep, too. Got to bed just after 1am.

Woke up about 8:45 Saturday morning, and made three eggs with spinach, feta cheese, and herbes de provence, heated up a nice big lamb chop, and made two pieces of spelt toast. It was *really* yummy! My Tempur-Pedic bed got delivered around 11, and the delivery guys terrified the cats by making so much noise when they were putting it together, but not much to be done about that! I did my laundry, ran some errands, put my clean sheets on the bed, put my bedspread on it, and climbed in. I watched a movie from my new bed Saturday evening, and went to sleep about 1am again.

I came up with a spreadsheet to track my food servings. I have pretty much eliminated refined sugar from my diet, and I want to track how many servings of meat, vegetables, fruit, etc. that I eat. So I came up with a little spreadsheet to track my weekly servings. So far it is easy to jot down everything, and I hope to have a better handle on just what I'm eating as time goes on. Already I can tell that I don't have any trouble eating enough protein or fruit in a day, but vegetables are another story!

Sunday was a red-letter day. For the first time in years, I woke up pain-free. The only problem with that was that I woke up at 6:30 in the morning. I stayed in bed for a couple more hours and slept a little more, but finally got up about 9am because two cats were vying for my attention so that I would feed them.

I did my morning yoga routine, and then decided to do a little cardio. It was already blazing hot out, so I worked out in the gym in my apartment building. Did about a mile on the treadmill, used the universal machine a bit, and did some triceps pull-downs on another machine in there. When I was done, I reached down and was changing the weights so I could work my biceps.

As I was bending over to reach for the bar to work my biceps, the ~3 foot long metal bar from above fell and hit me in the back of the head and neck, knocking me down. I was in so much pain I was crying/screaming. I stayed on the floor for a minute assessing the damage and trying to breathe. Then I got up and went upstairs to my apartment to find as many icepacks as I could, and see if I was seriously injured. The bar hit my head on the occipital bone, just above and to the right of my spine, and hit my neck right ON one of the cervical vertebrae. Ow.

Still crying, I called my neighbor and asked him to come over for a minute and see if he could SEE anything, and get his opinion on whether or not I should go to the emergency room. He brought painkillers over and talked with me for a few minutes until I calmed down, and by then we realized that I would live, and didn't need to go to the emergency room. He had me laughing by the time he left, which was good.

I'm okay, but have a big bump on my head and on the back of my neck, and it hurts a bit to move my head up and down, though moving it left and right is okay. I'm going to go to the chiropractor first thing in the morning to have her check me out.

The rest of the day was pretty quiet - I did have a brunch to go to in the early afternoon, and I did go, but definitely was not at my best. Had a smoked salmon and scallions egg scramble, and it was delicious, but huge - must have been about 6 eggs, so I brought it for lunch tonight. Also had a few bites of my friend's granola pancakes - very nutty and yummy. It was wheat, I know, but well worth the few bites of indulgence. After brunch, I went back home and grabbed the ice packs again, and watched "The Usual Suspects" and napped (about 4 1/2 hours!) before coming to work.

I realized as I was signing off my computer yesterday that I never made an entry last night! Was too busy with some other stuff I was working on, and just never got around to it. Not much to report anyway!

I've eaten a lamb chop and artichoke for lunch every day this week, and I'm not tired of them yet. They are SOOOO yummy. And had a lamb chop and scrambled eggs with feta cheese and spinach for breakfast (at 6pm tonight). My version of steak and eggs - and it was GOOD.

Went to acting class last night, and we did our scene from "The Big Sleep" again - it has definitely improved since last week, but can go so much farther, too. Doubt I'll get to do it again, though, since my scene partner said he probably won't continue in this class next month. I may get to do it with someone else, if my coach really wants me to do it again. I do have to find a comedic monologue, too, and put that up soon. First the dramatic one, which is very intense. I wrote it (and my friend SF helped me with it) and I've got to perform it before I move onto the comedic one. It's about a mother who knows that her baby is dying - very tearful, and even though I wrote it, it moves ME every time, so it will be good to perform it in front of an audience to see how they react to it.

But I have no clue what comedic monologue I'll do. It think a trip to the library and/or Samuel French (actor's bookstore) is in order for the weekend to see if I can find something. Or I'll write something. Maybe. Writing drama is easy for me, writing comedy is harder. Yet ACTING comedy is easier for me, and drama is harder. Weird, eh?

This weekend will be busy (aren't they all?) - Tomorrow morning I'll be meeting with a 'life coach'. I decided that I need to get focused on my goals and get cracking on them, and that I need someone to prod me along that path. Right around the time I was thinking about that, I heard about this life coach, and decided to take him up on the 30 minute free session he offered. I got some good stuff out of that (I think I detailed part of the conversation here last week sometime), and he and I will meet face to face for the first time in the morning. I'm looking forward to it. He had me fill out a sheet of paper with three columns on it: What I want to HAVE, what I want to DO, and what I want to BE. I filled out the whole page, and could have done more, but restrained myself, not knowing if he meant for me to continue or to merely complete the page. I'll report back on the session when I next check in.

I have to get a bit of a nap in after my session tomorrow, because I have an audition for a reality show tomorrow afternoon. Don't know much about it, except that I won't have to eat anything weird or date anyone weird. Good on both counts. So we'll see how that goes!

Then I'm supposed to go to dinner with Mike to some club by the woman who does "ForkPlay" - here's the website: http://forkplay.com/ Seems a bit cheesy and over the top, but that can be fun, too! She's singing at a club called "Residuals" with her band the "Studmuffins". I have low expectations, and will report back on this, too!

Saturday, Tempur-Pedic delivers my bed! Wahoo! I've got to change my singing lesson to later in the day to accomodate the delivery time, but that's okay! Of course, I may have to rethink the singing lesson altogether since I may not want to get OUT of bed once it has arrived!!

Not much else planned for the weekend. Rest. Sleep plenty, in fact, on my NEW BED!

Watched a movie this morning "Requiem for a Dream". NOT A HAPPY STORY! Ellen Burstyn was amazing, and the rest of the cast (one of the Wayans brothers, some guy whose name I've completely forgotten, and Jennifer Connelly) was very good, too. Gave the movie back to Mike, borrowed "Shadowlands" to watch tomorrow, and went to bed around 12:30 this afternoon.

Didn't sleep well - woke up a few times, and finally got up around 9pm. Did an hour of Pilates, which I should be doing nearly daily - I can really feel the difference in how flexible I am these days. Can't wait to get back to 'normal'!

Have more lamb chop and another artichoke for lunch today. Had a smoothie with pineapple juice and protein powder for breakfast, and some date/almond rolls and a slice of dried pineapple for a snack. I've got more of those and some trail mix for my next snack.

I'm finding that I'm not generally very hungry working this night shift, but that I do make myself eat a little something regularly anyway. And I crave more sugar at night. Not a good thing! Tonight is different, though. I'm actually gut hungry right now (have been for about 30 minutes already), and don't go to lunch for another 20 minutes. If I had to wait longer than the next 20 minutes, I'd probably eat my keyboard. Don't know what my being hungry means since I'm usually NOT hungry, but whatever. I'll feed my body some yummy and beneficial lamb and artichoke, and go from there.

Tomorrow is an improv class in the evening, so I have to get to bed by 10 am to get up by 6pm and get to class by 7. If I have time I'll watch "Shadowlands" after improv class, and return it to the video store before I come to work.

Went grocery shopping this morning - I am craving fruit, so I bought mangos, watermelon, strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, and some juices - pomegranate, pineapple, and my favorite - mango lemonade. Gotta love Trader Joe's! Could NOT get the mango lemonade open tonight twisted that cap until my wrist hurt, and then gave up and had pineapple juice instead. Opened THAT no problem! Will have to see if Mike can help me open the mango lemonade.

I was reading Rachel's blog recently about the horse Norman, and how after thinking about Norman and that now she calls that voice in her head Norman because it is so stubborn and unwilling to change. Well, after rolling that around in my brain for a few days, somehow I started calling that voice in MY head Norman, and I'm finding that it is making a difference for me. WHY, I don't know, but somehow calling that voice by NAME and *telling* it that I'm ignoring it has made a difference for me. It's only been a couple of days, but at least I am recognizing that stubborn, whining voice as the voice of Norman, and calling its bluff more often than not, and telling it that I'm NOT giving into it.

I met with my accountant again this morning to do amendments to my 2001 and 2002 tax returns. We met for a couple hours, finished my returns, and I left his office with some fat refunds heading my way. They will go a long way towards replenishing the savings that I depleted after I got laid off last year! So yay!

After I left there, I headed to the mall to return a couple things I'd bought over the weekend, returned them, and made the mistake of going to the Benefit cosmetics counter. Lovely, tantalizing products. I was in a festive mood, the make-up artist was also in a great mood, and so we played with makeup for a half hour or so, and I walked out with some fun stuff. I can't say it was NECESSARY, but given that I have a much harder time looking rested and awake these days than I did when I wasn't working nights, these products DO help counteract that, so there it is. I've been lusting after some of the Benefit products for a LONG time (a couple of years!), so I considered this my treat to myself for having finished up all the work I did on my taxes.

Of course, after the mall, I went home and washed off all the stuff we'd just put on, and slept for over nine hours. Woke up to find messages from both Mike and Anne on my machine, called them both back, and got ready for work. I didn't have time to eat breakfast before heading out to work, but I did boil two eggs while I was on the phone with Mike and getting ready for work, and I also threw together a smoothie, which ended up being my breakfast once I got settled in at my desk.

I've got a lamb chop and an artichoke for lunch later, and the eggs and my trail mix for a snack.

I've got to get back on track with my exercise program - I can really tell a difference in my waist these days, and it isn't good! It's very challenging to find the time to work out while working nights and trying to get auditions and have a social life, too, but I've GOT to do it. I think as soon as I get one of these tax refunds I'll join my favorite gym again and get back into some yoga classes and start taking some spinning classes there, too. I also miss my elliptical machines!