Old age is a bitch

I’ve happily returned to New York after my business jaunt to Fort Lauderdale. It was a worthwhile trip, but bloody hard work. I like my clients, but working with them in their offices for 3days straight is like being on a 72hour job interview. I am thrilled to bits to have a long weekend to recover before having to go back to work again. Although can you believe that some of my co-workers tried to coerce me into working on something for them this weekend? Ha, I should cocoa. Usually I would be amenable to helping them out, but this time I put my foot down and said no.

Fabulous as it is to get away and see other places the best thing about leaving New York for me is the tingle of excitement I get when I come back. I got goose bumps while sat in the back of the cab from Penn Station, heading back to my apartment through the streets of Manhattan. I’m just so completely smitten with this fabulous city. The only blot on my otherwise perfect long weekend in New York – you should see the weather here, it’s heavenly; it’s sunny, low humidity, a light breeze, it’s a dream – is the fact that I’ve done something horrible to my back. I suspect it is a suitcase carrying related injury, although it’s not as if my bags were particularly heavy. I pride myself on being a light packer – roll, don’t fold – and my ability to fit a week’s worth of clothes into the smallest of suitcases is renowned across the tri-state area. Well…okay…it’s not renowned. I lied about the last bit, but when it comes to packing I am a bloody marvel, if I do say so myself.

Back-wise I am not sure what happened, but it came on suddenly on Saturday morning. One moment I was feeling fine and the next I wasn’t. Unfortunately the timing of realising I wasn’t feeling so good wasn’t so great. It happened about 15minutes after I had stepped out of the shower. I was still wrapped in a towel after drying my hair and it was not a good moment to discover that it hurt like hell to bend down. Have you ever tried to put your knickers on when you can’t bend so well? It took me about 3minutes just to put on my undies. Fortunately I am relatively limber of hamstring and was able to stand upright while dangling my knickers in one hand and then raising each leg in turn to stick my feet through the leg holes and pull them on. I’d intended to wear trousers that day, but after the knicker experience I decided I wasn’t going to make further attempts to put clothing on my lower half and threw a dress over my head instead. How happy was I to have been born a girl in that moment!! If I’d been a man I don’t think I’d have left the house at all yesterday. I'm not sure I'd have been able to get dressed without assistance and although I like my neighbours I am not quite THAT friendly with them.

I didn’t let my back pain hamper my day too much though and headed out to meet Francesca and Jacqui for the last of the Warm Up parties at PS1, a converted school in Long Island City, Queens, which is now part of the Museum of Modern Art. They hold outdoor dance parties there from 3-9pm during the summer months in what used to be the playground. They have amazing DJs and musicians and it’s a great place to sit around and soak up the atmosphere. They also decorate the playground in some sort of theme. I’m not sure what this year’s theme was called, but they’d erected these big pink tree type things with hammock style seating underneath. You can sort of see them in the picture…sort of!!

Photo credit: Verseguru @ Flickr

My favourite theme was the year they had these giant igloo inspired canopies stretching across the playground and a cool room with huge blocks of ice you could stand on to cool down. It can get very hot in the playground at PS1. Yesterday we got lucky and managed to snag a hammock seat for the three of us and lolled around for a few hours listening to the music, chatting and people watching. It was a lovely afternoon.

I’m feeling a bit better this morning; I can almost touch my toes without screaming in pain, so a good sign, although I was very stiff when I woke up and initially thought my back was worse. Still, I was undeterred from hobbling over to Starbucks for my Sunday morning Grande Skim Latte, perhaps not my wisest move as on the way back, while balancing a latte in one hand and a New York Times in the other, I sneezed and a shooting pain went through my whole body. Thankfully there weren’t any small children close enough to hear the stream of profanities I uttered through gritted teeth as my body went into spasm.

I have to say I am already finding aging quite tiresome and I’m only 36 for chrissakes, I’m fit, I’m healthy, I eat the right foods and go to the gym regularly. This sort of thing should not be happening to me yet!! Harumph!!