I seem to have reached an end to a rope this morning.

At 2:30 I woke with a very bad sign--a pinched nerve in my neck and right shoulder. It is the kind of discombobulation that makes even moving one's toes agony. I spent the next two hours trying to find a comfortable position in bed, then finally out of desperation taking a powerful muscle relaxant that I had been prescribed by my doctor two pinched nerves ago.

For the uninitiated, a muscle relaxant is not the thing one takes if one needs to bring her A-game to church in three-four hours.

This kind of ailment is the thing I have experienced most recently immediately following either Christmas or Holy Week. It is almost entirely stress-induced.

I was hung-over with powerful medications at 8:00 am when my spouse informed me that he would not be driving me to church because I had nagged him endlessly about leaving the (carpeted) basement stairs soaking with dog urine last night, and frankly, he was as pissed as the stairs by then. I'm not sure he remembered about the pill I had taken. He was pretty upset with me.

I don't know why my daughter decided to go to church with tme this morning, but she did. Thanks be to God.

Five minutes before worship, I locked myself out of my own office at church. Fortunately I had my sermon and liturgy waiting on the pulpit, but everything else was in my office: most importantly my car keys to get home. The only other person who has a key to my office had it at home...she had not come to church because, in part, she was still upset with me.

This means that after worship I had to call her at home and ask her to come let me in my office. She told me that she had a lot of other things to do today, but in the end, after I tearfully begged her she sent her poor husband to do it. I guess she's still mad at me.

Note to self: tomorrow, if my neck and shoulder are better, I'm making several copies of my key and hiding them in various places in the church building.

I think I'll wait until the narcotics have worn off, though.