A bad back = more movies

Around this time of year, I tend to take my Letterboxd watchlist, which I've been cultivating all year, and refine it further by writing down a bunch of titles I still realistically plan to see before my ranking deadline, on a piece of paper in my notebook. Then I'll go through and cross them off. Hey, there are fewer and fewer reminders of the way we used to do things in this world. I'll opt in on any I can.

I might be going through more of the realistic titles than I expected to, thanks to a bad back. 

I don't know how it happened, but on Friday, getting up from my desk, I felt a quick, sharp pain in my back. It's important to tie it to that exact moment, because that's the moment something could have "happened," if something did indeed happen. However, I assure you, there was nothing unusual about this rise from my desk chair to my feet. Maybe this is just old age rearing its head.

But I've spent much of the 48 hours since then wondering if it might be something much more serious. 

I wasn't limited in my actions for the rest of the day on Friday, and I even went in our pool -- for the first time this summer -- with my son. (It's been a cool summer, and only just got really hot in the past week.) By dinner time, though, the pain and stiffening in my lower right back got worse, and I took myself up to my bed to watch The Naked Gun. Unfortunately, I started it way too early to have it be the last thing I did that night, but also too late to try to watch something else after it finished. Around that 10:45 finish time, it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. (Loved The Naked Gun, by the way, and hope to write about it separately at some point.)

That early sleep time left me awake at 3:30 a.m., wondering if I might have appendicitis. 

Now, I'd already googled the symptoms the day before. For appendicitis, the pain is supposed to start in your belly and then move to your lower abdomen. There's also supposed to be fever, nausea and vomiting. I had none of those symptoms. However, I also googled whether back pain could be part of appendicitis and of course it can be. AI will confirm any worry you have if you just phrase it correctly.

This all might have been less worrisome if my wife were in town, but she's not. She's visiting her mother in Tasmania and won't be back until the 18th. So it was on me to decide if I had appendicitis and then if I needed to take myself to the hospital, and how soon. Could I wait for my younger son to wake up, between 7 and 8? Did I dare wait for the older one to wake up, between 11 and 12? Or should I go right now?

I did eventually fall back to sleep, and the symptoms had not worsened by the time I finally got out of bed. So I decided to just monitor them.

They never got any worse, but it was to the point where I couldn't properly bend over, and any action that required any sort of support from my right hip/lower back was only accomplished with pain and great difficulty. So I knew that instead of taking the kids out to go clothes shopping that day, I would spend the day in bed, hoping that this was the right means of tending to the issue, which I was now thinking of more as a slipped disc. However, I'd also be attuned to any worsening, spreading, or indeed, the onset of nausea. 

So yes, I watched two more movies yesterday than I would have. I might have eventually scratched them off my long list, but the daytime viewing slot for my first movie -- On Becoming a Guinea Fowl -- guaranteed its inclusion on this year's list, when the Zambian film might otherwise have fallen into the "too hard bucket" if I'd left it for one night after work.

I found myself frustrated with this film for reasons having to do with frustration with the characters. I think the point of this film is that the patriarchy in this village is poisonous, dismissing the concerns of the female characters, many of whom have been abused in some way by the man who has just died, Uncle Fred, whose funeral celebrations seem to go on for more than a week. I think it was the director's point that the memorializing of this awful man is way out of scale with what he actually deserved, but this was a case where I felt like I demanded a justice that this film was not ready to give us -- or at least not in any clear, traditional manner. The actual ending of the film is open to interpretation. 

I also split this movie in half, thinking I'd have the chance to watch the whole thing before the Celtics game, but then needing to take a nap. I suppose that did not help it.

The next movie I watched all the way through, but this is one that I didn't need to scratch off my list because I'd already seen it. Yes, I had my second date with One Battle After Another, which was another thing that could have fallen by the wayside, this time because of its length. But I did want to give the movie one more shot at being higher on my list -- where it was already set to receive a very respectable ranking. Whether that happened or not, I will save for another time.

Finally I finished with Splitsville, probably a good thing to watch while my wife was out of town, given its subject matter involving open marriages. Really liked this one as well.

I might have gone into more about all of these movies except the purpose of this post is mostly to just tell you that I'm here and still watching movies. It had been a few days since I last posted, which is unusual in January, where I'm usually so overflowing with content that I have twice, in recent years, had streaks of more than 30 consecutive days with a post at this time of year. That ain't happening this year. Again, 2025 has been a challenging one.

And now, at least if I do suddenly pass from a ruptured appendix, you'll have one last post from me before I go.