Here I sit, nearly incapacitated by pain.  And bathed in bacon. An unexpected flare-up of last year’s back injury left me weeping uncontrollably to my chiropractor on the phone last night and nearly talking in tongues to the kids’ summer nanny trying to explain that I needed her to take my shoes off for me because I couldn’t reach my feet.

This is inopportune at best.  It’s one of the most exciting and busy times of my professional career with the new book coming out and scads of deadlines looming.  Painkillers have me as high as a Cirque de Soleil performer dangling above a breathless crowd (and honestly I’m looking just about as creepy as one, too, as evidenced by my visiting in-law’s attempts to avoid recoiling when I limp out of my room and into the light every once in a while).

So I’m laying here in my zero-gravity position in bed at 5:00 pm struggling to finish some correspondence without making some grave error like writing “public” instead of “public” because the work still needs to be done.  I started descending into an emotional state that was part panic and part pity party, though I’m not sure which emotion won bragging rights. I touched my heart chakra to calm myself and commence a deep breathing protocol that I was sure would either help me calm down or finally pass out (or preferably both).  But something didn’t feel quite right.  I investigated further and found the source.

I am bathed in bacon.

Let me explain.  My wonderful husband and in-laws had gone to lunch this afternoon, on a glorious sunny day, where they sat on the patio at one of my favorite restaurants enjoying their meal and no shortage of laughter.  They did all of this without me.  So I did what anyone else in my situation might do.  I wished them well and began silently feeling very VERY sorry for myself.  I did this as I choked down a tasteless meal replacement bar by myself in an empty house so that I would have something, anything, in my gut other than various narcotics, muscle relaxants, and steroids (a most unpleasant cocktail, to be sure).

But my pity party was short-lived because they brought me home my favorite spinach salad in the world, leafy greens perfectly dressed with tender onions, a delectable blend of cheeses, and the most exquisite warm bacon dressing gracing every morsel of it.  The salad nearly made the whole back ordeal tolerable.  I savored every bite of it and the attitude adjustment it served on the side.

I didn’t realize until just a moment ago that when one consumes large servings of warm spinach salad in the zero-gravity position, one can accumulate a remarkably significant pool of bacon dressing on one’s chest without noticing it until much later in the day.  Which I just did.  And it made me smile.  A big smile that, for the first time today, was not in the slightest bit precipitated by the heavy lifting of heavy medications.  I smiled because I’m lucky enough to have people in my life who gift me with salads that bathe me in bacon when I’m not feeling well.

And that made me think of all of the other gratitude-laced moments of the past 24 hours, which I had heretofore uniformly deemed as “sucky.”  My friend Katie was the one who reminded me to immediately request the medication that had helped my injury last time (which I had forgotten) and the medication immediately went to work on the worst of the pain.  And my friend Debbie called at just the right time to send healing prayers and angels of project deadline stewardship my way.  And my sister-in-law brought me a sassy Asian Geisha fan to cool myself in this hot, non-air-conditioned bedroom where I am confined in my zero-gravity position.  And finally, my friends at Waves of Gratitude, Cheryl and Kim, facilitated truly inspiring strategic partnership conference call that completely energized me, even through my slurred speech and tendency to repeat myself like a skipped record every five minutes.  As the saying goes, I’m really “too blessed to be stressed.”

So I guess that my many “gratitudes of the day” far outweigh the inconvenience of a little pain and a few project management delays.  An attitude adjustment courtesy of a bacon bath.  I could stand for a few more of those!