I miss sex.

I want to have sex. Preferably with my husband but at this point I’m not going to be overly choosy. The problem is: I can’t HAVE sex.

That’s right, I can’t have sex with my husband anymore.  I’m not referring to the fact that he up and abandoned left me to go play work up North to support my ever-increasing arse leaving me alone with a house full of preteens and one darling disabled little boy and my um, needs.

My body is a temple. A broken, crumbling temple. Age has got the better of me and in one fell swoop (read: on my hands and knees scrubbing up yet another puddle of dog pee) something snapped in my back.

I felt it the moment I stood up. I grabbed my back and moaned like I was in labour and then I hobbled to the couch and vowed never to mop the floors again. What’s a little squalor anyways?

I didn’t think much of my sore back until the next morning when suddenly I could barely move. (Picture me having to roll out of bed like a beached whale.) Two weeks of moaning and bitching about it and finally I hauled my sorry arse to the doctor only to be slapped with the diagnosis of having one very pinched sciatic nerve.

Despite the handful of pills I’ve swallowed and the bizarre yoga like stretches I try and do to shake loose the pinched nerve and resume a pain free life, my back hasn’t much improved.

Nor has my attitude.

I make a sh*tty broken person. Ask my kids. They’ve long since stopped offering sympathy and instead have taken to just hurling an Advil bottle at my head as they cackle like wild little hyenas over my cries of pain.

Ingrates.

My husband, with his magic hands (waggles eyebrows) has tried to loosen up the kink and work things out during the dark hours of the night. After I finished wrapping my fingers around his throat and threatening to chop off every digit he has if he so much as touched my sore back once again, I figured it was time to take the bull by the proverbial horn and be proactive about healing this bothersome pain which has me shuffling like an arthritic 80-year-old moaning in pain every time I stand up.

If one can’t enjoy the pleasures of her husband’s magic hands you know it’s time to stop wishing the pain away and get off thy duff and do something about it.

Since choices are limited not only due to my Northern isolated location but the complicated fragile nature of my hip region (darn you bowling ball shaped babies of mine for wreaking havoc on my delicate frame) I had to carefully examine my options in determining the quickest path to to healing and the shortest road back to getting jiggy with my man.

It didn’t take long to examine those options. I had the quack doctor chiropractor of questionable reputation and the acupuncturist who may or may not have been actually trained in the art of sticking people with sharp needles.

There is also a local hypnotist but I’m not convinced he wouldn’t have me singing “Fat Bottomed Girls” while squeezing my arse cheeks and pretending it was my butt singing.

Since I have a completely irrational fear of all things chiropractic (and don’t try and convince me how wonderful those bone crunchers are because I can’t hear you as I hold my fingers in my ears and chant “Star light, Star bright…” as loudly as possible) I decided to give the acupuncturist a try.

After all, Chinese medicine has been around far longer than western medicine. There has to be something to it, right?

Ya, except Tanis forgot the key point to acupuncture is needles. You become a human pin cushion. Tanis doesn’t like needles unless they are attached to a tattooing gun and shooting permanent ink into my skin and even then it’s hit or miss if I’m going to vomit or not.

Apparently my bad back is affecting my brain. Oy.

I had to weigh my fear of needles against my need to move pain free and mah need to once again resume marital relations with my love that didn’t just include my mouth and his joy stick.

Let’s just say mattress dancing won out and I made an appointment to be stuck.

Shuffling into the clinic I was a nervous, anxiety riddled, pain-filled woman. I was so focused on the mental image of having a bunch of sewing pins (you know the ones with the colored heads) sticking out of my body prior to the appointment I forgot one crucial thing before I left home for my appointment.

I forgot to shave my legs.

As the acupuncturist instructed me to take my pants off and lay down on the table (which, by the way is not unlike the words my husband often says in a misguided attempt to get laid) I froze with a new fear.

Holy farcklenuts, this woman is going to see the Yeti-like tree stumps I call legs! All images of being the human pincushion evaporated against the mental image of this woman seeing my ungroomed legs and running down the street to the local newspaper’s office to tell the tale about how she actually had the Abominable Snowwoman on her table waiting for treatment.

As I wriggled out of my pants, carefully making sure my pants zipper didn’t get ensnared in the forest of growth on my legs (oh ya, the hair was that long) I just prayed for an understanding pin pusher.

The moment I managed to haul my broken arse up onto the table and cover up my shameful stumps with the blanket, the lady acupuncturist walked in and ripped off the blanket.

Holy shit. No foreplay, no nothing. She looked at my chart, read a few lines then looked down at my home grown forest and clucked sympathetically.

“It hurts to bend down to shave my legs,” I stammered apologetically. “I showered but I…”

“No worries, lovey, you are very European.”

“I swear, I shaved under my armpits. And I’ve recently waxed. Look I’ll show you,” I said as I started to raise my arm. However, the woman’s back was turned to me and didn’t see me raise my arm to show her my smooth and glossy pits and must have thought I was going to flash her my cooter because she twirled around and laughed, “No, really, I trust you.”

Amazing how even with a pinched sciatic nerve I can still manage to get one foot in my mouth. Huh.

It wasn’t long before she brought out the needles and asked if I was ready to get started.

My mouth ran dry and I managed to choke out some sort of affirmation all though to my ears I totally heard “Pleasegawddon’tletmestarttocrylikeabigfatbaby.”

Amazingly, it didn’t hurt. At all. Before I knew it, she had pricked me proper and left me to the sounds of ocean waves lapping at the shore line while warning me not to move. (Ya, um, so didn’t need to hear that warning. There was zero chance I was going to get up and start walking around what with the needles sticking out of my arse and the hairy legs I was sporting.)

I won’t lie to you, it was the first time I felt pain-free in weeks. It was almost as good as sex.

Soon enough the treatment was over and she was removing the needles from my ass end and everywhere else she stuck them. She explained the basic ideas behind acupuncture and described some stretches for me to practice at home while I quickly did some arithematic and calculated if I could afford to hire her to be at my beck and call.

(I probably could if I auctioned off one of my kids but I hear there are laws against that sort of chicanery.)

I practically did cartwheels into her office to make another appointment. Okay, so I kinda limped but the pain, it was way less. A few more of these sessions and I’ll be more limber than a Gumby toy left on the dash of a car during a heat wave.

Smiling to myself as I got in my car, I called my husband to tell him about my new love affair with a small town acupuncturist and to brag how I’m was being such a good wife and taking care of a back injury that I may have let fester and worsen for weeks on end, but hey, why quibble over little details?

I prattled on to Boo (while leaving out the fact that my legs were furrier than either of my dogs) and then I waited for Boo’s reply.

A moment went by and I could practically hear the wheels of his mind grinding away.

“So basically you are telling me you went to get poked with some pins so that later you can get poked by a prick?”

Ya. That about sums it up.

While one poke is almost as good as the next, at least with the prick it doesn’t cost me any money. And I don’t have to shave my legs.

Heh.