Misadventures in Painting

Thursday morning I threw my back out.  That's a very vague concept...throwing out one's back.  The specifics involve a disc that hates me and every now and then decides to get angry and cause me a lot of pain in my lower back. 
It's never a good story either.  The first time I injured my back I was taking off my pants.  I bent down to slide my pants down my legs and couldn't stand up.  The second time....I coughed.  I was sick and the cough threw my upper body forward a fraction of an inch, and my back screamed at me.
This time I bent down just a little to lower my son into his exersaucer. 

The pain involved in this tiny movement is amazing.  What it means for me is probably a week of being unable to do much of anything.  Sitting hurts.  Walking hurts.  I can't actually stand up totally straight.  I can't bend over.  I can't lift much.  Getting out of bed in the morning takes several minutes....and hurts.

None of which is conducive to remodeling a house that we were planning to move into next weekend.  I was sanding the floors, and meant to continue to do so this week....but that's out of the question now.

About the only thing I can actually do right now is paint.  There is a lot of painting to do, so that's fine.  The main priority is painting the kids' rooms so we don't have to move all of their crap around to paint after we move in.

So on Sunday I was painting my son's room.  I had put two coats on the walls and it had dried.  I was moving around the room taking tape off of the trim and putting new tape on the walls so I could paint the trim.

When I had started sanding the floor in his room, I removed the floor register so I could sand around it.  I hadn't put it back yet because I wasn't done sanding in there.

I had put down a clear plastic drop cloth to keep the paint off the floor (I'm a horrible, messy, slob of a painter).  You know where this is going now I'm sure.....

So I had walked past the 6" x 10" or so hole in the floor at least 5 times by now, and had said to myself "Don't fall in the hole...."

I'm a terrible listener.

I go to pull the tape off the trim near the closet and stepped directly in the hole in the floor.  My leg instantly plummeted into the basement and stopped when my thigh got wedged in the hole about halfway to my Hoo-hah.  There was this big, metallic crash as the ducting that lets heat flow into his room fell to the basement floor. 

So I'm sitting there....thigh deep in a hole in the floor.....with terrible back pain.  I hauled myself out of the hole and plopped my ass down on the floor.  It hurt.  A lot.  There was sheet metal stapled inside the hole in the floor.....it's no longer there. 

So I'm sitting on the floor.....crying.  Crying because it hurt.  Crying because my back hurts more now.  Crying because I can't believe I put my foot through the register.  Crying because I can't do anything else but paint this stupid room.

As if on queue.....my husband walks in.

"How's the painting going?.....Why are you on the floor? ....Are you crying?....Why are you crying?"

So I tell him the story.....his response?

"Fuck!!  You mean if I'd walked down here two minutes earlier I would have witnessed that?!  Damn it!!"

I will be posting the details of his funeral later.