The Good, The Bad and the Painful

Last night we had a Halloween party which was a great deal of fun (the good)! We had about twelve other folks over and enjoyed good converation, a few drinks and yummy food (got to have lots of yummy food)! By far the biggest hit of the night were the Pumpkin Pasties that I made from a recipe I found on the internet. They are basically bite size pumpkin pies.

Here was our haunted bathroom... of course with the flash it doesn't looky nearly as spooky as without it. We changed out almost all of the light bulbs in our house to colored bulbs and then also lit a lot of candles and oil lanterns to create "Halloween atmposphere."

This is our hutch with the flash off... red lights mixed with lanterns and spiderwebs = creepy!

Here is the beginning of our spread. There were a few other things that were added throughout the night (including a very yummy spinach dip that filled the lower right hand corner of the table... thanks Lucy!). The front center plate is the pasties.




And here is the happy Greek couple... yes, the costumer decided she simply didn't have time to sew costumes. So, I bought seven yards of $1/yard fabric at Walmart, cut them into rectangles and pinned them on to us to make Greek Chitons. See? Teaching costume history does come in handy! :)

For the bad, I was walking across the costume shop yesterday afternoon and something in my back just snapped. Pain shot up my back and down into my legs. I tried taking it easy (as easy as I could making last minute preparations for our party which included making the aforementioned pasties). But by the time people got here I was having some trouble sitting in a straight back chair and standing for long periods. I took four pain pills, which made it possible for me to move in a limited way but by 10:30 I was out of costume and by 11:15 I was in bed. I felt bad leaving the party early (as most folks didn't leave until about 12:30) but there was nothing else that could be done.

I woke up this morning and my back still hurt (the painful). Luckily one of our guests last night is a professional massage therapist who was willing to make an appointment for a Saturday. So I went to see her today and it definitely helped relieve the pain temporarily (which makes me hopeful that it is just muscular and not spinal) but it is still very tender. If it isn't better by Monday, it will be time to make the doctor's appointment... So, I'm going to try and take it easy for the next few hours (I have to go back to school this evening to see the closing night performance of the first set of student-directed one acts) and tomorrow will be spent mostly lying on the bed/sofa in hopes that whatever it is will heal itself by Monday. Just wanted to keep you all in the loop. And now it's back to bed.