I like to end my posts on a high note (the last post stressed me out)

Christmas was good, except for the debilitating back pain I started suffering on Thursday.  Basically it hurt to sit, stand, extend any of my limbs or bend over at all (SI joints).
Seriously?
Two physio appointments in as many days later, I'm in the car with Michael driving to Penticton after being advised that this is the worst possible thing that I can do and that, to mitigate the possible undoing of all the good things that physio had done I was to make sure to get out of the car every hour to stretch my legs and do a set of exercises.
The funny thing about that was that our drive to Penticton ended up being one of the worst we'd ever encountered.  And the commute was pretty bad, too.
Typically we make a brief stop at Tim Horton's in Chilliwack for a coffee/pee break and for some reason we instead went to the mall there.  Maybe it was under the guise of last minute shopping.  I'm not sure.  The gist is this: there are two malls there.  One is Cottonwood mall and the other is Chilliwack mall.  We made.  The. Wrong.  Choice. 
There are four sad malls that I have been to in my short, anxiety ridden life and they were in Parksville, Kitimat, Prince Rupert and Chilliwack.  One of the stores had the word "Swords" in it.  Another was (I swear I wish I was kidding) selling 3D pictures of like, sexy, crying, female vampires.  I think the "food court" consisted of two, weird places. 
The saddest part?  There was a Santa there, but his set up was kind of lacking even though he had a real beard and - ready for it? - there were no kids lined up to see him.  He looked like a really nice guy and was sort of looking down the mall expectantly and I think when I saw that a little part of me died.
From there we decided to take the Coquihalla which was (again).  The.  Wrong.  Choice.  Numerous cars wiped out, crashed, spun out.  We decided to maybe seriously consider slowing down when we saw the snow plow that had gone over an embankment.  Seriously?
We white knuckled it through that and then basically into white out conditions where we played the "I sure as shit hope the guy in front of us knows where he's going because we're just following his tail lights" game.
That game SUCKS.  Though it did turn out that he knew enough not to drive into a crevasse or a frozen lake or some damn thing.
The morning after we arrived I received my surprise period which is surprising me more and more these days, as well as the inability to sit so I was actually relegated to bed for a few hours so that I could lie there and think about how this was most certainly the best Christmas ever.
Oddly, I managed to transition from almost totally incapacitated to somewhat... capicated thanks to the Christmas miracle that Michael prayed for (and Robaxacet and super strength Motrin).
Michael's sister and her family from London were there so it was really nice to be able to spend time with them, as well as his sister that lives in Penticton with his mom.
Michael has a really cool, attractive, blonde, funny, caring, tight knit family.  Insofar as inlaws are concerned, you actually couldn't do better than this bunch.  Especially given that they seem to quite like me too.  Or maybe they've just given up and accepted me since I keep on showing up, year after year, to various family events.
I don't often spend Christmas away from my family (I think this might have been the third one), but it was a really nice Christmas with really nice people.
Plus I scored that wind up Penguin I mentioned earlier.
He's pretty wound up.