A month later, in another fit of PMDD hopelessness, I impulsively close down the shop to work from home. By now, my custom furniture requests are enough to keep me busy without all of the overhead anyway. Rather than hurriedly selling off all of my furniture and art, I decide to display it in the small, local vintage shop that is right next door to my old shop.

The woman that owned it, Hannah, was one of the coolest chicks I’ve ever met. She just had that nerdy swag, with her wide rimmed glasses and infectious laugh, I liked her instantly.

Meanwhile, with my newly found blocks of time, I’m finally able to begin catching up on refinishing projects that I’ve been neglecting and meaning to finish, which is what I plan on doing today. I just need to figure out which one I’m going to tackle.

Suddenly remembering I have an old and forgotten wooden radio in the garage, my face lights up. When I open the door, I'm greeted with an impressive mess. At least that's what most people would call it. I called a treasure trove of possibilities I scan the cluttered room for the radio. 

Stopping momentarily to admire an antique that I had forgotten about, I spot the radio. I climb over a pile antiques and other thrift store finds to get to it. Standing beneath it, I reach for it. It’s heavy and massive in comparison to me, but I ignore this and decide to lift it anyway. Just as I have a firm grip on it, my back pops and stops me in my tracks.

Holy fuck. What was that?

The swear escapes my lips, but I feel no relief from it. Minutes go by that feel like hours, and I still haven’t moved. I can’t. I’m seemingly stuck in place. The pain is almost secondary to my immobility. Panic creeps in.

Well, guess you’re done for the day.

When I’m finally able to move again a few agonizing minutes later, I hobble back to the living room.

  Way to go dumbass. Lift with your knees!

My self-lecture is in vain. It’s too little too late. My back is seriously fucked. Admitting my defeat, I sprawl out on the floor for relief. To my horror, when I go to get up minutes later, moments later, I can’t move, again.

Nooooo.

In this moment, stuck to the floor, unable to move, I realize just how important my back is.

I’m useless, just like my father said.

Sickly, I laugh at this. And my back spasms because of it.

Fuck every life I’ve ever had.

I try once again to move, but the agony from doing so stops me in my tracks.

Conceding defeat, I sprawl out and lay my face flat on the floor.

Fuck it.

As I’m lying there helpless, my youngest daughter comes up to me, staring at me curiously, with her head slightly tilted in confusion. I don’t blame her. I know I look ridiculous.

“What doing mommy?” She asks me in her child-like sentence, tilting her head in the opposite direction.

“I don’t know, baby. I have no idea what I’m doing.” As the words leave my lips, I can’t help but notice the honesty in them. The accuracy in them. The cold reality that I’m really just out here, flying by the seat of my non-existent pants, pretending to be a grown up.

“Silly Mommy,” she giggles at me, as I lay there, helplessly on the floor.

From a bird’s eye view, it probably looks like she just kicked my ass and laughed. Even through my pain, I find this funny and her amusement at my misfortune — oddly adorable. She turns on her heel, leaving me in the dust and proceeds to pull out as many toys as she can find, one by one.

I watch in a type of horror that only a mother knows. In minutes, my already messy living room becomes an irredeemable mess.

As I’m waiting on the floor for the back gods to release me from my misery, I spot a craft magazine close enough for me to reach. This thing had been laying here for weeks and I still hadn’t looked through it, though I promised myself I would.

As I’m flipping through the pages, nothing in particular jumps to my attention. That is, until I come across a crafting machine.

But how the fuck do you use this?

Confused and dying to have one of these machines, I do what any crafty gal would do. I join the Facebook group for it.

Little did I know, just how much this one small thing, would change my entire life.