Pour Me A Story, Vol. 61
the Colorado Anniversary Edition
greetings pals, and welcome to this week’s edition of Pour Me A Story. we don’t have a special guest this week for more than one reason, so the poured story in question is gonna be one of mine.
there’s no sense in beating around the bush, so let’s dive right in!
A Long Road Back
this past Thursday marks a whole year since we officially returned to Denver after 10 months or so in Cincinnati. there’s something very cliche, of course, about a white guy with a beard moving to Denver on 4/20, but hey sometimes the world works in mysterious ways.
as I mentioned back in Vol. 50, our move to Ohio looked great on paper but didn’t come to fruition as we had hoped. coming back to the city we’d called home for at least four years prior (and longer for Alex) immediately felt like the right move.
of course, the settling-in process was made more challenging by the fact that I’d had back surgery (quite literally) four days before we left Cincinnati and, while I had a couple of weeks’ worth of false hope while the nerve-blocking meds lingered in my system, the pain settled back in once they wore off.
that rendered me all but useless, with a no-lifting-more-than-15-pounds restriction for the first six weeks post-surgery meaning I couldn't help out around the house much and nerve pain in my left leg robbing me of the ability to sleep for more than a couple hours at a time.
recovery went up and down, with a summertime regression leading to great results from physical therapy that got me through the seafood festival in September and beyond. I’ve been back to a level of physical comfort for a few months now where I’ve subconsciously tried to overcorrect when it comes to housework and parenting after several months of not feeling like I’ve pulled even close to my ever-expanding weight, but until recently I was still relying on anti-inflammatories to dull the morning and evening aches.
I begrudgingly admitted to myself time and again that moving my body was the best way to keep the nagging discomfort (not to mention intrusive thoughts about whether the $15,000 surgery had actually worked) at bay, but it took me almost the entire year to get back into the swing of regular exercise. a difficult therapy session in mid-March was the breaking point, when I realized I had to snap out of the funk I was in, and the best way to do so was to just fucking go outside and sweat.
the first step is usually the hardest but I had a fire lit under me, so the next day I found myself at the local Anytime Fitness signing up for a membership. as determined as I was to start feeling better again and lose some weight to facilitate a return to running, I knew that I’m at greater risk of making matters worse physically if I try to work out at the same intensity as I might have two or three years ago.
so aside from a couple of missteps — a particularly difficult personal training session that rendered my upper body motionless for three days, and a two-week cold that made it tough to breathe let alone work out — I’ve managed to find some momentum again. I'm pushing myself to get up earlier in the morning so I can get a run or a workout in before the baby wakes up and the day gets started, and on the days when I don’t move my body before work I can definitely feel the difference physically and mentally.
don’t get me wrong: I’m not signing up for another half-marathon any time soon. but the little bits and pieces of progress I’ve seen here and there make me feel as though a race isn't out of the question sometime in the future.
Worthy Consumables
at the end of our first day back in Denver, we hadn’t bought groceries but we surely had an appetite worked up. after we got the baby to bed (always a nervous prospect in a new bedroom), we settled on carryout from Illegal Pete’s, the fast-casual Mexican food chain that’s dotted all around Denver and elsewhere in the southwest.
we pulled up the patio furniture we had stolen from Alex’s old apartment in 2018 before we first moved in together, opened a beer and sat down to enjoy the sunset behind our very own (rented) backyard.
anyway this won’t be anything surprising to Denverites, but we’ve leaned on Illegal Pete’s ever since as the “we don’t feel like cooking or spending $80 in carryout” weeknight meal of choice. only recently did I stumble upon the Baja fish burrito and now I can’t get enough of the damn thing.
I don’t remember how it came up today, but I idly suggested Pete’s for dinner and it came to be. only when we sat down to eat did I realize we’d done the exact same thing a year ago. seems like we’ve got a new April 20 tradition in the Crawford house!
Parting Note
I’m gonna go with a very digestible classic here, and only because I just learned tonight that Jack Johnson was at Illegal Pete’s eating a burrito when he received a phone call saying he’d been signed to Universal Records.
on that note folks, thanks again for joining me. catch you again in the next edition!
— adrian ✌🏻