Pain in the Neck

I can't move my head.
It all started as a minor pain in the neck. No, seriously. I had this small little aching pain in my neck this week. Probably just a stiff neck from the unfortunate lopsided bed situation (see below for details). And now, I can't move my head, and it hurts to open my jaw.
I blame Juli.
Or maybe Mike.
Or Keli.
Or all three.
Or that comedian guy who made me laugh so hard I popped my jaw.

Tonight I ventured north to Ogden with BFF Juli, her sister Keli, and Keli's husband Mike. I've known Keli and Mike for years now. Jules and I go back about 11 years now, so naturally I've been meeting her siblings along the way. (Although I still haven't met them all.) But the most important thing to know here is that Mike was my first blog friend. Really. He was the first person I ever linked to, and that linked to me. We're special that way.

Mike performs and emcees at Wiseguys, a local comedy club. I've seen portions of Mike's act on his blog for years now, and I was excited to finally get to see the real thing. And it was definitely worth the drive to Ogden to see! Great job, Mike!

Mike emceed the night, plus did his act, and then there were 2 warm-up acts before the headliner took the stage. The headliner was a guy named Marcus, who apparently has no last name. I've googled and looked and can't find it anywhere, but I did find his MySpace page. From the minute he took the stage I never stopped laughing. He's freaking hilarious. But I think it was somewhere in the middle of this bit that I laughed so hard that I popped my jaw.


(Sidenote: When done live the buttler bit is several minutes long and freaking hilarious. The MySpace clip barely does it justice.)

I have never done that before- popped my jaw, or laughed so hard that I have popped my jaw. It hurt like hell, but I was laughing so hard I didn't care. I tried to rub my neck a few times after that, because it was tensing up funny, but I didn't worry about it.

So the show ended, I literally had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard at times, and we went home. Now this may seem a trivial detail, but it becomes important later. I actually had been having a rough and crappy day, and had been running late on my way up to meet them, and long story short, was pretty much out of gas. Because I was not wise and thinking straight, due to the crappy day, I hadn't thought to bring my wallet, and only had $5 cash on me. Knowing the capability of my gas mileage, $5 was more than enough to get me home. So I put $5 in and off we went.

There was an important stop to be made at Juli's house. Her daughter/my fairy god-daughter, got her first straight A's report card, and I had promised to come see it. Yeah Cali!!!

I hugged all the little girls (Mike and Keli's girls were there too) and left. It was when I was picking up Andi to give her a silly funny angle hug in the chair that I really noticed something pulling in my neck. But again, I didn't think much of it.

Jules and company live in Syracuse, a town that Google Maps tells me is 36.6 miles north of me. And don't forget, I had put the mere $5 of gas in in Ogden, about another 17 miles north of that. About 10 minutes after I left Juli's house, around 10:30 pm, I found myself in a complete and total highway standstill. No cars moving. Nothing. About 25 minutes later I had gone a short .5 miles. That is when I finally saw the first sign telling me the highway was closed. And that I had several more miles before the next exit.

About 5 minutes later is when I realized I couldn't turn my head anymore.

And then the yellow low gas light popped on.

Oh crap.

It was nothing more than my bargaining with God and a lot of faith that got me home tonight. I also think it was the prayers of the few hundred other people stuck in that backup who just wanted to get home, and my car getting stranded on the highway would have screwed them over as well.

It took me over 1.5 hours to get home. I managed to go about 70 miles, when realistically speaking I only had gas to go about 50. Seriously, I have never been so scared about running out of gas before in my life. But I made it.

I finally got home and in my room when the real neck pain began. When I went to brush my teeth I realized I can barely open my jaw. So I've loaded up on pain killers and muscle relaxants. But I can't find the heating pad because I can't move head to look for it.

So basically tonight I laughed so hard I hurt myself. Seriously!