I am falling apart. Fighting it, but falling apart, just the same.
This morning I wake up with calf cramps. Seriously. It feels like I've run a 5K or perhaps restarted judo classes. When I try to stand up on those sore calves after sleeping (yes, sleeping), my right knee gives out. It feels like something is caught under the kneecap and is driving itself further into my leg with knife-like precision.
From sleeping.
I think back: What on earth did I do yesterday to cause such overnight stress? Let's see, I took my car for a check-up and sat in a chair playing Sudoku on my phone. Then, I went to the grocery store for the dozen items I needed and walked behind a cart for about twenty minutes. After that, I did some light housework -- you know - washing dishes and whisking pudding in a bowl. Super strenuous activities like that. Oh, don't forget that I worked on some writing for a while, interrupted for a short time to watch Jeopardy. Extended ass-sitting, as it were.It's absolutely insulting the amount of sheer complaining my body engages in from doing absolutely nothing. Nothing, as in not a damn thing. That kind of nothing.
What is worse is that I have a treasure trove of wraps and braces just for occasions like this. Of course, these battle remnants came from real-life situations, for the most part. Let's see, I have in my arsenal:
Ace bandage (universal sign of an oowie); one blue wrist wrap (small); two pink wrist wraps with thumb holes; a wrist wrap with a complete thumb-stabilization brace; an elbow wrap from doing something to a tendon while I slept holding my granddaughter's hand -- an injury that took four months to mend; two ankle support wraps from pulling my Achilles tendons (both of them) during a particularly vacuum-ous mudhole during the Muddy Princess 5K Mud Run a few years back (I hurt myself but saved the sneakers); a heavy-duty ankle brace.
I also have bouts of hip bursitis and my feet often give out (one from a serious cut that damaged nerves and other pretty things when I was a teenager, and the other from an Austin bunionectomy). Sometimes while teaching at school, there will be loud pops or snaps that scare the children. It's okay, I assure them. It's just my back or my hip or my knee or my elbow or . . .
Life is grand, folks. It's all fun and games until you need wraps and braces just to get out of bed.