ouch

OK, so I haven't been doing much physical work for the past, oh ... six months, I think? But let me tell you - I hurt today.

Yesterday I built 80% of a shelf/entertainment center for a customer, and today I did a half-day of garden work, followed by a couple more hours at the business end of a leaf-blower.

Now my arms are rubbery and my hands don't want to grab things and hold on with any kind of reliability.

Damn. This working for a living is rough stuff.

More coming tomorrow, too, and Thursday, and again on Friday. I'll be lucky if I can drink out of a cup without using a straw by the weekend. Wow.

I'm off to bed. The NaBloPoMo gods have been appeased for another day.

Texture is everything

OK, maybe quantity is important, too.

I'm talking about snow here, kids. Get yer minds outta the gutter!

You saw the post of Quinn's most UN-excellent adventure to go pee last night. Poor thing couldn't squat, because no matter what she did, her feet never hit anything solid and the snow was ALWAYS snug up against her undercarriage. Think about that for a moment, will you? Brrr!

The snow last night was wet and sticky - great for snowballs and snowmen and forts and stuff like that. Except it was pitch black, cold as hell and blowing a gale, so we opted not to make snow sculptures in our yard. Well, after the snow stopped falling and the clouds cleared, the temperature dropped. All of that wet, sticky snow turned solid. The wind had compacted it quite solidly in several places in the yard, including under the bumper and whole driver's side of my truck. The kitchen door opened only because L went out there last night and shoveled a wee little space on the steps to allow that to happen.

The upshot of all this verbiage? That shit was heavy. I mean seriously heavy. But dry, so it didn't stick to the shovel, like wet snow will do. That'll jerk your arm right out of the socket when you're trying to fling snow and it won't let go of the shovel at the end of your arm's arc. I hate that.

But what did happen was the snow was frozen and compacted, sort of like a cross between flour and frozen cool-whip. I could cut great square cubes of snow with my shovel - so great in fact that I could barely lift them. I ended up chopping squares, then scooping the top half of the square off before going back for the bottom half. That's a lot of chopping and scooping and tossing, let me tell you.

And the day just got longer and longer as it went. Shovel out the truck, get it unstuck (LOVE 4WD!) head out and do one lady's walk and path for the oil man. Go to next account, shovel wide path up front, extra wide to allow access for emergency personnel if necessary (they're seniors, so I fuss and fret over them) In through the house to the garage and the little snow blower. That. just. won't. start.

No matter what we do. Push this, pull that, push the little squirty button a bunch, spray starter stuff in there, nada. Well, I told the gent, I've shoveled bigger and worse. He did not look convinced, but it's true. When I was a kid and there was a snow day, I shoveled. And we had a looooong driveway.

The only way to do something like this is one row at a time, one scoop at a time and just keep going.

I set to work. The driveway is probably 18 feet wide by 40 or 50 feet long. It was filled with that self-same dense-packed stuff I described above. To a depth ranging from about 12 inches to about 30 inches (wind had made drifts as well). There was an absolutely obscene mound of snow and crap at the mouth of the driveway left by the town plow truck. Fortunately, I begged a favor from a guy I knew in the next parking lot. His truck had a plow, so he came and knocked it back a bit for me. Still, it was a long haul. After three hours, I was nearly all-in.

But they had a friend who needed help getting her car shoveled out, so I went there and helped her. Turns out she had another friend who needed HER car shoveled out, so I went over to the other parking lot. Then I remembered that I was supposed to bring the snow blower to the garage, I went back to the other place, picked it up (literally - it's not that big) and dropped it off.

By the time I hit the bank to deposit all of my riches it was already getting dark. I got home to find that I had absconded with all the good shovels this morning, so I still had to dig out L's car for us to take to Massachusetts in the morning.

As they say in Minnesota, Uf-da!

I am some freakin' sore tonight. My back hurts from the backs of my knees all the way up and over and down again to my chin. Damn. My face is windburned, although I did keep lip balm on, so I am not bleeding as well. I think I will probably not be able to move tomorrow. A four-hour-and-a-bit ride in the Crown Vic will be a wonderful thing - that car rides like my couch, but more comfortable.

Posting may be spotty due to the sneak-around factor at my aunt's house for the next few days, so please bear with me. I'll be behind the gym with the pilfered smokes. Winston reds.

P.S. I'll try to get a picture of the yards I shoveled before we leave town tomorrow and post them here if I can. You gotta see this stuff!

I hurt

I hurt today.

Really bad.

We went down to the big city of Portland Saturday, stayed overnight at Motel 1.4 or whatever, and then came back Sunday. Only Sunday it snowed.

In Portland, it was pretty. There was an inch or two of wet, fluffy flakes - just right for snowballs, but not enough for snowmen yet. The roads in town were a little greasy, but the highway was OK. We headed north toward home at just before noon, and the highway was clear-ish for quite a while. But after Brunswick, it got colder, and by the time we reached Augusta, it was starting to get a little hinky. Traffic seemed to want to go much faster than I was willing to drive, so we got off the highway and took the coastal route down Route 3. Bad idea. Apparently nobody wanted to pay plow truck drivers overtime rates on a Sunday for less than six inches of snow, so things were barely plowed at all. Greasy and slippery and we saw several places where cars had hit the guardrail or slid off into the ditch. We crept along, vowing every few miles to get studded snow tires as soon as we get a few hundred dollars together to do it. I was tense the whole way home. A drive that normally takes about 3 hours took four and a half. It was hellish.

I spent some time last night on that vibrating massage thing that fits in the armchair, and that was nice, but not nearly enough. Then this morning the power went off sometime between four and six a.m. I may have mentioned here before that I have a sleep apnea, if not: I have a sleep apnea. I wear a face mask attached to a hose that constantly pushes air into my lungs as I sleep. The machine is called a C-PAP and it is a lifesaver. I am useless if I do not wear it for a night, and if I go more than one nigh without it, I am punch-drunk and incapable of any productive effort. So anyway, when the power went out, my little "breathe machine" as I call it, crapped out, leaving me with a mask over my nose and mouth and no air coming in. Helluva way to wake up, let me assure you. So, I took it off and tried to go back to sleep, but that doesn't work much at all, and when the power came back on and I finally got out of bed, my back was so stiff and sore that I could hardly bend over. Lacing my boots actually brought tears to my eyes. It's bad.

I had to get up, though, because I have some really cool senior citizen folks who depend on me to shovel out their driveways and front walks, and I knew they'd be wanting to get out of the house today. Mind you, I can't bend over, so shovelling would have been comical had it not hurt so much. Luckily, most of it could be pushed and scraped clear and I didn't have to bend and lift.

So anyway, after that, I hit the grocery store and limped on home. I am still dressed in my work clothes (the boots are as far away now as they were this morning, and I'm not excited to try that again) but hope to find my pajamas soon. Maybe sweatpants. I might travel down into the next village to sozzle in my friends' spa for a little while. We'll see how it goes with the boots first. Maybe a hot shower will be enough to let me relax a little. The spa sounds great, but it's the coming and going in 6 degree (that's Farenheit, for my Canadian and foreign readers) temperatures with sub-zero wind chills (it's howlin' a gale out theyah) that causes me some concern. How relaxed am I going to be if I have to run that gauntlet before and after the sozzle? Meh.

I suppose someone will tell me to go to the doctor, and that sounds like a great idea, but I haven't got insurance, and I haven't got any money, so hot showers and gentle treatment are what I've got to work with. Maybe I'll get the cat to curl up with me on the couch. He's a good heating pad.

Umph.

I just had a massage.

Ok, well not JUST maybe. Like a couple of hours ago. The warm fuzzy feeling is gone, but the rumpled hair remains. And now my muscles are complaining as they adjust themselves back into the original (unhealthy) positions they are accustomed to holding.

I have been working pretty hard these past few weeks, jacking and leveling cabins, building big things, lifting and toting and climbing and crawling. Today, I tore out some back steps and the skirting around a mud room so I could replace the rotted skirt and re-route the dryer vent so we won't have to do this again right away. I spent a fair amount of my time on my back, under the mud room, swearing and banging my elbows and knees and head and cursing the crushed rock on which I was laying.

So I've been sore for a while. I suppose it is not really a surprise. I am in my 40s but working like I'm still 20, but with better carpentry skills. The masseuse was so kind.

"You're a mess," she said.

Lovely gal. So kind. So thoughtful. So diplomatic.

But she's right. I was a mess. And I still am, in large part, because a 30-minute massage was not even going to come close to addressing the needs my muscles have.

And now I am one hurting unit. I got just enough to know what comfort could feel like, but not enough to hang onto it for more than an hour or two. I have been working too hard after too much time sitting like a lump, and both of those things are now taking their toll.

Uf-da. As they say in Minnesota. Good god.

My next appointment is not until mid-June, but I am looking forward to it. I have already booked a full hour. I am going to try to plan ahead and investigate whether I should take a bubble in my friend's spa before or after the massage. Before, I think, but we'll see. In the meantime, I will be counting down the days, and keeping track of the aches and pains.