Make a Big Fuss!

Last night, I met up with my brother at the gym. In my routine, last night was 'miscellaneous night.' I cover forearms, calves, quads, and core. I go back and forth between liking miscellaneous night (it's not quite a serious work out, I bounce around and just do stuff for each muscle group, just to keep up) and wanting to skip it altogether (well developed forearms are probably not gonna get me laid, so what's the point?).

So I was doing squats. Now, in the not two distant past, I was squatting six plates. (For you non-meatheads, that's six forty-five pound plates, three on each side, and counting the bar itself, the total weight I'm squatting is 315 pounds. Since I got out of the habit of doing squats, last night I was taking it embarrassingly easy: just two plates.

And on rep number two, as I was descending, I heard/felt the Dreaded Squish. No bolt of lightning pain, no shriek of agony. (I am wa-a-a-a-ay too cool for that.) Just an 'uh oh.'

So I've pulled a muscle.

It's a weird thing, pulling a muscle in your back. It's like this little muscle group that you never knew existed before is suddenly gone. Just totally out of commission. And until this happens, you have no idea how vital this little muscle group is.

But you're about to find out. You find out because you suddenly can no longer do all those things that little muscle group does.

Here's the list so far:

• Bend at the waist
  
• Lift up my left leg, as you would when walking up stairs
  
• Get up from a chair
  
• Cough
  
• Lift up my head in bed
  
• Roll over while supine
  
• Shift weight from one foot to the other.
  

I called in to work today. My back feels like it's getting better. And that's good. Of course, in my frustrated attempts to get a good nigbht sleep last night, I had to torture myself with the thought, "What if it's a ruptured disk? What if this isn't going away? What if I'll be in this shape for the rest of my life?"

But it looks as though those malign deities who have marked me for a fate of convalescence are gonna be cheated. It's getting better.

Hopefully, I'll be able to make it to work tomorrow. And hopefully, I won't be feeling in any way out of sorts for this weekend at MAL. ("Why... who is that strikingly handsome man with the bald head and bushy stache... and the cane and backbrace and look of agony on his face?")

But today is the Day of Exclamations. While loading up the dishwasher I dropped a fork on the floor and almost burst into tears of frustration realizing that there was no way I could pick up that fork. Tonight, I'm going over to my brothers. He and his wife have a jacuzzi in their fabulous bathroom. And I'm gonna take advantage of that.

The guy came today to add salt to our water softener (and oh. my. god. was he a hottie! excuse me while I run the water for no good reason) and it took me about twenty minutes to make it up out of the chair where I was sitting, struggle to an upright position, and get across the floor to answer the door. The soundtrack that the water softener guy had to hear ("Just a minute! Eaaagh! Be right there! Aaaiieech! I'm coming! Fuck! Almost there! Oooooaaaah!") was probably pretty priceless.

You all know how I make a lot of noise when processing pain, don'chya?

Anyway. Gonna see if I can take a nap now while the ice pack gets cold again in the freezer.

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