A Week of Ups and Downs

First of all, let me backtrack to Saturday when Sarah was over for a visit. I bent down under the desk to plug her laptop power cord in and had my weight on my right arm. When I plugged it in, I pushed myself up and heard (and felt) a triple-pop come out of my right shoulder. Little by little pain started drifting into the area. I was worried how bad it would get at first, but after it got to the point of a deep, dull ache it finally stopped growing. It just sat there and throbbed at me. It didn't really give me much trouble sleeping or anything and I basically stopped worrying about it.

The next day I drove the truck to a guy's house that had firewood for sale. I made one trip home with a load of wood, moved a bunch of our existing wood (to rotate the old to the front), unloaded the truck, then went back for the rest of the load. After unloading that and putting all the other wood back in front of it I was exhausted. I mean almost drop-dead tired. I thought if I would have gotten into the hot tub I would have just fallen asleep and drowned so I didn't even do that. By early evening I was about out of it so I decided I'd go to bed--I think it was about 7 or 7:30--thinking I'd sleep like a log (cheesy firewood pun).  Wrong.  It was probably one of the worst sleeps of my life.  My shoulder screamed in agony all night causing massive tossing and turning.  Unfortunately that was a work night and I suffered the following day.  To add to the shoulder issue and lack of sleep, all that bending and lifting firewood also gave my butt cheeks and upper legs an overdose of activity.  They were hurting bad all day at work too.  I did at least manage to get a good night's sleep that night.  If memory serves me, the following night of sleep was a repeat of tossing and turning due to the shoulder pain.

The good news came Tuesday evening.  That's when I got to go to the airport and pick Suzie up!

The poor dear... She ended up working her fanny off almost the entire two weeks that she was at her folks' house in Kauai.  It was no vacation.  Meanwhile, the cold, dank Seattle summer (or lack thereof) we were having finally turned around the day after she left and we were blessed with perfect temperatures the entire two weeks right to the day.  I did a good job of keeping all of her plants alive and all that.  I didn't have any wild parties or do anything wrong.

I blew the dust off the Harley Wednesday morning and rode it to work.  That was a high point.  Okay, maybe not so much going to work, but the ride home is always good.

We're both trying to get our sleep groove back.  Between my off and on shoulder pain and her time adjustments/jet lag, we were having some trouble.  I think it's getting better though.

Yesterday at work was a nasty day because of the shoulder.  I spent about 3 hours on Thursday afternoon doing brazing, and it definitely exacerbated my shoulder pain (although it really didn't show up until later that evening).  Because I had to spend most of yesterday doing the same thing (which is not my regular job) I opted to do the whole day standing up so my right arm could operate at a more relaxing angle.  Trouble is, that's pretty hard on the back, neck, and everything else.  Let's just say that when quitting time came, I was damn glad to see it.

It was a good Friday evening with my wife finally.  Out to eat at our local joint, and a nice, relaxing soak in the hot tub.

Okay, that's enough whining about my tired and abused body.  Tomorrow I'll whine about the predicted steady rain... Yep, it's back.