Monthly Archives: January 2009

My 25 Things

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Because I’ve been blogging in some form or fashion since I was 17 years old, It’s hard for me to surface 25 bits of information that aren’t already well known by the people that read SarahThe/Check my facebook.  That being said, if you want informations, you can have them:

25 bits of SarahThe informations: 

1.) I have a disproportionately large shin muscle.  I guess this a result of the way I expressly lift my toe when I walk, but I’m not sure.  When I run/take long walks with Scout, my shin muscles always hurt badly, and I can’t figure out how to make the pain go away, because I don’t know how to stretch them.  This is the case right now, as I just walked back in the door from a walk. 

2.) I read books over and over again.  If I read a book once and I like it, I add it into my rotation.  As a result, I can draw up fairly detailed outlines of a few books from memory.  The Poisonwood Bible and East of Eden are two of the books I’ve read over a dozen times.

3.) Because I don’t know if I’m going to get into nursing school, I am constantly creating elaborate back-up plans for myself.  Occasionally a back-up plan will be so appealing, I wonder why it is that I’m killing myself to try to get into nursing school.  Inevitably, that feeling is closely followed by a stark wake-up call where a hiccup in the road-to-nursing school will help me realize how much I want this dream, and the insane lengths that I will go to in order to obtain it. 

4.) One of my greatest regrets in life was never learning how to play a musical instrument. 

5.) My other greatest regret is how poorly I have maintained my ability to speak Spanish. 

6.) I’m moderately obsessed with the color Grey right now. 

7.) My decorating style is Modern/Mid-Century/Earthy/Bohemian.  Chew on that. 

8.) From the ages of 11-16, I raced Bicycle Motor-Cross, or BMX.  My family was beyond involved with racing, and every one of my brothers and sisters, as well as my dad, competed on local, state, and national levels.  We even went to a World Cup race on year, where my dad and I both placed 3rd (in our respective divisions). I was Texas State Champion for a good handful of those years, and I was ranked nationally when I was 14 and 15 years old.  Zack thinks that this is one of the weirdest things about me.  I quit racing a month before I turned 17, since I knew I would be unable to finish the season because I would be leaving for college.  I haven’t talked about it much since then, but my history in cycling has followed me and my life with surprising tenacity, and been helpful more often than not.

9.) I wear size 7 shoes.

10.) I recently removed all the ‘weird’ earrings from my years, except the piercing in the basin of my right ear, called a “conch.”  I didn’t remove the Conch because it hurt like hell, and I’m wearing it longer to validate the pain that it caused me for 6 months.  This reasoning makes no sense.

11.) Though I always feel better about myself when I am tan, I choose to be white my family has a proclivity towards skin cancer. 

12.) I really thought I would still be craving Cokes 5 (or so) weeks after quitting, but I’m not.  Every once in a while I have a mood where I’d like one, but they are few and far between.  That’s really surprising to me. 

13.) I’m a tosser.  I love to throw things away. No matter how much stuff I get rid of, though, it seems like there’s always something else for me to clean out.  Zack, despite what he’d have you think, is not a tosser.  This has not caused any strife in our relationship.  Yet. 

14.) I love a well organized fridge.  After grocery shopping on Wednesday, Zack and I put away an entire refrigerator’s worth of produce.  It made me visibly happy that my fridge looked “like a fridge should.”

15.) Once in my life, I could do 6 back hand-springs in a row. I loved that time in my life, but can’t imagine going back to a gymnastics class.  Maybe someday?

16.) I can shoot the bird with my toes. 

17.) I am self conscious of the way I walk in heels.  I always wonder if I’m one of those people who walks funny, but nobody will just be honest with me about it.  If I am one of those people, for Christ’s sake, tell me. 

18.) I never thought I’d get along with another girl named Sarah as well as I get along with my sister-in-law, SarahI.  She has become one of my very best friends, and I love her dearly.

19.) Aunthood is incredible, and I love days when I get to go be with Abbie and Kate.

20.) I talk to my dad on the phone almost every day.  He calls me at work because: a.) he knows I’m always at my desk, so he can always get a hold of me when he wants to, b.) I don’t mind listening to his daily rants about politics/drivers/jobs/life, and can let them roll off my back after we’re done talking, and c.) we have very similar senses of humor, so he generally knows when I will think something is funny.  I wouldn’t consider myself overly attached to my parents, but anyone from the outside looking in might think I’m a little hung up still.

21.)  I have real-life friends that I met on the internet.  I don’t consider this to be strange at all.  

22.) I love to study different generations and their collective mindsets.  

23.) I’m way more feminist than I ever thought I was. 

24.) I love me some Hookah. 

and 25.) Zack and I have known each other since I was 15 years old.  This year will be our 10 year anniversary as friends.  Every once in a while, a memory of something we did together years ago will float to the surface of my brain, and I’ll ask him about it (or vice versa).  I am constantly shocked at the selectiveness of our brains–he often remembers conversations or encounters of which I have no recollection.  I can remember entire outings that he swears never happened.  One of the things I’d like to do (but that will likely never happen) is to sit down and try to draw an accurate timeline of our relationship together, to see what we can come up with.  Our history as friends turned lovers is fascinating to me. 

#26, a bonus.) If someone were to create for me A Perfect Mexican Meal, it would require a lot of driving.  I would want Bean soup from La Familia, queso and corn tortilla chips from The Blue Mesa, a margarita and an enchilada from Campuzanos, and rice, a chicken taco and a bean tostada from The Red Cactus.  If I could ever eat all of those foods at the same time, I might die from the Pure Delight.

I’m Setting Goals For Myself All Over The Place

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This week Zack mentioned to me that he was wondering how often I was going to post about P90X.  We were in the car together driving to a friends house for a birthday celebration, and he said that he was wondering if I wouldn’t mention anything about it on the blog, and then at the end of 90 days, post a surprise blog saying TADA!  

I never thought about not saying anything about this workout program on my blog.  First and foremost, I like to write on here about the things that I can, (large chunks of my life are excluded for outside reasons.  Job security, saving the family from embarrassment, etc.) and I feel like my body is something that I can write about freely.  If there is anyone that will suffer embarrassment from my writing about my body, it will be me, and I am allowed to embarrass me.  I explained to him that this workout program that we are doing together, this is life.  And I happen to write about life.  So it only made sense that I would write about working out. Besides, I added, writing on the blog, for me, is a way of keeping myself accountable.  There have been times when I wanted to work out, and posting that I would on my blog was the only reason that I actually went through with it.  I know that nobody from the blogosphere is going to come personally chastise me if I say that I’m going to do a workout and then I don’t, but I like to be a person of my word.  If I say that I’m going to go run 2 miles, I want to run those two miles.  Or at least I want to have a minor coronary trying.  

Then he fired his next question, as gingerly as possible:  what if, you know, at the end, if, well, your results aren’t what you’d hoped that they would be?

I said, well, I guess then I’ll blog about that too.  Cause that’s what I do. I write about life: victory or disappointment, weight gained or weight lost, birthdays come or birthdays gone.  I know that you guys don’t come here specifically to see me on a journey to become a more healthy person.  I’m not exactly sure what it is that you do come here for, actually.  But I do hope that you don’t mind my posts about P90X, or the strides that I’m taking towards becoming (as Zoolander would say) a ridiculously good-looking (or at least ridiculously fit) person.  The more I think about it, the more I can say that what I said earlier–the bit about you guys motivating me to stay accountable–it is so, so true.  

If you can’t stand the posts, just hang on.  I’m sure the intensity with which I blog about the workout program will wain over time.  Right now, since it’s still new, since it’s still not routine, since it’s still incredibly difficult, it has taken over my life, and even while I sit here and type this to you, my abs are screaming at me to PLEASE GO LAY DOWN, because this UPRIGHT POSITION WILL NOT STAND. 

So this is me, signing out for the evening, saying that I 1.) am going to attempt to give daily blasts regarding our P90X progress, including a 1-10 rating on how well I followed the diet plan, and 2.) am going to work hard to be my normal self, despite the fact that Tony Horton and the P90X crew are kicking my normal self’s ass each and every night.

25, with a pile of laundry to do.

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Update:

My dad just called, saying a.) happy birthday, and b.) that he couldn’t wait until my NEXT period to see if it is better/worse than this one.  I’ve been trying to get my parents to read my blog for years.  Awesome dad has obviously started reading it consistently.  Hi, dad.  I can’t wait for my next period, either.  Love you.

Probably TMI.

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Just a head’s up:  Since I have ambitions in the medical profession, and since I am a chronic over sharer, and since I’m not skeezed out by talking about body things, I am going to write this post.  Also, it could possibly be helpful to the 3 other people on this planet that aren’t on birth control.  That being said, if you hate talk of bodily functions, or if you’re a boy, you might want to skip this one.  It’s not about sex.  You’re not going to be missing much. I promise. 

So I’ve been off birth control and off caffeine for over a month now.  I ditched caffeine about a week before I ditched the birth control.  I had decided for a number of reasons that I didn’t want to be on birth control anymore.  We have to use other types of baby-preventatives anyway (because of my weird ass allergies) and Zack and I both feel like the weight gain that I’ve been experiencing since we’ve been married was tied in some way to the birth control.  There were a handful of other side effects that I was experiencing mildly, too.  I was just ready to ditch it.  But when I decided to do that, I had to remind myself that the reason I started it in the first place wasn’t for reproduction reasons.  It was cause I have the worst periods on Earth. 

Anyone who has been my roommate for any length of time can tell you that my periods suck.  In high school and college I used to miss class, staying curled up over a heating pad, praying for God to PLEASE, PLEASE make it stop, PLEASE.  When I moved to Waco after college, Katy and Brooke seriously considered taking me to the emergency room a couple of times because the flow was so heavy and  because the pain was so severe that we all became convinced that something was righteously wrong with my woman parts.  Zack used to lay behind me and hold my knees to my chest, clinging to me like one of those Koala Bear Dolls you could clip to your binder.  I have bad, mean, ugly, periods that talk about me behind my back and send nasty rumors about me to Gossip Girl. 

Because my periods are total bitches, and because birth control totally muzzled them, I was justifiably concerned about the repercussions of leaving The Pill behind.  After some research, I discovered that there have been some links between period pain and caffeine.  Now, I don’t know about you, but up until last week, I was pretty convinced that caffeine was my best friend.  It can be found in any number of delicious things, including but not limited to two of my very favorite beverages: Coke and Iced Tea.  It was hard to leave it behind, but every time I wanted to drink a Coke all I had to do was remember what the cramps feel like and I could stop myself. 

My body was so hormoned up that it took 5 weeks for my estrogen and progesterone to crash low enough for me to have a period.  5 weeks!  Starting Friday, I had my first period in about a year.  I started Friday, and the worst cramps I had were a slight twinge.  Out of fear (not out of pain) I took 2 Ibuprofen and I never felt anymore pain.  After a moderately heavy (but pain-free) first and second day, my period has slowed to a complete stop, and it’s only Monday. Monday!  That’s a 4 day, pain-free, angelic period for you.  It’s a freaking Christmas Miracle. I can’t say Pain-Free enough.  Pain-Free! Never in the last 4 days have I cursed Eve, or wanted to die, or thought about having a hysterectomy!  

Now, I can’t be scientifically sure that it’s the lack of caffeine that has delivered into my hands this Period to End All Periods.  Obviously.  It’s just been one period.  Perhaps my body is still adjusting, and after going through one complete menstrual cycle that is not skitzed out by 1 year of my body thinking that it’s pregnant, I will once again have the period from hell.  That being said, I can look backwards now and see that the times in my life when my periods were at an all time worst–those were the times that I was drinking the most caffeine.  My senior year of college when I decided to be a coffee drinker? Hellatious periods.  My years in Waco, doing my own grocery shopping, I discovered that I could purchase Cokes and drink them! All mine! A whole 12 pack in the fridge for whenever I want!  Miserable, hospital skirting periods.  While I lived at Camp, and I was constantly drinking Coke like it was water, all day every day?  Periods that would have made the sanest person suicidal.  Even birth control couldn’t quell the storm that was created the month that I discovered how easy it was to make Iced Tea with my Iced Tea Maker.  

So there it is.  Maybe it’s coincidence.  Maybe it’s science.  Maybe both, or neither, maybe I’m barking up the entirely wrong tree.  Worst case scenario:  I’ve stopped drinking caffeine–a drug that’s not so great for you in the first place–and that can’t be such a bad thing, whether or not it’s responsible for this Pre-Fall Garden of Eden quality period of mine.

My Friday Nights Are Totally Edgy

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Because I don’t have enough to do with my time lately, I decided to take on a sewing project today.  I was inspired by this blog and this skirt at work today.  Since I am headed to Midlothian tomorrow night for a King Pin Wii Bowling Tournament, and since I had a pair of pants to mend for the Brother-in-Law, I thought I’d get creative and make a fun skirt for the nieces.  The ladies at Hobby Lobby complimented me on what an awesome Aunt I clearly am.  I know, I told them.  I am totally going for Aunt of the Year.  (It’s an easy win.  I’m the only one currently.  They’ll be gaining an Aunt Jenn in August, so she’ll be eligible for Best Aunt 2010, and will likely win if I’m waist-deep in Nursing School.) (Gawd, I hope I’m waist deep in Nursing School.) 

I was inspired by Wood’s first paragraph, “For years I sewed infrequently, occasionally making a purse for a friend or a little something for Juniper once in a blue moon. And what I made was pretty awful. I never used patterns. My finished projects were best viewed from at least 10 feet away, and that’s just not a great feeling to have about something you spent so many hours creating.”  ME TOO, I thought. My work is ALSO viewed best from 10 feet (yards?) away.  I also never use patterns!  I also sew infrequently at best!  But she has a blog, and she posts things that she makes, and they are cute, so me too, right?

Maybe not.  I’m not sure why nothing that I make is ever satisfactory to me.  I took engagement pictures for Jared and Jenn recently (*side note: this fact is one of the main reasons why I should NOT have been making skirts tonight. I should have been editing photos.  Alas, I am worse at editing photos than I am at sewing straight lines, so sewing won.) and I honestly thought I was going to become Ansel Adams for the 2 hour shoot.  When the pictures came out looking like normal, pretty engagement pictures, I was wholeheartedly disappointed.  NOT PERFECT, I moaned to Zack.  He was like, hey, these are good. Get over it.  I didn’t get over it until I showed the pictures to some ladies at work.  I just showed them to my work friends as if they were engagement pictures, failing to mention that I had taken them.  When one of the ladies in my office asked me who their photographer was, so that she could see about hiring her, THAT was when I finally believed that they were, in fact, good pictures.

Same story with the skirts tonight.  The fabric wasn’t perfect, I’m not very good at cutting straight lines, I didn’t have any safety pins for pulling through the elastic.  Abbie’s waist was too tight (just right?), Kate’s waist was a little loose (she’ll grow into it?) and Abbie’s ribbon hem wasn’t perfect, either, and the skirt was longer than I had intended for it to be.  I was feeling pretty bummed about the skirts overall.  Then Matt (the girls’s dad) called, and asked if we could baby-sit.  I said sure, bring over those buckets of deliciousness.  And it wasn’t until I slid the finished product over Abbie’s head that I felt better about the finished product of the imperfect skirt.  She smiled big, ran to the middle of the living room, grabbed the fabric in her little 2 year-old hands, and she started to spin.  

I guess Abbie doesn’t care if the elastic in her waistband is twisted.  She just cares what that skirt looks like when she’s twirling around the living room.  And I gotta tell you, while in motion from about 10 feet away, that skirt looked pretty dang good. 

P90X update – Day #5:

The legs are slightly better today.

Last night was the P90X Yoga X night.  I was only able to do about 20 minutes of it (sans any of the lunge stances, opting for triangle poses instead) before I had to bail out.  I think the stretching helped, though, as this morning I was able to lower myself into my office chair without using the arm rests.  I could have done that yesterday, I guess, but I would have cried while doing it.  That hardly counts.

Tonight was the Back and Legs day.  The cruelty of P90X has been unrelenting.  I’m still visibly grimacing while walking up and down stairs, but I hung out for the workout video today and did what I could.  For the most part, I forewent weights when they chose to use them.  My lunges were shallow, and my wall-sits were non-existent.  But I moved for an hour.  I warmed up, worked out, ran in place or did jumping jacks when I couldn’t do the exercises, and I cooled down.  

After the Back and Legs video, we did the Ab Ripper X video.  I’m proud to say that today, the third time we’ve done this particular 16:00 minutes of hell, I was able to track improvements.  I probably only missed about 10 of the 350ish reps in the whole video.  The first video, I probably missed at least 50.  I have to say, even though my performance for the Back and Legs was dismal, I’m proud of my improvement with the Ab Ripper.  Perhaps I’ll feel this way about everything in 3 weeks.  I’m just not there yet.

P90X: Day 4

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To say that P90X is kicking my ass would be a vast understatement.

Night before last we did a Plyometrics routine that involved an hour’s worth of squats and jumping.  And then jumping and landing in squats, and then squats to jumping, and then jumping jack squats and YOU GET THE PICTURE.  

Yesterday, as I was gingerly lowering myself down the staircase at work, a spy student sprinted down the stairs, and then waited for me at the door at the bottom.  He was going to stand there until I got to those doors, and he was going to hold that door open for me. I could see the determination in his eyes.  Little did he know, my legs had turned into two angry hillbilly trailer wives, donning curlers in their hair, drinking whiskey from the bottle, and were yelling things at me like, “YOU JERK ASS HO.  IF YOU TAKE ONE MORE STEP DOWN THESE STAIRS I’MA BEAT YOU WITHIN AN INCH OF YOUR LIFE WITH THIS HERE BUNNY SLIPPER!”  

Nevermind the fact that there weren’t any bunny slippers in sight, I was honestly scared of what my legs would do to me if I tried to bust it down the staircase so that the nice gentleman at the bottom holding the door could go on about his business.  So I started to hobble down the stairs slowly, one at a time, holding on to the rail, determined not to go faster than my threatening legs would have liked.  But then the ego kicked in.  Couldn’t let anyone see me using the stair railing like a walker, now could I?  Nope.  So I hustled down the staircase.  Then I called Zack almost in tears.  

“MY LEGS ARE TRYING TO MURDER ME,” I said calmly.  He reassured me, promising that they would feel better tomorrow. 

This morning I was literally in tears walking to work because my legs hurt SO badly.  Zack severely misjudged the intensity of my leg hurt.  I know that I’m a chronic exaggerator, but please believe me. Aside from surgery and broken bones, I have never felt pain this severe in my life.  

“Did you pull a muscle?” My work-neighbor asked.  I had totally thought of that, I told her, but the only reason I didn’t think so, is because the pain is so even, in both legs, in all of the muscles from the knee up.  If I had pulled one muscle, I explained, I had pulled them all, and that was a ridiculous thought.

I’m starting to wonder if she was correct.  Perhaps I simultaneously injured every single muscle from my hips to my knees.  Whatever it was that I did, it’s something that no Ibuprofen can help, I can assure you that much.  

Now, if you’ll excuse me, because Irony Hates Me, we have been invited to a very fun birthday party tonight with dear friends where I will watch everyone else play bowling, laser tag, and generally have a great time, whilst I hang out on a bench somewhere and wish for death, or a wheel chair, whichever comes first.

Working Out. Again.

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I’m leery to even start this post, because I’m having trouble typing.  Usually when I have trouble typing, it’s because I’m crying and I can’t see well.  Or because a key is sticking on the keyboard, making it impossible to type a particular letter.  

Today, I’m having trouble in a more physical sense.  Zack and I started a workout program called P90X last night.  It is basically an ass-kicking work out program that lasts 90 days.  I guess we technically started day before yesterday, with a physical fitness assessment.  I was admittedly sore from the half-a-dozen tests they required from us, so that we can use those numbers as benchmarks for how much stronger/fitter/awesomer we are at the end of 30/60/90 days.  Zack is really excited about P90X in particular because the workout program is based on the same types of workouts that he has done before, so he’s seen them work.  He did months of online research, (and months of listening to me whine about my out-of-shapeness) before he finally committed us to this program.  

I am excited about it the way a person might be excited before getting a surgery.  I know that I’m staring down the throat of 90 days of miserable, miserable pain, but I’m so excited about the possible end result.  I’m not even just excited about the body-centric part of it, either.  It’s more than that–it’s the health.  My resting heart rate is tragically high for someone my weight and age.  Within 2 minutes of starting vigorous cardiovascular exercise, I am usually within 10 beats/minute of my maximum heart rate.  After doing 2:30 minutes of jumping jacks, my heart rate was over 190 beats/minute, and it felt it was going to implode.  I can now say that I KNOW my heart is working insane amounts of overtime in order to keep me alive, and I really, really want to be healthier.  It’s not just about the weight, it’s about the health.  

So we have a workout program.  We have a diet program.  I’ve quit cokes, I’m eating dark leafy greens, I’m drinking water.  Zack is constantly encouraging to me.  Even while we were doing our fitness test, I was “maxing out” on push-ups when I got stuck around #18.  I started grunting and yelling, trying to squeak out my 19th and 20th pushups, Zack said, “Keep Going!  You’re Doing Great!”  He didn’t say, “Don’t quit.”  He didn’t say, ala Jillian from The Biggest Loser, “SARAH, YOU ARE SO OUT OF SHAPE, YOU CAN’T EVEN FRIGGIN’ DO 20?!”  Instead, he chose to be encouraging.  And because of these things: the plan, the program, the food, the cokes, the encouragement, and above all, the teamwork, I am feeling, in a word, capable.  

We can handle this.  We can get in shape, we can torture ourselves for 90 days.  We can live healthy lives, and we can be conscious of the decisions we make and how they effect our bodies.  

We even took before pictures.  Perhaps I’ll post some change shot at the 30 day mark.

Color Me Feminist

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I went to a Lecture last night given by Monica Casper, Feminist Extraordinaire.  If you would have asked me 10 years ago if I ever thought I’d go to a feminist lecture, I would have openly laughed at you.  I didn’t know anything about feminism, other than the fact that my dad often jokingly referred to them as “feminazis.”  Years later, I was in a philosophy class studying the women’s movement and I mentioned the phrase “feminazis” out loud in my class.  My professor dismissed what I had been saying (and rightly so), and mentioned that perhaps my dad shouldn’t listen to so much Rush Limbaugh.

“How did Dr. Roark know my dad listened to Rush Limbaugh?” I wondered later.  My friends had to inform me that Rush had popularized that term, and that’s probably where my dad learned it.

Sometimes when I look back on the things that I blurted out during my youth, I get so embarrassed  I consider writing notes of apology and explanation to everyone who heard me.  Even if I could look up the 20 some-odd people that were in my philosophy class, nobody would remember the time that I trashed feminism.  Even if they did, they wouldn’t have thought about it in years.  I’d just be reminding them of what a narrow-minded idiot I was.  No need to go around reminding people.  Unless, of course, it’s for blog fodder, apparently.

So my history of insensitivity towards feminism aside, I went to go see Monica Casper speak last night.  I got an email invitation to the lecture, and forwarded it to my decidedly-feminist friend, Emma.  Emma was even more excited about the lecture than I assumed she would be.  Her excitement about feminism was catching.  I found myself excited about the lecture.  As soon as Professor Casper began to speak, I realized that Emma and I had made a good choice in deciding to come.  She spoke to the large crowd as if we were all fairly unfamiliar with Feminism with a capital F.  I appreciated her willingness to explain her foundations in feminism, what her “feminist lens” is, and how she does all her wide-ranging research asking the same question: How does this effect women?  She took the time to explain what “feminism” means to her.

As she continued to talk about the questions that spawned her resarch projects,  I realized that I’d pondered on a lot of the same topics before.  I guess being concerned about my friends and myself is, in a way, feminism.  I spend time thinking about what women are and aren’t capable of doing.  Lately I’ve been thinking about how our best baby making years usually happen right after we’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on preparing ourselves for the work force.  Then after we’re fully equipped to start our carrers, some of us choose (or have to) walk away from the work force in order to have babies and a family.  I just never thought about them as feminist issues.  I just thought of them as issues that effect me.

So, consider me enlighened.  I’m practically a feminist.

A Conversation Between Me and My Muscles

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Every once in a while, I have a day that reminds me that I’m getting older.  Don’t scoff if you’re older than me, if your many years of life and wisdom look at my measly quarter of a century and think, “Older?  She’s still a baby.” I am still a baby in some respects, but in others, I am older, much older than I used to be.  And one of those respects is my calf muscles.

I helped a friend move yesterday.  I swear, I didn’t even work that hard.  There were boys there, and those boys did most of the heavy lifting,  I didn’t carry any couches or mattresses up or down any of the 3 respective staircases that were involved in the move.  Mostly I carried chairs and shelves.  We were only moving for about 4 short hours.  Regardless of the facts, today my calf muscles are screaming at me in the same tone of voice they use when I have climbed a mountain or taken Scout on an hour-long hill infested hike around the neighborhood.  They started in with the screaming at 6:00 this morning.

I should have known that they were going to be angry with me; last night I was so tired that I went to bed at 9:00.  I was sitting on the couch with Zack, waiting for bedtime to roll around when I checked my watch.  I looked down and it announced 21:00 as the time, and I made myself believe that 21:00 was a reasonable time for a 24.9 year old person to go to bed on a Saturday night.  I was tired.  I didn’t think, though, that my tiredness had anything to do with the moving.  I always am more suspect of my mental exhaustion than my physical exhaustion.  After so many months in a row of staying up late to cram scientific facts into my brain, I usually believe that my sleepiness is just my body trying to catch up on those missed hours during this short, glorious period of having to do NOTHING AT ALL.  But at 6:00 this morning, I woke up and stretched in the bed.  And that’s when my calf muscles started yelling at me.
“Why do you do this?” they asked.
“Do what?” It was early. I couldn’t remember what I’d done that could possibly be making them so mad.
As I rolled over to resettle in bed for a few more hours, my shoulders piped up. “THEY ARE MAD AT YOU FOR MOVING, IDIOT.  WE’RE KIND OF PISSED, TOO.”
Oh.  Right.  Moving.  I had forgotten about that.
My lower back has been surprisingly mute.  I’m not very good at lifting with my knees, and after our move in November, my lower back was really upset with me.  I checked in on it.  ”How are you doing?” I asked as I stretched my hips around.
“I’m fine,” my lower back informed me, “but you might want to check in with your upper back.  It’s really mad about those shelves that you carried.”
“Yeah!” said upper back, “could it have hurt you to make a few more trips!? God, I’m sore.”
Then the calf muscles were back in the action, screaming, “HELL YES IT WOULD HAVE HURT HER TO MAKE A FEW MORE TRIPS.”
“Touché, calf muscles.  Now all of you, shut up, cause I’m going back to bed.”

All of this internal yelling has lead me to but one conclusion:  ibuprofen must be paying my muscles on commission.