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.