Wee Bit Stiff and Sore

I woke up feeling like I played left tackle in a Packers versus Bears game last night. My shoulder hurts. My mid-back is sore. My legs are stiff.

The shoulder started aching a couple days ago. I thought I strained it when I did a long stretch to place the bird feeder back onto the hook in the big oak tree. But as time went on it wasn't hurting or acting like a strain. First it didn't start hurting when I did it. It started hurting like an hour later. Plus it was aching arbitrarily, not with movement as I would expect.

My Mom suggested arthritis, and the pain is consistent with that type of thing. I do have a little arthritis in my shoulders and hips, and it does flare up every once in a great while in a random fashion.

Whatever it is, it has made sleeping difficult. It's not overwhelming pain. But it's like trying to sleep while someone is giving you a little shock every two seconds. You drift off. But since the pain constantly disturbs you, you can never fall into a healthy deep sleep.

Whatever it is, it is getting better.

My back is undoubtedly stiff and sore from an afternoon of cutting cardboard down for recycling.

I drown in cardboard. We order almost everything on the internet, and have it delivered. And it gets delivered in cardboard boxes that are broken down into approximately 12 by 12-inch pieces for recycling.

I can never keep up.

Yesterday it was so nice outside I set myself up on a lounge chair out back. I put a fresh razor in my utility knife and started hauling all of the cardboard out of the basement and surrounded my lounge chair with it.

I ended up cutting down cardboard for a couple hours. And I cleared it all out. It's now neatly packed into three small boxes for recycling tomorrow.

It was a couple hours of occasionally strange positions, using little-used muscles, and now today the back is feeling the success of my labor.

Despite the soreness and stiffness, when I was finishing up yesterday I told Barb, "You know, I really need to get out and do something like this everyday."

I've got some weeds in the backyard with my name on them today.