Showing my age…..or is it, my age is showing? Ah well, I’m getting older!

There are key signs that I’m aging.  They’re pronounced too, I can’t miss it.

• Gray in the beard showed up this year.  That’s new.  At first I tried to chalk it up to stress, the autoimmune thing, etc.  Let’s face it, there’s gray there.
• Recently I had my 38th birthday.  Note, I didn’t use the word “celebrated.”  Now, if someone told me it was my 29th birthday I would have celebrated.  🙂
• Popped my knee on the last trip to Coyote Buttes.  Literally, I heard a loud popping sound while I was trudging around in search of the Control Tower.  Oh, as a side note, Ken sent me his “photoshopped” Control Tower today…..yeah, he’s in it with Josh and the squirrel pretty deep.
• The boyish charm seems to be fading.  Probably a function of the graying beard.  Maybe I’ll shave it off earlier this year just to hold boyish for a while longer.
• Kids at the grocery store call me sir.
• I refer to the people behind the counter at the grocery store as “kids.”  Well, I don’t call the cranky old guy at the deli a kid, but you get the gist.

The list goes on, and I could probably recount points for the next hour, but I think you get the idea.  It seems, even against my will, that I am getting a little older.  Somebody’s gotta work on that for me…….Photoshop?

After weeks of the re-root canal, re-oral surgery, cut my gums open stuff that’s gone on I can say that I’m feeling better.  My white count has normalized, and for the first time in 5 years people don’t freak out when they see my blood work.  It’s surprising to me as well, and I sincerely wonder if a slew of doctors in New England really blew it on my diagnosis, and if I’ve been walking around with an infection for 5 years.  That could account for not feeling so well from 33-38, wouldn’t you say?

But today I got a little scared.  Severe abdominal pain once again, like I’ve never experienced.  My gut is painful to the touch right now.  My first instinct?  Autoimmune thing / infection still?  Yeah, the worry button got pushed……..

Fortunately, I unpushed that button a little while ago.  See, I bent over to pick something up and really hurt.  And that’s when I remembered…….

Yesterday while getting the gallery ready I helped Ian stow his boxes of calendars.  Pretty big boxes, all on the floor.  They had to get moved up into our storage loft area.  Ian climbed into the loft and it was my job to get the boxes up to him.  When I grabbed the first box I didn’t think about how heavy it was, I just grabbed and lifted.  Felt like I threw my back out and hurt my “middle.”  The box was beyond heavy.

Now we move heavy stuff around often.  I get big shipments of canvas, paper, and stretcher bars all the time.  And they’re heavy.  But they’re not as dense as those calendars were.

So, on the first lift I thought to myself, “I think I just hurt myself.”  The rest of the packages were lifted properly, with the legs, but each one put some stress on my back and my gut.  And today……well, paying the price for not thinking when grabbing calendars.

In the end, not the autoimmune issue or infection.  Just plain old aging Rich lifting heavy stuff the wrong way…..  🙂  At least the gray is only in my beard for now, and the pull that’s left my tummy super sensitive to the touch can’t be seen by anyone I run into!  😉