Gettin' Old, Part 2

2010 - 05

"Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be..."
Paul McCartney

I don't know about most of you, but I'm typically not the type that normally feels or acts my age. For the most part, I'm kicking around and staying somewhere in the neighbourhood of seventeen to a maximum of about twenty-five. Generally, people tend to take about ten years off when they're guessing how old I am.

I like that.

I like it a lot.

But then last Wednesday happened. Last Wednesday, I was ridden hard, whipped, beaten, treated real bad, and put away wet.

We'd just finished taking my daughter around to some universities (see "Gettin' Old, Part 1") and both The Wife and I were ready to get back to our real jobs. As well, over the past few weeks, we've been steadily purging our basement in preparation for someone with skills with powertools to come in and finish the basement. As of last Tuesday, we figured that was going to be in a week or two.

On Tuesday, he said he'd be here Thursday. Two days.

So I quickly arranged for another vacation day. And on Wednesday, for about nine solid hours, broken only by a quick trip to the dump, all I did was go up and down stairs with something in my hands.

For the first few hours, it was boxes. I brought virtually every box we own from the basement to the main floor of our house. It's still up here, and basically it's filled our dining room from floor to ceiling, about a third of our living room from floor to ceiling, the downstairs bathroom, part of our foyer...hell, I even have a rocker in my kitchen...and I'm not talking about a dude that likes KISS either.

Yes, as I said, I'm a packrat. I couldn't tell you how many boxes of books, comics and CDs I hauled upstairs. But it was a lot.

Then, when that was all done, it was time to drag all the construction stuff in my driveway into the house and down the stairs. Ceiling tiles, doors, two-by-fours by the boatload, I can't even tell you what all. Oh, and then there was the drywall.

When I was in my very late teens, I used to help my Uncle Floyd do drywalling. I used to haul those bastards all by myself, and trust me, I was never Hercules Unbound or anything like that.

So it came as quite a surprise when I could barely move them. I eventually gave up on getting them down the stairs and settled for the garage instead.

So, let's do a status check of where I was by 6 p.m. Wednesday evening, shall we? Sweating like John Goodman disco dancing, aching like I'd run the Boston Marathon, bruised in places I didn't think I could bruise. Tired. In fact, I was so tired (and sweaty and dirty) that I didn't have the energy to change clothes or have a shower, so I laid down on the floor of my bedroom and fell asleep. So tired that when my dog parked his ass near my face and farted, I didn't even move. I just breathed through it. Yeah, that tired.

..and then there were my knees.

My traitorous knees.

They were rubber by the time I was done. I couldn't even walk the last few two-by-fours down the stairs for fear of my damn knees giving out. My wife said I looked like her mother trying to get around on the stairs. That ain't a compliment.

It took a good couple of days for them to come back. It's Sunday today, and today's the first day I haven't noticed it when I've done any stairs.

For the first time in my life, I felt every single day of my 47 years.

I really didn't enjoy it. Don't ever want to feel like that again.

Getting old sucks.