Tag: pain

Here Comes the Existential Pain

It’s April 30th. The last day of the month. Normally that’s not a big deal, but this month… this month…

April 2021 is the last full month of my forties. There is a day in the month of May… a day that is coming soon… a day that the first digit in my age changes, and that is a bad thing. When it changed from zero to one it was awesome. When it changed from one to two it was also awesome. When it changed from two to three… well that sucked. That sucked bad. When it changed from three to four it was painful but by then the damage was done, and I also had Jen to make me feel better about it.

Four changing to five feels about the same as three to four, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. I’ve got eight days left. Eight days left in my forties, which I didn’t even want in the first place but now that they are ending…

crap.

…….and I just found out my friend’s kid has Covid. The universe is a prick.

D’OH!

Damn it, Roomba!

Our bedroom used to be the garage. There is a heavy door between the bedroom/ex-garage and the mud room that used to be an exit for the house proper. On Roomba nights we close that door most of the way. It’s closed enough that Roomba won’t come in, but open just enough that Patches the Wonder Cat can get in if she wants. The mud room is tiny, more like a breezeway than a mud room, but we call it the mud room. There is a door between the mud room and the kitchen that we always leave open. Sometimes if we have all the windows in the house open the breeze will blow it shut. Otherwise, it’s open.

I got up this morning. I needed to go into the kitchen. I was still 80% asleep and it was dark. I pushed open the mostly closed bedroom door, took two steps without really paying attention to what I was doing or really even opening my eyes all the way and

BAM!!!

The kitchen door was closed about 50% of the way and I walked straight into it. I took most of the hit with my foot, I stubbed my toe something fierce, and the rest of it got me square in the face.

It looks like our friend, Man Servant Mr DJ Roomba, Esq tried to clean behind the kitchen door last night and left it part way closed. Fortunately there were no permanent injuries. Except for the injured pride.

Also, my iPad tried to install updates last night and I got an error stating that it was out of storage space. I don’t store anything on it. I put movies on it and music too, but only when I know there won’t be wifi, like when I was going on a plane to Florida 13 months ago. I’m not sure how my browser ended up with a billion gigs used. Like… what the hell?

Pain

I was worried about getting my 30 minutes of exercise in today but I was able to pull it off. Did you know that riding a stationary bike uses a different set of muscles than walking in place? Who knew, right? So now I’ve got two different sets of muscles in pain. Nice.

Speaking of pain. I had a slightly positive outlook on the whole tendinitis in my thumb thing this morning. I still can’t really bend it at the knuckle without that weird getting stuck feeling, but the general, constant pain seemed to have passed. Progress, right? Then I put together an exercise bike. Oh, there you are, constant pain. Welcome home, my constant friend.

Push Up Madness

I feel like such a lame ass wuss but I also think it’s funny so you’re going to hear about it.

Yesterday’s push up challenge continues.  I only managed three yesterday.  On the third try I had a bit of a pain in my abdomen.  When I went for attempt it was WAY worse so I stopped for the day.

Today I decided to go every other hour rather than the officially sanctioned every hour.

  • 9:00 good.  Ouch, but good.
  • 11:00 not quite as good.  Much more ouch, all over.  My arms were still numb from the first go ’round.
  • 1:00 similar to 11:00.  The big issue now isn’t my arms or my expansive gut or anything like that.  It’s my knees.  Getting down to the floor and then getting back up again is killing me.

I’m not actually doing push ups.  Yesterday I was doing close to one half of a push up.  I started up, lowered myself as far as I could without falling over, then pushed back up.  Today I am wishing I could get half way.  Today it’s more like 25%… then 20%… then 15%… Come 5:00 I expect to just do a plank for three seconds and then collapse.

Isn’t this (ouch) fun??

Quarantinie goodness!

Stir Crazy for the Win!

Pain

I am physically falling apart and it’s pissing me off.

Last week I got fed up with the state of my shoes.  Both the shoes I wear to work, business casual style, and the sneakers I wear everywhere else were in a sorry state.  The work shoes were worn smooth and walking on a wet floor in the lobby at work could be dangerous.  The sneakers were also flat but had the added benefit of the soles coming off entirely.  So I bought new shoes.  I have to order them online because my feet are freakishly huge (size 14, 4x width).  New Balance makes shoes that fit me but I generally can’t get them in stores.

The shoes were delivered.  I tried them on.  They fit.  End of story, right?  Wrong.

On Monday I had a bad pain in my left foot.  It felt like I twisted my ankle but I didn’t.  I wasn’t sure what I’d done to earn this fun pain.  By Tuesday the pain had sort of settled into my instep and gotten much worse.  I think I know what it is.  I have never been diagnosed with plantar fasciitis, but years ago I was dealing with brutal pain in one of my feet and there were two or three people who told me that my symptoms were exactly the same as theirs had been when they were diagnosed with plantar fasciitis.  Someone suggested a stretching exercise and I tried it and eventually the pain went away.  This time around it is Friday and I’m still in major pain.  Wednesday was better, Thursday was WORSE (capital letters to emphasize just how much worse).  Today is bad but so far a little better than yesterday.

If it is what I think it is then it’s the third time I’ve had it.  The first time was out of the blue and absolutely brutal.  The second time wasn’t as bad, but I was doing those stretches right away and it took care of it.  Now when I think back at the second time though… I am pretty sure it corresponded with new shoes.  Is it possible that breaking in new shoes causes whatever this is to flare up?  If so, I might never buy new shoes again.  I’ll just wear these until they disintegrate and then go barefoot for the rest of my days.  This sucks.  I want it to be over.

Then we add this onto the crap pile.  Last night, Jen and Harry and I were sitting in the living room watching That 70’s Show on Netflix.  An episode ended at 9:00 (I love cake) and Jen said she had one more in her before she had to go to bed.  I decided to take that opportunity to do the thing that I have been telling myself to do every day for months: Practice the effing guitar.

I went into the bedroom, plugged my Les Paul straight into the amp (guitar pedal nerds world wide shudder in fear) and spent about 20 minutes noodling.  After a few minutes I thought, huh… my left elbow hurts.  Why the hell does my left elbow hurt?  It hadn’t hurt before, but it hurt then and it still feels a little tender now.  What the hell!?  I didn’t do anything to earn additional pain, why the hell does it hurt?

You know what I need?  I need a freakin’ vacation.  That’s what I need.  How about a vacation and a new body.  Can I trade this one in for a younger model?

Band Practice

We had our first band practice in a month tonight. Amazingly, I managed to get through most of the songs without too many disasters. Well… mostly.

I did have a difficulty though. Let’s flashback a few years.

It’s 1990 and I’m in my first year in music school. My band from high school, Tempest Fero, is still together. We were playing at a CYO dance in Tewksbury. While covering an 80’s Rainbow song my left hand started to cramp. That happened now and then, but it was never so bad as that moment. My middle and ring fingers needed to bend in order to fret an A-minor chord in the open position but they simply would not do it. They got part of the way, but I could not press the strings down onto the fretboard. It was very disconcerting. I did my best to invert some chords and play others in different positions. I was really worried about the situation. I can’t remember exactly what I did when the song ended, but I probably walked toward the back of the stage and pretended to fiddle with my amplifier. Just to give my hand a moment to rest. The next song lived in a different part of the guitar neck and I was able to get through. In fact I made it through the rest of the gig without any more problems. Over the years I have had similar pains, mostly when songs center around the second fret. There were moments on stage with Break Even where I preemptively changed positions because the pain was increasing. It could get bad, but I never froze on a song the way I did that night.

Until tonight.

The pain started in my right hand this time as I was strumming hard but after one song it was okay. Then during the second or third song the left hand flared up. It was bad from then on, but not debilitation. Then on the second to last song we played I was unable to fret an open G. My fingers shaped it, but I couldn’t press down.

Does that scare me a little?

Oh yes, it most certainly does.

There is No Excuse for Clipping

Now I know how Rush must have felt when they got the first mix of Vapor Trails…

It’s a good thing these are just demos and not a real attempt at doing anything… real.

So the vocals… the clipping… the distortion. No excuse. It’s spoiled the entire song for me.

This is the second of two songs that I recorded in their entirety using GarageBand for iPhone. My ability to get a good vocal take on an iOS device is iffy at best, but I was just all over the place with my iPhone today.

Tonight, when I did the iOS mix of this one the vocals sounded bad, but they always sound bad, you know? They were worse than most of the songs I’ve done this month, but it wasn’t the end of the world.

Then I ported the file to the Mac and I could actually see the waveforms. Uh oh. Then I actually played the track. Oh damn, what a mess.

Sorry about that.


———-

As soon as I heard how distorted the vocal tracks were I listened back to the iOS mix to see how bad it sounded there. Now that I knew what I was looking for, yeah it’s there. It just doesn’t seem quite as insultingly awful on the first mix.


———-

I suppose I could go back and rerecord, but June ends on Monday and it’s a kid weekend. I don’t have time to do any more vocal recording. I’m stuck with this, unless I want to fix it next month. I won’t want to fix it next month though. The best this can hope for is that I rerecord the entire song from scratch at some future date.

Holy Crap That Hurt

I spent a chunk of my lunch hour playing the new 12-string. I overdubbed one rhythm guitar part onto one of the songs in progress and DAMN did my hand hurt. It was brutal. I am so ridiculously out of playing shape. Hopefully by the end of this stupid thing I’ll be in better shape to start worrying about February.

Setting Myself Up for Misery

Well kids, September starts this weekend. You know what that means, right?

It means it’s time to start having my heart broken by the Red Sox.

They are 2.5 games up on Tampa Bay, in first place in the American League East. If it ended today, the Sox would be in the playoffs!

They keep coming back and winning games. Last night was another example. They were down 3-1 to the Orioles in the seventh inning. Two runs in the bottom of the seventh, one more in the bottom of the eighth, and chalk up yet another come back win for the Red Sox.

I can’t believe I am about to say this publicly, but John Lackey has been great. They don’t score any runs for him (is it personal?) but his pitching has been excellent. Lester seems like he might be back to his old (meaning not 2012, and not mid season 2013) form. He’s been dominant in his last few starts. Peavy has been all we hoped for and more. Good ol’ disabled-list-after-holding-his-child Clay? Well who the hell knows, but he is pitching a rehab start this week. If he comes back, and is close to the guy he was early in the season… well… that would be a pretty formidable starting rotation, would it not?

The offense is clicking. Napoli no longer strikes out every at bat, just most of them. Ortiz seems to be cooling off a bit. Everyone else looks ready to make a post season run. Things look really good here in Boston.

Of course… September starts this weekend.

September. The bane of the Red Sox fan’s existence.

Not all of us remember the 1978 collapse, but pretty much all of us remember the 2011 collapse. Those who don’t remember are either two years old, or boozed it clear out of their brain.

Just in time for the heart break… I have started to believe. They are going to screw me again, aren’t they.

Go Red Sox!!!