Ahh ha

I think I have had my 'ahh ha' moment. Sure, my knees have been slowly getting worse over the years. That started when I dislocated the kneecap in high school. In fact it dislocated a couple of different times in basketball. And again in college when I was dancing to Redneck Mother at a frat party. Oh yeah, I guess again when I was playing volleyball in college. Than over the course of my life time after college, I abused it even more-my knees, my back, pretty much my whole body. Man, I think back to what I all used to do. All the lifting milk cans and hay bales and five gallon buckets of feed. At jobs during the summer between college in factories Than having three kids and continuing a life of hard labor--no pun intended. It has only been the last four years that I have really been forced to slow down.

But I was refusing to accept it.

I had my ah ha moment today. I was slapped in the face with it. Working with my husband in an apt., trying to help him move a roll of carpet, the stove, reach up to screw the blind brackets to the window frame, painfully brought back how I used to do those things alone. I moved appliances, I could pull a huge full extended WOODEN ladder out of a basement and set it up against houses that I painted WHILE my kids were in a playpen below. I carried five gallon buckets of paint--not one, but two--up a flight of stairs. I pushed a mower strapped with a 9 mo. old in a baby pack. Heck, I loaded the mower in and out of the back of my car by myself. Shoveled snow off sidewalks for hours-and LOVED it. I thoroughly enjoyed working.

But not today. The scariest part came when I finally got to sit after a long day of working and getting dinner made and cleand up. I got this horrible dizzy spell as I sat down to watch some TV. Damn migrain. What now, is my whole body going to hell? What am I going to do? Work is my life. I dont know how to relax, I dont know how to have fun. I dont know what else to do!

So I will go to bed feeling my knees and my shoulder pound.Try not to feel that numbness in my neck and arm and the nauseating migraine linger. Hope I dream again, not being aware of my body except for a feeling of freedom.