Paying the Price, Part 3

Saturday dawned and was cool and clear (at 7am, anyway), and not wishing to venture out and tempt the fates again, I decided to have another go at the garage purging project. I was about 2/3 of the way through the book sorting, and in a couple of hours I had 4 more boxes of books to take to the library for their book sale. I probably should have stopped there and settled for the satisfication factor.

But it was still cool enough that I decided to begin exploring all the plastic storage bins that have lined the garage walls for the last few years. I knew some of them contained my yarn stash overflow and some of them contained old Halloween costumes and props, but I could not for the life of me remember what else I had shoved out of sight and out of mind. I began to spread the contents of a half-dozen large bins all over the driveway.

I was making great progress, finding yet more books, the yarn, the costumes and a lot of junk that went directly into the dumpster or into the thrift store pile. Along the way, I popped an old Renaissance fair flowered garland on my head, clipped an Hawaiian flower over my ear, draped an old scarf around my neck, and had the entire driveway covered with stacks of sorted clutter. I was getting amused, or maybe it was horrified, glances from the neighbors. Hard to say, because they were bolting for their houses before I had the chance to say hello or ask for help.

Along about noon it suddenly got hot and the excavation of the garage was no longer providing me with that sense of satisfaction but more like a feeling of total exhaustion. I had a row of bins that were now filled with items to be delivered to the thrift store, the books for the library boxed and in the car ready for delivery, the remaining books boxed in new, clear bins, and a large bin of items that I needed to think about sitting by the back door where I will have to stumble over them until I can't stand it anymore and finally get down to deciding what to do with them.

I managed to get myself presentable enough to go out for lunch and later deliver the books to the library. It wasn't until I had finished my lunch and getting ready to leave the restaurant that I realized what my morning had done to me. I could barely get myself out of the booth. Every muscle in my body was screaming. I managed to get the books delivered and then I spent the remainder of the day groaning every time I moved.

I had good intentions of resting on Sunday, but the morning dawned cool and clear and my muscles had relaxed just enough to fool me into thinking I was ready to tackle another cleaning project. Before I knew it, I was standing on a step ladder, dismantling the canopy that was disintegrating on the big deck. That one task was enough to send all my muscles back into protesting spasms.

For the next three days I could not move without pain. Fortunately, at that point I guess my guardian angel got back from her vacation, because things began to change for the better.

LSW