Old age is sinking in

Sorry about earlier.  Old age you know.  I just needed to vent the bad juju.

It has seemed that the past year has enlightened me to the unstoppable aging of my body.  It started in softball last season when I got a microscopic tear in a tendon in my heel (a weekend warrior injury so the doctor said).  It comes and goes and I’m thinking that I’m probably stuck with it now.  It’s an irritation but can make it hurt to walk.  I’m sure that this is some past baseball injury from the glory days that I forgot about.  At least that’s what I’ll be telling people.  😉

Then in the fall, somehow I tweaked my neck quite severely playing basketball.  This has led to some of the most intense shooting pains I’ve ever experienced shooting through my neck and back.  I’ve been through physical therapy for it which seems to help some.  I’m supposed to continue my stretching exercises but the last bout with strept kind of stalled those, and a busy schedule doesn’t help things.  Like most habits that are good for you, they are the hardest to maintain.  The stiffness has been manageable and I’ve tried to do stretches when I feel it coming on.  Most likely an old football injury.  Oh that’s right I didn’t play football.  How about an old “smear the <derogatory term that is now politically incorrect>” injury?  Yeah, that’s probably it.

But last night I experienced the most alarming cause for concern yet.  It’s something that is so related to old people that I may need to close the blinds at night, just to protect my reputation.  Let me set the picture.

I was sitting on the couch.  Our huge lap cat is sprawled across me, keeping me nice and toasty.  I’m watching the History channel, some show about ancient Sparta, their society, doctrines, 300, etc.  Very interesting stuff.  I missed all this back when 300 came out.  I don’t really get into all the related shows that come out with movies.  Most of them seem rushed to take advantage of what’s currently hot.  The show started at 8pm.  I hadn’t realized it at the time, but it was a 2 hour show.

So there I am, enjoying the show, doing some reading during commercials.  When 9:20pm hits, I start crashing.  I can’t stay awake, the rest of the show is a blur since I’m constantly waking up only to drift off right away.  10pm hits, the show is over, and I decide I need to get to bed.

What’s worse is, I can’t think up some cool excuse to make this forgivable.  I used to be such a night owl and now I’m reduced to hardly being able to stay awake until 11pm.  Over the past month or so, I’ve really cut down on my caffeine intake.  I avoided coffee for like two weeks during the strept battle because it didn’t sound good at all.  I’ve started to get back into it because I was getting sleepy on my drive into work.  Now it looks like I’m gonna have to go back to having a cup or two in the evening just to stay awake.

I used to feel like caffeine didn’t do anything to me.  Now it seems like it helped maintain the status quo.  Without it, I start to perform sub-par.  Well, I’ve made it a little later tonight, but I need to get to bed now.