Labor Day

The weather gods have given us a perfect early fall day. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, it’s not windy, it’s not humid, and it’s not hot. The current temp is 70 degrees F. Perfect.

My left knee has been giving me a lot of trouble lately. If I walk on it for a while, then my whole leg starts throbbing. If I sit down for a little bit, the throbbing goes away. I think the knee gets full of fluid and when I try to keep moving it, the fluid might be pushing on some nerves.

I also can barely bend this stupid knee. That’s one of the reasons I do yoga. I want to keep it stretched and limber, although yoga hasn’t worked very well. I notice improvements in every other part of my body except that knee.

It’s gotten worse this past month. Sometimes I have what I call little arthritis attacks and after a few weeks, the inflammation will settle down, so I’m hoping that’s what I have right now.

I did the treadmill this morning at workout. Sometimes if I take an ibuprofen before working out, it helps my knee from getting too sore. But then if I work out really hard, it makes me feel dizzy, so I skipped the ibuprofen.

I managed 20 minutes on the treadmill, before I gave up to the sore knee, and went onto another machine, kind of like crosstrainer machine with gliding action rather than stress bearing action.

I finished up the last 25 minutes on that machine and my knee was fine. I wasn’t sore or limping when I got off the machine. I did my sit-ups, push-ups, and stretches with no problems.

Joe said I’m just getting old. That’s probably true, but I don’t like not being able to walk. I’d go to the doctor, but I have a $4,000 deductible and my routine exam is going to cost me about $500, so I’ll wait and see if my knee gets really bad.

I took advantage of this nice day to plant grass seed in some bare spots in my front yard. Then I set out the sprinkler and watered the lawn. It’s been very dry here; we could use a good rainy day.

I spent some of the morning going through old papers on my desk. Do you ever wonder why you keep certain things? I kept asking myself, “What was I thinking when I kept that?” Well, I had a big pile for recycling when I was done. And my desk looks a lot less cluttered.

I found a pedometer and snapped on my waistband around noon or so. So far, I’ve walked 4180 steps. I think it would be a minor miracle if I ever walked 10,000 steps in one day. I sit on my butt a lot.

I decided to take the dogs for a stroll around the neighborhood and the heck with my sore knee. And that’s what we did. I didn’t take any ibuprofen before walking, because I wanted to pay attention to what my knee was doing.

It hurt, but I changed the way I was walking and that helped a little bit. The dogs sure enjoyed themselves. There were lots of neighbors outside working on various projects like staining fences, cleaning out their cars, working in their gardens, or just walking. I said “Hello” quite a bit.

Joe is coming over for dinner and we’ll fire up the grill one more time. We’re having nothing special, just burgers, corn-on-the cob, maybe baked beans as well. I’ve eaten like a starving woman this weekend and thankfully, my weight has stayed the same.

Joe thought we could set up a cardboard cut-out of Superman or someone and put it on the deck to get at my neighbor.

On my walk this afternoon, I saw a man sitting in his garage with his chair pointed towards the street and not facing his neighbor’s house. Doesn’t that make sense?

Back to work tomorrow. Ugh.