“Why don’t we just shoot it? It’s all broken down anyway.”

If you read my post yesterday, you would have discovered I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Focused.  Engaged.  Relevant.

What a freaking difference twenty-four hours makes.

Today, I felt like sh crap.  And it all actually started last night, after a day filled with lots of physical activity, sunshine, and dehydrating wind.

I fell into bed, not exactly in a fit of exhaustion, but darn tired and unable to read a few bedtime story pages before extinguishing the nightstand light.  Unfortunately, as so often happens to me these days, I slept soundly for a total of approximately two hours before waking up, completely penned in by a geriatric cat and multiple throw pillows.

No worries, as I’m fairly used to it by now, but it is very annoying, to quote Daughter.

To compound matters, both my knees seem to have developed nighttime personalities.  They don’t hurt, exactly, but they feel funny — that’s the best way to describe them.  They are weird enough that they keep me awake, after I wake up in the middle of the night.  To calm them down, I try shifting around, lying this way and that, and in desperation I usually prop a pillow under both of them, hoping they will be satisfied.  Really it’s my brain trying to convince my knees to knock it off at this point, and haltingly drift back off to a troubled slumber.

It’s not Zombie Terror sleep when I do finally manage to fall off, but the broken pattern makes me feel mostly dead when I wake up.

Then the real trouble begins on the morning after.

My feet feel like waffle irons, or like they’ve been roasted by a George Foreman Grill, a la Michael Scott.  My right knee is swollen which, I suppose, is better than experiencing the previously described amorphous midnight sensation.  The inflammation issue with the knee throws off my hip, leaving me with a cruddy limp and a painful twinge whenever I walk.

And my eyes.  They are red and sore like I’ve been stranded in the Sahara for days without a hat and sunscreen.

All this after about five hours running around as a referee yesterday.

Man, it sucks.  Big time.

Normally, I would just take it easy today, and engage in the type of leisurely Sunday activities that would allow my body to heal — drink some hot tea, read the paper, watch some golf, and take a nap on the couch.

No such luck.

I foolishly bravely signed on to officiate several more games today, which meant one thing to me:  Medication.

Compared to just a few years ago when it was nothing for me to suit up and work outside ten hours per weekend day, now it has become a carefully planned activity, not as complicated, perhaps, as the D-Day Invasion, but not as simple as taking regular aspirin and heading out the door, either.

Though I begin each day with a small regimen of vitamins and other witchly concoctions helpful mixtures developed by my Spouse, today I had to bring out the heavy artillery, and several rounds of it.

First up, a large, strong cup of coffee.  This comes after I’ve already have several cups of tea with a booster of oatmeal.  If I’m feeling really crappy, I’ll eat part of a scone, as well, after splitting it with Daughter Number Two (DNT).

Next, Extra Strength Tylenol; at least two, but maybe four, if the first two don’t take the edge off.  And I’ve got to time the dosage, as well.  Too soon, and it wears off in the middle of the afternoon.  Too late, and it does no good at all.  I’m a dead man walking, trying to look sprightly and alive.

Third, it’s liniment, or Cramer Gesic, or Atomic Balm.  And I spread it liberally over every part of me that hurts or is sore, and some areas that aren’t, just for good measure.  I smell like a medicine aisle at the drug store, but that’s a small price to pay for the illusion of relief that topical creams bring.

Fourth come the eye drops.  Whatever is available in the medicine cabinet — allergy drops, sensitive drops, cleansing drops, soothing drops.  It doesn’t matter.  Any of these choices help the sandpaper scratching the inside of my eyelids.

And last?  Sunscreen.  Lots of it.  I now use so much sunscreen that beach babies are envious of me.  Their overprotective mamas have nothing on Yours Truly.  I slather the stuff on like tomato paste on pizza crust.  If a part of me is exposed, it gets covered.

So, I’ve cunningly deduced that these preparations are the “Man-Equivalent” of my Spouse getting ready to go out, anywhere.  I guess you could say all this stuff is “Man-Make-up” and “Man-Drugs,” but that would be “Man Stupid” of me to classify it, as such.

In reality, I’m simply getting carried away with the “Man-” quotation marks thing.

So after all this preparation, I managed to make it through the afternoon, on a day I was hoping would end shorter than it did.

The last game I refereed late today was for the championship in that particular age bracket.  Unfortunately, it ended in a tie after regulation, and it was still tied after two overtime periods.

I was running on fumes at that point, but I had a game to finish.  Fortunately, it was decided by penalty kicks which required exactly zero running by me.  Just blow the whistle and write it down.

I could do that, but little else.  And the game did, in fact, finally end.

Now the biggest decision left for me in the few remaining hours of consciousness is whether or not I should try to play basketball at lunch tomorrow.

I guess I’ll have to see if I can walk first before deciding.

In the meantime, I’m going to squeeze in a couple more Tylenol and have a heart to heart discussion with my knees about their sleep patterns.  I figure if they don’t behave, I’ll call out the Zombies to take care of them.

After all, we share the same bed.

– Dad