A Series Of Unfortunate Events

As part of the July 1st event in my hometown, there was a slopitch tournament.  Ball is big where I’m from. Basically because it was the only sport available to us growing up. lol.  The population when I moved away in 1997 was about 475 people.  That number remains fairly close to today’s.

Anyhow, my mom is a councillor for the town and the planning fell to her.  She asked my sister and I to form a team, and so we tracked down some old friends and put one together.

I never gave it a thought.  I joked that I’d be rusty…not having swung a bat for probably 12 years, but I was still confident it would be like riding a bike.  Skills-wise, yes.  It all came back.  But what I failed to plan for was how I’ve changed physically.  I’m not in terrible shape, but I’m certainly older.  And I realized too late that I haven't run, in any capacity really, since my surgery.  And when I say run, I mean full on sprinting around those bags. After game 1, I could feel that I tweaked my left hip and pulled my right quad.  But, with age does not always come wisdom, and I continued to play and push myself well beyond my limits.

In the following days I was struggling pretty good physically.  But again, I took for granted I could keep going and started digging in my garden as soon as I got home.  I had brought lots of new plants home from moms and needed to get them in the ground.  They can’t wait that long out of the ground.  And so all that up and down eventually resulted in a re-injury of that pulled muscle.  It took my breath away and it was many moments and some creative movements before I could stand up.  I made it into the house, took a bit of a break and did some massage work to try and ease the pain.

Sadly the story doesn’t end there.  Again, wanting to get back out to my garden, I told myself I’d take it slow and easy.  Which I did!  Until I witnessed Nathan hit a bump on his quad and took a good tumble.  On instinct, I launched into a run.  That quad muscle screamed, but I kept going until I reach Nathan and could see he was okay.  Once I knew all was good, the pain exploded almost beyond coping.  I hobbled inside, and with Dans help, was able to get onto my bed and start icing.  

I still have plants to get into the ground, but they will have to wait.  I have already made too many errors in judgement. 

I’m struggling with recognizing limits that come with aging.  I don’t feel old.  I still have the same drive and motivation I’ve always had.  More even.   But when I hurt myself, where I could once push through, knowing recovery would be simple, it now takes so long.  And I just don’t have that kind of patience.  There are so many things I want to do.

On a positive note, we won the tournament.  lol.