tired and sore, but feeling good?

I woke up late this morning, with dry, itchy eyes, body aches and some residual bone-weariness.  It was great!

You see, I put in rather a strenuous day's work yesterday.  I finally determined that I needed to replace the shabby old window-shades in the bedroom with room-darkening ones.  I brought the ladder upstairs (old houses have high ceilings, and even my two-foot stepstool doesn't help me reach the top of the window-frames), and started measuring.

Of course, the lace curtains on tension-rods had to come down, and I determined they were overdue for laundering (old houses get more than their share of dust).  The dressing-table, reading-chair and settee had to be moved to get close enough to the windows, too.  My husband helped me with some of the cleaning, so I climbed the ladder only half as many times as I would have otherwise, but nobody but me is allowed to touch the dressing-table -- too many unique breakables!

Tossing the curtains down the chute kept me from having to breathe the dust of them, carrying them in my arms down to the basement, but taking some benedryl before following them down by stair was a wise move.  Half of them fit in the washer, and I gave them a prewash and a soak before the wash-cycle, so I had to handle the dusty things a lot more -- hurrah for diphenhydramine!  :-)

Two loads of laundry with that many phases = about ten trips to the basement.  The lowest flight has 14 steps, and next flight is 21.  Somewhere in the middle of all this, we dressed for going to the store, and I ordered my new shades from a shop that looks very good and professional -- it should be, having been in business there for almost 70 years....

When we got back from our errands (also visited a fabric store -- I've been raiding obscure sewing boxes looking for white AND black thread recently), I was surprised to find myself too energetic to sit down.  THIS IS RARE FOR ME!!!  I delightedly headed for the third-floor stairs (18) to work on clearing off my cutting-table (old pool-table left by previous resident) in preparation for making the period-correct swimsuit for my next living-history event.  Looking to put some LC beverages in the mini-fridge there, I discovered it was in need of wiping out and the freezer area was iced shut.  I ran back downstairs for "dog towels" and turned it off to defrost.

The dust up there was pretty bad, too.  I ran back downstairs for the dirt-devil, and walked around the worst area bent over, sucking up thread and dust-bunnies and fabric snippets and doghair, etc.  (benedryl still working, thank the gods)  I can deduce the number of times I trekked to the basement, but the trips to the third floor I can't begin to guess.

The biggest problem with that big room upstairs is that it's full of STUFF.  I have plenty of my own stuff, but when my mother moved from KC to Phoenix, I inherited an awful lot more.  Then my MIL moved from BFE to Colorado, and I got EVEN more.  Once, when I stayed home but J went to BFE to help her sort and pack and all that, there was a sale of "excess" by their local historical society, and he brought home an OBSCENE LOT more stuff.  Some of all this collected STUFF has been appropriately dispatched, but still more just doesn't have a place it belongs yet.  Thus there are boxes and piles -- dust-magnets!

A cutting-/pool-table is a big piece of flat surface!  It lies only a dozen feet from the top of the back stairs, and it's a very convenient spot to lay things and get them out of the way of day-to-day living downstairs.  The piles of books waiting to be shelved were transferred to their appropriate areas, music- and data-CDs ditto.  Fabric remnants also, and sewing and other tools actually put where they BELONG.  Living-history sewing tools were separated from the modern ones, and dispatched to the pile going downstairs for the next event -- remember I was looking EVERYWHERE for thread....

The table was finally clear!  WHAT a sense of accomplishment I felt -- and it only took the time of three episodes of The Avengers on the DVD!  I was starting to feel those tired muscles, as well as satisfaction.  I sat down and caught my breath for half an hour, then "shut up shop" and took my laptop and empty glass to the kitchen, and whipped up a quick dinner.

I was asleep well before midnight, but had a patch of wakefulness during which I was tempted to get up and take an Epsom-salt bath -- SOMETHING I did yesterday really seemed to have depleted minerals worse than usual!  Twitchy legs don't afflict me very often, but sometimes....  I never let myself wake up completely, though.  When I got back to sleep, I slept deeply, putting in over nine good hours, I believe.  I WAS tired!

So when I woke late with itchy eyes and aches in my back and legs, I felt GOOD.  This is what NORMAL people feel after a good day's work and a sleep, not that melting-into-the-mattress, terrible I-can't-move-i'm-so-exhausted fatigue I was suffering from late last summer and fall! 

When people complain to their doctors and families of debilitating fatigue and they hear in return (with a smirk), "yeah, I get tired, too," THIS is how they WISH they felt when tired!  There's a big difference between normal-tired, driven by expended energy, and that horrific exhaustion-upon-trivial-exertion that the pathologically-fatigued individual feels.  When you've put in the mileage I did yesterday, the sense of accomplishment -- and knowledge that you can do it again today -- makes those tired muscles worthwhile, even rewarding.