If you’re a Johnny Come Lately to this blog you may think I’m just your run of the mill faggot.

And in all honesty, I am rather non-descript and run of the mill.

But what I also am is under a tremendous amount of stress and pressure both at work and in my personal life.

Over the past two weeks I have been toiling away on a project that I was told was supposed to be completed in 10 days by 8 people working a total of 320 hours.  Of course, as department head I was told that there was no one available to assist me so I would need to complete it myself. Which I did. In 10 days and 80 hours, something the other branches did not manage to do even with the allotted hours and employees.

In addition, Lola’s memory seems to be flagging a bit more with an exponential rise in her neediness levels; Josie seems to be having some breathing issues; I’ve really only been getting an substantial amounts of sleep on the weekend, getting by with an average of 4 a night during this entire project; my cable payment went lost  in the mail resulting in Comcast all making with the turning off of my internet for like 12 hours before I got that shit straightened out; the return of the gout in my foot and knee; and I only saw Tristan 5 out of the last 14 days,  so things got a little stressful.

Which is why I think I had the chest pains.

And the kind of wonky rubbery arthiritis-pains in both my upper shoulder/arms to the elbows parts (but one does need to take into account that I did break my left arm back in college so that one does ache quite bit anyway due to the nature of the injury) that made my arms fel almost too heavy to lift at times.

Neither of which was really worrying me all that much — okay except for last Wednesday when 30 minutes into my work day, I felt so exhausted and weak that I almost just burst into tears, threw in the towel, and went home — but then I got the really bad headache. Which I know was just the stress of having only 3 days to finish the project (with 5 days worth of work left) because it was gone literally the minute I finished dotting the final “i” and crossing the final “t” but still I am a hypochondriac and I imagined myself in the remake of MY LEFT FOOT or some other Oscar winning picture that makes you want to slit your wrist after you watch it because that’s how I roll.

And so here I sit this morning – no chest pains…no head ache…no rubbery, wonky feeling in my right arm — fit as a fiddle and fine as frog hair.

Except for those weird-ass feelings in my left arm.

Which aren’t quite pain. In fact they’re  more like three seperate aches — one in the rotator cuff where the original break occurred, one just below the elbow that aches off and on like a dull bruise, and one in the knuckles of my left hand that feels almost as though I’m going to lose the ability to grasp things or even type at any second. And I keep hearing the doctor tell me over and over, “You’re more than likely going to develop some nasty arthritis in that arm as you get older, Dirk…”

Looks like he was right.

Sigh.

I guess you really do start to fall apart after 40.