I had a massage today and I swear my massage therapist was channeling one of the more motivated of the Gestapo elite.  I'm not so sure a "relaxation" massage should have me wishing for bamboo shoots under the fingernails because it would be less painful.  I've been having a lot of low back pain which is due, I'm sure, to 13 years of lugging epiduralized women around in bed, using equipment that was designed by a random engineer and not by someone who would actually use it (i.e. hardly functional and not nearly ergonomically correct), and packing half my life in my Big Ass Bag everyday to work.  One might think the BAB could be lightened, but I've tried and I can't.  I NEED everything in that bag like I need air to breathe. Honest.  Anyway, little Miss Mengele today suggested next time we work on my psoas and deep abdominal muscles but she warned me "it will be painful.  I just had it done and I screamed."  Awesome.  I'm already breathing like I'm in transition, let's add the sensation of crowning a 12 pound baby into the equation.  That should be fun.  I did feel better afterward, but then I screwed it up by staining the big toy.  You know, those big wooden play structures seen in all the best playgrounds and yuppie housing developments? Mine has been well loved and well neglected for the past 8 years.  Why not stain it when there's. more than likely only two years left before I tear it down, use it for firewood, and set up a bitchin' outdoor living room in it's place?  Lots of climbing up and down ladders, figuring out the best logistics so as not to paint myself, literally, into a corner, and cussing the amount of Solid Color Weatherproofing Deck and Fence Stain in Russet it takes to cover wood that has seen 8 years of Pac NW winters.  Sucks it up like a sponge.  Not to mention the amount of lichen that had grown on the roof of this bad boy.  I did attempt to do the responsible, anal personality I try to hide, thing and clean all of it off, but it proved more stubborn than I.  And as it's about 15 feet in the air at the peak, I think I can be forgiven for saying, "Fuck it!" and painting over all of the little symbiotic vegetation. (Before you judge, please reference the above "2 years before I trash it" explanation above.)

It was also 88 degrees today, which, for we poor Pac NWsters, is akin to living on the surface of the sun. Despite the level of SPF I slather on on a daily basis, my face looks like half of Richard Dreyfuss' in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As I turn into Queen Bitch of the Universe the hotter it is (see, there are reasons I no longer live in North Carolina or Utah), I'm trying to convince myself it's actually cooler by watching Slap Shot and Fargo.  So far it hasn't lulled me into thinking my brains are not boiling in my head, but I remain optimistic.