taking it personally

i took my first personal day on thursday in i don’t remember how long and, honestly, it felt nice…

…i can see how folks misuse this.

my back did a weird thing on wednesday, and not the usual part of it. since i was a kid i’ve had lower back issues, but this was mid and crippling and bad and resulted from me daring to lay down across the foot of our bed. that was it. i had started later than i meant to, and had more to do in order to get things going than i’d counted on, so i already knew the bigger, more needed project (m’s oil change) wasn’t happening as planned, but i lay down after being out in the heat, went to move slightly, and my back, for lack of better terms, just said “no”.

that was a first.

i think the heat has been the main culprit in how crappy i’ve felt lately. as i’m pretty sure i’ve explained, one of the few things i learned back in the covid times is that i am, quite literally, cooler than you people. when i was growing up, i was taught that normal human body temperature is 98.6°, but now hear it’s a “range” between 96.8° and 98.6°, and i am on the lowest end of that range. when shops were allowed to open in may of 2020 we had to take our temperatures and record them when we came to work, and i consistently clocked in between 96.8-97.1°. one notable, and amusing, exception was when i came in sweaty from the gym – as sweat cools us, that day i clocked in at a postmortem temp of 92.8°. standard corpse temp is anything below ninety-three. once i wiped the sweat off i fell back in my normal range.

so running about in the triple digits really hits me in a bad way. between that, and the weird back thing, wednesday was a wash, so i did a “do over day off” on thursday and got some shit done…and it felt good. sacrificed a bit of the next paycheck in the process, but with what i saved on gas and food and such it shouldn’t be too bad a hit when all is said and done, and as the pay period still has three weeks to go i can make up the hours pretty easily, i reckon. so take it personal every now and again – it ain’t a bad thing.