You hear it a lot, "Getting old sucks."
Now, I don't really see myself as old, rather as my friend's kid told me the other day, "Kat you are not old,you are medium age."
Fair enough, I mean if the description fits.
I also am one of those mutants who looks younger than they are on the chronological timeline, but let me tell you something, after simultaneously, without a break, taking care of children for the last 30 years, I definitely feel my age on the inside.
However, I still run and jump around like I am a teen most of the time. It's just who I am. If there is something on top of the hay pile, I am going to run and bound up to the top. The only difference between now and a couple decades ago is I sometimes stop and think about things before I do them.
The trend that is goat yoga has finally infected my area. I owned goats for 15 years and did more unintentional goat yoga than I ever wanted too. Nothing is less fun than contorting yourself into a twisted downward dog while trying to dislodge Lucky Two Tone's dumb head from the feeder for the 77th time. Those heathen goats twisted my carcass into more yoga poses than I'd like to admit.
Oh yes, and they poo and pee on and heat-butt you in the process.
So even though I get it, goats are cute, the idea that people have turned livestock being livestock into cutesy exercise time is interesting to me. And by interesting I mean a bit on the head-scratching, are you serious type of interesting.
So what does this goat yoga word diversion have to do with getting older? Well, Friday morning I went out to feed all my animals like I always do. Being the sometimes nice mom that I am, I told my daughter I would feed her show steer for her, since she was leaving that afternoon to go to a Jackpot Show in Moses, Lake Washington. Her steer's rubber feed pan was full of shavings, so without thinking, and like I have done a million times before, I hand standed myself right over the stall wall, holding my body weight on one arm while flipping the feed pan over and simultaneously pouring Pumpkin's grain into the feed pan with my other arm before popping back to my feet.
I didn't even think about my acrobatics. I literally do stuff like that all the time.
Saturday morning I woke up and couldn't move my neck to the left. At all.
A nerve roller coaster of fire was emanating from the base of my skull and radiating out my collarbone and down my spine into my shoulder blade. Was it true? I mused through the nerve-fire, have I gotten to the age where just sleeping good at night can take me out?
Saturday proved to be a miserable day, for on top of spinal meninscreamus my vision was also completely blurred. Here's the thing, you don't get days off on a farm, so I still had a bunch of stuff to tend too.
It was great.
After a judicious application of heated rice bags throughout the day, I felt like I would pop right up Sunday and be good to go, as Sunday's are crazy busy here, so I willed it to be.
The Pope Of Nope decreed otherwise.
Today, I think I might be slightly better, but after three days of working with almost debilitating nausea and pain, I am starting to see why a lot of old people are a bit hateful. Is this what it's like for them?
Maybe I will head out to the barn this afternoon and execute another feed pan handstand. You know, so it can balance things out. I mean, something's got to give, I am pretty sure my Corgi is worried I'm dying, the cats are starting to test my carcass continuity, and my children are being, gasp, nice to me. The world is upside down I tell you!!
(Okay, I jest a bit, about the kids, they are always pretty nice to me, which is crazy, I know. The cats I am 100% serious about though.)
Through my pain haze I got to thinking, if people will pay to do yoga while little goat kid heathens crawl all over them, perhaps they will pay for a Feed Pan Fitness program too. I'd teach trend followers how I do my feed pan handstands and superman hay bale leaps. Maybe I'm on to something here!
Or maybe I'm just delirious because my neck hates me.