Man, I've been beat like a tied-up goat.

Ethel's still packing like crazy (in between visits to the dentist, and to the doctor (for female-type stuff of which I am remaining blissfully, willfully ignorant (that is, she went to the doctor for that stuff - not the dentist)) and she's got me doing stuff, too (Silas and I just took down the ceiling fan from the back porch).

But that's not why I'm so tired, I'm sure. And it's not my training - I've stuck with that whole no-lifting and reduced cardio volume plan that I set up last week.

I think maybe it's what they call "stress", although I just can't see that - I mean, how stressed can I be?

But I'm grinding my teeth down to nubbins, and my neck is tired; maybe it's stress.

Lessee - my mother-in-law died in mid-January, and I spent a week up there for the funeral, and then I spent a week back here with Silas but without Ethel (that, by itself, will make a fellow's neck tighten up) and then my father-in-law moved in for a month (a great guy, but his grief was just smothering - it was difficult to be around) and then, when he left, we found the Chocolate House, and then my mother came to stay for ten days while we were packing and getting set up to close...

Okay, maybe it IS stress.

BTW - that's verbal shorthand, I think. The engineering terms "stress" and "strain" refer to the amount of load that is laid upon a material, and the amount to which it deforms under load. So "stress" is the events that happen to cause changes in my life; "stress" is not the fatigue and the neck pain and the teeth grinding. That's my reaction to stress; perhaps we could call it strain, since it is how the material deforms under stress, but as a living organism, the damage that I do myself seems to be the result, not of how I deform under stress, but of my refusing to deform under stress - my resistance to change.

There - that's it. Resistance is the opposite of strain; the greater the resistance, the less the material stretches out to accomodate the stress.

So I need to drop the resistance; let my habits and lifestyle stretch to accomodate the stress. I'm willing to do that; I've already done it, at least as far as changing my training regimen goes. I could even miss some meetings, if that's necessary (I seem to be doing plenty of 12 Step work to cover my bases on that score :)

Okay, that's it. That's that. We're done here. I'm done for the day. Ethel's gonna come home in a while and demand that Arnold Snakesenegger (our five-foot boa) be taken to the pet shop TONIGHT, but I'm not gonna do it. That can happen tomorrow night, or even Saturday morning.

Of course, Ethel left here an hour ago to go to the Uhaul store and get more tape, and get some milk. The Uhaul store is five minute away. So she may have stressed out and just gotten onto I-17 and headed north for Flagstaff.  That would be a considerable "strain" - i.e. a very large deformation as a result of stress.

I hope she saves a spot for me.