A few days ago, Amelia was talking to me about how much she missed her grandparents. She said a few things about each set of them, and when talking about Grandma and Grandpa Schneider back in Wisconsin, she listed off some toys she likes to play with at their house. These included an old pedal tractor, a toy stove and toy phone. I told her that I played with some of those toys when I was little.
“Boy, those toys must be really old,” she said, with pure earnestness only Amelia can conjure.
It is true, I am no spring chicken. In fact, my use of the term “no spring chicken” itself an indictment of my advancing age.
It isn’t something I think of all that often, frankly. Yup, my beard grows in pretty white, but it’s been doing that for a while so I’m at peace with it. Yes, chasing after a puppy and two little kids makes me a lot more winded than the 25-year-old version of myself would have been, but like an aging quarterback, I feel like I try to play smart rather than hard, and move more efficiently.
But also like an aging quarterback, I’m probably more injury prone. I do have some recurring low back issues and Tuesday I woke up feeling particularly creaky. When the kids asked me to play outside, I felt a little a little like Bill Murray’s Hercules on that old SNL sketch.
The more I moved around, the more I recognized this was definitely above and beyond my standard old guy morning stiffness, and began to reckon with the fact that I might actually have to see someone about this.
A few weeks ago I wrote about a telehealth appointment I had that went pretty well. Unfortunately where it comes to something like a chiropractor, there aren’t really any options for that kind of thing. So if I was going to get this looked at, I was going to have to venture out into the world.
As luck would have it, this happened on the very day that chiropractors were allowed to start seeing patients again in Colorado, and mine happened to have an open appointment. I hesitated, but I knew from previous experience that this could get bunches worse if I didn’t get my back cracked, so I took the appointment.
I got masked up and loaded the car with hand sanitizer. Fortunately, there were no other patients in the office when I was there and I was able to keep respectable distance except for the actual adjustment, but I still noticed myself trying to breathe as a little as possible. It meant grunting a lot of “Uh huh” to attempts at conversation.
Anyway, it went pretty quickly and I got out, thankful I did it. While still a little sore, I am feeling much better. Another day or two and I’ll feel like a spry young lad of 45 again.
The kids were pretty upbeat most of the day, and I’m sure the fact that we had nearly perfect 70-something-degree weather had something to do with that. The biggest snag was that Henry refused his usual afternoon nap. That can be risky business. Henry is a kid that can wake up pretty grouchy from naps, but when we’ve tried to move him away from having naps, it’s often been even worse. Today, he was pretty decent overall and in fact got very into doing some painting.
It could have been that he couldn’t nap because he had a jolt of artistic inspiration and just had to chase the muse. It could also just be that he wanted to watch Snoopy in Space for the 40th time.
We wrapped up the day by having a nice dinner outside and taking in the beautiful weather until the sun went down. After the kids were in bed, I was struck by the urge to watch old Monkees TV show. To my delight, I discovered that pretty much all the episodes are on YouTube.
I unabashedly loved and continue to love that show. Yes, it is goofy and sometimes dated, but so am I. The songs are great and the writing in lots of episodes is razor sharp and holds up really well.
One song that struck me as being a good one for the sometimes tough slog of day-to-day life in quarantine is “Tomorrow’s Gonna’ Be Another Day.” Next time I feel the gloom and stress close in on me, I’m going to say to myself, “I don’t care what they say…tomorrow’s gonna’ be another day.”
