Recovering from .... tilling?

SHERYL SPENT MUCH of Sunday working on the garden and replacing fence posts. I mowed the lawn, tilled the garden, walked the dogs, took two large golf naps and puttered around the house.

This morning, neither one of us could move.

To be fair, tilling the garden is a nasty job and I pulled muscles I don't remember having, though it probably was the same last year. I don't wonder why anymore. It's pretty simple - getting older sucks.

Tillers are evil. But the garden looks good!

Then again, everything is relative. When I worked in the Grand Canyon National Park about a gazillion years ago, I'd walk down to the Colorado River and back up to the South Rim on the same day. I could barely walk for the next week. We used to call it the "Kaibob Shuffle" after the trail that goes to the river. People would look at you funny and you'd say, "Kaibob Shuffle," and they'd nod symphatheticaly.

A few years later I was at Central Michigan University and a bunch of us gathered to play football. Tackle football. Without helmets. Just stupid college stuff, no doubt fueled by Falstaff and being young. I remember trying to catch a punt, and my roommate, Marty Horjus, came out of the nowhere and flattened me with a vicious tackle.

We all laughed and played on, but I do remember the next few days of doing the "Horjus Shuffle."

I knew I was in trouble a few years ago when I woke up after a Herald-Whig Demons softball game and could barely move. Then came the harsh reality of recovering from a weekend golf tournament. Now I'm sore after a raucous Cheeseburger or HartLyss show, which we call recovering from the Rock and Roll Truck.

I refuse to let it slow us down. After all, how much slower can you go? Me and my buddy Aspirin will get through it. A glorious New Belgium beverage never hurts, either.

Life is too short to get bent out of shape about being sore. Bent, of course, being the operative word.

Now. Help me reach up for that guitar on the wall, would ya?