Wearing my stress

I've always been a person who wears her stress in her shoulders, particularly my left shoulder.  I believe I walk around with the top of my shoulder touching my ear when I am at my most tense.  I don't believe that's a good thing.

I've been having R rub out the knots, I've been applying heat, applying Capsazin cream, soaking in a hot bath with or without Epsom salts, and still it's giving me trouble.  It's a sign that I'm just too stressed to heal right now, so today I took the afternoon off work and got some things done.  That's really the only way I can solve extreme stress....by working to remove it.

I went to two banks and took care of some big items with the trust.  I was an HOUR AND A HALF at one of the banks.  That's right, an HOUR AND A HALF at a BANK!!  I was actually feeling okay when I went in and my shoulder was a locked up mess by the time I left.  I also dropped off some donations for the church that were sent directly to me and I was going to go get a couple of appraisals but I was too spent when I was done.  I'll do those tomorrow.

When I got home we had a new little concrete pad poured at the base of our front steps so we have a fairly large yard project to complete this weekend.  Last weekend R yanked out a jankety old sidewalk that bisected our little front yard and we hired a guy to use equipment to yank out some jankety old concrete steps and another old sidewalk perpendicular to the one we removed.  R roto-tilled and reseeded the upper terrace of our yard and we'll do the lower portion this weekend, while also rebuilding the gap in our limestone rock wall left when the steps were removed.  It will look awesome when it's done but right now it's a lot of dirt and mud and a hole in the rock wall.  Truckload number two of dirt arrives tomorrow morning.

After the workers left today, I decided to scrub my kitchen floor because it was just disgusting.  We've had a lot of mud and dirt tracked in after we also reseeded the back yard, and I've been too busy over the past few weeks to do much more than try to sweep up the loose stuff.  It's stupid but my shoulder felt pretty good after scrubbing the floor on my hands and knees, and felt fairly recovered from my HOUR AND A HALF at the bank.  It's back to hurting now though because I tackled some of my Mom's bookwork later on and ended up composing a lengthy letter to the attorney while scanning documents she needs.  I feels me a hot bath coming on.  If I could take a hot wine bath, that would be even better.

Guess that's it.  I'm not great at relaxing and I'm still not sleeping all that well but I'm managing.  My mental "to do" list shrunk a little today and that helps.  I also made a list of things to do this weekend, because writing down lists help me relax so I don't have to manage them in my head.  I know, it's sad and it's also pretty evident why my shoulder is touching my ear.