There's a rule in life. I know this rule, and I broke this rule, and now I'm paying for it. Never, ever say, "I'm having a good week," no matter how true the statement is. The cosmos has ears, and it doesn't take well to being taunted.

(Sigh.)

So, a complete recap of the weekend: swim a quarter-mile for the first time, fit into size 14 jeans for the first time in a decade, get mauled by skittish seventeen-pound cat.

Top of left arm:

It took eight weeks, but I can finally say it: the size 14 jeans button and zip. As usual, just because they button and zip doesn't mean that they're public-ready, but getting in them at all is plenty of a victory, given how much I've struggled since mid-May.

(Need a refresher course? Take a look at the 'weighty issues' category page for a listing of all entries on the subject.)

To retrace my steps:

The TV anchors were mourning the loss of Ronald Reagan, and I was sitting in a random Tex-Mex restaurant in metro Atlanta, wondering if I, too, had lost my bloody mind. My brain was having trouble processing everything going on at once: Brian telling stories, chipper music from the radio station, Maggie Thatcher eulogizing Reagan, the utter tastiness of the quesadilla I was eating.

It had been nothing but a random provocation of muscle, an awkward-standing up that led to a consistent, throbbing ache in my right lat.

"Rub it?" I asked Jeff, hopefully. "Not like scritchies, but real massage work?"

Some recent finds from the joys of the interweb:

#1: What Planet Is This?

From this article from the Sun-Sentinel (italics are mine):

From an email I sent to Val today:

I'm really struggling with the weightlifting, and something just doesn't seem right. I've had to lay off lifting a bit this month because of Atlanta trips, but I'm getting exhausted during weightlifting sessions and it's not the kind that I get a second wind and bounce back from. Something's not right, and I don't know what.

There was more said than that, but it's unimportant. Val's response was unequivocal: