Alex Becomes the Walking Dead

My body hates me. It does. And it punishes me, constantly, for doing things to it.

My knees remind me, daily, of the decade-plus they spent squatting behind home plate, catching countless baseball games from Little League through college, and my right shoulder barks about years of being abused by the unnatural act of throwing a baseball.

The surgery I had on it during my (red-shirted) freshman year of college didn't do much in the way of alleviating any pain.

Other things hurt, too. Like the bulging disc I have in the lower right side of my back, and the pinched nerve in my neck, suffered during a jarring collision at home plate when I was in high school.

That one's actually on film, so ask me nicely next time you see me, and I might show it to you.

My jaw pops every time I eat a bagel, reminding me of the time I was hit with a low-90s fastball, in the face, during a college game while trying (and failing, obviously) to bunt a runner over to second base.

Recently, though, my body is angry with me for doing a whole new set of stupid things.

Things like sleeping only four or five hours a night, going for my daily treadmill run at 5:00 AM, and putting in way too many consecutive hours hunched over a keyboard in a very not ergonomic chair.

And this, after several years of not eating right and not exercising. Which, I know, was/is the cause of most of my aches and pains.

The knees are actually a lot better now that I've lost quite a bit of weight. I'm back down to my college playing weight--a little less, actually, because I had to put on some size to compete at that level back then.

So I'm healthier, in many ways.

But still, my body reminds me of all the extra hours of work and all of the missed hours of sleep. And it takes its revenge when I have a day off. Every time. Seriously.

I have not had a single vacation--be it a long weekend or an entire week off--where I didn't manage to get hilariously sick.

Take Christmas week, for example. Hilariously, pathetically ill.

And this past weekend, which was Memorial Day. I managed to be completely out of commission from Saturday through Monday. No sleep, either, as whatever was/is wrong with me also keeps me up at night.

When I went back in the office on Tuesday, I knew I should have taken an extra day to recover. So I planned to take Wednesday off.

And then some pages came in, and that became completely out of the question. So I planned to take Thursday off, which I did. You know, to relax and recuperate.

Which would have been fantastic, if not for a comical series of appointments that magically became scheduled to happen at home on Thursday. An endless line of exterminators, carpenters, mailmen, and Fed-Ex guys. Followed by, apparently, the entire neighborhood's decision to cut their lawns at the same time.

You know, right when I opened my window to enjoy the beautiful weather and lay down to sleep.

I know, I know. I shouldn't be complaining. And I'm not, really. I just think it's funny that I'm so bad at doing anything even the least bit relaxing and/or enjoyable lately.

I'm supposed to go away late next week--a bachelor's party in Las Vegas--and I know that whatever head cold/chest cold thing I have this week is just the preamble of the real cold that I'll have next week.

You'll see. It'll happen.

And I'll be here to write about it, with all of the expected Exfanding snark I can muster.