Alabama - Day 12

Tannehill Ironworks State Historical Park
Thursday, 12 December 2019

I only slept about 4 hours total last night.  When I'd lie in one position, I'd stiffen up after a bit, but when I'd turn over it was a major project due to muscle soreness plus sore joints, and I had to work to find a position that didn't hurt and then couldn't get back to sleep.

The only visible injury I had was a fairly large scrape on my left elbow.  By the time I got up I had a faint bruise on my right knee.  Good thing I wasn't married to a wife-beater because the cops would never have believed me - I just don't bruise very easily.

But inside, I felt seriously bruised.  On both knees, especially the right one, and along my right thigh, on that scraped elbow, and in the muscles of both arms and both legs - all felt bruised.  Getting in and out of bed was a serious project - with the extra high mattress it's not all that easy even normally, which this morning wasn't.  Standing felt sore and walking felt sore and climbing up and down steps (which I have to do even inside the RV) felt sore.  But every now and then I'd remind myself that I was hit by a car so I deserved to feel sore.

I could have used more sleep but dreaded the idea of trying to climb back into bed.  Instead, I stayed up and worked on my blog.  It's not anything that time won't fix (and maybe some Ben-Gay), so I feel very lucky.  It could have been so very much worse.

On an non-injury related note, once when we went out to walk, Dexter stopped dead just outside the door of the RV and stared at something.  It took me almost a minute to see what it was - a squirrel was sitting on a sign at Dext's eye level about 15' away.  They had a staring contest until I got tired of standing there.

It got down to freezing again last night and there was frost on the leaves on the ground, though I didn't see any frozen water.

Once during a walk today I saw a Red-headed Woodpecker, but unusually this one was looking for food on the ground.  If its coloring weren't so distinctive, I'd think I mistook it, but you really can't do that with this bird - all that black-and-white body and solid red head.

It was a peaceful day and I was really really glad I'd decided to stay over another day and recuperate.