Well the past few days have been interesting enough to finally set aside 20 minutes and write a post before I go to bed. I spent Saturday working on my sisters new house with my dad. I obtained some rather large blisters on the palms of my hands (which by the way looked a lot like stigmata) from scraping up old tiling on the kitchen floor with an ice chipper (!?). I did not realize how much concrete dust I was breathing in until I was all done. There was a pack of new dust masks sitting on the kitchen counter the whole two hours I was working.
Sunday morning I woke up and had a really bad sore throat -- you know, the kind you get when it hurts to swallow. That was my first signal that I was about to get sick. Also, all of my joints started aching, as if they had been under huge physical stress. By Sunday evening, I was really starting to feel out of whack. I was shivering non-stop, I couldn't get warm enough, my stomach was turning, head hurt like hell (behind the eyes), throat hurt, every muscle in my body was sore -- even coughing hurt my abdominal muscles. I hate that feeling -- the feeling as if my entire body was falling apart.
When I woke up on Monday morning, I felt sick, but not sick enough to skip going into Cambridge. Monday evening I worked out, even though I still felt pretty sick. Working out usually makes me feel better, so I figured what the hell. I didn't feel any better afterwards, but I didn't feel any worse either. After my workout I went to my sisters house again to work with my dad. I screwed down the concrete backer board for the tile floor. I put in about 800 screws (with a drill, of course). Bending over like that for two hours really puts a toll on your back!
It probably doesn't help that my basement gets pretty cold at night (around 45 - 50 degrees), which I'm sure weakens my immune system even more than the small amount of sleep I've been getting (5 - 6 hrs a night, even on weekends). I've decided to try and get at least 6 - 7 hrs of sleep every night, and sleep extra on the weekends. Also drinking more tea!
Man, tile removal definitley stinks. When I was working with floors, tiles rarely came up .. but we did have this one house we had to remove tiles and put in hardwood floor. No one wanted to do the removal, so I had to do most of it myself. It wasn’t a large room, it was rougly a 9×18 hallway. But it totally sucked. We didn’t have the proper tools so I had to use a hardwood floor hammer. Got so many cuts, so much dust .. then had to sand the other rooms .. more dust (the only day I forget my mask). Tile install is much easier haha. Anyway …….. hope yah feel yourself again soon.
You should try some pah-baw (rice soup/porridge?) from a Khmer restaurant. That makes me feel better when I get them sore throat, muscle aching sick .. TAKE IT EASY MY MAN
Thanks Tom. Yeah tile removal sucks. But honestly, my favorite type of construction has to be carpentry (framing walls, working with wood, etc). All you have to deal with is the sawdust, which usually isn’t so bad. Plus, you get to actually build stuff, as opposed to just sugar-coating it (drywall, painting, tiling, carpets, etc).
Some rice soup would be good right about now. I haven’t had that in a looong time!
HEH HEH…. I had Rice Soup for lunch today! 😛
Yeah, anytime the wife or I feel ill, rice soup hits the spot.
A good friend of mine, Ton, his mom could cook some good Khmer food, then she had a stroke and is now in a nursing home 🙁
BAH!!!!!!! Hit enter instead of shift…
No heater in the basement? Anyhow, hope you feel better.
There’s heat in the basement, which I turn on for a few hours each night before I sleep, but I cannot afford to leave it running the entire night. My gas bill would be $500+ every month — and I cannot afford that!!