It’s official. I’m old. Do you know how I know I’m old?

I pulled a boob muscle.

A BOOB muscle.

No, it isn’t officially called a boob muscle. I think it’s the pectoral muscle, or something fancy sounding like that, something I thought only men had.

I pulled it by lifting a camera bag while twisted at a weird angle.

When I first felt the pain I thought, for an entire ten seconds, that I was having a heart attack. This was a stupid thought, of course, because it hurt only when I moved, hunched too far over or stretched too far back, or when I touched the skin or muscle itself. If I barely breathed and laid in bed with a rice pack on my boob I was fine. It was obviously an external muscle issue, not an internal muscle issue.

I’m so old.

Seriously.

I’m so ooooold.

If I can pull a boob muscle by just lifting a camera bag, I’m afraid to work out, like doctors are always telling old people to do. Who even knows what I could pull doing a simple lunge or yoga pose. In fact, I once pulled a groin muscle doing Yoga. Too much information? I think you may be right.

For the last couple of years more and more body parts, some I didn’t even know I had, let alone they could hurt, have been revolting and as a result I am having pain in places I never even thought about having pain in. I mean, the breast, where it curves into the sternum? Is that actually supposed to hurt? I don’t know but it did after the whole camera bag fiasco that came from trying to carry too much up the stairs while also closing the dog gate behind me and keeping our little, loveable mutt (Zooma the Wonder Dog) downstairs so she can’t find her favorite pee place – my bedroom carpet.

Sometimes I get pain in my shoulders and arms and feet, even when I don’t do anything the day before. The “most fun” pain to have was in my butt because my 4-year old thought it was hilarious when I said my butt hurt. Of course, it’s actually the sciatica muscle but she laughed so hard at the idea my butt hurt, I finally gave up on explaining what a sciatica muscle was.

Logically I could credit all these pains to any number of things besides getting old – maybe I’m developing fibromyalgia like my grandmother and mom, maybe I’m just out of shape, maybe I have MS or an auto immune disease, or Lyme, or maybe it’s hormones because I do have other symptoms of some garbage phase of female life called perimenopause. Or maybe my hypochondria is showing again. Let me consult my medical book or Dr. Google and I’ll get back to you later about which it is.

I don’t know what it all is but deciding I’m simply “old” is the easiest, and cheapest, explanation for now. Declaring “I’m getting old” is a great excuse for sipping on herbal tea with honey, wrapped in blanket (on the days I’m not having hot flashes), reading a book and telling local teenagers to get off my lawn.

How about you? What’s the weirdest muscle you’ve ever pulled? Keep it clean. This is a family blog.