The revenge of the hot sauce

I awoke with not unexpected stomach pains: the “suicide” wing sauce was, indeed, extracting some sort of revenge. Part of last night’s experiment with the wings (hitherto, I have avoided hot sauces like the plague on account of fear of consequences like this and the burning sensation in my throat) was to see if the loss of my sense of smell actually had been accompanied by any loss in the sense of taste. It has, a little, I think. I keep on being told that you can’t lose a sense of smell and keep a sense of taste: well, you can. It might just be a little dimmed. As one who is pretty dim most of the time, this comes as no shock. What did come as a shock was the whoosh of burning as the remains of the ribs departed. Anyway, I struggled on through my day, clenching my buttock cheeks as I walked around the house lest there be any sudden urges that I might not be able to control. This, of course, had Ottawacker Jr. in hysterics.

 The perfect expression of this type of pain was, of course, the opportunity to work on the New Zealand job. So, I managed to do a couple of hours, teeth gritted, glutes clenched, and it seemed to pass the time. Around midday, I felt a little better. Then I realized I had the second of my personal trainer sessions with Anna at 2pm, and all of my good work might be rapidly undone. I had a piece of toast and a yoghurt, and crossed my fingers.
 
Crossing my fingers was not enough. As Anna took me through her routines of stretches and mobility poses, pausing from the constant haranguing only to adjust a position or, I though, to sniff rather suspiciously at the air, I suddenly began to realize that while I was capable of doing most of the poses rather well, managing to appropriately clench my glutes while doing the bridge, for example, what I couldn’t do very well was get out of the poses. Unclenching my glutes presented a much more serious problem. As I lay on the floor, recovering from the sort of stretch that an arthritic rhino could do easily, I felt an ominous gurgling in my stomach. I clenched my glutes again.
 
“Vot you do?” shouted Anna, leaning over me with what looked like a big stick (it was, a big stick it’s the one I was to use for the shoulder stretches). “Now is recovery time. Now you relax.”
 
I wasn’t for the life of me going to unclench those glutes, so I made some joking excuse about getting in some extra work while she wasn’t looking, and then, apologizing profusely, made an excuse and made a beeline for the toilets. “Won’t be a second,” I said, “I’ve just got to, erm…” I made it out before my excuse did. And, you’ll be pleased to know, before anything else did. The rest of the session went rather well.
 
In the evening, we had a pizza and movie night. Ottawacker Jr. went to the basket of DVDs dropped off by Mitch – and his eyes fell on The Croods, a Dream Works film about a cave family governed by a father who is scared of his own shadow and who takes the protection of his family too far. Trying not to associate myself too much with the lead character, voiced by Nicholas Cage, I enjoyed it quite a lot. Indeed, at one stage, I must have got a piece of dust in my eye.
 
It was either dust or an email I received earlier in the day. We have been looking to get our steps repaired at the front of the house. There are only five of them, and a small landing on top. The quote we got had me rapidly clenching and unclenching my glutes (Anna would have been impressed): $5,000. I am not sure whether this meant they were using rare minerals or just gold. However, not for me. Five grand buys a lot of chicken wings.
 
**Any suspicion that I might only be using this photo because I forgot to prepare a blip is absolutely correct.