I’m playing hurt. 

You’ll recall that time I tripped over my son, spraining both wrists, bruising both knees, and tearing my jeans. 

Those bruises on my knees lasted 14 months. 

Fourteen. 

I’ve had boyfriends for less time than those bruises. 

And the sprained wrists bought me six weeks of physical therapy.   

Again with the boyfriends. 

I already did physical therapy, barely even nine months before the sprained wrists, for a shoulder injury. 

Don’t ask me what I did. I don’t know.  

Middle age is a cruel, cruel mistress. 

At physical therapy, I was told my right shoulder blade jutted from my back at an abnormal angle. The muscle was prolapsing into the space caused by my funky shoulder blade. 

I’m not a big fan of body horror flicks. 

I’m even less of a fan when the body horror is right there on my back. 

The shoulder pain returned in July. “No need for physical therapy this time!” I thought. Same injury, same physical therapy exercises. 

It was Body Horror on My Back, Part II — the sequel nobody wanted. 

One of my shoulder exercises was push-ups.  

Now, my push-ups look like a cross between a high plank and a male walrus impregnating an ice floe. 

Which is to say my form is bad.  

So not only did my right shoulder pain fail to improve, my left shoulder got in on the action.  

I grudgingly returned to physical therapy, the place where everybody knows my name. 

That I’m old enough for Cheers is probably a large part of why I’m in physical therapy. 

One of the physical therapists wasn’t buying my story — that I couldn’t pinpoint an inciting movement for my original shoulder injury.  

There had to be something, she felt. Some movement, some dumbbell poundage, some action when my shoulder exploded. 

But if Leslie Mann gets pregnant in This Is 40, random injuries of indeterminate provenance — well. 

This Is 50. 

Especially since the injuries haven’t stopped at my shoulders. 

I mean, let’s be real. 

One chilly morning in January, I slid out of bed —

Wait. I just want to say I don’t slide out of bed because I’m as decrepit as the Crypt Keeper. 

I slide out of bed because I’m not a morning person. 

Please. Do not talk to me in the morning. I like you and would feel awful wishing for and maybe slightly plotting your death. 

My husband tells me he loves me each morning before he heads out. Which is sweet but equally true at four in the afternoon so, like, let’s talk then. 

Anyway. I slid out of bed that January day and found I couldn’t put weight on my right foot without crippling pain rocketing through its entire ventral surface. 

This time, I knew exactly what was wrong. And exactly what I’d done. 

Plantar fasciitis, from an angry run. 

See, I was trying to get to hot yoga the day before.  

But hot yoga is an hour away. Its price is right, the classes stream, it’s in the city and I am, at my heart, a city girl, and there is an awesome smoothie place up the street. 

But the rain was coming down in sheets and traffic was at a standstill, and it became clear no matter how many profanities I hurled from my mouth, I was not making it to yoga. 

Or my smoothie. 

So I traded bare feet for sneakers and went for a run. 

But I was angry because running in the cold rain is about as opposite to hot yoga as one can get. 

Also, hot yoga rocks but running is an abomination. 

I want to say “running sucks” but Indy often told me I am too smart for such profane words. 

So we’ll just say running is an abomination. But we all know what I really mean. 

For nine months, I tried to work out that stupid plantar fasciitis. 

My doctor told me to use Voltaren and see a podiatrist. Which made me feel the way I felt when my gynecologist said I was perimenopausal.

That is, homicidal.  

About as homicidal as I feel when my husband tells me he loves me before 10 in the morning. 

I remember my grandmother’s podiatrist. His name was Hayes. He came out to the house and clipped her toenails. 

I don’t want Hayes coming to my house and clipping my toenails. 

I saw the podiatrist anyway.  

She had a big needle filled with a steroid, for injection into the sole of my foot. 

Wait, wait, wait! I’d rather have Hayes clip my toenails! I’d rather have the plantar fasciitis pain! 

But the injection worked, the physical therapy is easing the shoulder pain, and I don’t have to do push-ups anymore. 

This, my friends, is 50.