stress with a capital S-T-R-E-S-S

My left shoulder hurts.  It started about a week ago.  At first it felt like my muscles were just tired from lugging around Number Four all day.  But then it got worse.  Plus, yeah, it's lasted a week.  Sometimes it feels like someone is trying to shove the handle of a wooden spoon in my shoulder socket.  It's lovely, I tell you.  Ibuprofen is my friend.

Being a righty, I never realized how much I relied on my left arm.  It's the arm that reaches and grabs and pushes and lifts while my right arm focuses on the fine motor stuff.  It's been my baby holding arm for a non-stop 6 1/2 years.  It's my diaper bag shoulder, and my milk pouring arm.  I also realized that I steer the car mostly with my left arm, and I like to hold the phone on that side too.  So I may be right handed, but I think I'm definitely left armed.

I have three theories as to why my shoulder is painfully freaking out:

1- A migrating genius virus that has set up camp in my shoulder to breed.  I swear this can happen.  Just last month my cousin's daughter had a virus move to her hip socket and fester - they had to take her into surgery and pull buckets full of infected green puss from her hip. True story.

2- A recent traumatizing injury that I have very successfully locked into my repressed memory.  Repressed memories are powerful things.  I mean, I don't even remember when I was abducted by aliens and had all my brain cells stolen (although I clearly have less brain cells than I used to.

or

3- STRESS.  Obviously, this is the most likely reason.  By the end of the month, I must accomplish the following: completely finished artwork for that book I'm illustrating; a 10 page, fully illustrated, booklet on hearing and vision loss in spanish; a family project that I cannot at this time clarify due to secrecy and that I should already have done, but I don't, not even close; regular normal stuff; and oh, yeah, my kids have been non-stop sick all month.  So yeah, stress = spoon handle shoving shoulder pain.

I'm also kind of stressed because I am meeting with a client today (the vision/hearing spanish booklet one) and it's been like 5.9 years since I've met with a client in actual person.  I hardly even talk to clients on the phone anymore.  Most of my work is done strictly through email, so this whole meeting thing is really throwing me out of my comfort zone.  Especially since I realized I have nothing but jeans and sweatshirts to wear, because my fatty fatness has refused to budge a pound and all my good clothes are about 52 sizes smaller.

And you know what else?  Right after that meeting I have to go to a pre-op appointment for my eyes.  Well, actually just eye (because they will only operate on one eye at a time.)  And it turns out that my Dr, that I thought was all involved and caring, is actually just a jerk.  Because they're making me pay for the surgery UP FRONT.  $3600.  Per eye.  And don't even ask for a payment plan, because the answer is no.  Of course the other option is going blind, so there's really no options at all.

And you know what else?!!!  I am not done whining yet.  There has to be something else. 

Let me think....

Oh ok, here's one:  I checked out some books at the library and hardly noticed that two weeks had  passed, and I didn't get to read them, so I went to renew them online so I could read them after my surgery (which is Feb. 1st, assuming of course my eyes will focus on a book) and one of them is non-renew-able.  And it's due tomorrow. 

Life is so unfair.