It would be easy to say that pushing the mower through the thick grass yesterday afternoon was the reason my left arm felt as if it were falling off today. But then, why would my right arm have just the usual soreness? And anyway, the pain in the left didn’t seem muscular, but neural. It was a twinge that kept twinging like an electrical armband that was wired to prevent me from reaching for anything more than a couple of feet away.

It couldn’t have been the mowing that did it. Nevertheless, I laid off the mowing today.

A logical explanation (possibly) for the stomach cramps that kept me in the bathroom all morning would (possibly) be the leftover southwestern soup I had last night. It is, after all, full of beans. But I made that soup myself, and I’ve eaten it many times without incident. And I know what went into it, so there couldn’t have been a mystery ingredient causing my discomfort.

So it wasn’t the soup. Still, I had nothing more potent than a grilled cheese sandwich today, and with mild cheddar at that.

What I actually think happened to my arm is that I slept wrong on it, “slept wrong” being one of the go-to explanations for having outlived my infrastructure’s sell-by date. The digestive problems? That’s just getting old (although, come to think of it, I did eat some pickled bean salad (from a jar) along with the soup, so you might say I was asking for trouble, and oh boy, did I get it).