Samson redux

I spent yesterday helping a friend replace the flooring in his dining room. They bought the house about a year ago, and the person they bought it from was fairly obsessive about making sure everything was over-constructed. At any rate, Mr. OCD put down a variety of that attached pad Berber style carpet that normally retails for about $1-$2 per square foot. Moreover, just to make sure that nothing happened to keep this treasured product from coming up, he glued it down with some variety of contact cement. Approximately 4 hours later, my buddy and I finally had the last scraps of the pad scraped off of the floor and some new foam underlayment put down for his new maple laminate floor. I went home from laying the laminate at 12:30 a.m. We had a lot of trimming to do-4 door openings, 3 floor outlets, a floor vent and part of a chimney to go around plus it has been a few years since I laid any laminate, so it took a while to get back the knack. The important thing is, we did finish the job.

The problem is that I am sore beyond belief today. I don't remember being so sore when I put in the laminate for our attic bedroom at our house in Iowa. My knees and the heels of my hands are very tender and I'm keeping ibuprofen in my system at regular intervals. Worse, when I posted about my condition on my Facebook status this morning, one of my oldest friends had the temerity to suggest that I was experiencing the vagaries of something she referred to as "middle age." I am not amused. Personally, I've decided that gray hair or not, I'm not middle-aged until I'm 50 at least, and maybe not even then.

If that doesn't work, then I've got a fall-back theory: As all of you know, I recently got my hair cut off, and based on my study of the Scriptures, I'm pretty sure that has something to do with it. After all, read this:

...she called a man to shave off the seven braids of his hair, and so began to subdue him. And his strength left him. - Judges 16:19b

See? Middle-aged? Meh. I just got a haircut, and haircuts produce weakness. Once my hair grows back out, I'll be back to knocking over pagan temples again. Or at least, that's the theory I'm going with.