Heavy Lifting

I keep our Christmas tree up in the rafters of the garage.  Not the pine variety.  We got rid of that a long time ago in favor of a fabricated tree.  Not to avoid mess.  It still sheds needles.  But to avoid the trip, selection, return trip, and maintenance of a real tree.  I miss the smell a little, but there are pine trees near my house I can visit if I need a fix, and I can even haul some needles back if I need the smell.

According to my tree, which seems to get heavier every single year (I'm sure it is, it must be picking up something from the air or the ornaments), standing on a ladder and shoving it around on my own is not recommended.  In the past, I didn't think too much of this warning.  But this year, with the plated/screwed hip, standing on a ladder, balancing slightly backward while I gave it a shove onto the hanging planks, my leg gave me a warning that my years lofting it up there might be numbered or, at the very least, that I should heed the sign and come up with a new storage location.  I don't think I'm in any danger of breaking the hip unless I fall.  But I do suspect I'm in more danger of falling given that my leg seems to have shifted length a bit and I'm not as balanced as I once was.  It's very seldom an issue.  However, shoving heavy boxes over my head, and vigorously hopping out of bed in the morning, seem to be edge cases.  The bed statement might be perplexing, but picture hopping up and getting going before your brain and body are really ready, which is often how I get going because I long ago convinced myself half the lying around in bed issue people seem to have is just not popping up as soon as you can.  The result is a lean against the wall because my balance doesn't autocorrect quickly enough to tell me where my shoulder is in relation to the wall.  Coupled with a malfunctioning Marvin the Martian anamatronic art hanging that sticks out a few inches that I now bump into now and then, I know for a fact I lean a little when I get up more than I used to (although the odd klutzy moment in the past had me bumping it, so it's not a unique experience, only different in terms of frequency).

I notice as well that I should get entirely different people to lift my tree box, because both of those guys seem to be much younger, more coiffed men.