Fatigue Metaphors, Metaphor fatigue.

My father is fond of saying 'busier than a one-armed paper hanger with fleas.' Paper hanger in this instance means a person who puts up wallpaper.

Not desktop wallpaper. Real wallpaper. Where do you think they gotthat word?

Well, I have been busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

That's busy.

Life and it's requirements have been beating me like a rented mule, a red-headed stepchild, and an egg-sucking dog.

All of which can be freely beaten, usually deserving it.

An egg-sucking dog is a dog that breaks into the chicken coop (that is nota metaphor) and eats eggs. It is apparently an incurable fault.

One person responsible for my exhaustion is Rick, my friend, whose picture is in the dictionary under 'fit.'

He lures me to the gym by talking about lunch then works me like a part-time job, until I am sweating like a drunk on Sunday (when the bar and liquor stores are closed), or sweating like a hooker in church (Mary Magdalene got a pass, but the rest of them are apparently going to hell).

I wake up the next day as sore as someone who lost an argument with a truck.

I'm still trying to work out how exercise makes you feel and look better. I'm perpetually sore and I've gained 15 pounds. Granted, it's supposedly muscle, but my knees (or what little is left of them) don't care what the weight is made of; they simply don't like it.

So I ice them, several times a day. I end up with two homemade joint-sicles. They only feel good when I have frozen them numb.

Otherwise, they are constantly nagging at me like mother-in-laws made of calcium and tiny bits of cartilage. The pain glows in them, like the soft, smoky flames of an oil lamp fed by rancid fat scavenged from a dead walrus found on the beach.

No, really.