Remember being able to touch your toes? I can remember doing it, back when I could see my toes over my stomach. Now, if I need something on the floor, I find something to reach down there to get it. If I have to get down on the floor, I begin by figuring out how I am going to get up. Usually, I like to wait till there are several things on the floor I am going to need before I actually bend over in a flailing attempt to snare the items. Bending over once is better than doing it multiple times. It hurts to bend over and it is a reminder that, unlike Jack La Lane, my exercise program could use some improvement. Tying my shoes has caused me to go to slip on boots. If this doesn't sound familiar, it will, trust me.
So, anytime I get a chance to refinish a floor I jump at it. You probably are thinking this is strange behavior bordering on insanity. Not so. I am the perfect floor person. I am good at running the floor machine. You stand up and walk very slowly behind it. It pulls you along while you pull back. After pulling back on the floor machine for hours, crawling around on the floor is not that bad. It is actually a welcome relief and the pain in both knees is hidden by the incredible back ache you have. As it turns out, my inability to multi-task makes it impossible to concentrate on two pains at once and makes it possible to spend endless hours on my knees, running an edger. When my knees finally eclipse my back pain, I can switch and go back to walking behind the big floor machine, or , (I save this as a treat) I can sit and scrape the corners and the thresholds.
So there you have it, variety is the spice of life and my secret to pain management. By varying the pain, both in affected body parts and intensity I can go on for hours. I now use this in all my activities. I don't think my method will work if you can multi-task. I suspect you will be able to feel more than one pain simultaneously. This is probably why you don't see any women doing floors. I am pretty sure we wouldn't have wooden floors if women had to sand them. Women have a sensitivity that would be a definite hindrance in the floor business.
I have a son who is a veritable artist with a floor machine. He's twenty six and considers himself too old to do floors now. He has sworn them off. Well, once he gets a lot older and it hurts to do almost everything, he probably will do floors again, why not? Bring on the floors. Woo Hoo.
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I remember the conundrum of picking things up off the floor when I was pretty heavy into my pregnancy, bending over was such a hassle that I would find reasons as to why I really didn't need that object for a few more months. I also empathize with the shoe tying thing. Not sure that I feel the same about floors as you, though, you can have them, and when it comes time to do the floors in the addition - well, they're all yours, too. :)
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