MILES AND MILES BEFORE I SLEEP

Don't you just love those little pedometers you can hook on your belt that PROVE after a hard day of getting up off the couch and walking all the way to the pantry to get another soda and bag of chips and then walking all the way back to the couch that this was the equivalent of running .00087 of a marathon?

So I have been tallying up my actions over here which obviously, since they are all way outside my comfort zone, must add up.

1. SLEEPER IN A STRANGE BED
My grandson graciously offered to let me sleep in his bed (the temptation of sleeping on a huge air mattress that doubles as a trampoline probably aided in that decision), so I am surrounded by Star Wars sheets, Star Wars pillows, and Star Wars posters.

This constant aggressive behavior of fictional characters in a purely imaginary galaxy, and well as the baleful face of Darth Vader looming in the back of every illustration, must be sucking out the calories in my body at, what, shall we say 1,235 every hour? And since I sleep eight hours at night, and normally about two every afternoon at nap time, with an occasion twenty minutes thrown in here and there....


2. HIGH ABOVE THE CHIMNEY TOPS
There is a reason old people live with ranch-style houses, and install elevators and little chairs that grind and moan themselves slowly up the stairs - it's called knees. Or lack thereof. We get too little lubrication in our joints (and some other locations, but let's not get into that right here) and bones too thin and the ever increasing CRUNCHCRUNCHCRUNCHCRUNCH sound of bone grating on bone and whittling them both away to nothingness.

There are stairs here. Which are necessary to tackle and overcome anytime I want or need clothes, privacy and/or sleep.

So if the Great Bisbee Stair Climb (an annual event about 26 miles from my home) is the equivalent of a 5k ("but feels like a 10k!"), going up and down these stairs for a) toys forgotten, b) clean laundry to go up c) dirty laundry to come down, c) climbing up for numerous naps during the day.... well, let's put it at 20k, okay?

3. MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE
My son-in-law is on a business trip for a week, so I have both cars at my disposal - the enormous Ford Explorer, where the back seat covers approximately one full-size football stadium and has an average MPG of .007, or the Toyota Pruis, which is a very, very quiet skateboard with a shoebox cunningly disguised as the automobile body.

But to run either of these cars, even the keyless hybrid, you must carry this MASS of keys. Keys for both cars, for the house, for work, for the church, for nostalgia of some other place and time and some obviously for some other country and/or century. They leave my Capri's hanging down around my ankles from the sheer weight and my back muscles seriously strained from their sheer weight.

So that is, well, probably carrying 25 lbs. on that 20k....

Wow.

I'm amazed I haven't been hospitalized as anorexic yet.