What I Like About Blogging

One of the best things that I like about blogging is that my husband’s life is now an open book. I somehow find that fulfilling and rewarding. My husband is completing a weeklong bike ride across Iowa, called RAGBRAI. Before he left, he told our youngest daughter that in his ideal RAGBRAI, I would drive an RV from town to town so he could sleep in it at night. I of course, would have my laptop and all my “leisure time” for writing.

I thought about this for about a minute and a half, or maybe like 3 seconds. First of all, my idea of an RV and his idea of an RV are at opposite ends of the spectrum. I’m thinking plush, leather seats, bump out sides, luxurious and roomy – very very roomy. He’s thinking room for a bike and a mattress with minimum rust.

I have a low tolerance for noise. Loudly ticking clocks keep me awake at night and I remove them. I don’t open windows, not only because the pollen etc from the outside makes me sick, but because the frogs and insect noise outside keeps me awake. In short, I don’t have a hearing problem.

My husband, on the other hand, has increasingly decreased hearing in addition to his selective hearing. To say that he sleeps like a rock would be an understatement. One evening, our fireplace was going but the flu wasn’t properly open. So, the fire alarm system in our house was activated. There’s an extremely loud alarm on every one of our three floors – including one right outside of the bedroom. Joy boy slept through the entire 15 minute ordeal while our youngest daughter and I worked on ventilation and got the alarm to shut off.

That screeching ear blasting alarm pales in comparison to the noise my husband makes while snoring. His snoring gets worse with activity – like riding a bike 100 miles a day. Therefore, the thought of spending several nights in a tin can with a sweaty snoring Sasquatch with sinus problems gave me night mares for a few days. I enjoy sleep deprivation even less than I enjoy anything that makes me get sweaty – like bike riding.

I’m off the hook for this year, of course. I recently had knee replacement surgery. Recently enough that driving anything across Iowa is completely out of the question at the moment. This might be why they say “timing is everything”.

But each day with the new tin lizzie knee is a little better. I am able to get up and down stairs relatively well and yesterday I ventured out in our back yard. This is quite a big deal for me. We have a walk out basement and our back yard slopes down. It’s just enough of a slope that it has always been tricky for me to walk down it. The alternate route is the basement steps, but those are wooden, go straight down, and are narrow and a bit scary.

But I managed an expedition into the back yard yesterday. We have a bird feeder back there which was sadly in need of filling. I packed some bird seed in a plastic container, slung it into a light weight back pack and blazed a trail to the back yard.

We used to have dogs that blazed the trail. They had certain set paths. They beat a path from the garage door to their favorite sleeping spots, then around the perimeter of the fence. We couldn’t get grass to grow on their doggy path, so I put in stepping stones.

We had basset hounds and basset hounds are funny creatures of habit. Normally, once they develop a habit, they will not change their habit for anything. Therefore, I thought putting in the stepping stones was a clever idea and would reduce muddy dog feet.

For some reason, our dogs did not like the stepping stones and actually moved their dog path. There must be something permanent about certain dog trails. Although we are currently ‘petless’ and have been so for a year and a half, we are still trying to get grass to grow on the doggy trail that now runs right along side of the stepping stones. Go figure.

In addition to filling my bird feeder, my expedition led me to the discovery of two nearly ripe tomatoes in my garden. Nature’s wonders never cease. Pat will return shortly and I am sure that I will have plenty of “Pat stories” to add to future blogs, including this week’s adventures on RAGBRAI – spent in a tent and not in an RV.