I tell people I need to have a bedroom and full bath on the first floor in the house I buy. Throw the guests upstairs. I don’t mind an upstairs. I don’t mind an upstairs at like one p.m. when my legs tend to wake up if they decide not to work for the day. I don’t mind an upstairs for exercise, or when I want to pretend I’m climbing Mt. Everest. I can stare up at the top and think about the altitude difference, I can think about the effort of pulling my weight up, all 140 pounds of me, plus you know, a “pack” of supplies aka clothes for the closet, clean sheets for the bed, whatever. My dog and I look up and usually I take the first step and he scoots up like, “Come on sherpa, you can do it.” Presently I’m staying in a room upstairs, so the mornings have that same kind of feeling. I stare at the foot of the stairs. I think long and hard about if I can do it standing with the handrail, or if it’d be smarter to sit my butt down and bump along like we did as kids on the stairs–maybe add an element of fun and lay back and slide down the stairs as if it were a sledding hill and not just the obstacle to getting to the coffee pot. It’s a calculation of keeping my record of not falling. How reliable are these legs? How reliable are they to not buckle in the process and make me a permanent cripple? Gotta hold on to my record of no falling. I know the minute I fall I’m in deep trouble. No one likes letting people who fall live by themselves. Graceful sitting still is permitted. So, I sit my butt down and slowly work my way down Mt. Everest this morning.
Mt. Everest
