skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Cliff rides the grandson's dirt bike (that has no seat)I heard the grandson's noisy dirt bike and looked out the door to see what he was doing. It was Cliff riding it! Men are eternal boys.
"That thing's got some go-power," Cliff said as he got off, grinning.
"Do you think he'll kill himself on it?"
"Oh, no doubt."
Gee, thanks for the reassuring words, Cliff.
Arick has a seat ordered for it, and then the two "boys" will be able to ride in earnest. I guess it's pretty uncomfortable, sitting right on the bike like that... or standing.
I love to eat out; Cliff wouldn't care if he ever ate anyplace but home.
Where we live, the nearest place to dine away from home is eight miles away... unless you count the Village Inn, which is more of a bar that happens to serve Mexican food. They're a little pricey to suit me, and they don't have a huge menu. So you'd think it would be easy to resist temptation, eat at home, and stay healthy.
Cliff's heart surgery and recovery has been a big incentive in keeping us out of salty, fatty restaurants, and we try to eat out no more than once a week. Sometimes, however, we do go overboard.
Here's what happens: Cliff works second shift, leaving for work at 2:30 P.M. So we do our grocery-shopping or farm-supply shopping, or make our monthly-or-so trip to Sam's Club, on weekday mornings after our walk. That has us departing home around 10 A.M.
No matter in which direction we go, we find ourselves right in front of someplace to eat at noon. Sam's Club isn't so far from Olive Garden; and Smokehouse Barbecue and Fazoli's are right across the road. Price Chopper grocery is in a suburb of Kansas City that has just about every chain restaurant you've ever heard of (except for anyplace featuring steak). Ten miles to the south of home, there's Pizza Hut (my biggest weakness) and Subway. Eight miles east, there's our favorite Mexican eatery and another Pizza Hut; and now, a brand new Chinese buffet that totally rocks, and blows the dirty little Chinese place that's been in that town for years out of the water.
Picture me as Eve and Cliff as Adam (only with clothes, not fig leaves). This Eden we inhabit has forbidden fruit everywhere.
But I do want my husband healthy.
Cliff, who weighs every morning, recently crept up to 210 pounds over a five-day period when we ate out three times. Not good. He tries to stay at 205, and with my help, he does.
So we've been eating at home. It helps if we skip our walk on the day we shop, because that gets us out early and puts us in the danger zones before all those places open for business.
Of course, meanwhile I'm plotting where we'll eat out, the minute he's back to 205. Yesterday he was 206.
I think we'd better stay out of the buffets, don't you?
Eve, I feel your pain.
Cliff happened to see this article in todays Kansas City Star about a cousin of mine whose funeral we attended a couple of weeks ago. Click HERE for the article.
I blogged about Cecil in this entry.
I asked Cliff this morning what was on his agenda.
"Nothing," he said. "We'd go for a bike ride, but we went for one yesterday."
"So is there a law against riding two days in a row?"
"I guess not. Where do you want to go?"
"Oh, someplace with some sort of little museum or place of interest, so we'd have a destination in mind. Maybe we could go to Sedalia and visit your cousin Kenneth."
Cliff didn't sound real thrilled with the prospect, but it was as good as anything he could come up with. He went out to get the motorcycle ready and I googled up some places of interest around Sedalia.
I found websites for the Bothwell mansion and a historic depot-turned-museum.
When we're riding the motorcycle, we avoid freeways like the plague. We take the lettered county roads as much as possible, which sometimes gets us lost. But on a motorcycle, getting lost is an adventure. Twice today our blacktop county roads turned to gravel and we had to backtrack; touring bikes don't do well on gravel.
We took our usual picnic lunch of sardines and crackers, plus a cantaloupe for dessert. Cliff used his pocketknife to cut it; we spooned the seeds out, and we each ate half.
I'll do other entries about the interesting places we visited at Sedalia. Otherwise this entry could get far too long.
By the way, we never did find out where Kenneth lives, and got lost hunting for him. It was great fun!
Yes indeedy, I've been keeping my Dyson vacuum busy. Honestly, vacuuming is my new hobby; it's so much fun to empty that thing and watch it fill up again. I'm serious! As you can see above, I still take time out for a horseback ride in the bottoms from time to time.
Anyhow, there haven't been many journal entries, because I knew people wouldn't find it very interesting to see pictures of my Dyson, or read about how much it sucks.
I had a conversation with the grandson last night; he stretched out on the couch with his head on a pillow, and I said, "If you go to sleep there, do you want me to wake you up?" (He's been known to go to sleep on the couch at 5 P.M. and sleep there until morning.)
"No! I'm not going to go to sleep on the couch today! I don't know why I'm so sleepy all the time; I think something's wrong with me."
"Well, let's see," I said. "It's 7:15 now. You would have had to go to bed fifteen minutes ago in order to get eight hours of sleep tonight, because you have to get up at three o'clock in the morning to be at work by four."
"Really?" He sat bolt upright and looked at the clock.
"Yep. Two and two makes four." (I got that from Barney Fife on an old Andy Griffith Show I watched a couple days ago). "And then there's the fact that you didn't go to bed at all, night before last; that sort of thing catches up with you eventually."
He confessed that he was in pursuit of female companionship that night. "That could have added to his weariness," I thought to myself. (Imagine me rolling my eyes here.)
"Dang, I was going to go to the doctor to see why I've been so tired," he said.
I should have told him to give me fifty bucks for an office call. I saved him the cost of whatever prescription he'd have had to purchase, too.
This is the first decent rain we've had in over two months; last time Cliff checked, it was up to an inch... and still coming down!
I've loved Johnny Cash forever. There were some years, back in the days of the old Columbia Record Club, when the only records I ordered were Johnny Cash. They're all still upstairs in my junk room, and I have CD's of some of them now.
"Walk The Line" is one of my favorite movies. I visit Johnnycash.com often. Which is where I found out there's a DVD called "The Best Of The Johnny Cash Show".
I ordered it, and received it today. It's the best $40 I've spent in a long time.
Watching it, I'm twenty-five years old again and it's Saturday night; Country music singers don't have to be pretty (or handsome); I have a baby daughter and a toddler son. I own a Gibson Dove guitar that I later sold for a pittance, not knowing how much it was worth. (But I have another one now, and it won't go anywhere until after I die.)
On this DVD, I've seen: Bob Dylan; Kris Kristofferson (back when I had a crush on him and had his picture on my dresser... poor Cliff); Louis Armstrong; Creedence Clearwater Revival; Waylon Jennings (before he was "an outlaw"); James Tayler; Pete Seeger; Neil Young; Mother Maybelle Carter; Joni Mitchell; Eric Clapton, back when he was Derek and the Dominoes; Bill Monroe; Jerry Lee Lewis; Tony Joe White; Stevie Wonder; Conway Twitty... and so many others!
Cliff's going to love this one. I think Kevin, my son-in-law, will enjoy a few of these songs too.
I'm still smiling.
If you remember the old "Johnny Cash Show" on television, you'll love this. Wow.
