Must. Get. Out. To. Walk. Today.

Well, this was my mantra that I muttered for the third day in a row as I lay curled up in bed while listening to the early morning news, but … “greasy and slick roads” and “snow that just sneaked in” were the descriptions I heard from the traffic reporter and meteorologist, respectively. I willed myself to jump out of my warm cocoon and hit the ground running anyway, thinking I should at least try to put in a few miles on the exercise bike before trudging out to deal with the snow.

Mother Nature continues to be fickle while she ponders over what type of weather will be the “flavor of the day” … for a few days it was like a polar vortex, then she turned on the snow machine again. I wondered if she could not find the button to turn off that pesky snow?  I had an electric lawnmower like that one time.   Once you turned it on, and the motor started humming, if you shut off the mower, it was done for the day.  Finally, a neighbor suggested I tie the handle start button down so the mower would not shut itself off.  It looked funny, but did the trick and I could mow the front and back yards without shutting the mower off.  So, I had a pantyhose leg tied taut to keep the start bar button jammed down and turned on, plus another pantyhose leg to tie the grass catcher onto the mower, since it was missing a critical piece in that apparatus.  I must admit, it was a pain in the you know where, so, I finally put that Toro mower out to pasture after 25 years of service.

On a happier note, however, the temps will soar to the mid-50s on Friday, so hopefully a walk will happen for sure. In the meantime, we are still needing the muffler and mittens here in our state we fondly refer to as “The Mitten” – we Michiganders need to be flexible indeed.

After hearing those miserable traffic and weather reports, I figured that a walk was not in the cards, so I hightailed it down to the basement and did five miles on the bike. The scenery is not as nice but after hearing and reading last week about the correlation between lack of exercise and brain shrinkage later in life, I figured I’d better protect what gray matter I have left and get the ticker thumping and legs moving.

After hopping off the bike, I shot upstairs to make some breakfast and get cooled off before I went out to shovel … that ordeal is getting old as well, and I’m sorry I joked about the dust collecting on the shovel. Perhaps I am the cause of this incessant piddling snow we are getting?

Later, outside chores done, as I stepped back into the house, the cold air soon fogged up my glasses, and, while waiting for them to clear, I mindlessly unzipped my jacket to prepare to shimmy out of it as I’ve been doing for the past week or so since the zipper teeth suddenly got mangled up. The zipper unzipped like normal and I took it off, and it didn’t dawn on me ‘til I saw the coat hanging on the hall tree that the zipper was functioning 100% again (evidence of brain shrinkage already I guess).  So, suspicious of my good fortune, I zipped it up and down a couple of times and the teeth meshed together perfectly and it was 100% okay.

Hmmmm.

Now, to whom do I thank for the magical repair job?   The tooth fairy or the zipper fairy?

I wish my own teeth had moved into place that fast back in the day when I wore braces. It took forever, to get though a regimen of full “metal mouth”, two headgear and a slew of rubber bands to get those teeth aligned perfectly.

[Image by photographer P. Alexandru at Unsplash]