Sounds of Saturday morning in Well now
- May 13, 2017, 9:50 a.m.
- |
- Public
It is a surprisingly unquiet morning here in the House of Eternal Entropy.
I sit at the keyboard typing away as the tablet plays this morning’s stream of gathered news and blog clips.
- Why do I feel the compulsion to know what is going on when I know it will just upset me?
The toilet is running two rooms away.
- I’ll get up and stop it after I finish this.
The tenant’s five year old is being vocally adamant in her refusal to do who knows what thing now on the other side of the thin wall.
- I dismiss the wall-shredding screeches as the sound of my mortgage being funded.
The skitter-kitties are in full-on rally mode, chasing each other madly about the house, taking the scramble over and under anything that has the temerity to exist in their path way.
- I would worry about the not inconsiderable pounding of powerpaws on the wooden drumhead that is the single layered floor of my raised house, thinking how annoying the erratic feline fury explosion must sound to my tenant. I would worry, but I don’t have to. She forgives the intrusion of noise involved in living beside my girls just as I forgive the noise that comes of living next to hers.
The concert from the neighbor across the street has just begun.
- He is the drummer in his very own garage band. Their genre, I believe, would be classified as heavy metal or perhaps headbanging. I don’t know if it’s my personal prejudice (possession of musical taste) or their lack of talent, but three decades of practice (yes they’ve been together, I’m told, since high school) has not brought them any closer to producing harmony. They have, however, perfected the art of stripping paint off houses acoustically. (I wonder if I can send them the bill for repainting? Probably not.)
Oh well.
It’s Saturday.
After yesterday and last night’s torrential rain, it’s finally clearing up and the day promises to be relatively cool and fair. If I weren’t still sore from last Saturday’s fall (maybe I actually did break a rib), I’d go uptown to Audubon Park and trikke for a while. Maybe I’ll go out for brunch on the balcony of a restaurant I know on St. Charles Avenue. It’s the perfect weather for that today and, with summer coming hard upon, it won’t be for long.
Contented smile.
I’m off to jiggle the toilet handle and get dressed.
Last updated May 13, 2017
Marg ⋅ May 14, 2017
What's 'trikke'? Sounds like fun :)
Cobalt Marg ⋅ May 14, 2017
A trikke is a bizarre mode of exercise.
It's kind of like a push-scooter except it has two foot platforms set in a vee-configuration instead of just one. Also, instead of propelling the thing by keeping one foot on the platform and pushing the ground with other, you keep both feet stationary on the platforms and lean side to side, leaning and pushing the footboards with your legs while using your arms to twist the handlebars left and right to make the vehicle arc forward, following your center of gravity.
If it sounds weird and somewhat awkward,
that's because it is. (See trikke.com if my description makes no sense.)
You ride a trikke standing up,
which is why I bought one after I broke my back and had trouble bending forward.
Biking was just too uncomfortable.
Unlike biking, there is very little glide to trikking.
Since there is no drive chain and gears to multiply your muscle power,
you must actively propel the thing nearly every second you ride it.
Within a few yards of your last pull, your trikke stops moving,
so it's really a much more constant full body work-out than biking is.
As for fun, well, I've never really considered exercise fun,
more of a thing that must be done to keep the body from atrophying.
(Yep, I know. I'm such a Pollyanna.)
I make quite an odd sight when I trikke,
a chubby middle aged lady wearing non-exercise clothing,
her hair in an updo fastened in the back with a huge black chiffon bow,
an expression of grim determination plastered on her face,
wiggling a strange vehicle down the road.
People stare and often shout out,
"That looks like fun. What is that thing?"
I invariably answer,
"The latest innovation in chubby woman torture devices!"
I mostly mean it.
Marg Cobalt ⋅ May 14, 2017
Aw I was getting all excited there when I watched the video in the link and thinking "OMG I may have actually found a form of (damned) exercise I can actually DO with this bloody illness ('scuse my French)" and then as I watched further and then clicked back to your description I realised nope - not gonna happen. It was the turning of what looked like some form of ignition at the very beginning which fooled me I think! I have the same attitude to exercise as you do and have a perfectly good bike rusting away in the shed to my shame so maybe I'll just have to use Shank's Pony every now and then and be done with it :)
Thank you for your hilarious explanation though - you always make me laugh!
Cobalt Marg ⋅ May 14, 2017
Ignition? Hmmm.
The original Trikkes are the sort of which I have one,
for extended torture through physical exercise..
There are also some with electric motors,
which makes them sort of cheap Segways,
definitely not exercise devices.
There are times when I'm huffing and puffing away that I think,
"Slap a damn engine on this puppy. I'm so done."
Marg Cobalt ⋅ May 14, 2017
:) I know the feeling!