Stewart is actually ‘freaked’ by climbing stairs and getting into cars. He has been this way since he was a puppy. At his size, one wouldn’t think that this would be an issue, but it is in Stewart’s head.
It seems to be an American thing that at a certain age, you take a look at your home and think, damn, I have to get out of here, there are stairs.
MK was talking to our daughter-in-law and she made an observation. She reminded us that in Europe, the stair thing isn’t a prevalent thought. People there expect to continue living and not by always modifying their surroundings to fit their ‘age.’
A case in point is the older people you sometimes see tooling around in Europe on old bikes. It is always surprising.
Every so often, one of our sons says to me, “Dad, isn’t it time you sell this house and move into a ranch?”
I brought up the stairs because in my attempts to do things in the house, in our major work of Swedish ‘death cleaning,’ I find myself always running up and down the steps of our bi-level. There aren’t as many as you would have in a standard house, usually eight or nine, up or down, but they add up. Being the somewhat compulsive person, when I get something into my head that I want to do ‘now’ because I will forget it if I don’t, I find myself running up and down the steps.
Don’t get the idea that I am actually running, although sometimes I actually do, but I end up going up and down many times and I like to think that although I no longer do ‘StairMaster,’ that I get my steps in at home. I am thankful that my knees are as good as they are although not necessarily perfect.
So maybe, this stair business at my age is the right thing after all. Maybe this is good for my knees and joints and maybe this form of ‘real exercise’ is a good thing.
So be damned, prevalent American thought that steps for my age are not the best.
