The Great Outdoors -- Not!

I am the most inside person you will ever meet.  I love the concept of the great outdoors.  I love photos and videos of nature scenes.  But for me to love being outside, the conditions have to be perfect:
 

• No bugs
• Temps around 60
• Gentle breeze
• No direct sun – sunny, but not sunning on me
• No loud and obnoxious people
• No loud and obnoxious vehicles with radios blaring so loud my bones vibrate.

 
Old fogey, that’s what I am. I just happen to love being inside. Air or heat set at 68.  That’s probably why I love rainy days and snowstorms. 
 
That being said – I am dealing with an inflammatory situation in my body these days.  A very painful one.  Doctor is running tests.  The front runner of the doc’s choices is….drum roll…Lyme’s Disease.  Of all people, don’t you think I’m the least likely to get bit by a tick?  I am outside no more than 15 minutes the entire day – max!  
 
Now, I do sleep with 7 dogs, so maybe one of the pups brought the interloper into our bed. Just seems weird that I, of all people, would get Lyme’s.  Still waiting for the test results.  I’m actually hoping he’s correct since I presume antibiotics would reduce the inflammation.  And I don’t like the other choices.  
 
Today, however, I had to venture outside to attempt to whack some weeds in the easement to keep the city from citing me.  My current whacker of weeds is broken so I purchased this dandy contraption from China. I like the concept – just attach two zip ties and out you go.  Concept failed.  My new contraption only irritated the weeds and nipped a few pieces of clover.
 
But during that dreadful and sweaty time in the great outdoors – and yes, most people would say it was a perfect day – sun shining and about 80 -- a bug flew into my eye. And of course, my eye closed automatically trapping the little rascal. I think he was dead by the time I got all the pieces of him pried from my red and teary eye.  I can only be grateful that it wasn’t a bee.  Ouch – even the thought of getting stung in the eye would make me consider wearing a beekeeper’s hat on my outings back and forth to my car.
 
And now, of course, there is a rattle in my left ear.  Most likely it is water from my shower and not another bug burrowing into yet an alternate facial orifice, aiming its way to my brain.  You see why I stay inside.

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​​Before I retreated to my air-conditioned house, I yanked some of the tall weeds like a mad woman and then stomped the shorter ones into oblivion, reenacting the scene from I Love Lucy where Lucy and Ethel were stomping grapes.
 
I tried a perfunctory sweep of all the tree stuff the wind blew on my sidewalk, to almost no avail. If one looks both ways on my block, mine is the only sidewalk covered with brownish tree litter – tree dust of sorts. It was not amenable to being swept….or perhaps I was not amenable to sweeping it after my above recounted adventures.  My only thought was, if the wind can blow all of that tree dust all over my sidewalk, why can’t it just blow it away?!  Well, I had two thoughts.  The second being, what happened to everyone else’s tree dust?
 
Before I close and put more drops in my offended left eye, I might share with you that my pups are insiders as well.  They too, like the concept of going outside.  So they yap and twirl and jump at the mere mention of “outside” – and dash out the door only to return in a matter of moments, often to run to their peepad and do their business.  They truly are housebroken – they love to run in from outside and go potty in the house.
 
Lastly, just for the record….my most well behaved pet is my chicken, Glozel.  Just saying.  I know it doesn’t fit with the topic, but during my quick ventures in and out, she comes when I call her and seems to mind better than my pack of renegades. A+ for Glozel.
 
Leaving you now – off to order parts for my aging whacker of weeds.  Yet another mechanical thing for this aging bookworm to fix.  My, oh my, how my life journey is turning out.  I could say that things didn’t go according to plan, but that would imply that I had a plan.  And if I had a plan, things might, or might not, have been different.  No complaints – life is a great adventure and it’s just a matter of playing the cards we are dealt (or deal ourselves) joyfully and with as much grace (ha-ha, says this clumsy one) as possible

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