Slight Detour: Saturday Slight

Pretty foggy out there this morning, and as daylight comes, the fog is even more noticeable.

I'm guessing that when it lifts, we'll have a nice day ahead.

Bill is heading into Spokane to watch a Lady ZAGS game. The dogs and I will hang out at home, and I may spend some time with the horses.

It's nice to have a break in the weather clean-up that has dominated this past week.

Barbara and Laurie Tibbs, Dolly Crum, Marianne Love. Doug Crum

Five retired educators met for lunch in Bonners Ferry yesterday.

Two drove over from Libby, while three sisters among the educators drove from Sandpoint.

Common denominator: horses.

Dolly and Doug Crum spent their teaching careers in Libby, both specializing in physical education and coaching. Doug coached wrestling.

If I recall correctly, Dolly even served as athletic director at Libby High School. Doug was a wrestling coach.

She also arranged for me to visit her high school and the Libby library when I was still doing author events for my books.

Dolly has been a horse lover her entire life, so you can imagine that she and Barbara and Laurie have plenty in common.

It was a fun visit, especially for me because I had not had seen the Crums for a number of years.

We met at Kootenai River Brewing Co., where the food was great as usual.

Twas definitely a welcome January getaway for all involved.

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Yesterday, we did talk about horses and ZAGS and Internet scams AND getting older. A common problem united us on the "getting older" topic.

In fact, in both cars, as they were headed to Bonners Ferry, the occupants lamented the problem of getting down to perform a task and then figuring out how the heck to get up again.

It seems to be a universal dilemma after we reach a certain age.

At least, we're still figuring out rising-up solutions on our own and not yet to the point of being props for the TV ad, "I've fallen and I can't get up."

I'm sure our time will come.

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Considering the above topic, I zeroed in on the following paragraphs in the New York Times newsletter earlier today.

The older we get, the more comfortable and calcified we get in our preferences and quirks.

We like things the way we like them — the thermostat at 68 and not a degree warmer, the aisle seat, steak medium-rare but closer to medium, don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee.

This self-knowledge is comforting, and central to forming an identity, but it’s also limiting.

We are used to controlling our environments, to minimizing variables so that we can avoid discomfort.

“No hothouse-flowering,” I’ll silently admonish myself when I notice I’m making my life smaller because of some arcane preference, behaving like an exotic plant that needs too much coddling.

Usually it has something to do with my physical comfort — if my levels of hunger, body temperature, caffeination and restedness are not calibrated, I might be grumpy, I might decline a social invitation.

Our grip on our preferences can be so tight that our lives constrict around it.

Wonder if any of these trends look familiar to anyone out there. I'll raise my hand to "aisle seats" and to the somewhat related tendency of operating the thermostat.

In our house, it's a dueling event

I turn it up. Bill turns it down.

In both cases, there are never witnesses to the respective acts.

It's a unspoken finger conversation we have every day, and I have a feeling that conversation may never end until we do.

So, just curious about the absolutes that rule your lives.