(You will find the word “afghans” below; the computer wanted me to capitalize it, as in the plural of a person from Afghanistan. That would have been bad, although I have to grin envisioning it.)

Last week I told my grandson that I thought I had been approached by his cold virus. Having attained a certain age and an interactive relationship with viruses, I reported that I believed his cold virus had sensed dormant antibodies in me and had decided to make a quick departure after fielding a couple of sneezes.

Well, I was wrong. I would say the virus went home and got some gang members to come over and put me in my place. Yes, the sinus pain, the dripping nose, the sensation of a tight chest, not to mention the dullness of mind and flagging of muscles set up camp in me, AmeliaJake. It didn’t pay any attention to the “NOT IN MY BACKYARD” signs I had erected.

It was a slow week-end, one spent with kleenex twisted and stuck up my nose to allow me to walk around without leaving a trail. I suppose, though, discarded kleenex could be regarded as another version of a “Paper Trail.” When I was younger, we used to take a paper grocery bag and fold it over as a portable used tissue receptacle. (Most stores have gone to plastic and it just doesn’t seem to work as well.)

Yesterday, I awoke and welcomed the fact that I could take a nice deep breath and my coughing was no longer a hollow honk, but – as the medical community says – a productive churning of loose gravel. I felt better. I had to take my car for service and it was a long appointment, but I was happy, sitting there in a well-appointed waiting area, reading my Kindle.

I came home, stopped at a store, sat down to look through some papers and later found myself waking up tipped over on some afghans and thinking, “Wow, what happened to the clock?” HA! I felt not bad, but like a limp rag. I decided to make myself more comfortable on the afghan pile and turned on a documentary and later had to rewind it to the part where I had fallen asleep again.

This is all so boring for jet-setting people and pretty boring for me too. However, I’ll wager I’m not the only one who’s been on this trip.

When you collect stuff because you are interested in history, you will find, as the years go by, that the term “gradual” can have an insidious connotation. Your here and there interactions with items is cumulative. It adds up. It gets stashed in a box and then you discover you have boxes. How did this happen? I think it is something like life: you’d think, “Oh, Heavens, this is going to take forever and I am going to be soooo bored” or “Gee, is this colonoscopy ever going to be over?” Then, bam, years, decades even, have passed.

I actually remember the first day of kindergarten; somehow 65 years have passed. But then I don’t think I’d really like to do kindergarten again. I was so clueless; I remember when we went to a basketball game at the school where my dad was teaching, the teen-aged daughters of the principal kept asking if I needed to go the restroom. I couldn’t understand why . . . I wasn’t tired.

But I’m talking actually stuff right now. I’m talking ONE small box that I started digging through. I came across an old checkbook – not mine, one from Lakeside Hospital in Kendallville. (That will teach me to not get caught up in the bidding at an estate auction.)

It’s from 1916 and similar to the checkbooks of the recent past with the stub for noting what the check was written for. Apparently, however, some people – and I guess it was important when the person was the hospital treasurer – would past the cancelled check back onto the stub. It didn’t get lost.

Ah, I see that although most of the checks I found were from 1916, this one was from 1917. They were doing the same thing I do, paying the fuel and light bill. I do it online now, though, and I pay more than $8.47.

Notice the date: June 6, 1917. Who knew that 27 years later, the Allies would be landing on the Normandy beaches? Actually, the U.S. wasn’t even in W.W.I yet and no one was wondering how they were going to keep them down on the farm after they’d seen Paree.

I regained weight; I was not pleased. After some thought, I figured the best bet for me to at least make a stab at getting leaner and more fit would be to invest in a treadmill. I made the leap of faith – that I would actually use a treadmill – and ordered a really sturdy one online.

It was delivered, all 243 lbs of it and the box was bigger than I imagined it would be. Perhaps that is a result from order a LARGE beanbag and having it arrive in a small box. Of course, once I opened the box and started to unzip the cover that restrained the bag, I got an entirely new perspective on the situation.

There were instructions and they were in English, for one half of the booklet. What you were to do was stated out, at least some of the steps were. The diagrams were not those that zoomed in on certain connections and I decided it was time to turn to YouTube. That was a good idea, but it “t’weren’t good enough” – to quote a story about Bert and Maine and the Bangor Packet.

The YouTube instructions were adequate in themselves, but somewhere in the assembly, I realized the manufacturers might have thought, “Well, this thing doesn’t have to fly to the moon” and left one hole on an inner piece just the tiniest bit too small for the threaded bolt. So I took the darn thing apart and did what I should have done in the first place – I tried the bolt in just that one hole, without the pressure of any other pieces on it. That didn’t work. It didn’t work one hour later either, when the sweat was running down my face and causing my glasses to fall off.

However, after another 30 minutes, I had gnawed the bolt through the hole. I removed it, put the apparatus back together and tried to put the bolt in. It didn’t want to go. I wiggled the outer upright piece, while tying to hold the other parts steady. Somehow, I got that bolt in.

But that was only Step 3.

So I took a deep breath and plodded on, stopping only at the very last when I was supposed to insert six non-essential screws into the handholds. The screw holes were accessible through channels on the bottom side of the handlebar console. Screws fell on my face and I paused to wonder, after all this, if the treadmill would actually work.

I plugged it in and pushed the power button and, yes, the motor started to rotate the tread. I got on and adjusted the speed to .5 mph; I decided it would be better to go faster on another day.

Of course, I don’t want to set the speed too high, because the instructions did make it clear one should make certain the back end was at least three feet from a wall. I guess that means if I goof it up and tumble off the back, I won’t smash into a wall. I don’t know, though, I wonder if hitting a padded wall would not be preferable to thudding to the floor.

Gee, can you imagine me YouTubing my assembly process?

I am signed up with BookBub, a website that alerts you everyday to ebook bargains. Often enough, a bestseller with a hefty price tag will be offered for $1.99 and some books, of varying literary merit, are FREE. Frequently, new and capable authors will offer their books for free in order to build a readership. You can click through a questionnaire to indicate your preferences – so you won’t get any Zombie offers, for instance.

It has been a very useful service to me and many times I have opted for a FREE book for a quick read and an escape. In addition to bestsellers, books that are extremely well-written, but appeal to a quirky, limited audience are offered for low prices.

Today, my suggestions included a book of little-known information and piqued my interest. In the brief blurb about the book, how to milk a yak was listed. Okay, that probably wasn’t the hook to reel me in. Yak milking? I am at the present facing assembling a motorized, 234 lb. treadmill that arrived at my doorstep. It flashed across my mind that when I get this thing together, I do not want to visualize walking up a steep mountain trail to milk my yak.

And what would I do with knowing how to milk a yak? Turn to the person in line behind me at the grocery and remark that none of the tabloids I sneak a look at while waiting to reach the cashier mention the fact that such and such celebrity probably doesn’t know how to milk a yak?

Here is a bit of trivial information about me – a minor confession, if you will. I sometimes pick a long line that includes baskets filled to the brim so I can seek longer peeks at the tabloid articles. Why? I don’t know. I imagine it’s the low brow instinct in me to be drawn to the gossip people yak about.

LZP sent me the above picture for my birthday; he ordered it and then it was backlogged and then the place only shipped on Fridays and, well, it got here on 70 years + 9 days. And that’s fine. In fact, it was really a treat. Like Christmas when I was a kid- a special surprise. Der Bingle did not spill the beans – although I know it was hard for him.

LZP said it reminded him of Indiana and it is a very familiar scene to me – I can’t remember not knowing about weathered old barns. I grew up with a lot of them around; I grew up with one just to the east of us where corn or soybeans grow now. My mother told me that once when I was maybe two, they looked up to see me in my pink ruffled shorts running after my grandfather up the barn path as “fast as your little legs could carry you.” I don’t remember it, but I remember her remembering it.

Thank you, LZP. Thank you very much.