Kinsler: Our neighbors have given up trying to figure us out

We’ve just come home from yet another one of our magical medical getaways. These are getting routine, a routine that consists of an extended northward spell in the noble Honda Accord to one of the Cleveland Clinic’s regional outposts, plus an overnight stay at whatever hotel/motel/tourist cabin/frontier village that Natalie was able to find at Trip Advisor.

Natalie excels at this sort of thing. Every part of the voyage has been professionally planned: at 8 minutes thirteen seconds after touchdown in the Veruvian Crater Col Neil Armstrong will place the contingency samples into container C-5 and then we are allowed 20 seconds for personal needs at the Ashland Rest Stop.

So what she found was a “bed and breakfast” facility located in an 1843 Ohio Victorian mansion. We were invited to spend the night in the Silas G Hunnicut Bedroom, furnished just as it was on that fateful night.

I don’t know what else Silas G. had the use of, but across the hall was a secret door to our private bathroom. I liked the bath/shower facility therein, for the shower-curtain loop was made of chrome-plated copper and was part of the plumbing. The thing had five valves in total, which efficiently frightened off my beloved. “It looks like a puzzle I can do without this morning.”

The remainder of the furnishings lacked any obvious amusement. The ancient steel bed was comfortable enough once the occupants became accustomed to the shrieks of irredeemable woe from either the souls of the damned or the improperly lubricated spring-steel risers installed by the bed’s manufacturer. And the desk bears special mention.

George Washington had to push a great deal of paper to run the colonial army, so he had a desk and a chair which would disassemble and fit in a saddle bag. At least that was my theory as I tried to make my little laptop computer fit on a surface clearly made to accommodate scraps of parchment.

The chair was worse because it had three legs. Natalie was asleep in the bed when I apparently made a single false move that deposited my carcass on the floor and entangled the chair back in the wires of the bed frame. At this, the bed responded with a memorable clong that my beloved immediately classified as sufficient to interrupt any thoughts and dreams of our fellow bed-and-breakfasters.

“Everything’s an adventure with you,” she glowered.

Mark Kinsler, [email protected], writes silly stuff and tries to keep Natalie happy in our little house in Lancaster. We’d like to think that our two supervisory alley cats missed us.

This article originally appeared on Lancaster Eagle-Gazette: Kinsler: Our neighbors have given up trying to figure us out