I have an acquaintance I chat with when I go past his house during my walks in the morning. His name is Curt and he is the fellow who gave me a tomato plant recently and told me how to take care of it.

Curt has a son, Curt, Jr., who is temporarily staying with him, along with his girlfriend. Monica. I noticed Curt re-doing the paint job on his mother's car, an absolutely beautiful effort -- he is a professional and the car looked like it just came off the assembly line. So I started chatting with him, too.

Curt, Jr. has taken his stuff out of storage and is selling it. He sold me a treadmill for the princely sum of $15. Actually he only asked for $10 but he was so nice, I gave him the extra $5. With me balancing one end, he loaded it on the back of his dad’s pick-up truck and hauled it up to my place and Ed and he off-loaded it and stuck it in our garage.

Curt Jr. and I were talking and he opined relative to some subject, “Well, I’m still young,” and I said, “Yes you are,” and grinned. He said “Are you flirting with me?” “Busted,” I said.

He’s sort of a Bruce Willis type, so I know you all forgive me.

So I used the treadmill briefly today during a thunder storm but quit when I began to feel sick. It was a queasy feeling along with upper right quadrant back pain of the kind I used to feel when I had a bad gall bladder. I had that out years ago, but I think any digestive upset would produce similar symptoms. I don’t think it was caused by the exertion – I was getting sick before I started and the effort just made things worse.

For relief, I used a back massager that has knobs that pulsate up and down. It is a truly imperfect device but it helped some. (It caused $25 on sale in a New York discount store. I miss a place where you can get to everything by walking.)

I am feeling better now and Ed has gone off to Subway to get us a couple of Italian sandwiches because I said I was feeling too lousy to cook anything. What a guy.

xx, Teal