Out and about

The S.O. and I went ambling up to Houghton-Hancock this morning. Well, maybe ambling isn't quite the right word. Ambling implies a pleasant walk or drive engaged in solely for the pleasure of wandering around for no particular reason. Stumbling out of bed at zero dark thirty, discovering that multiple inches of the promised lake effect snow did actually fall overnight, and then driving 45 miles to the V.A. clinic for a blood draw isn't actually much of an amble. It's more like an endurance test.

And why were we stumbling out the door before daylight? It's annual physical time for the S.O. Today was the lab work; next week is the actual turn your head and cough with the doctor. I'm thinking that maybe he should start nudging the schedule a little, trying to get it so it falls a little later in the calendar, like maybe in June. Or July. Having to be at the doctor's office shortly after 8 a.m. might not seem quite as horrendous when the sun's already up and the highway isn't covered with blowing snow.

Of course, I didn't have to go with him. He doesn't need moral support just to piss in a cup and have a few tubes of blood sucked out of an arm. I could have stayed home, curled up blissfully in a warm bed, and let the S.O. brave the winter roads alone. However. . . and this a big however . . . once he was done at the clinic, he would go somewhere for breakfast. It had been quite a few months since I'd had breakfast at the Suomi Restaurant in Houghton. Nisu french toast. Or perhaps one of their famous blueberry pancakes. Or some pannukakku. Multiple possibilities, all of which are worth getting up early any time of the year.

There was a time when we were regulars at the Suomi. Back when I was teaching and the Younger Daughter was a student at Tech, we would meet at the Suomi fairly often to do lunch or breakfast. The S.O. and I went there a lot, too. We'd go to Houghton to shop, and we'd eat at the Suomi. We'd be up there a couple times a month. Now it's more like a couple times a year, at least for me. The S.O. gets up there more often because he gets drafted to drive other people occasionally, like the crazy neighbor who can't afford license plates for his own car. The neighbor even has the papers to prove he's crazy, but that's a subject for another time.