Living in cold Canada in the winter and trying to do our walking has led us to look for good indoor places. We mall walk if there is one close. The new Walmarts have a great soft floor and many communities open arena's a couple of times a week for walking. Having ashma sure curtails any out door walking in this cold. I was at Walmart yesterday and decided that I will start going there once or twice a week to get started on my walking. I can use a cart to help keep my back upright and keep it from getting tired. Maybe the walking will strengthen it. I am trying to find things to get me up and out.
Your post made me laugh because I do exactly the same routine. I'm in New Jersey, not Canada, but this has been an exceptionally brutal January and February here. It's been way too cold for me to walk outdoors. My store of choice is the Target just about a mile from me. I like the cart for support as well. There is a mall about 5 miles away that has an exercise group who gather at a specific time each morning to stretch and walk the mall. I walk there often, but don't participate in this group because they start too early for me. However, I think it's a great way for people to get together, walk safely, and not have to pay for a gym membership. I agree with you Jazzy that it's important "to get up and out."
I had just made a comment on another thread (?) about walking. We have a couple of delightful parks to walk in, but certainly not now!!! Way too cold, & too much snow. There are a lot of mall walkers around here, but I hate the mall. I have a "silver sneakers" membership at the Y, but do I use it? Of course not!I have a treadmill in the basement, but I hate our dungeon-like basement.
There, that's all the excuses I can think of......:) :)
Mim, I also dislike basements (which we called "cellars" when I was growing up). I'm especially afraid of our basement in the winter. Last week I ran out of t.p. in the first floor bathroom and rather than going "down cellar" for the large stash from Costco that is stored in the cabinet there, I stole the partial roll from the second floor bathroom. But that was about to run out yesterday so I gathered up all my courage and went down to the basement. To my surprise, it was not too scary at all. But I brought up enough t.p. and paper towels, too, so that I won't have to go back down there anytime soon!
Myrtle, you're funny!! My basement (or cellar, which is what we called it to) is just junky & dismal. My husband has always been a pack rat, so I blame the junkiness on him! Of course, I have no stuff down there, you know (wink, wink). It's also very cold down there right now.
Yes, that TP is an important reason to down into neverland!!
Mim, Our basement is junky and dismissal, too but it really is full of my husband's junk - tools, lumber, old paint, nails in jars that are screwed into the ceiling beams. (What is that nails-in-jars-on-the-ceiling thing all about anyway?) My husband has been in LTC for nine months now, so I really have no excuse for not cleaning it out.
My friend and neighbor, who I have mentioned before, was widowed about ten years ago. About a month after her husband's death, she went down to her basement and cleaned it out. Then she painted the walls with some kind of gray waterproof paint and set up shelves for the few items that were still there. She was down there for about four-five months. I guess it was a kind of bereavement exercise. It turned out beautiful. Very clean and not scary at all, which is good because her washer and dryer are down there.
I thought I would continue to clean out the basement this winter (it's been going on for three years now), and I did some serious work a couple of months ago. But the cold and snow slapped me with serious hibernation inertia and now I'm hoping that spring will resurrect the cleaning instinct!
Myrtle, are we sure our husbands aren't one & the same? Your husband's stuff in the basement sounds EXACTLY like Dan's!!! He did used to do some very good woodworking down there, there are so many little bits & pieces of "things I might be able to use for something" - I look around & wonder where do I start.
I have been trying to clean things out (like Marche, for 3 or more years now), but I just don't seem to be able to make a dent. Oh well, just keep chipping away at it I guess.
I always have thought they were two different things. A cellar is below ground/house and used for storage with unfinished walls (often dirt), no plumbing and few lights. A basement is below the first floor, had finished/concrete floors and walls at least framed in if not finished, plumbing and lights. My in-laws had a cellar - had a separate entrance, dirt walls and floor (basically a hole under the house) where the furnace was. My sister had a house with a finished basement where the pool table and other 'toys' were.
I think it depends on where you live. The terms seem interchangeable in New England, although "cellar" is rather archaic.
In my experience, the only thing that has to be in the basement is the furnace. The only basement in my experience with any kind of framing was the 1950 house where I grew up -- my parents built a knotty-pine room in it. The next house I lived in (built in 1800) had a basement with fieldstone walls, a dirt floor, a single light bulb, and the furnace and oil tank. (Scary!) My house now (built in 1954) has a concrete floor, concrete block walls, electricity and plumbing, but no framing. My sister lives in a new "luxury" condo that has a concrete basement with the furnace, water heater, and central vac system. But it has no framing.
I think the view of what basements should be differs according to region. It is too cold here to putter around in the garage or toolshed in the winter, so a basement is the only place husbands can put their tools, workbenches, old paint, extra lumber, empty fire extinguishers, and nails in jars screwed to the boards on the basement ceiling.
I never thought about what an actual "cellar" might look like - Charlotte, you might be on to something. My grandparents had what I would call a cellar, but it did have a concrete floor (don't know when that was done, though). Their place was built around an enormous boulder that apparently was too big to move at the time, so there in the cellar was what we called "Plymouth rock"! Always found it a little creepy down there. They also had a fruit cellar, a storm cellar. I think that now basement would be a more appropriate word (or in our case, the junk hole!).
Just as those of us in cold climates now need a place for our heating equipment, in the old days people needed a place to store their coal, which was brought into the cellar via a coal chute and then shoveled into the furnace, as needed. People also had root cellars to store their produce after harvesting it. My grandmother stored the food she had canned in her cellar. Since I have never lived in the Midwest, I only know about storm cellars from movies like the Wizard of Oz.