Again – I Have Nothing

This week’s over-fifty ramblings are more about frustration than anything else. I’m sure you’ve been there at some point this week. 

It’s all about steps. I really am quite fond of steps. Or to clarify that, stairs. Whenever I have had a chance to take an elevator, or steps, the latter are usually what I opt for when I’m not loaded down with stuff. Why? Because I’m crazy? Or because I know it’s good for me? I guess a little bit of both.

 I watched my parents live a very healthy life into their nineties without any mobility problems, so I’ve always attributed that to the fact that they always lived where they had to go up and down steps.

Here in South Beach we live in an attractive six story Mediterranean atrium style building incorporating a group of duplex and triplex penthouse townhouse units accessible by elevator. Having three floors in our unit I have stairs every day and I don’t think anything of running up and down during the day. No problem. But when leaving the house, I always take the elevator to the lobby. Cooler and easier in this tropical climate. 

Well, here I go fast forwarding again. Our new management company was not happy with our current elevator service  so they canceled the contract without reading the ‘no cancel’ clause. The result? When the elevator broke down shortly thereafter there was no one to fix it and now the attorneys are fighting over who can do it. In the meantime, we have been without elevator service for almost six weeks now and I have lost my idiot love of stairs. 

These days I can be found at least six round trip times a day climbing three fights of dastardly cement stairs stripped in yellow in the hot stairwell just carrying on with my life. I’m not building cardio vascular strength, but instead building dread every time my intercom rings summoning me to the lobby to fetch something I have to drag up three floors.  

My contribution to the world economy has definitely stopped and if I ever see the woman who canceled our contract without reading it I just might give her a swift kick in the derrière, or sentence her to walk up and down our hot stairwell steps in perpetuity. 

©Sandra Hart 2016 All rights reserved.