No Banana Peel Necessary

Yesterday was my birthday and though over the past couple of years I’ve had fun going places, this year I decided I’d like to have a low key day. That didn’t preclude eating at my favorite pizza place and later on, stopping to have a salted caramel frosted brownie at a popular sweet shop, however.  Last night I reminisced about my last few birthdays — a year ago my husband took me to Baker City, Oregon to visit the national museum built to honor the Oregon Trail pioneers and to fulfill my lifelong dream of standing in the ruts of the Trail itself.  Two years ago he and I cashed in airline miles that we’d been hoarding for years and took a more extensive trip for my birthday and I recalled the place names associated with that.  Three years ago we went to a city in Montana so that I could visit the museum dedicated to Charlie Russell, something I’d been aiming to do since moving to the Northwest many years ago. I thought and thought  but couldn’t for the life of me remember the name of the place where the museum was located.  I had a near-panic attack, feeling quite sure it must be the beginning of dementia when I couldn’t recall the name of the good-sized Montana town only about four hours from where we live.  I remembered that my husband and I had a large hotel room there and that the bed was in a section of the room that had been built up and was raised about a foot off the floor.  He and I laughed because twice he stumbled and fell coming down from there in the dark — and then I fell, going up onto that raised area in broad daylight.  It was after remembering those things that I had the sudden revelation.  Of course — it was Great Falls, Montana.  How appropriate.