A funny thing about stairlifts (Accessibility for One is Accessibility for All)

   Humor can be found in the darndest places and at the most unlikely times!

   I recently made the mistake of taking a muscle relaxer before bedtime. Typically, I steer clear of these medications, reserving them as a last resort to alleviate cramping and spasms. The relief they offer often leaves me with what I call "jellyfish muscles." When stretching, massaging, and other remedies failed to provide relief, I concluded that taking the prescribed medication was the best course of action. So, thirty minutes before turning in for the night, I swallowed the pill.

   You may be thinking, what is the problem? You're going to bed anyway; it's not like you need a lot of muscle power to sleep.

Unfortunately, muscles are essential for climbing stairs, and my bedroom is two flights up.

This was a significant oversight on my part.

   Had I been descending, I could have simply let gravity do the work, melting my way down. Instead, I faced an uphill battle. Gravity became my adversary, and my now-relaxed muscles offered little assistance. The journey upstairs was an adventure—one step at a time—essentially reverse-engineering the "descend-on-the-butt" method to scoot upward. What usually takes thirty seconds stretched into a twenty-minute ordeal.

If I wasn't tired before, I was positively exhausted by the the time I crawled into bed.

The next day, I resumed my research on stair lifts.

   We had been considering having them installed. Navigating stairs are becoming increasingly challenging for me and it is not like my disability is going to magically go away. We both agree staying in our current home is important. Our community is here; stores and doctors are with in walking (or electric scooter) distance and easily accessible. Moreover, purchasing another property in our area is not financially feasible, even if we sold our current home at a good price. Thus, installing a stairlift seems to be the practical solution.

   The research has been unexpectedly entertaining. Have you ever heard of an installation-free mobile stairlift? I hadn't either, but to my surprise, the internet is full of images of such products.

I even found images advertising PORTABLE stairlifts!

   I'm not entirely sure how they are supposed to work... Does one just surf up and down the stairs? Hover? I would love to see a demonstration some time...

   However, that is not likely to happen since I highly doubt these products are real. I assume they're AI-generated images. Apparently, ads don't require the AI-created disclaimer social media demands of our everyday posts.

 Now my new hobby involves finding and posting as many of these unlikely images that I can find! It will be great when technology may someday be able to provide such useful devices, but in the meantime, these images are a wonderful source of humor and offer great inspiration for science fiction writers such as myself.

 (I know I'm surprised!)