Remember when after partying all night you'd come home and fall into bed? Face down, holding the bed so it wouldn't spin? Yeah, me too! Well, I have since discovered the reason why older people get less sleep at night, forcing them to take naps, and it's NOT from clubbing into the wee hours, honey.

Each year my husband and I find we have more things to do before going to bed. I'm not talking about closing the garage door and turning off the fish tank light either! With every new anti-wrinkle, scientific, or health discovery, we include these improvements somehow into our nightly routine.

Meanwhile at my sink, as I'm doing my personal dental rituals, Honey Buns cleans and assembles his face mask for sleep apnea --- then he takes out his contact lens. It all seems so never ending!

Some night we even add showers, hair washing, saving, and/or plucking! Woooooooo --- I'm tired just thinking about it! The bedtime list goes on and on and grows longer with each passing year. Taking care of business is time consuming. We both feel like one of those hilariously sad jokes where the old couple takes their bodies apart each night! Sometimes to the surprise of the other!!

So how many steps to bed? I've lost count. My brain numbs during the boring repetition of it all. But it has to be done by me --- there's no outsourcing this dull and dirty job.

Leaving out of my neighborhood this morning, I got to the stop sign and automatically looked right. That side has a hill which hides cars, so I wanted to make sure it was clear --- even rising up in my seat. Nothing! As I took my foot off the gas, the car rolled forward and I started to take off, but with only a glance to the left.

OH, NOOOOOOOO! A car was on top of me! Quickly putting on my brakes, the guy steered around my car, all the while giving me the "you dumass" look. I deserved it big time!

Some dangers are easy to avoid, but how much time do we spend looking out for the known dangers and forget about the unseen ones? Until they hit us in the back of the head? Kick us in the butt? Or ram into the side of our car? I guess, to be extra safe in life, it's best to look and look and then look some more!

Surprisingly today on the CBS show Sunday Morning, I saw a lady of whom I have been searching for a photograph --- Elma Gardner "Pem" Farnsworth. She passed away earlier this year, at age 98, and I've been wanting to recognize her as one of the most interesting women of our last century.

Her husband was the inventor of the electronic TV that we know today, Philo T. Farnsworth. It took a genius to figure out that images could be scanned onto a picture tube row by row. Smart man, he also gave his wife, Elma, equal credit for the invention. He knew early on that behind every good man there is a good woman, but she is also listed as the first woman on TV. They did work side by side in their laboratories and, after Philo's death in 1971, she fought for the recognition that her husband richly deserved. Today he is the undisputed father of television! So they were quite a team and had quite an exciting marriage.

The birth of television changed the world and lead to many discoveries used today. Other inventors of image technology made developments in the 1920's, but nothing like the Farnsworths. Their team effort shows that support can make many things possible. Elma's autobiography Distant Vision: Romance and Discovery on an Invisible Frontier tells their story. I haven't been able to get a copy yet, but I imagine those early days of perfecting such as amazing invention has to be a fine read.