Sunday chats and Monday rains, Fitness Day 3

It didn't occur to me when I started this that I was creating two new habits - exercise and writing about stuff, including exercise. So...

Sunday
3:30 p.m. - Deciding it's time to take advantage of nice weather (and make sure kids are where they said they'd be) I figure I'll do my two-lap walk again in the neighborhood. This time I'll stretch my muscles first as a warmup. This does two things - it loosens up my legs and amuses Bill, my husband. I'm glad I can provide cheap comic relief. When his toe heals, he can get out here and I can laugh back.

3:34 p.m. - 3:52 p.m. Two of three children are in the yard when I head outside and down the driveway. The 14-year-old boy has the water hose turned on, showing his 11-year-old sister how sediment flows downstream in a flash flood. I remind them that I'm paying for their flash flood experiment, not FEMA, and to turn off the water. Of course they want to know where I'm going (with the unspoken hope that it involves a store and something for them). When I tell them I'm going for a walk, they decide to tag along, probably for laughs. (You can tell who their father is.) The boy jumps on his sister's bike and she decides she's going to run, because after all, she's a (former) soccer player and runs in PE and I'm 43. She yells for me to stop and wait. Um hm. I keep going. The boy, all 6-foot-5 of him, is hovering nearby, riding back and forth in sort of circles, kind of like a Labrador puppy - all legs and feet and excited to be out. I keep going. The girl catches up, talking the whole time and telling her brother not to run into her. I keep going. Halfway through the first lap, they start insulting each other in the middle of the street. I tell them not to have a family fight in the road. As I keep going.

After the first lap, the boy finds other things to do and departs. Not the girl. She's still got more to say. I haven't heard everything yet about Taylor Swift, the band's Solo and Ensemble competition or the latest sixth grade gossip. I keep going. So does she. I'm actually glad that she's talking to me about anything, and that she's exercising. I'm just not going to stop walking right now to listen. She can keep up. She is, after all, 11 and I'm not. I have to take advantage of momentum when I have it. However, when she brightly suggests that we should extend our exercise by walking to her Girl Scout leader's house several blocks over, I can visualize my momentum shaking its head, saying something like, "Are you mad?!?" and I say no, my limit is the remainder of the walk home.

Monday
Was it the Carpenters who sang, "Rainy days and Mondays always get me down?" No walk today. We've had enough trouble with colds and sick days this year without adding more. I do, however, park the truck and walk to the third grade pick-up point when school is out to retrieve the youngest child. It's only drizzling at this point. No one in our family will ever melt. Tuesday I'll get back after it.