Dear Diary 2

Dear Diary,

Someone said that every great journey starts with the first step. I suspect it was Groucho Marx. Before I fell asleep last night I committed myself to starting my day with a walk.

I know from experience that if I don’t do the walking in the morning that by evening I have provided myself with a plethora of reasons not to actually do it. Neither my flesh, nor my spirit, is strong. I did procrastinate a little, so obviously that little commandment needs closer attention!

First off I had breakfast and a cup of tea. Then I checked my blog comments…then I checked the weather and damn it looked as though the rain that has been falling off and on all week would hold off, so all excuses evaporated.

In the past I have never had the right clothing to wear and often walked wearing jeans or less than attractive track pants, but Daughter2 has dropped a couple of sizes and so I inherited some very nice gym gear from her. She separates things into piles for mother and for sister so I get clothing she deems age appropriate so Flamingo Dancer is not walking the streets dressed as lamb rather than mutton. Or in the case of flamingo dancers would that be chick and hen? Whatever, I look damn good in my second hand clothes.

The clothes have been washed more than once so I actually look like a hardened athlete, well at least from a clothes aspect. I don’t look like those poor people that one sees every new year walking in their crisp new gym clothes that they just purchased due to a new year’s resolution that everyone, including themselves, knows that they won’t maintain a week.

The shoes. Now my shoes I am really proud of as I have two pairs of the world’s most comfortable shoes in the world. One is a brown pair that I bought for $20AUS from Kmart about 8 years. Daughter2 calls them my old lady orthopaedic shoes and well may she be right. I think they are dainty and unassuming; she thinks they are embarrassing and ugly. I am the one wearing them however. I have worn them on many walking escapades and my feet are never tired at the end of a day and I have never, ever had a blister or a sore spot. I love my shoes, though I notice that I am wearing a hole in the toe of the right shoe which I appear to do with favourite shoes and so I may have to see if I can find more of the same.

My other pair is a little newer. I can’t remember when I purchased them. In fact I forgot I even owned them. We used to have a big cane basket where everyone threw their shoes and after the daughters moved out it lay dormant for a year or so I went through it and called various owners. No one claimed the white sports shoes and after awhile it slowly dawned that the shoes were mine. Repressed memories obviously!

The white shoes were the shoes of choice today as they have a little more toe room and I have a sore toe at the moment. Well, it is not actually sore, the nail is coming off, but that is a whole ‘nother post that is not going to happen.

So I booted up and told Mr FD I was off to discover the big outside. I think he teared up for a second as I suspect he thought I had finally lost my mind, but he soon recovered, obviously thinking it better to humour me in case I turned dangerous. In fact he made encouraging comments like “you are a better person than I”, much in the same vein as one adopts when waving loved ones off to war.

I thought about finding a pedometer lost in the bowels of a drawer or a cupboard so that I could feel superior when I achieved those magical 10,000 steps, but soon gave up this idea as:

1. I was never going to find that pedometer in the near future, or maybe even in this lifetime.

2. I am very competitive. If I walked 6 steps today I would have to walk 16,000 tomorrow. If I didn’t I would feel guilty and beat myself up about my failure and not appreciate the fact that I walked 6 steps, which would be about 5 more than I walked the day before. Not going to enhance my happiness now is it?

So I set off in my second hand clothes, my shopping mall shoes (the expensive white ones, I think I paid around $50AUS for them, also at Kmart) and minus any fancy smancy sports equipment and I walked around our neighbourhood.

There were lots of positives. I got a thrill to note that we have one of the nicer gardens in the area. This also saddened me as considering the little effort we put into our garden the rest of the neighbourhood should be ashamed. Why do people spend $750,000 AUS and up on a new house and then allow the yard to go to weed and rubbish? I am not saying that anyone has to maintain a garden, in fact don’t start one if you don’t have the time, the energy or the inclination to maintain it. Put in gravel and a birdbath and call it a day. Don’t insult nature.

I also saw 3 wild ducks in the play park. They were skirting the half basket ball court and I imagine that they were just waiting for the rest of the team to show up for the game. Mushrooms were also in full bloom, thanks to the showery weather of the past week. Dull brown and grey ones but still pretty to examine and admire.

A couple of houses were up for sale. Well one was actually for auction and one for sale. Not many houses in our neighbourhood come up for sale, but the few that have in the 8 years since the area opened up, always seem to be the same ones. Why is that so? Why do some houses sell and sell again and others never get sold? It is almost that there are negative forces at work in some homes, or bad feng shui that chases people away. These are the type of things I ponder as I walk.

I ended with an uphill route back to our street and a good feeling of accomplishment. No chariots of fire theme music met me as I walked back up our drive way, Mr FD did not leap from his chair as I opened the door, though he was eager to hear what the big outside was like these days. I did come home with a sense of having taken the first step.  I did feel happy. In fact minutes later I am still feeling happy. There might be something in this after all…

Dear Diary, do I have to do it again tomorrow though?