Exercise

"I am a good walker! Now why is everyone always assuming I am not a good walker?"

~Jane Austen's Persuasion

Now here is a non-epiphany for you! I hate exercise! I have always hated exercise. I think people who like to exercise and rave about it and are addicted to it and can't live without it are the same kind of alien/human hybrid implants that were frequently shown on X-Files sucking the bone marrow out of living victims or stealing their brains or suddenly turning into black oil slicks and oozing out of eyeballs in search of fresher prey.

In other words, I may know them, but I don't often invite them to tea.

Myself, being on DEATH WATCH the way I am, should be incorporating a little exercise into my life. I belong to a gym. I don't go. It's too much work to bother! I don't mind it once I am there, but it's the getting there that is just too insurmountable.

You have to put on ugly shoes.

You have to sweat and get sticky.

You have to shower before and after.

You have to suck wind, count reps, and heave ho.

I hate all that stuff. Especially the ugly shoes and the heave-hoeing.

I have been known, though, to take long walks. I am awfully fond of a long walk. As long as it doesn't turn into a clothing and footgear production before hand. What I mean is, if I can just get the urge to take a walk and then stand up and head out the door grabbing only my sunglasses and my keys, then I am all for a long walk!

Today, I felt like a long walk. Never mind that it is about 90 degrees outside and just blazing, brutal, grass-frying hot out. I felt like walking, so I did.

It turned into a very short walk. I am awfully fond of a very short walk!

I did get to see thousands of roses in bloom, just in the 10 block radius that I covered around my midtown neighborhood before I realized that my feet were stinging and I had potential blisters forming that might fester, superate, go septic and end in amputation if I did not skedaddle back home as soon as possible and get off my feet and out of my strappy sandals.

I also saw the new construction on the old Victorian that burned two years ago. The man had been slowly remodeling it and he had no insurance. It must have been bought by some new fellas, because there were 5 of them standing around outside in the shade while a crew of about 5 more fellas were busy framing the upstairs anew! AND! They appear to have gone up an extra story, so that now the Old Gingerbread 2-story Victorian will be a 3-story Victorian. Hopefully they will put an attractive siding on it. Most of the buildings around town are registered historically, so you aren't allowed to tart them up with aluminum siding or anything too modern like that.

I am happy to see it rising from it's own ashes, but very sorry to think I won't be able to go over there and glean the roses from the neglected yard. I feel that I personally and single-handedly kept those rose bushes pruned and alive for the last 2-3 years. Now they are all fenced in. I hope the new owners appreciate the beautiful old blush rambler they have in their front yard. It is succulently fragrant.

Mackie is in full-exercise mode as well. He just does it all in the night-hours. He has enough sense to nap during the heat of the day.

And by the way, this post is just FULL of new paragraphs, but I've fiddled with it and reposted it and it's just not accepting my breaks or paragraphs or divisions. Blogspot does that sometimes. I uploaded Mackies picture 3 times before it showed up. It just dissapears stuff! I find that incredibly annoying. Does it do that for anybody else? I feel like the Ghost Blogger.