When:  I didn’t really walk.  Explanation to follow.
Weather: 50’s, Cloudy, Rain is supposed to be on the way
Observations/Thoughts

• Today was another walkless day.  It makes me look like a liar mouth.  I call it my daily walk, and yet I don’t walk.  As i threw this project together at the end of last year, I thought, “What will I do if I am sick or traveling or for some reason can’t walk?”  As you may have already guessed, I am well within my rights to take a figurative view of a “walk”.  And, this is what I am doing.
• Still sick: I won’t bore you with the extra nap or the extra liquids.  A cold may not be drowned-able, yet it does seem to be temporarily appeased when excessive liquid is introduced into a virus-ridden system.  It did seem like I walked/sat around the house with a constant dropping of tissues in my wake.  As the day has progressed, my mind feels closer to its usual sharpness.  My wife was not pleased to hear this.  When I am sick, I am a better husband.  I gratefully accept all of the help she offers me.  I don’t resort to a sassy or slightly exaggerated comment.  I am “me” with the insecurity removed.  When sick, I realize my flaws and don’t  try and defend my often flimsy positions.  (Maybe not always flimsy.  Maybe I am just more tolerant of other positions when sick…)

When:  I didn’t really walk.  Explanation to follow.
Weather: Low 60’s! Very pleasant out.
Observations/Thoughts

• Walking Sabbatical:  It is a little early in my journey to have to pull out this cheap ploy. If I am not mistaken, I mentioned I was feeling a little sick recently.  The little became a lot.  And, when compounded with some Nyquil well past its expiration date, I didn’t have a restful night.  (The Nyquil smiled on me for about 3 hours.  Then, it decided my only option was to toss and turn for the rest of the night.  Fortunately, I received a full night of nasal drainage protection.  The rest of the Nyquil chemicals deteriorated into something more spiteful than I remember.)  My body was prepared to speak the comfortable mantra of a walk.  My wife, in one of her rare moves of discouraging me, encouraged me strongly NOT to walk.  If I could not walk, then I could not justify the leaf rake making any new friends in my front yard.  Today, I sacrificed achieving my list for reassuring my body I wanted it to be healthy.  Since it is the weekend, I will have one more day tomorrow to convince my body I am committed to his health.

When:  Mid-afternoon Tuesday
Weather: Cold–below freezing cold
Observations/Thoughts

• Resolution Keepers:  A couple women who decided to get in shape for the new year reluctantly stretched their resolution out for at least one more day.  They were covered in cobbled together winter attire.  They restricted themselves to half of the sidewalk when we passed.  They then reswelled to fill the whole sidewalk again in my wake.
• Blow the stink off of you:  My dad used this phrase when I was growing up.  When he said, “Go outside and blow the stink off of you.”, we knew we were getting a little too rambunctious in the house.  Today, I prescribed going outside on my own.  I don’t need to say any more about this.
• Siri Hates The Cold:  As I took my walk, I used Siri as my notetaking tool.  She seemed to sense it was frigid out.  Her processing power was greatly depleted.  After I said, “Take a Note”, Siri heard my note.  She had to think about it longer than normal before she was able to display the thought.  It became clear after I saw a story today of how Apple phones don’t work so well below freezing.  So, now we know.

When:  Before the 10:00 service at church
Weather: Cold with a heavy mist
Observations/Thoughts

• A jogger in a morph suit:  A jogger passed me.  Whatever his gender, I didn’t see the face.  He was completely bundled up.  From the knee down, he had snuggly fitting clothes.  The rest of his body was wearing layers with a hood covering his head. He had a leash with a medium size dog with black specks.  He waved as he went by.  I mumbled a distracted, “Good Morning.”  He mumbled a barely audible response.
• Morph suit with dad on a bike:  The other runner was doing faster than a walk to keep his dog entertained.  This was a legitimate runner.  To be running in this weather, he must have been training.  His had the same snuggly clothed calves with layers to his neck.  His gender was confirmable by his visible head.  I received the “on your left” warning.  My left hand went up in acknowledgment.  After pleasantries were exchanged with the runner, a man who was likely his father rode past on his bike.  With the temperatures dropping, dad was probably there to provide support should his training son hit some black ice.
• Tortilla Christmas Tree:  Somebody ate Mexican in the past couple of days.  The chips must not have been very good.  A bag of chips was dumped/thrown or otherwise evacuated out of somebodies car window.  The little styrofoam of salsa ended up at the top of the “tree”. The chips trailed the salsa.  If was far from forming a spectacular tree.  The colors were wrong and the shape was off.  After heading north along my walking path, my mist-speckled glasses were playing a variety of tricks on me.
• Freezing precipitation:  At the beginning of my nearly one hour walk, the mist was beading up on my jacket.  Somewhere along the way, the temperatures dropped enough I could no longer ignore the change.  The precipitation on my jacket was foregoing the beads.  It was now supporting a colony of ice crystals.  (This was not apparent until I got home and was able to remove my nearly frozen spectacles.)  I had to shrink the length of my steps on bridges and other treacherous places.  The breeze hadn’t fully completed its project to numb my face.  It had started to break me mentally as it started to chill me from the chin while slowly moving upward.  Kind of like an impending brain freeze with no ice cream required.

*************************************************************************

This project is immediately traced back to this morning.  In reality, it precedes today by a number of years.  I am one of those people who make new years resolutions.   As the old resolutions prepare to turn to dust, I often do a review of those guilty arrows the previous year launches in my general direction.  My secret to writing resolutions has been writing them generic enough a minimum effort can allow them to be achieved.  Or, if I would “fail” in the goals, I would write a defense of my failure as last years resolutions are wrapped up and put permanently to bed.  I have decided the excuses are no longer good enough.

The ambitious goal is to write a blog post for every one of my daily walks.  (Mostly daily.)  If for some reason I don’t walk that day, I will note the excuse for my perceived laziness.  I will ramble about something else or bring out a “best of”.  Should I not have internet access on a given day or week, I will attempt to write a post and upload when the option is available.  The length of the post might vary depending on a variety of factors:

• Was there anything to see that day?
• Was my brain able to process and creatively retell anything I saw?  (I am hoping my standard for “creative” also improves as the year goes on.  Do I have more “good” or “bad” brain days?)
• Was I really serious about this goal?  Can I continue to maintain it as a priority? (I am not getting any younger.  If I am going to seriously attempt to write, I need to do it soon!!)

My undergirding motivation is to write what I think is important.  I will edit the unnecessary and likely over-indulge my own interest.  If others choose to read this, I will be grateful.  I am writing for myself.  Committing to a public “release” of a daily writing sample “should” play upon my sense of responsibility and accountability.  I will pretend it will be hard.  Secretly, I am anxious for the challenge.

While this post could also be called “A Love Letter to a Neglected Home” or “Pants and Comb” or even, “Glad To See My Family and Friends, but…”, I didn’t want to limit myself to what I brain dumped.  So, it a presently unedited (Okay, slightly edited) form, here is my take on how it feels to be home after extensive “being goneness” this summer.

After having the opportunity to go on a long planned European trip in early June, the “spending time with the roots” part of the summer travels followed.  During our travels to the “colder” places of Europe, shorts were not really needed.  In fact, I took two pairs and didn’t wear them once. So, when it came time to pack for a visit to the Midwest, I was only able to assume I would need 2 pairs of shorts.  I should only need 2 pairs of shorts, right?  The Midwest is north of Texas and my morning walks will not be hindered by sheets of sweat running off my body as I attempt to scare off any of the calories consumed during numerous social gatherings.  It takes over 16 hours to get there, so it must be cooler there.  As I lay the groundwork for the contradiction, you have probably already leaped ahead a few days….

During our trip, we spent nights in 4 different locations.  The first location is where I realized the limitations I placed on myself.  Due to a combination of excessive friction, extreme amounts of sweating AND a healthy diet of Mexican food, one pair of shorts decided they were going to “make a split”. While not the first pair of pants I have split, it was a reminder of the occasional cruelness able to be unleashed by a simple trip using a suitcase with limited dimensions.  Fortunately, the patch for my pants provided some additional life to the shorts. The shorts were able to be juggled for the two weeks with frequent washings and frequent wardrobe changes.  If my shorts had the ability to think, they likely would have known they would be moving to the “pile of misfit pants” when we arrived back home. 

How could a simple comb make a 1,200-mile journey worthwhile?  On our trip, I took one comb. It is not a space hog.  It doesn’t cause a suitcase to “suck it in”.  It is just a reminder of how, when traveling, space usually reserved for certain items is less a priority for some people than it is for others.  (If you are one who has NO IDEA what “putting things in its place” means, your parents were much better at staying out of the details then I am able. And, you may lose things with some frequency…)

Despite the nuisance of it, my comb was kept in a bag.  Every morning after my shower (This is not limiting me to morning showers OR to combing my hair at other times), I would comb my hair.  The comb would be carefully removed from the bag. I would put it back in the bag when I was done.  During the process of us hopping from house to hotel to house to hotel, the “comb bag” ended up in different suitcases.  (This still was “organized” BECAUSE we had our “over-nighter” bag when staying in hotels.  This kept us from hauling in all of the suitcases.)  During one of our “stops”, my wife asked if she could use the comb.  I agreed–she is my wife.  When the comb had completed the straightening of her uppermost protein strands, she put the comb back.  It was almost where it was supposed to go, but not quite.  After a couple more borrowings and a couple more returns that were almost the same place where it was before its workout, the comb was acknowledged as being DITB (Definitely In this Bag).  I trusted my wife.  I knew at the end of our journey of 1,200 miles of driving, I should find my comb and be able to put it in its place.

This (as I edit this, it was a couple mornings ago) morning, as I got dressed in my house while standing in my bathroom with most of my clothes in my closet and a few waiting to spring out of the suitcase and assume their previous positions in a few rather unkempt dresser drawers, I realized how good it was to be home.  I remember an old line from a 1980’s movie, “Home is where you hang your hat.”  This seems to illustrate a person who has a more flexible definition of a home than me.  To me, home is where there is bounty and where I can find my things.  I don’t need lots of things.  I just like to have my things available to me, and I like to know where they are at.  And, as silly as it sounds, I have been smiling the whole time I am writing this.  I like an adventure.  When the adventure is over and it is only about waiting to go home, not even a whole day sitting in a car driving across 7 states and dealing with a few people who were not able to delay their accidents for just ONE day are able to wipe the smile of inner peace from my face.