Moseying through Monday

I’ve been telling all and sundry that I intend to begin running again this week, but I never said it would be Monday. I sort of thought it MIGHT be today, but I also knew I would find any number of good reasons to begin tomorrow. Or even Thursday (Wednesday has already been designated laundry day). Heck, Friday or Saturday are still this week. But I’m getting ahead of myself. As it happened, I took a nice little walk with my nice little dog, and so I offer a Pedestrian Post in lieu of Middle-aged Musings Monday.

The temperatures had warmed considerably since morning, with bright sunny skies. It was obvious a lot of the white stuff was melting. I say, “Woo hoo!” One reason I thought a walk might be better than a run is that I could check out the state of the sidewalks in my flood boots to see if sneakers were really eligible. OK, that was a spurious reason. When I begin to run, I’m just going to run through the puddles and get my feet wet. I won’t be running long enough at first to risk any possible wet foot diseases that aren’t old wives’ tales (are there any?).

I remembered to put on my prescription sunglasses this time (I had forgotten them on Saturday, to my cost). I changed my work shoes for my flood boots. I was already wearing my thermal sweatshirt. I had switched to that from the jacket I have been wearing. It was a little cool for it this morning, but it was fine for the 42 degrees my thermostat claimed it was. I put on a hat. I forgot my gloves, but they were in my sweatshirt pocket. It turned out I did not need them. Score!

The sidewalks had been plowed at some point, but they were still covered with a couple of inches of gushy snow. That made walking effortful, but I reminded myself of the calorie-burning properties of effort. Tabby found plenty to sniff but spent some time trotting along at a good pace as well. We waded through several deep puddles. I LOVE my flood boots!

We passed a lady carrying a cute little baby and leading a sweet-looking little boy.

“My dog is a good dog, she wouldn’t bother anybody,” I told them, in case they were worried.

Further along we met a pug with his lady standing in front of a house. I was surprised he did not bark at Tabby as she paused to sniff a few patches of snow before we got to them. Then Tabby surprised me by wanting to approach him. She is not usually interested in other dogs.

“She wants to make a friend,” I said. The pug and his person were amenable. While the two dogs were sniffing each other, the door opened up and a bigger dog came bounding out to check out Tabby. Not real big, but bigger than my dog. I’m not sure what breed she was.

“Sasha! Sasha!” called the man with her.

Sasha seemed pretty friendly and apparently meant Tabby no harm. Only Tabby doesn’t like to have her but sniffed and butt sniffing was what Sasha had in mind. The people got Sasha under control. I petted her and the pug and we went our separate ways.

I was enjoying our effortful walk through the slushy, gushy snow, but it wasn’t long before my legs began to feel a little wobbly. That’s what I get for slacking off on my walks. Tabby didn’t seem to be having any trouble, but when we don’t walk, she takes any number of good runs up and down the backyard. Perhaps I should try that.

We ended up walking for more than 20 minutes. I know, I’ll never get back into Boilermaker shape on a mere 20 minute walk, especially one with a pooch that keeps stopping to sniff. Give me a break, will you? It only just now got above freezing. And it’s only the second week of March. I can rock this, you’ll see. I’ll write blog posts about it.