From here on out I have Fridays free. Well, it started after the week after Thanksgiving. Well, I had a couple Fridays before that, I think ... anyway, I've been working about 4 1/2 days a week for the past couple months, and there is a run of Fridays that I don't work that I am now in the middle of which ends at the start of 2021. Like I have said before, I thought I had a lot of paid time off I needed to use before the end of the year, until my company abruptly changed the number I could carry over. But I had my heart set on having all these days off that I couldn't go back and volunteer to work them again, so I'm not.
I am telling my parents I am working half-days, and that packing a lunch won't be necessary. So once I get up and roll out of bed (has to be by 11, otherwise my folks will get suspicious) I have (and I think I've documented some of this before on WAF) I get lunch at some above-fast-food place, walk around the cemetery to visit my Grandmother and uncle, and get dessert.
It's those walks that are the most energizing. With gyms closed and me not going in them during the time they were open because they were coronavirus hothouses, I needed an outlet for exercise. Increasingly, when I had the time during daylight hours, I would go to a park, and oftentimes it has been Lakewood. The cemetery is a beautiful place, yet it is usually bereft of people. I think people don't walk there because it's creepy. I thought so at first, but then the pandemic came and I needed some exercise and the park was too crowded. There is peace walking around a cemetery. Besides, are the residents bothered by me walking around them?
The past few Fridays I noticed how good, and fortunate, I've been to walk in good-to-great weather. It can snow in November and December, and yet so far, there has been little of that. It can also get very, very cold those months. But it has been above average. It was above 50 last Friday, and a Friday before that.
I reflected on that while I was walking around Lakewood. It was a great day for a walk -- not too hot but definitely not too cold, little wind to complain about, certainly not humid. I prefer cloudy days when the temperatures are in the fifties, and it was sunny out, but even then that made me feel good, because in the throes of winter, sunlight is at a premium. And I thought to myself, one more than one of these days, "I should enjoy this, because I don't know how many more of these I will have." And I take a picture to memorialize my cliched epiphany.
Well, I didn't know how many of these glorious days I would still have. I really thought the first time I thought such a thought, it would be the last time I would be able to walk around anywhere peacefully and happily. But I did it the following week, and I think the following week, too. Snow hasn't come yet, so I've been able to take quick walks around a park a couple times as well. Now the fifties and forties are gone; I walked at Lakewood Friday when it was just above freezing, and although I was OK, it wasn't that great. Still, I consider myself fortunate to have been able to stretch my legs out outside.
Did the same thing yesterday/Saturday, just before coming home and just after eating a free sub from Firehouse thanks to the Free Tuesday T-Mobile app. I tried taking a brisk walk, but the weather was brisker: It was barely 32 if it was, there was no sun, and the wind was whipping. I lasted maybe ten minutes. I would not consider that to be walking weather. And the forecast for this week is not showing temperatures during the day rising through the thirties, so, well, maybe I was right to cherish those walks because they could be gone now.
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