Park in the Walk; Rat Poison and Green Tea; Smoke and Fire

Thursday, the park was very busy again, so I was forced to park by the kid's playground. The park and the playground are separated by a large drainage ditch. A rather scary looking one at that. Although the water was low, debris littered both banks.

Now that I think about it, the ditch is actually a creek and meanders for miles until it hits the river.

The only path from the playground to the park is across a bridge intended primarily for cars but with narrow pedestrian sidewalks at each side. So when you walk across, you are literally within inches of the traffic. And this is not slow traffic either. The street is one of the major thoroughfares of the city.

Somewhere about the 1/2 mile mark, I figured out I'd overdone it on Tuesday. Because various muscles started acting unruly. So I slowed down and only did a mile.

There are seveal spots along the track that allow you to catch a wide-angel view. You can see walkers moving left, right, diagonally, backwards and forwards, coming and going, clockwise and anticlockwise. To a Martian with a telescope, it must look like industrious worker bees indicating where the honey is.

When I used to walk there, I started noticing that everyone had a distinctive style of walking or running. And I could tell at a distance who someone was. Even though now I've only been doing this for a couple of weeks, the patterns are already beginning to emerge.

Yesterday evening, the population was sparse, so parking was no problem. The pains from the previous day were gone, so I was able to loop two miles without a problem. I enjoyed watching a young guy with long brown hair. As he ran, the hair bounced up, then lay flat; there was something about that I found very seductive.

Ahead of me was a large short woman in a hugh gray tee and "el jumbo" black tights. She had the kind of body that should not be seen in tights except in the privacy of the bedroom with the door locked, the windows closed and the curtains drawn. I know I should be ashamed of myself, but I kept thinking of the lines, "Fatty, fatty! Two by four! Can't get through the garden door!"

She was also singing along with her CD player. LOUDLY singing along. (Advice to large woman. "Baby, don't give up the day job!")

The sight was so disheartening, I repeated a section so she could get ahead. But somehow after a few minutes, I found myself behind her again. When I left the park, she was still at it, bouncing along and preparing for her audition with the gospel choir.

My brain was AWOL today when I visited, because nothing struck me. I did note a couple of tennis players on the courts, but that's it.

Within seconds I was trying to figure out how to spike their green tea with rat poison. However, reason intervened, I gobbled the last remaining fried vegetables and headed for the door. Why me!

My standard word for dealing with laundry when I bring it home is "lug." I lugged the laundry inside. Pushed the hamper across the kithcen floor and threw a pile of shirts on the counter. Then ran off to the bath. Coming back, I smelled smoke. And on the counter smoke was rising from the clothes which I jerked away to discover that the toaster oven was on fire. Apparently the clothes bumped the on switch, and the crumbs and residue caught fire. Luckily a bottle of glass cleaner was also on the counter, so a few sprays, and the fire was out. But if I'd dallied a few more minutes at the other end of the house, the clothes could easily have caught fire.

PAX!