I love my walk with the dogs by the river bank two minutes from here (if you're well, five for me). Once a week is enough. Any more than that is sheer self indulgence with too big a price tag, and it's not just me that pays it.
As I walk out of the door I have a healthy feeling of being naughty. I too feel like shouting "Onion Sauce" at the rabbits in the hedgerow but unlike Mole I'm not a young male just abandoning white-washing, so even if I do meet Ratty the water rat I will still turn round and come home again to my charges. There is more to life than boating after all. Mind you I'd love to row again. It's one of the things I dream about.
I feel like I could walk all day. I possibly could if I had nothing at all to do for the rest of the following week. The word walk is perhaps exaggerating. I've found a way I can sort of roll - So long as I don't really use any of my joints I just sort of keep going. I so love being out. Love it. Exhilaration. Freedom. I used to walk or bike everywhere. I feel like I'm going someplace.
On Sunday mornings in the summer there's always someone around. On this crisp frosty day there's no one. I can sing. Memory not too good so I don't sing songs, I just sing ditties made up of what ever's going through my head at the time. Odds on God will be in there somewhere - I prefer cheerful subject matter. Lots of gratefulness. We may have some grotty things in our lives, but still an awful lot to be thankful for.
I get home and jot down some of what I can remember of those lovely thoughts, then get a drink. Now I start to feel like I ran all the way. Nausea. Instead of changing out of my sweat drenched clothes I lie down. It's revolting being this limited. The feeling of stale dampness blinks in and out as I try to concentrate on listening to the radio. Another thought takes over and eventually drives me into an upright position - a desperate hope that if I think hard enough I'll come up with something that the poorly appetites can eat, enjoy and be nourished by. Failing that at least something that will keep them going for a few more hours anyway. But occasionally in among all that comes the flicker of a memory of a bird in a bush - a mere flash of white wing bars as it hops from invisibility to invisibility (I must wear my glasses more often). There's the happy thought too of the vague sense of red fast fading in my wind-stung cheeks. I really did go out. I made it. I'll do lunch later, I'll lie here for a bit.
Actually, before the reality energy accountant finally takes me in hand I don't get a shower but I do manage to summon up enough lingering adrenaline or endorphins from the walk to get changed into fresh clothes before collapsing properly. I don't quite come up roses, but I don't end up as the mulch we'd put at the bottom them.
Would you leave such a person in charge of 2 even sicker people ? A world in it's right mind wouldn't, but the current arrangements will have to do until we find one of those.
I will look back and not remember it as an unpleasant day. No major crises. I feel fairly peaceful. I listen to the rest of my book on the MP3 player that my daughter named Petunia. I spend a long time on the computer because I feel too blobby to do anything else. Quietly sort out my sewing pics into a blog so I can remember what I've done. I mud wrestle my brain to do a couple of words on Scrabble and Words with Friends.
When I have my sandwiches I look at the bread and I think of the people not on line because they've been able to meet together for church, or go out or get together for Sunday lunch and am glad.
I spend a few minutes with the girls when I take them their meals. Later on I hear them chatting together. One of the loveliest sounds in the world.
Another Sunday.
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