These Boots Were Made For Walking

I was reading in the newspaper about the Climate-Change Czarina, Carol Browner. The reporter was clearly impressed that this woman walked a mile to work- everyday! And in stylish clothing!

I walk approximately 5 miles about 4-5 mornings each week. I like it. It is fun and good exercise. It is , decidedly, not a big deal. On many work days I do errands on foot. The trip to my bank and back is about a mile. It takes me 20 minutes to go in both directions. My dog likes the walk too as many of the establishments we visit have cookies as a reward for being so well behaved in a queue.

I am not listing my walking routine to impress, but to show that walking has simply become part of my life. My 5 mile walk takes me about an hour and 15 minutes- longer if I run into a neighbor to talk to. My walk gives me a complete hour to think and arrange my day- only interrupted by the tweets and cackles of the birds.

So many people think that this amount of walking is a superhuman feat, but it is, quite literally, as easy as putting one foot in front of the other. Many are defeated in exercise programs because they feel they can never accomplish their goals. The reality is they just need to adjust how they think.

I use to be a long distance biker. My mother would wistfully dream of joining me on a jaunt so one Mother's Day I told her we would spend the weekend biking to my brother's house in Newmarket and back- about 75 miles round trip. I promised her she would make it and if we ran into any steep hills we would walk up them. I am pretty sure she doubted she could actually do it. But do it, she did- and it became an annual Mother's Day ride. It also changed her attitude about what she was capable of physically.

I think there are a lot of things in life that are like this. If you can break an impossible job into smaller tasks it can become doable. When I feel swamped by something I pick smaller parts of the problem to tackle. Eventually things are not so overwhelming and the problem is solved.

It reminds me that I keep dreaming of walking to Montreal. I bet I can.

My Mother, My Self Redux

I gave my mother a 5 minute lesson in blogging and she is off and running. She loves photography- especially of her grandchildren and mushrooms so you can expect to see a lot of that in the future. She is retired so has a lot of time to spend on it too. Next thing you know she will probably out-widget me.

Go check out her blog!

I love my mother.

My Mother, My Self

My mother is 72 and both a mentor for me and an occasional pain in my side, but she has taught me everything I know and she is still busy trying to teach me everything she knows. She is now retired and is throwing herself into whatever activities interest her. She is currently involved in an educational program for the elderly run through a small division of the state university. She called me the other day to ask about e-newsletters and how it might help this program promote their classes. She has been agitating for the school to make some changes and to update themselves. She let out a big sigh...... "I think I am just a loudmouth."

I could hear myself sigh. I had just been contemplating the possibility that I might be a loudmouth.... then I hear her admitting to a streak of loudmouthness. I am sure this must be genetic. Right when I had just gotten over the hurdle of looking like my mother, now I have to deal with behaving like her too?

This self reflection on loudmouthedness started about 3 weeks ago when I attended a board retreat for a non-profit I volunteer with. I feel I spoke up more than might be seemly... especially for a little old art major in a sea of lawyers and bankers. And this is my own twisted view of the world, but there was only one other woman on the board who spoke up with any kind of consistency and in a challenging way. I know the other women who serve are bright but they seem to lose their voice in these situations.

Sometimes I think I speak up not just to make a point but to get a seat at the table. If you don't speak up you are relegated to the role of do-er or assistant. Doing is a good and important thing.... someone has to get the work done, but I want to be part of the policy making. And I definitely see this as a gender based difference. A difference that I am not immune to..... so I struggle to behave like that woman I imagine myself to be.

Does this make me a pushy bitch loudmouth?