ewitsalex

( we chase our own tail )














once they started melting
lost all hope
no going back now
no going home

So I walk in the park every morning. I've been doing that ever since I quit my last job as a lawyer (Before that, I walked from the train station to my office, instead of taking the bus). Up until recently, I walked from 6:15 until around 7:00, but this year, I've been taking my daughter to the bus stop at 6:40, so I walk from 6:40 until about 7:15. This has caused some confusion because the people I used to see walking before 6:40 think I'm slacking off and have taken to remarking that they haven't seen me in the park lately. This is easily explained by saying that I'm walking a little later.

But for the past few months, I've been running into a woman whose in-laws go to my church. She walks three days a week, and I walk five. At first, we were just yelling hello as we passed, but in the past few weeks, she's started yelling things like, "Good for you!" "Go, Alexandra!" and "Boy, that was fast!" as if I'm a small child who needs constant encouragement (or like the episode of The Office when Holly thought Kevin was mentally disabled and kept praising him for stuff like driving a car). It's a little embarrassing, but I figured she just has poor social skills.

Then, yesterday, I figured it out: This woman is a dietician at the local hospital. Since she hadn't seen me out walking for the past, um, five years (or since seventh grade, if you count all the exercising I've done that wasn't in the park), and since I'm not a size four, she is assuming that I only recently committed to a fitness routine, and that I might, in fact, be having difficulty putting one foot in front of the other and, therefore, needed praise for doing so.

Which had the opposite effect of praise because it made me spend the whole day, thinking, "Oh, my God! Am I that fat?" (I'm a size eight, and I'm pretty sure this woman is also).

Which made me really sort of want a McFlurry.