My New Favorite Place

My new favorite place is the wonderful, beautiful, great outdoors. Each year when the weather breaks like this, I am dreading it. I have to wear shorts in order to be comfortable outside, which means that I have to come off about $30 for the tanning bed. Or I could not spend the money at the tanning bed and just sweat all summer long in jeans. That's what I did last summer, which back-fired terribly because right at the end of the summer was when we took our road trip to Vegas and my lily-white legs are shining in all of the pictures. The other bad thing about wearing shorts is that I have a tinge of arthritis in my right knee from an accident that I sustained teenager. So when I go inside buildings that have the air turned on high, it makes my knee throb. However, this past week, I have found it nearly impossible to stay inside. I could just stay out from morning til dark. I find every reason in the world to go hang out with the kids on the playground at work. I have even gone so far as to get onto my girls if the kids are still inside when I get there. I think one reason for this sudden love of the outdoors is my weight loss because I have more energy than I once did.
Yesterday, I was out running some errands. I was finally on my way home and I saw Ex's best friend and his girlfriend out riding their horses near my house. I was so jealous. I would have loved to have gone riding. By the time I had gotten home, I had decided that I was not going to spend the day locked up inside the house. I ate my lunch and asked Roommate if she wanted to go walking with me. "No," she said. So I took Lucy-the-wonder-dog instead. That didn't last long though. I didn't take her on the leash so she stopped to play with her doggie friends at the neighbor's house. I kept going, assuming she would catch up to me in a bit, but she went back home without me. We live in a very beautiful, rural area, and it was so peaceful to be able to take in the gorgeous landscape and smell the fresh air. I mean, I see the same scene every time I get in my car to go somewhere, but it was different to be able to take some time to really check things out. I could see all the way across acres and acres of land; so far, in fact that I think I could see Ex's friend's barn. I think I went probably about a little less than half a mile up the road, then I turned around and jogged for a bit. That was rough and I would have been mortally embarrassed had anyone seen me doing this, so I stopped that and commenced to walking again. When I reached the drive-way to our house, I wasn't ready to quit, so I went up the road the other way. I would say that it was about 1/10 of a mile or so, once I got to the curve and turned around, I jogged the rest of the way home. I was hot and tired when I got home, but I felt great.
After that, I showered and got ready. I dragged Cousin and Sister with me shopping. I have no clothes that fit me for warm weather. That's a good problem to have, but a problem nevertheless. I dropped over $100 yesterday on two shirts, two pairs of capri pants, a skirt, a dress, and two pairs of shoes. Really, $100 isn't bad for all of that. But that's just the beginning. I probably have a couple hundred more bucks to go before the spring/summer wardrobe is completed.
Today we had a dinner at church. I didn't think that I had overdone it, but when I got home, my stomach felt so full and miserable! I changed clothes and threw some stuff in a bag and went to Cousin's house. Our plan was to walk. However, when I first got there, they were cleaning house and I had to lay down and let my food settle. I would have thrown up if I had tried to walk right then! We left her house between 2 and 2:30. We walked up her street and through the new neighborhood going in across the street. Then on around the block back to her house. The kids went with us and they were about to die, so we stopped in at her mother-in-law's house for a few minutes, then we made it back home. As soon as we got home, we hopped in the car to drive the same path that we had just walked to clock how many miles it was. 2.3 miles to be exact. How about that? Walking outside is way more fun than the treadmill. And I can tell that I'm starting to get some sun on my arms after just two days. I hope I can keep this up.