WALK OR NO WALK?

How has my morning been?



Well, thanks for asking. I'll just tell you about it right now.



Yesterday evening Blake called while he was out with Cody. Or as we like to say "Dumber called while he was out with Dumb..." But it is said in love, I assure you.



Anyway, he called to say he was going to wrestle after school tomorrow (which is today), so Cody would pick him up in the morning so they could go to wrestling together, and could Kayla ride the bus, and I said alright; thanks for giving us some notice, because sometimes he tells us THAT morning that he's not driving and Kayla has to scramble to get her things ready to get on the bus and then it puts a kink in the morning; and here we go with one of those run on sentences that we all love.



But poor Kayla had lots of stuff to carry. She had, not in order of importance:



-Her backpack which was stuffed to the gills, because she missed two days of school last week, so she had makeup work to finish.



-Her track bag.



-A Wal-Mart sack holding her volleyball uniform which had to be turned in today.



-A Wal-Mart sack holding her gym shoes because they ran in the rain yesterday for track practice and she changed into her gym shoes for the indoor part of their workout.



-Her lunch bag, which usually goes in her backpack but it was too full.



So I took pity on her and drove her to school so she wouldn't have to contend with all that crap...I mean junk....I mean all those things that are vital to her education and her development as a well rounded young woman...on the school bus.



I decided to look at this early trip as a "glass half full" kind of thing. While I was out anyway I'd just go ahead and stop at the mall after I dropped her off and get my morning walk in. I try to walk a little over 3 miles at the mall most mornings.



By the way, do your local malls open early for walking? Ours opens at 5:30 and they have little signs up showing the distance per lap, etc. I thought it was standard operating procedure for malls, but I've heard of communities that don't do this. It really is a great service the mall offers.



Anyway, I got into the mall right at 8 and I could tell as soon as I walked in that something was amiss (rather than a mister) because I heard lots of people talking and laughing. More than I usually hear when I'm there walking with the over 70 crowd.



Turns out they are holding try outs for the game show Deal or No Deal at the mall. Turns out the line ran the ENTIRE length of the mall. I don't know how long that is, but one lap around the whole perimeter is .66 miles. And the front of that line was pretty crowded because it was actually one of those giant maze-like things that you see at theme parks. You know to keep the line manageable? And of course it wasn't a single file line. It was about six people deep, all the way from Bergners to JCPenney.



I was really ticked off.



Because I like my walk at the mall. I like the relative quiet, even though there are usually about 30 other people walking. I like the music they play over head. I like the time to plan my day, compose blog posts in my head, and just gather my thoughts. I like to come home afterward and feel good about my self for exercising first thing in the day. And I like to window shop while I walk.



So I stayed just long enough to walk the length of the line to see if it did, indeed cover the whole mall. Well, and to see if they happened to be serving free coffee and donuts anywhere, but they weren't. Sure enough, the line did run the entire length of the mall. So I said to myself "I'm not staying and trying to walk in this mess. This is RIDICULOUS!" As I was leaving, I noticed a few people actually sleeping on the benches of the play area. Can we say CLASSY? Did those people stay all night? Had the mall allowed these people to camp out? Did these people really think they had a snowball's chance of being chosen for the show and then actually winning?



Could any of these people actually EXPLAIN this show to me?



If the managers of the mall can use their facility for this, will they be willing to open it up the next time there is a community emergency that displaces its residents, like a tornado, or flooding? Would they have been willing to open it up to the homeless last winter when the temperatures were about 6 below?



So. With my non-walking morning, I can go to the gym and exercise, which would probably entail time on the treadmill and I HATE the treadmill; or I can get on the elliptical machine here at home, or I can run the vacuum and try to convince myself that those magazine articles are right when they say housework burns calories, or I can go clean my craftroom and the bathroom and then finish the laundry, or I can make my grocery list and then head to wal-mart because I need stuff to make my husband's birthday cake, or I can sit in my favorite chair and stare out the window and CONTEMPLATE exercising, or I can get out my college English books and re-learn the evils of the run on sentence.



Actually typing this entry has worn me out so I'm going to start with the 'sitting in my favorite chair' option.