Not All Who Wander Can Have a Nice Trip

I enjoy a good pun. I've even used the phrase, have a nice trip, I'll see you next fall a few too many times. You know what. I had a nice trip. Yes, bound and determined to walk when opportunity presents itself Z, Daytona the dog, and I headed out on Thursday evening. I was tired, distracted, and thinking about other things. Apparently I wasn't thinking about the act of walking.

I trip less than a block from home. I kind of tripped over the dog, over the road, over my own feet. I was holding the dog's leash, she kept going. I knew I was falling but couldn't stop it. We were on the road. SLAM!! That's the sound of my old knee and hands and head hitting the pavement. My hands braced the fall, so I didn't bang my head hard. But my knee...Do you realize how much you need your knees?

I've always had crappy knees. I can't sit on my knees ever, not for years. It's like needles shooting in my kneecaps. Dont' know why, they operate fine. As I hobbled home I knew I banged up something in my right knee. It hurt like crazy, it still hurts. It's swollen still.

I iced it, took ibuprofen, got some TLC from Z and Tigger and propped it up. I'm still hobbling along, but I don't think I injured anything permanently. I had a bout of adrenaline this morning from another issue and the pain stopped for a while.

Now I'm back in bed, with The Son of Neptune beside me, Hush! it's a book. It's Rick Riordan's new book. At least I won't be distracted this weekend.

I'm sure I'll be fine, but it's just a pain (punny!) that this happened right when Z and I were making the commitment to walk. We'll head out again next week. This time he's in charge of holding the leash.

R.I.P. Steve Jobs

Found this shared on Google + today. I'm going to play this for Z today. A reminder to live YOUR life.

Is this a weak day?

It's Wednesday right? It's already been a long week. I'm tired (insert whiny voice here). Z is tired, although I've heard that from his mouth 8.7 x 10^25 times this year already.

 We're having a long week, school is running longer. I'm an introvert and need time alone to recharge my batteries. My time alone this week has consisted of crawling to the nearest flat padded surface after school. Generally that's the bed. I close the door with a faint cry of, "Leave me alone", or a "Don't you dare wake me up." I lock out the dog, the cat, the child, the spouse and try to slip into some rest for at least an hour. Funny thing, my thoughts follow me in there and it takes about twenty minutes to sort them out. Then I fall into oblivion for a few moments and get up to voices wondering what is for dinner.

My introverted muse is curled in the corner crying, "I don't know and I don't care." My teacherly self is excited because I can check off a few more boxes. The spousal part of me is off adrift in the sea of apathy this week. "You want food? There's the kitchen, pour me a bowl of cereal while you're at it." That's what I feel like saying. Instead my family has resolved to enjoy my cooking abilities. *snicker* Tigger complimented the meal last night, soup and cornbread. I told him my cooking was just fine when he lowered his expectations. I wasn't kidding, I just don't like being a cook.

Z and I have walked a few times this week as well. Now that it's getting dark sooner, we have to head out right after dinner. We've been taking the dog, who is quite excited and begged to go the other day. So Monday night I vegged out in front of the TV. I rarely do that all evening. I watched Terra Nova, House, and Castle. The combination of those shows mixed into the weirdness of my brain, and I had some really funky dreams Monday night.

But we're back at it today. School will happen, I will check off boxes. I will be astounded by my son's ability to grasp formal logic. He makes the connections as easy as he breathes in air. Part of me is not surprised, logic is a pattern, he's always understood patterns. I will crawl to bed this afternoon, I will eat or cook some dinner (I might be able to bribe someone else to do it today), and we will probably walk tonight. It's fall, the trees are pretty.

Not All Who Wander are Lost

Tolkien said it, I'm adding to it. Not all who wander are lost, some are still intrigued by the wonders. Some are intrigued enough to wander with sore feet, sore back, and no fortune to support them along the way.

This is the notion that Z and I started this week, to wander around the world. I was inspired by Jennifer of A Message for Eberle, who was inspired by Eberle herself.  Now Z and I aren't headed toward the Misty Mountains for real, we're walking around the virtual world.

I understand this is not as exciting as my actual goal of traveling the world, but it excites me still. I have wanderlust stitched into my DNA. Tigger has it too, so it's no wonder Z has twinges himself. But like Dorothy  of Oz we enjoy our homelife too. We also are experiencing our own economic tightening. We can afford the world wide web, not just the travel around the actual world.

Intrigued by Jennifer's google map, I made our own. We will start in our little part of the United States and trek a path 31,783 miles around the globe (as the crow flies). Z and I spent a good deal of time in Asian history last year, so our journey is different. We'll be headed to Hawaii and then down to New Zealand. We'll tour to Australia, India, Greece, Egypt, Russia, Denmark, Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, then back to Continent via Nova Scotia. Along the way we'll read stories of the area, watch movies of the area.(guess what we're going to watch when we hit New Zealand?), discuss tourism, maybe pull out a National Geographic or two.

I'll be honest this has given me a boost I so very much needed. Not only to exercise, but to remind my son that the world is bigger than we can possibly imagine. How are we tracking mileage? Since I want to keep a time frame on this we are counting 30 minutes of  actual walking as 75 miles off our journey. At this rate we will most likely take 18-24 months to finish our journey. We may change course, we may linger in one place, I don't know, and that is half the fun.

We're keeping a log book. I've written down all the points I want to hit, the distance between destinations, and a log of our walking. I'm pretty sure there are some academic skills being taught in there as well. The first travel book came in the mail this week. I did pick a few locations where we've actually traveled, at least Tigger and I. That way I can pull out pictures, which reminds me we need a poster board.

Z was just as excited as I was. Our dog, Daytona Grace, was excited too. She is walking with us, although she is more interested in the smells of our neighborhood than the aspect of traveling the world. We are teaching her to sit at each road crossing and look both ways. She's a smart dog and learned that in two days. She's almost seven, and still gets excited as ever just to see people walking by.

I don't know if Eberle knew what she was starting with her own journey. I don't know if Jennifer knows how inspiring she is (she's also responsible for me really thinking about what I own from her Halving it All project). I do know that today after dinner I told Z we were going for a walk, the dog had been bugging me for an hour to go. Z didn't balk. We hooked up the dog and headed out. It was nice, it was calming, it was peaceful. We've had a rough year in many ways. I wasn't sure I'd find that calm again. Maybe we simply needed a destination, even if it a virtual one.