Life of Wry

Walks figure prominently in my life these days.  They’re a good thing.  I mean, really, time for daily (mostly) long walks?   When I’m alone, it’s thinking time.  When I’m with a friend, it’s talk time.  And always it’s exercise–exercise that supports a pretty lusty eating habit.  (She’s a good eater.)

Definitely a good thing.

On those alone days, I take a lot of pictures.. now that I have this here Blackberry. I record ideas and notes-to-self (before on a recorder, now on my BB). I sometimes text. Sometimes, I even use my cell phone to make calls (zounds). When I’m not digitally multi-tasking, I’m just thinking. I work out a lot-o-shit. I get distance on the daily minutia. Walks are just a big hunk of time to do stuff I don’t have time for in my non-walk life.

I do cherish the alone walk days.

I also love the friend days.  I have friends who are way smarter than me and so damn thoughtful, whose experiences and perspectives truly enrich me.  No other way to say it.  It’s like being at a TED talk.  Or a TED walk.  (Until I figure out how to linkify a word: ted.com).

Today’s walk was with Lorilyn and Aqua the lab, who had the same long, thick stick in her mouth for most of the morning (gotta love them).  We talked about the holidays, our boys (both 7th graders teeming in hormones and self-absorption), the passage from one decade to the next, other people’s marriages, her upcoming trip to Vietnam, our thoughts about a trip to Africa.  Stuff like that.

The Putah Creek loop takes about an hour, usually followed by another 30 or 40 minutes drinking coffee somewhere; today: downtown Peet’s.  Davis cafes at mid-morning are typically filled with workers on break, yoga moms, retirees.. and people like us–former professionals, not currently in day jobs, doing a lot of non-paid work for the schools or nonprofits.  Or whoever.  And, depending on which cafe we end up in, there might be students.  With laptops.

It’s a scene–the daytime cafe scene.

Forever, it seemed, I looked at this scene from the other side–the working stiff side–and totally envied it.  To be that person, sitting with that other person, bent intently over mugs of frothy coffee, thoughtfully listening, talking eruditely, laughing, or gesticulating classily.

Or really, I just envied having the time. Downtime, leisure time. Time to walk, talk, think, read, write, process, plan, and the time to carry out those plans.

If I’d have given it any real thought (which I NEVER HAD TIME TO DO), I don’t think I’d have expected to be having this kind of time in my 50s, but I guess I do.  And I really do enjoy the walks, especially the walk by Putah Creek, and today its wintry beauty.

In this case, at least for now, the grass is as green as it looked from the other side.