Walking to China

Now I don't want anybody to get excited or to expect that I was establishing a precedent or anything, but I started cleaning house today.

We removed the puppy fence the day the puppies left and last night Walt took down the "upstairs apartment" (the smaller cage that sat on top of the large cage). All that empty space was an inspiration and I started folding towels so I could clear out the playpen and fold it up.

I tried fitting the playpen into our little closet in the family room, but was having a hard time, so Walt took over, removed most things from the closet and managed to get all the tubs of towels and the folded up playpen all into the closet, which left this wonderful space.

I also removed all the barriers that we had put up to keep puppies from peeing on the treadmill.

When I finally finished this is what happened.

Yes, I actually got up on the treadmill and turned it on. I didn't exactly set any speed records or distance records, but I did put in about 10-15 minutes walking and that certain seems to be a decent start on, as Jeri puts it, "walking to China."

Our friend Suellyn (from the Russia trip) asked if I was getting in shape to climb the Great Wall.

Walking on the treadmill, or outside somewhere, to quote W.S. Gilbert, "revolts me, but I do it." I wish I liked exercise but at the very least I can work on tolerating it to make life easier for me when we go to China. I suspect there will be more walking on this trip than we had in Russia.

Incidentally, I started reading a book called "Listening to Van Gogh," which is a poorly written book, but is a good one to read before this trip because it's about some retired people who take a boat trip down the river in Southern France. It's our Russia trip meets our France trip. I'm finding the activity on the boat remarkably similar and when they start doing side trips into river cities I suspect I will have lots of nice memories of the France portion of our trip two years ago as well (and should bring back enough unpleasant memories that it should keep me on the treadmill as well).

If I can just get past the rotten dialog. This book is a good example of why I don't write fiction...this is the kind of dialog I would probably write!