I Like to Walk*

As happens with many people who have babies, I have taken up walking. My town is a very sidewalk friendly town, so I can walk without worrying too much about getting run over. I love walking because it makes me sweaty, and if I feel sweaty, I feel like I'm accomplishing something and losing weight, even if I've managed to get sweaty just by sitting in the house with the AC off. I have a loop that I do. It's about 4 miles, and it basically hugs the local university (from now on referred to as LU), and in the end cuts through LU. I think I can do it in about an hour, maybe a little more, and I always manage to pass by interesting places and people. I say "always" as though I've done this more than four times.
The first time I did this walk, it was great. I drove around for 40 minutes trying to find a place to park and getting lost in a town where I've either visited regularly or lived for almost four years. Once I parked, I turned back a couple times, worried that Baby would wake up and want to eat. He didn't. He slept for about half of our walk, then he woke up and looked around and cooed. About 2 1/2 miles into the walk, the endorphins kicked in. I love the point during exercise when endorphins kick in. I temporarily lose all of my insecurities and think happy thoughts like: I don't care that Husband had a serious relationship before he met me. I'm totally secure in that. It's great that Baby hates to sleep and wants to eat every 90 minutes. I'm not a failure for moving back to Virginia. So what if I never become a skinny girl? It's okay that I don't really have many friends nearby. I'm okay with how socially inept and freakishly shy I am. I'm not going to eat a Dairy Queen cheeseburger and Blizzard after this. I'm going to go home and make a salad. It's okay that Baby's throwing a fit right now; I can't do anything about it. It's okay that I've lost so many friendships over the years. Moving on is just part of life. Maybe I will want to have another baby someday. Maybe I want to have another baby soon, like in a year. Maybe Irish twins wouldn't be so bad. I love the endorphins. They usually stay with me for several hours, which ends up being good for Husband and anyone else I might come into contact with.
On that first walk, after the endorphins kicked in, I picked up my pace. I got to the end of my loop, but I wasn't back at the car yet, and I realized I was hungry. Completely famished. I'd had an english muffin and some snack cheese earlier in the day, but at 2 p.m. it clearly wasn't enough. The loop ends in a part of town that has lots of restaurants and shops, and I managed to talk myself into taking a slight detour to Qdoba. I passed a homeless man on the way to Qdoba, and really thought it was a sign from God that I shouldn't spend $11 on lunch when there are so many people in the world without Qdoba for lunch, and there are so many frozen pizzas in my freezer waiting to be eaten. My liberal guilt wasn't strong enough to deter me from going to Qdoba in the end, though, but it was strong enough to prompt me to give the guy a dollar, which I usually don't do.
Since that first day, I've done my walk a few more times. Once, I convinced myself that since I'd taken Baby out in the heat of the day I'd managed to get him overheated to the point that he got a fever which would then infect his brain, thus rendering him retarded. I took frequent breaks during the journey to check on him, and when I got back to my car I sped home. I explained to Husband my concerns and told him we needed to get Baby cooled down immediately. Husband wasn't as concerned and enjoyed a few minutes playing with a happy Baby, and relieved my concerns by saying, "Well, sweetie, if he's retarded, he was retarded before cause he's not doing anything different."
Yesterday I managed to convince Husband to go on my walk with me. He kept deviating from the standard path, even though I told him how we needed to stick to the regular loop. We meandered through LU, stopping once for me to feed Baby, and 2 1/2 hours later ended up back at the car and on our way to Dairy Queen.
Today, I was inspired by having lived through yesterday's deviation from the routine (routine is very important to me), so I changed it up a bit. I parked in a different spot, only .2 miles from the start of the loop, rather than .5, and did the loop backwards. Downhills became brutal uphills, but I feel so proud of myself. Clearly, the endorphins are still hanging out. I did 3.3 miles in an hour and four minutes. I even ran for a minute of this walk. My co-worker is right; running while breastfeeding a baby is going to suck.
And I don't have any observations or insights from my walk today, but there's always tomorrow's journey.
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