ALWAYS PEE BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE HOUSE. I reminded myself of this important bit of personal necessity before departing on my morning walk. It was 5 AM and the temperature had dipped into the high thirties, but I was layered up good. The route I chose was uphill almost immediately and the condensation from my breath settled into my beard as if I’d walked into a wet spray. Then, turning left as I exited the subdivision, I committed to a three-mile trek. A few cars were out, but traffic was light that early in the morning. My mind-over-matter approach took control to keep me from focusing on distractions like my stomach growling, my knee wincing, or the demurs of my lower back. My head settled into an evolving olio of miscellanea that kept up a steady flow well beyond my halfway point. It was like Annie Dillard wrote of “the mind’s muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash.” Everything from song tunes to soup recipes, old friends to new fantasies, memories to mishigas, it kept coming, and then eventually I took another left and was on the final stretch. As I re-entered my subdivision, I felt safe beginning to consider the bowl of cream of wheat that I envisioned, complete with fresh blueberries. Accompanied, naturally, by a steaming mug of Columbian Supremo.
I am truly jealous of the fact that you walk each day no matter the weather or the aches - ;I have a hubby that does the same. I attribute his determination and dedication to football training in his youthful years - with one heck-of-coach ! ;I generally do not partake in any medications but if a tablespoon of determination were available I WOULD DEFINITELY take one or two !
As a side note, your daily posts do help my vocabulary i.e. my word to lookup in ;today's post was: " mishigas". jb
In meditation, they call that "chatter" and you want to quiet it but it comes in handy during your walks - as does that delicious breakfast reward!
JB - I've looked up words all my life, often writing them down on an ever-growing list. I'd never remember them otherwise.
I too make lists - the problem now is memory related - I now find in these "wonder years" - I wonder where I put that dang list. There is one redeeming factor I find in my senior years that is, more and more I am replacing "Oh my God " with "Oh well"
jb
Is mishigas the same as meshugas, because I love a schtickle of yiddish, and I enjoyed today's schmegegge!
I find this word and its cousins spelled and pronounced differently all the time. To me (I can't say I'm right), a meshuga is a nut case person, and mishigas (or meshigas, I've even seen it mishigaas) is crazy stuff. My bilingual ability stops at English and legal mumbo jumbo, so I'm no more familiar with Yiddish derivation than anyone else, although I know a schmuck and a schlump when I see one.
