Walking in Memph...uhh, Fairfield

(I have a feeling this may get random...be forewarned!)

I wear a copper pendant around my neck that has "Choose Your Life" engraved on it. It was a birthday gift to myself...a little reminder that I've spent most of the past 43 years allowing others to choose, or at least heavily influence, my life for me. Time to step up to the plate, make the choices...and, oh yes, assume the responsibility for those choices.

So, I choose my life. What does that mean? I choose to lose 20 pounds. I choose the hairstyle (and color!) that *I* like. I choose to become a fairy princess. Well...maybe not. ;-) I choose to eat a big bowl of strawberry trifle right before I go to bed and NOT feel guilty about it. (Somehow that doesn't seem to go along with the whole "lose 20 pounds thing, though...oh, well!) On my weight loss chart, I've written "Choose your life; LIVE your choices" at the top as a reminder that the choices are fine, but until I actually step into them and live them out, they're not worth a whole lot. I look at that chart every day...and see the same 3 pounds disappearing, then reappearing as I make choices to eat healthily or not.

It's also a rather grim reminder to me that I committed, when I started the diet thing, to actually start walking as well. That was over a month ago. I wake up every morning and think "I should get up and walk today", but then I roll over and steal another 30 minutes of sleep...and break my commitment yet again. But, tonight I dug through the closet for my walking shoes...and I walked. Only for about 20 minutes, but it was a start. Living a choice. Will I choose to live it tomorrow?

The walk itself was a bit interesting. I haven't had new glasses in over 2 years and I'm feeling it more desperately every day. The lenses are scratched and my vision has changed enough that I'm to the point I almost see better without the glasses than with them--a sad state of affairs! Because of the scarring from my bout with optic neuritis, I also see in 2 different colors(one eye sees pinker--gives "looking at the world through rose-colored glasses" a whole new slant!!) and (hard to explain) almost 2 different "places"--like one of those "fractured" pieces of artwork where two pictures are sliced up and intermingled and kinda wavy...it's a weird sensation. And it's worse at night. So, there I am, walking down dark sidewalks, trying to determine if I'm seeing real "hills and valleys" in the concrete or if it's just my odd way of seeing the world.

And, I was meandering through some territory I hadn't seen from a walker's viewpoint for...over 30 years, I guess--the same street my sister and I used to walk down after school every day. That brought back some grade school memories! Much has changed, much has remained the same--isn't that just like life in general?

When we were young, one of the houses had HUGE evergreens covering every inch of the front, except for a tiny little opening for the narrow sidwalk leading to the front door--the shrubs are gone now and the house is a beautiful little jewel...how sad that it was hidden all those years. Down the block, I stood on the bridge where my first "crush" (through a mediator, of course!) told me that he liked me--and I watched the water sparkle in the dim glow of the streetlight. Life changes. Life stays the same.

It's sometimes good to revisit old "stuff" from a fresh, more mature perspective. It's sometimes good to walk through life, instead of always speeding down the street at a breakneck pace. And, it's sometimes good to stop and smell the flowers and listen to the water gurgling over the rocks and pet the cat that jumps out at you from behind the bridge. I'm glad I chose, at least for one night, to slow down a little.