Walks of Life

As an outdoorsy Tomboy, I've led a reasonably fit life, but over the past few years (most of my forties) my active way of life has eroded to nearly nothing. So this week I started walking, just 30 minutes a day, mainly because my recent blood work showed I have high cholesterol, the bad kind (LDL, little deadly lipids). But also because it feels good and is more interesting to me than running in place. I also have signs of adrenal fatigue, tired adrenal glades, exhausted by living inside me for too long. Stress tends to wear them out. I get stressed out by many things, crowds, conversations with people, loud noises, mean people, driving without my nav on, fretting about whether my children will grow up healthy and happy, too many e-mails, or just thinking about any of these things, as well as fretting about all the usual modern day stressors like the oil spill in the Gulf, war, economic depression, putting my fate in the hands of politicians in whom I have little to no faith (though I'm still holding out hope for Obama), the health care system, global warming, toxic waste, shifts in the magnetic poles, and on and on.

Anyhow, I'm out of whack and I'm trying to get back in whack, so I've started walking. I'm adjusting my diet (cutting down on Diet Coke, eating more grains, less dessert. . .the usual healthy stuff), but I don't want to write about food. So I'm going to write about walking.

For now, I walk in my neighborhood, because it is right outside my door. I live in a University town near the campus in an older neighborhood, next to a small park, a railroad track, and an irrigation canal. One measure of a neighborhoods urbanity is by counting how many Starbuck's are within walking distance of the front door. Within my 30 minute walk radius, there is only one, so my town is not really a city, though it likes to think of itself as a city. Among the businesses in the area I could walk to are:

• Two Mexican restaurants, three if you count Taco Bell
• a Bike Store
• Three churches
• a Florist
• a state of the art Hydroponic store (for growing a righteous crop of cherry tomatoes, dude)
• a Laundromat
• a same day paycheck cashing facility
• a plasma center
• Canoe and Kayak school
• and the Chamber of Commerce office

So I'm not going to write about my jaunt to buy a chalupa.

Rather, I will note things I see and think about while walking. Despite what may appear from Google Earth as a dull little burg, my neighborhood is full of fascinating walks of life. Take, for instance, the four lizards I saw in my garden this morning. One had a stumped tail that reminded me of the lessons my father used to give me about how to catch a lizard without ending up with nothing put a whip of still flicking lizard tail in your hand. Here are the basics. Sneak up behind them very quietly. Like me, they startle easily, so don't cast a shadow across them. Then pop your cupped hand on top of the entire lizard. Hold it firmly but gently in the little cave made by your scooped hand. Then ever so gently pinch the lizard at its shoulder blades and turn it over. I caught blue-bellied lizards growing up, so when I turned them over it was like I was holding a pinch of the California sky. Then you stroke their bellies with just one finger. This seems to make them sleepy, so they will lay belly up like a drunk on the beach for as long as you need to get a good look at them and they won't scurry off too quick and leave their tail in your hand when you let them go. I usually don't catch them anymore, enjoying to just look at them in the garden. It's enough to watch them sun of the wall or catch the occasional cricket. Two years ago, one that fell in a bucket in the front garden and lived in a terrarium for a year in my son's room. The little baby lizard we found that same year in a puddle in the front yard. Environmentally speaking, it's best not to keep garden lizards and then let them go, but that's what we did. We kept them until they ate big, live, lizard-vitamin-dusted crickets and the crickets kept escaping into the kitchen, chirping away every evening. So we let them return to the garden.