Cold Days

It's brrrrry outside, so cold that my room mate won't let me walk anywhere but drives me. I don't mind, there is a lot of ice on the sidewalk and I don't like the idea of falling. About ten years ago, I fell and fractured my leg so I'm not an enthusiastic walker in winter ice conditions.

On the other hand, in about two weeks, on Groundhog's Day, I'm having my fifty-fifth birthday. I can hardly believe that I'm the same person who lived by the Pacific Ocean and spent my free time turning over rocks to find the baby crabs.

Because of my diet, I'm not going to have a cake or pie but I might buy one single blackberry tart that they sell in the grocery store we shop at. David, my room mate, will buy a big cupcake as he doesn't like fruit. So we will have a celebration, we just have to something other than our birthday Chinese meal.

For years every birthday for both of us we've gotten Chinese food for our birthday meals. I need something different this time, something healthy and weight efficient, so I'm doing a lot of thinking about what to have. I don't know if anybody else has had this problem of needing to find a special diet-friendly celebration supper but I guess it's probably common.

The problem with dieting for people in the city is that their isn't anything to do that's beautiful. There's no walk to the waterfall, something that would interest a person. For me, gyms are boring, so there is virtually nothing to do for exercise.

When I was young and went to Algonquin Park, I found walking half-a-kilometer to a designated toilet and washing my laundry in the lake or just walking up and down to get water to cook, great exercise. Exercise without thinking about it.

I'll just get it done with the food thing and then, after that, I'll be happy to wait for spring and look forward to the melt and all the fun things that come with sunshine.