the tyranny of ten thousand steps

You are supposed to walk ten thousand steps per day. I have this on the authority of my Food Stamp Nutrition Education Program director, so I feel that it must be so. It's a lot of steps! I have to cover over five miles per day to do it, it's more than I can do on my lunch hour at work. Today I walked up the path along the stream near campus to get to whimmydiddle's house to pick up a couple of books. (And sign a card--btw, here's a picture of pirate Koralleen you can cut out and paste into the group photo I missed.) On the way back, I followed the path on the other side of Rte 1, which is just as nice and goes by more houses.

I passed a few women playing with kids and it reminded me how much I am looking forward to being a hausfrau in the near future. One woman was just hanging out of a screen door, threatening a toddler on the porch, "You have 'til the count of three before I go get the (It sounded like 'cotswold', but could that be right? Was the kid afraid of oolitic limestone or thatched rooves or what?). One ... Two ..." Anyway, it was a nice walk but it still wasn't even 6500 steps.