| ---> This also all makes perfect sense on the inside. |  |
Today, I became aware of the fact that I was walking across town pushing a jog stroller. Not in the "hey, whoa, who am I, recovering amnesiac sense - I mean, I wasn't surprised to see my hand on the stroller's handle. No, more in the coming out of the imaginary world of a book to stare blinking at the real world around you sense.
Which, speaking of sense, made a lot of sense as a feeling, since I, just a moment before, in actuality, had indeed been reading a book while pushing the baby stroller. I'm sure some of you have done that, right? Hey, why not enjoy a chapter or two while hiking the 8.7 miles necessary to get the baby asleep.
Except there wasn't a baby in the stroller I was pushing down the well-traveled sidewalk. Not because, lost in a book, I'd left one sitting in the middle of an apple display at the grocery store, or on a ferris wheel, but because my colossal galoots formerly known as babies no longer fit in the stroller and I've commandeered it. I've taken to packing it with the stuff I need to write (a redwood tree's worth of index cards, a Staples' factory worth of notebooks, whatever seventeen reference books make the most sense that day, two pounds of cheese) and pushing it across town to the cottage where I ply my er...um...well, where I make my wild guesses about what word should follow another.
Now all this simultaneously pushing the baby-less stroller and reading the book would not be much to become aware of had I only been wearing shoes. I don't want to bore you with all the tedious details about why I've taken to kicking my shoes off whenever possible, but suffice it to say, I'm just as likely to walk out of the door barefoot as shod.
And did I mention the river-raft of a straw hat? It's a necessity when one is technically 57% Irish (don't ask), but one's skin somehow manages to be 100% People of the Bog. Come to think of it, the reason i may have suddenly become aware of myself, walking happily along, reading the book, pushing the non-baby-laden stroller, under my personal cabana, might have had everything to do with the fact that I had begun to mumble a bit of invented dialogue for the next book that had sprung up in my head.
Today I became aware of the fact that I might be scaring people.
"Wait...come back! No need to cross over to the other side of the street. Really! I'm harmless! It's just a bad ankles and practical logic thing! Plus I write a little....."
Which, speaking of sense, made a lot of sense as a feeling, since I, just a moment before, in actuality, had indeed been reading a book while pushing the baby stroller. I'm sure some of you have done that, right? Hey, why not enjoy a chapter or two while hiking the 8.7 miles necessary to get the baby asleep.
Except there wasn't a baby in the stroller I was pushing down the well-traveled sidewalk. Not because, lost in a book, I'd left one sitting in the middle of an apple display at the grocery store, or on a ferris wheel, but because my colossal galoots formerly known as babies no longer fit in the stroller and I've commandeered it. I've taken to packing it with the stuff I need to write (a redwood tree's worth of index cards, a Staples' factory worth of notebooks, whatever seventeen reference books make the most sense that day, two pounds of cheese) and pushing it across town to the cottage where I ply my er...um...well, where I make my wild guesses about what word should follow another.
Now all this simultaneously pushing the baby-less stroller and reading the book would not be much to become aware of had I only been wearing shoes. I don't want to bore you with all the tedious details about why I've taken to kicking my shoes off whenever possible, but suffice it to say, I'm just as likely to walk out of the door barefoot as shod.
And did I mention the river-raft of a straw hat? It's a necessity when one is technically 57% Irish (don't ask), but one's skin somehow manages to be 100% People of the Bog. Come to think of it, the reason i may have suddenly become aware of myself, walking happily along, reading the book, pushing the non-baby-laden stroller, under my personal cabana, might have had everything to do with the fact that I had begun to mumble a bit of invented dialogue for the next book that had sprung up in my head.
Today I became aware of the fact that I might be scaring people.
"Wait...come back! No need to cross over to the other side of the street. Really! I'm harmless! It's just a bad ankles and practical logic thing! Plus I write a little....."