Angry Hiking

 So my guys tossed me out of the house. Maybe not so much a toss as a freeze.  In any case, the three of them cooked together and left me to my own devices. Elder and younger worked on one dish, elder soloed on another, and dad made another two, all for transport later to the feast.

In the meantime, out I went, pretty sure where I needed to go to shed some of my pent up....let's just call them BIG FEELINGS and leave it at that. I found myself at the head of Forbidden Drive and decided that was too peoply, so taking my walking sticks, I went the long way around the stables to a much quieter part of the trail.

AND...laid out everything in my head sotto voce while jabbing the terrain furiously with my walking stick as I went. It occurred to me that now I thoroughly understood every past-middle-age woman I've ever seen doing exactly the same thing out in the woods,  and really, it wasn't all that different from my hegiras into the woods post-dx with elder back in the day (minus the walking sticks--I didn't see the point of those at the time since it felt then that I was part mountain goat. But anyway.)

Then it got peoply. AND some of those people had dogs that were supposed to be on leads and weren't. Or, they didn't take up enough slack in their leads. Didn't matter. Just kept thrusting forward, jabbing the ground furiously as I went. An older man wearing shirt sleeves and a tie came out from behind a tree singing. It was such a totally random sight I nearly laughed out loud. 

I heard someone else talk about calories consumed and burned, and why does everyone make such a fuss over one day?

I heard someone else talk about horseback riding in Sonoma.

Conversations in other languages dopplered forward and back as I went along, furiously stabbing the ground as I went. (I was stabby.  This much is obvious.)

I was back at the car in just under 51 minutes, having hiked three miles.  And my head was more or less back on straight. I got home in time just to run back out to the store because my intrepid cooks were short on an ingredient. And so it went.

We enjoyed the evening with family, everyone happy to be there, making plans, remembering people, toasting all the things.  And we left with more food than we came with. 

It was a blast.

I think I need to do more hiking. Just a little less angry.