Slippers

The cold lingers in Houston, waiting just one more day to remember it is really "springtime" here, and that flowers are blooming.  I was delighted to see the poppies jump out of the pansy beds, waving their cheery heads a foot above the other flowers. 

Today the temperatures go up though, and my self imposed exile to the house will end.  I will miss my dog slippers though...

Instead, they will pull me along the sidewalk as though they are magnificent white horses and I am a recalcitrant carriage. When my joints warm up, I try to walk with rhythm, silently counting out sets of eight like we used to do in aerobics classes, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8; 2,2,3,4,5,6,7,8; 1,2,3,4; 2,2,3,4; 1,2; 2,2; 1,2,3,4 and then start over. Funny how rhythms like that get stuck in my head. Or a song I've spent time sweating to...even twenty years ago, comes on the radio and suddenly my muscles want to step into a grapevine or Charleston or Step up and down and Cross... a history of life based on the exercise dances in the gym.  

Those classes were great places to meet and bond with other women.  The high intensity gave way to low intensity, then to things like Pilates and yoga.  Now I'm much more likely to spend an hour on an elliptical reading Kindle than I am dropping into a Zumba class, but there are times when I choose a machine close enough to the gym door to hear the music.   More often though, I am the Carriage of the Dogs.  But only if it is at least fifty degrees.

I'm editing chapter one of Invisible yet again, pursuant to some great advice I got from two of my adult children.  I knew it was missing something, and they were able to spot the deficiency.  Now if I can just struggle through today, I might be ready to send this one out.  There is a manuscript contest in Texas I'm thinking of entering.  

That reminds me of the contest I won when the Houston Writer's League hosted conferences.  It was a short story, and I edited it to death after it won.  I never sent it anywhere to be published because I wasn't confident that the edits improved it.  I am thinking of posting it here, but it would break my heart to post it online and have no one read it.  The insecurities, the insecurities!