My Ass is Killing Me

There is a pretty little lake a couple of miles from where I work, and I often walk around it over my lunch hour. It’s ringed by lots of cottonwood, oak, and maple trees, which are now in full fall color, and there is a charming little waterfall at one end of the lake. I almost always see several woolly caterpillars creeping along the path, ducks and geese bobbing near the shoreline, and today there was even some kind of a white heron or crane or something. Whatever it was, it was darn pretty.

A sign on the walking path says it’s two miles around this little lake, and it usually takes me about thirty minutes to walk the whole thing.

Most days.

Today I got back to my car, all energized and grateful for a sunny day, for brilliantly colored trees, for the crisp smell of autumn and the simple pleasure of crunching through fallen leaves. My good cheer quickly faded, however, as I realized that somewhere along the way I had dropped my car key.

It was not in the parking lot or anywhere near the car.

So, my choices were to a) give up and walk the two miles back to work, and then figure out a way to get the spare set of car keys from home, or b) walk around the lake again and hope I would find the lost key.

Pride has led to many a downfall, it’s true. Hoping in vain to avoid involving anyone else in my predicament, I walked all the damn way around that damn lake a second time.

Of course, I did not find the key.

So then I hoofed my sorry ass, which was good and draggin' by this point, another couple of miles back to work, making my nice little two-mile lunch hour walk into something more like six miles and two hours.

My Ho was kind enough not to laugh when I called him. He will be bringing my spare keys later.

I am SO not doing Pilates tonight.