UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH.............

Have you ever eaten so much soup that you feel like you're sloshing all over the place after you eat it?

Yeah - I was there after dinner tonight.

[SLOSH SLOSH SLOSH walk out to the car SLOSH SLOSH drive here, drive there SLOSH SLOSH SLOSH walk in from the car ETC.]

I had already determined before dinner that I was GOING TO WALK TONIGHT DAMMIT. I actually determined that this morning as I was thinking through my day. And so, with that determination, I headed upstairs to tackle at least a mile and a half on the treadmill. It's not my favorite way to walk, the treadmill, but with air quality alerts out the wazoo and itchy, red eyes, I decided that inside was the way to go.

I grabbed our tablet so I could watch some "West Wing" while I walked (and ran!) and, as I started, I realized that each episode (without commercials) is about 40 minutes long...and that walking anywhere close to a 20-minute mile, I could cover two miles easy-peasy. So, that became my new goal.

What I've discovered about myself is that treadmill walking doesn't feed my soul in the same way that walking outside does. It seems more utilitarian, walking on the machine - like something to plow through as fast as possible.

And then, there was the issue of the continued sloshing.

[SLOSH SLOSH SLOSH walk SLOSH SLOSH walk walk SLOSH run run SLOSH SLOSH walk ETC.]

Eventually, the sloshing feeling passed. I got past the point where I felt like I might fall off the treadmill and onto my face, and I pushed myself to get in just over two miles. I felt rather triumphant, actually.

And then, lying on the floor, stretching, I looked up at the underside of a wooden high chair made by my father, and I saw this:

Those are my initials at the top: KEI. Under that is the logo of the kit he used, then the year: 1974. At the bottom are his initials, his mark that he put on everything from books to LP's to the furniture he made: RCI. And he died three years after he made this chair, so the RCI things in my life are quite precious.

I had forgotten. How often do you look underneath your furniture, anyway? And so, I had forgotten that, of course, my dad signed this, as he signed everything. Of course, he left these marks here for me to find years in the future - I guess almost 40 years ago, now. It made me smile to see these marks again - and all the sloshing around on the treadmill tonight, so that I could end up stretching, so that I could see this again - totally worth it.