summer abstracts

summer abstracts

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Are we walking....

to the grocery store (ahem, I mean supermarkets), to the playground, to the library, to playdates, to wherever.

It is very convenient that I live within walking distance to two- count them TWO- well stocked malls. King Kullen, Super Stop-n-Shop, Home Goods, Children's Place, a USPS within an Ace Hardware, excellent pizzerias, etc...
so we could and do walk to all of the aforementioned places in 10-20 mins (maybe 30 mins to the library and the shady playground with sprinklers)...it's just that everything is so much more spread out and feels much farther. Fair enough, this is why most folks move to the burbs - for the extra space, right?

Fortunate to live right by a picturesque bay so walking to points along Main St is actually pleasant and doubles as a nature class.
M gets a kick out of running onto the town dock, checking out the boats, geese, goslings, swans, and determining if it's high mid or low tide.

The downside is that the sidewalks are really quite narrow and traffic is zooming by about a foot away from us.  It's a bit too close for my comfort level. If there are any other pedestrians or bikers on the sidewalk at the same time, then someone has to yield by stepping aside.
When M wants to bike to wherever we are going, then I become a nagging nelly. He's on his bike with training wheels, pedaling along at a quick clip and I am constantly reminding him he must go 15mph since he's on the sidewalk and can't go 30mph (he thinks he can just because he reads the speed limit signs).
He's still going along at his speedy speed and I realize that he can't hear me! He's got on his helmet and all of my words are actually being drowned out by the whizzing traffic.
As it turns out, we can't hear each other even when he is walking with me or is being pushed in his stroller.
I just hear him yelling "Right mama?", "Okay mama?"...I don't answer affirmatively since I am not sure what I might be okaying.

I am proud to say that we've hoofed it during the fall, winter, spring, all of June, and some of July.
However, I put dibs on the car during this heatwave.





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