walk it out

Now that vacation is over, it's back to real life.

The car shopping has started, and I am overwhelmed. I am not a car person, and some of this car-speak is a foreign language to me. Todd keeps asking, “What do you think about this car?” or “What about this one?”

I DON’T KNOW!

Then, Monday morning, we had a new front door installed.

It was the wrong color.

Todd went round and round with the higher-ups, explaining that it was not the color the salesperson had represented to us. In the end, it worked out. We’re getting a new door in the correct color at no charge.

But in the meantime, the question, “Are you sure you don’t like this door?” kept coming up.

I DON’T LIKE IT!

After dinner, I was a ball of stress. Todd was cutting the grass, and I needed to get away from the house.

Time for a walk.

A couple of houses down from mine, I could already feel myself relaxing. The rhythm of one foot in front of the other. A four-count breath in time with my steps. I was physically walking away from the stress.

And then I began to notice.

The buzz of the cicadas.

The sounds of children playing on their next-to-last day before the new school year begins.

Cars accelerating as they made their way up the hill on David Road.

The cloud formations.

The occasional breeze.

Summer flowers beginning to lose their vibrancy from the heat and with the approach of autumn.

Car shopping and the color of the door disappeared from my mind.

And when I got home, those big thoughts that had taken over my brain didn’t come rushing back.

That one hour walk around the neighborhood was all the therapy I needed.