Counting Steps

randy@letters-to-rachel.memorial

June 11

Dearest Rachel -

You know, it's hard for me to get a sense of proportion sometimes, especially when it comes to distances. I try my best to relate the length of the walk between our house and the fitness center to that of, say, the Serenade of the Seas, but I just can't seem to determine if they're at all comparable, and which one is longer. The route here at home feels longer, but it would often seem that the route from my cabin to the gym, and then across to the Windjammer for breakfast and then back to my cabin would add up to nearly a thousand steps (not counting those taken on the exercise equipment, since, if I was taking that route first thing in the morning, I was simply going up there to weigh myself).

By comparison, it takes something like seven hundred fifty steps to walk from the fitness center back home (assuming I'm cutting through the office park at the end of the block, which I usually am). Which I guess means that the trip here at home is longer (and chillier, come to that, especially since it's still dark out as I make this trek – none of which is particularly germane to the topic at hand, but I feel it nonetheless), since the round trip is effectively fifteen hundred as opposed to a mere thousand steps or so.

And yet, somehow, I could almost always manage to get in a full ten thousand steps aboard the ship – and even potentially double it (or more!) when in port – but I struggle to get anywhere close to that here at home, even when I put in a couple of miles worth of walking on the treadmill. Why was it so easy there, and so difficult now? It's not like there weren't days that I basically spent in my cabin; how is it that those few trips to the Windjammer or the dining room made such a difference?

It all comes back to my inability to judge distances, and how much I'm doing for how long.

I think I mentioned to you yesterday about how I was planning on convincing Daniel to come shopping with me once I was finished with my standard 'work' day. While he spent more time in the bathtub than I'd expected (although I really should know better), once he was done, he texted me to let me know I could head home, and we headed out to use the supermarket coupons we'd accumulated that were expiring this month. To be sure, they would still be good for another week or so, but I'd been building up a list of things to get. Some were things we were running low on, while others were things I wanted to try now that I was home (although how and when I'll be able to cook for him, when much of what we brought home would be enough for ourselves twice over, is subject to some doubt). But it's more organized than I usually am when it comes to going shopping, so that has to count for something, right?

Anyway, we went back and forth through the aisles, including crossing the entirety of the store for one item on the list that wasn't food-related, before finishing up our trip in the refrigerated and frozen sections (as you don't want to be carting items from either of those areas any longer than absolutely necessary, lest they melt or otherwise react badly to extended time out of their recommended temperature range) and finally checking out. I had to ask Daniel to run back to the frozen section once we were there – for some reason, the bag of vegetables I'd picked out had a hole in it that I'd not noticed at the time, but once at the scanner, it was hard to miss the fact that individual peas and corn kernels were falling out of it – but apart from that, it didn't seem particularly out of the ordinary.

However, once we were out in the parking lot, got everything loaded up into the car, and Daniel went to return the cart to a corral in the next lane over, I decided to check my phone app that keeps track of my steps taken throughout the day. Often, it will first display the previously checked number before updating itself, rather than counting every step as I take it – I don't know why. That's what happened this time, as I read '7,400' (approximately; I didn't have the time to observe the actual number before it refreshed) first, before it transformed into '11,100' steps (also approximate, as it didn't occur to me to take notes).

Essentially, if I understood it correctly, despite having put in over two and a half miles on the treadmill yesterday, what really put my numbers over the top was the visit to the supermarket, which added more than half again the number of steps I'd walked throughout the rest of the day. Could it be that a visit to the supermarket actually amounts to well over a mile's walk? I mean, the place is big, yeah, but it never crossed my mind that it was that big. Imagine the exercise one would get coming here on a more regular basis, like if one was shopping for one's family.

I'm sorry if I ever took this part of your role as homemaker lightly, honey. But at least you got yourself some exercise this way, even if may have never crossed your mind that it was the case. Likewise, I know that Daniel's gotten some exercise from coming along with me, too.

Granted, we then managed to waste all that effort by stopping at Arby's (it was something I'd thrown in as an incentive to get Daniel to come along). After having brought home dinner from there, I was dismayed to wake up this morning having gained four pounds from yesterday morning. Even a longer workout on the treadmill didn't mitigate the difference by more than half a pound. Guess I have to wait for whatever I overdid it by to work its way out of my system – assuming I don't add something else to it first.

Anyway, that was my day yesterday, honey. I'm going to have to go a little lighter today, and see what happens, but for now, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I'm going to need it.