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Bloggy Blog #37

   For starters, I am somewhat impressed you are all here at six in the early evening when it is still eighty-six degrees outside and sunny. I'm pretty sure the humidity is around 648% as well.That's some damn dedication. 

As for me, I am here because I am fat. I mean, I probably am, according to WebMD, my mom, and Judgey McJudgerson over there. Whatever. I JUST LOVE PIZZA SO MUCH. And booze, really, but that's totally more of a coping mechanism. Anyway, I am only here because I need some cardio in my life. Lower that blood pressure or something, I guess. Maybe tack on an extra day or two of my life toward the end. I just feel compelled to do it at the hottest time of the day. I tried this too when I was living in Louisiana. Ninety-four degree afternoons with a gazillion-percent humidity and I'd be out there trying to burn calories on the track. Some good that did.

So, I am here, and you are here. I am here to walk around your fields. Four of them to be precise, each of them made with some fun cushy green artificial turf.The perimeter around these fields equals roughly one mile, according to my trusty and probably mocking phone walking app. It is with this tool I make laps around these fields a couple times a week. If I'm feeling devoted, I'll pump in four to five miles a day. If I am lazy, I will do two.

The turf is nice and gentle on my old bones. It is also flat, which I cannot say about the perimeter around the fields. On the front side of the fields is a sidewalk, but on the back side, there sits nothing but a rocky, uneven dirt path. That's not fun to walk on at all, much less try to run. Maybe one of these days the town will be wise enough to make it a walkway of sorts, but for now it is what it is, and that is a path that wrecks havoc on my feet and ankles. So I try to walk along the edges of the fields and its soft cushy turf, but only if there are not any games happening on the field.



Herein lies the problem, dear footballers, soccererers, whatever. Every single time I try to take a walk, you are always here, always playing games. It is almost like you have synced up your watches and schedules to arrive just shortly before I do, kicking your balls around.Kicking and running and yelling and kicking some more might be your thing, but it's sure not mine. I'm just here to get a workout in, really. And at least I'm doing it right. You, on the other hand, are often not.

Listen - why are there soccer balls flying at my face? I am walking way behind your gigantic goals you seem to be booting at, and missing by a goddamn long shot. So you missed, fine. But I am a good twenty yards away from your field and these balls keep crossing my path, or just missing behind me, or just flying over my head another ten feet. Where the hell are you kicking these balls to, the moon?

I am tired of having to do a quick heads up look around whenever I hear a loud boot of the ball, knowing it's inevitably on a path right to my face. Are you doing it for attention? Are you bad at soccer? Maybe kicking balls isn't the sport for you. Maybe you should be walking instead. We can be walking buddies. I'll use you as a shield from getting walloped the next time a ball comes whizzing in my direction.

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