Mall Walking

This morning I met my friend Jessica at our local mall. I have some how talked her into training with me for the race and we decided to walk together every Wedensday, and do a long run every Saturday. Well, since it is freezing here and neither of us have a gym membership, we consented to walk the mall. Have you ever done it? We have now done it twice. The first time we were a little late getting there, so we ended up dodging nicely dressed people out doing their shopping. We only got a couple of wierd stares and a few rude gestures by the time we were done. Today we got there a little earlier and oh my heck! It was like a mob in there. There were so many people there to exercise. Little old men who like to look at and talk to the kids everytime we pass, old ladies who totally are into their workout and don't even glance at the kids, packs of heavier women, sometimes 4 abreast that are "exercising" but are walking slower then a crawl and gabbing louder than the kids (when we come up behind them, we have to take a short cut around and through the "stalls" in the middle of the mall because they don't move for nobody!), suprisingly we were not the only young ones walking this morning. I saw at least 3 other youngish looking moms toting strollers and grumpy kids-however, WE were the best looking moms there...It was so crowded that like on a track at the gym, they were going one way only-you felt very stupid if you went against the flow. As we were walking and of course passing everyone, little Abby proceeded to take off both socks and toss them over board along with her jacket, Taylor kept repeating "cuck, cuck, cuck..."(which is truck) louder and louder until I would answer him, and Jack made many conspicous slaps and pinches to Abby which would start her crying. After about 10 min, we decided to pull over to the cookie store and Jessica bought a dozen chocolate chip cookies for the kids to munch on. And of course we were parched and had to get ourselves a diet coke. After about a 1/2 hour or so of walking, we decided to go into Old Navy. Each of us bought something and were thinking of stopping in Buckle and Children's Place but decided against it because Jack wanted to go home and play "Mario" and Taylor and Abby were fussy. So, having spent money, gotten our diet cokes, and exercised all before 10:30am, we walked to our cars and decided to meet there again next week!