These Boots were made for Walking

Before moving to Kiev my total amount of walking had been 3 minutes on the treadmill at gym, walking from the car to my house and from the car park to the shops at the shopping mall.  All those hours spent browsing shops at the shopping mall did not prepare me for my new life of walking to work.  At first the morning walk was hard, there is an incline, lots of steps, uneven path, it played hell on my calves.  The first few times the walk took me 40 minutes.  I hated it.  Especially in the rain when cars deliberately aimed for large puddles so they can send a spray of dirty water your way.  But I persevered and am pleased to say I actually enjoy my brisk walk in the chilly mornings.  Being part of a workforce all walking to work gives me a sense of belonging.  It now takes me 20 minutes to walk to work instead of the initial 40.  Looking at the jelly flesh covering my legs, there seems to be a little less of it which is probably a good thing.  So walking might be good for me after all.  I might even end up with long slim well-muscled shapely legs like the Ukrainian women have, but I won't hold my breath.  Those legs take years.
I bought two pairs of ankle boots before I left Cape Town, thinking that made me ultra-prepared for Kiev.  However, boots for mall-walking and boots for road-walking are not the same thing as I am discovering.  And boots for snow walking is something else entirely.  I don't want to give up my morning walk so I guess that means some serious boots made for walking shopping is on the cards.
Admission of guilt:  After the first night walking home, I decided my reward for a hard day's work each day is to take a taxi home.
Last Saturday I met a friend who took me to explore the city centre of Kiev.  I experienced the underground rail system for the first time.  Terrifying.  People who all moved purposefully knowing where they were going, crowds of them, all hemming you in and suffocating you.  And then there were the escalators, so long, steep, a vertical drop to the centre of the Earth, moving far faster than any escalator I'd ever experienced, and the holding on part didn't move at the same speed as the steps part.  Scary.  As someone who is not good with heights and escalators in general, this was a time to dig deep and face my fears.  My friend was supportive, standing in front of me so I couldn't see the drop, letting me babble on incoherently so that I could distract myself.  Somehow, I don't think I am ever going to be able to travel on the metro underground by myself.
We walked and walked searching for The Chocolate House which did not sell chocolate as we discovered, but held an interesting abstract art exhibition and was the venue for a couple of weddings we gatecrashed.  The rain came down in buckets and we were drenched, droplets of rain dripping down from the ends of our noses as we took temporary refuge in telephone boxes.  My gym trainers are not waterproof as I have discovered.  Maybe because they are meant for indoor use and it goes without saying that it never rains inside a gym.

This Saturday my lovely teaching assistant took me to a second hand clothes market so I could stock up on some winter clothes.  We took a bus to get there, thankfully no metro and no escalators.  Lots of the clothes looked new or hardly worn at all.  I bought two coats, a longish one and a shorter one, 4 100% wool sweaters and a polar fleece and paid only $85 for the lot.  That's what I call a bargain!  So hopefully I'll be warm for the winter which seems to be approaching rapidly.  The temperatures lately have dropped to about 5 degrees Celsius and my Cape Town winter gear is hopelessly inadequate.
Next weekend I think I'll do some boots shopping.  Apparently there is something you can put under your boots to stop you from slipping in the snow.  I need to get that and a woolly hat and maybe a scarf or two.  I already have a balaclava and ear muffs from my visit to Siberia several years ago.
Time to have another coffee!
Cindy
Cindy Vine is the author of Not Telling, Defective and C U @ 8, all available on Amazon in paperback and kindle.

Rain, more rain and brain drain

It's easy to blame everything on the weather.  Especially in rainy season when there're torrential downpours that knock over trees which fall on power lines and cut out the power.  Heavy rain on a tin roof is deafening.  It's hard to hear yourself think.  But it doesn't rain all the time, and most of the rain comes during the night when you are trying to sleep.  So it would be unfair to say it's because of the rain and blame it on the weather.
Maybe it's age that's making my brain foggy.  Or maybe it's the high moisture levels in the air from the rain that's making some brain cells go mouldy.  You see, it really is the weather!  I knew it, it couldn't be me!
Actually, I think it is because as a part-time writer you have to juggle so many things that it's easy to allow yourself to be distracted.  You have a demanding full-time job, a home to run, children to manage, strange diseases to cope with, and on top of all that you have to keep on writing and still find time to do your own marketing.  Seriously, there are only so many hours in the day.
Maybe I should blame it on my Kindle.  Since I got that damn thing I can't stop reading.  Books are so easily available and so cheap.  Goodness, some are even free!  When I have the time to write, I'm reading.  The Kindle should take all the blame.

But I guess sending the wrong books to the winners of my Goodreads Giveaway was all me.  I had run two Giveaways simultaneously.  One for Defective the book I published last year to give it a bit of a push; and the other for C U @ 8 the book I have just released.  Stupid me sent all winners C U @ 8!  I felt like such a fool.

I have three books waiting to be worked on.  Two still in the research stage, but one ready to be written.  But for some reason the spikes on my running shoes seemed to have got stuck in the starting blocks, and instead of racing to the finish line I am struggling to get started.  Maybe I need to just step out of the shoes and run barefoot!