Baa Baa Dirty White Sheep (and Goats, too!)

I almost did not go out for my walk today. I haven't been walking very much this summer. It has felt so hot and humid that I have no desire what so ever to go outside at all, much less exercise. But I took a good look at myself, beat myself up mentally for awhile at what I saw, and decided that it really doesn't matter - I NEED to get out there and walk. Sigh. I do NOT LIKE Kherson in the summer. Plain fact. I long for cool mountain air, maybe even some snow. I long for air so dry my skin starts to flake off.

I am having a mental temper tantrum. If I was about 50 years younger I'd stamp my feet and yell really loud about it and then go sulk in my room for awhile. But alas, I am NOT 50 years younger and really need to act my age. Altho, from what I hear, the older you get, the more you can act that way and get by with it....

ha ha

sigh

So, I went out today, after getting down on the floor, by myself, and doing some exercises for my legs and then my arms using 3 pound dumbbells. I got up off the floor all by myself. It may not have been pretty - ok, let's be real here - it was not pretty, but I managed to get up all by myself with no problem at all. I'm just glad there was no one around to see me - feet flat on the floor, hands flat on the floor, body in a nice fat Russian letter Л, altho I might have looked more like a cross between that and an upside down V with a crooked right side. You'll just have to imagine it. The point is, in my wandering all over the place, that I got down on the floor and back up by myself for the 3rd time only since my knee replacement surgery. All 3 times have been in the last 2 weeks. I feel rather 5 year old-ish proud of myself. :) :) :)

So, after that success (so glad I didn't have to wait for Mel to get home to get up because he is still not home some 3 hours later!), I decided that do or die, I needed to get my rear out the door and brave the somewhat cooler temperatures today.

But first, I got on line and looked up SparkPoints again to see about calculating how far and how many calories and how much I could feel good about myself after coming back. They have this nice little calculator now, using Google Maps, that tells me how many miles I've walked and how many calories I've burned. That is nice - very nice. I won't tell you, dear blog readers, though, what the numbers were!

Then I put on my socks, put on my walking shoes, made sure I had my cell phone and camera and part of a bottle of water, my keys and ID/copy of passport and left.

I'm glad I went when I did, because I came across a man herding his sheep and goats over by the agricultural institute. Now I've seen this man several times over the past 10 years, but I've never seen him with SHEEP before, only goats. And I've never seen him close enough to where I could reach out and touch him (sounds like a commercial for a phone company) - he's always been 'over there' when I'm 'over here' and I am rather shy by nature. I stopped, pulled out my camera, took a couple photos, realized he was watching me and I started to walk on.

Then I stopped and had a mental conversation that went something like this: "You know, Cindie, that you have been wanting to find some place to buy SHEEP fleece. Look right there in front of you - those creatures are SHEEP, the first you've seen here in Kherson that you can remember. Now, you could be shy and afraid of your lousy Russian language ability, or you could be brave like Melinda and just open your mouth and ASK the guy if he has any 'sherst' for sale or knows where it might be for sale here in Kherson." I turned toward him - he had walked behind me a bit going after some wandering sheep, the ones in the photo that are 'over there' - and said in strongly American accented Russian, "Excuse me, please. I have a question. I don't speak Russian very well. Do you have any wool for sale?" At least that is what I think I said. He answered me - that tells me I really did communicate. I didn't understand everything he said because his vocabulary was not quite what I'm used to - after all, I don't talk to people about sheep very often. He did look very puzzled, and kept looking over at the goats who seemed to be rather independently minded and prone to wander. Then I told him I needed the wool to make yarn and that I have a circle. Maybe I should have said 'wheel' but you know, I have no idea what a spinning wheel is in Russian, and I figured it's really not called a 'circle' either, so I did a little hand demonstration of a circle going round and round on it's side, like it was rolling forward. I don't have a 'circle' really (wish I did) but I have absolutely NO IDEA how to say spindle or even how to do a hand demonstration of one that would be understood and the point is - I want to make some yarn, not what I use to make it. The man understood immediately what I said, and told me that maybe he had some wool at home, he didn't know (and then he kind of made a noise at a goat who was not doing what it was supposed to do, but straightened up immediately when it realized his master really was paying attention). So I asked him (the man, not the goat) if I could have his telephone number (goats don't have telephone numbers, as far as I know...) and opened up my purse, pulled out a little spiral notebook and a green pen and handed them to him. He kind of squatted down on one knee, wrote out his phone number carefully, handed it back to me and stood up. I said, "Your name?" And he took it back and very carefully wrote his name in small letters under the number. From the care he took, I'd say he doesn't write it all out very often. I told him my female translator would call him, thanked him, and walked off.

Actually I'm really excited. Maybe I'll be able to buy some wool from him! Maybe. We'll see what happens.

I wonder what he thought of me. :) heh heh heh Some strange red faced and sweaty large American woman stopping to ask him if he'd sell her some wool. I bet he tells his wife about it whenever he gets home! Ha ha!

I went on and finished my walk, barely putting one foot in front of the other by the time I got back. Climbing up 3 flights of stairs - oof-dah. I came in, took off my shoes, tossed my bag and purse on the sofa, went in the bedroom, took off my socks, and collapsed on the bed and just let the fan blow air on my head for a few minutes. Then I got up, went into the bathroom, checked to see if the water was still on - it was! - and turned it on, turned on the shower and sprayed the top of my head. Oh - that kind of hurt, but it felt so good! I ran cold water on my wrists and then more on my head until it didn't hurt any more. Then I came in here and happily clicked in my SparkPoints miles and points and wrote this post.

Now - I need to think about de-boning the chicken I cooked in the crock-pot yesterday and start making a chicken salad for dinner, and dream about maybe actually getting a fleece and working with it from sheep-to-yarn. Cool!