An Exercise in Geometry

This lesson requires a snow suit.  It's been in the single digits around here the last few days.  Not overnight, mind you -- in the middle of the day.  Here's Gabe, dressed for the weather.  You know what he's saying, don't you?

"I can't put my arms down!"

This is the story:

Gabe's been studying geometry but having trouble memorizing terms, and I just bought a little pedometer to track the 10,000 steps a day required by my new diet regimen.  In a typical day, however, I fall approximately 9, 630 steps short of the goal.  (Go figure that.*)  So, because Gabe needs to understand what perimeter means...  Well, guess who suited up, clipped on the pedometer and walked around our ten acres today?

Not me.

Good old Gabe did double duty, checking to see if the pedometer really works, while walking his math lesson around the outside edges of our little forest.  It was cooold and he came back with very pink cheeks -- but also a walking understanding of the word "perimeter."  We now know how far around our little property is:  if the pedometer tracked properly, Gabe walked 522 steps!  That's .41 kilometers,  a little over a quarter mile.  Fantastic!

Now I know the pedometer works -- and Gabe knows what "perimeter" means. A good day all around! (No pun intended.)  I have to confess that it'll be a while before I make the trip, myself, lacking a proper snow suit (and any kind of eagerness to do so), but the pedometer has paid for itself today, adding to the general store of knowledge here at the Davis house.  The whole exercise has been a win/win/win.

Tomorrow I'm going to wear the pedometer and see what happens if I swing my feet while sitting at the table teaching school.  I'll let ya know what I find out. :)



* I have studied the matter conscientiously and coming from a perfectly practical standpoint I've determined that exercise is impossible for me. No, really it is.  Impossible.   Even if I had a burning desire to walk 10,000 steps (which you know I do not, so I won't lie to you), 10,000 steps in any direction outside our house would lead me to the bottom of a snowy ravine (or it could, anyway, if I slipped in any one of a dozen snowy spots on the road). So walking outdoors: impossible.  At least for now. Ask me again in spring -- when it's muggy and buggy and the road is muddy...


Also impossible would be taking 10,000 steps inside our very small (quaint, cute, charming?) cottage in one day.  If I tried it, I'd remind you of the lions you see at the zoo walking around and around and around and around a 10'x10' enclosure.  It would drive you mad to watch it; it would drive me more mad to do it. Dodging children and cats and purposely instigated obstacles...  Coffee spilling all over the place..

 So why don't I get in some steps by  going up and down the stairs?  A reasonable proposition and I considered it, I truly did -- but, honestly, our staircase is 100 years old, steep and narrow with a low ceiling, the wooden steps themselves worn and slick,  Though the children would undoubtedly enjoy the spectacle, I'd most likely break my neck running up and down them.  Impossible.

So exercising at home is out.  What about going somewhere else to get in those 10,000 steps?  Even if I had time in the day to do such a thing, leaving kit and kin alone at the house, it would still be impossible.  We have no malls anywhere near us to traipse around -- and it's a good bet Dan would see through the thin excuse to go shopping be wary of my doing such a thing if we did.  We have no gym anywhere near us, either, and, in case you wondered, no space in the house for a treadmill or stationary bike -- or anything but a chair that I can sit on and kick my feet for exercise.   Which is the only one I like the sound of, anyway!

So, yeah.  Just clarifying.  Justifying? Hating exercising.  (Don't anyone tell my diet support group about this, though, OK?.  They might think I have a bad attitude or something...)