March Sweeps - Day 48

Two more days and I'll have written fifty days in a row.

If you're like me, and you're going a little stir crazy, with extra time on your hands each day (what else you gonna do, watch the news?  That's as aggravating as reading 4Chan posts), you try to keep active, and look for things to do, other that watch TV or sleep.

But I've got a new tradition, it seems, of going to the park and runn--er, trying to run up and down the stairs there, then going back to the car and writing on my laptop until it gets dark.  I've done it three times this week, and it's lonely, but I like it.

Speaking of lonely, I stopped by the mall today when I heard it was still open, and I stepped inside, and froze in my tracks.  The mall was mostly shuttered, and it was the first time I have gone there as an adult that I didn't feel hopelessly unattractive (I guess that's a silver lining, eh?).  I grabbed my phone, to capture the eeriness while I took a look around the mostly-empty building.

GameStop and one other store were still open (that I saw), and there were other customers in the far distance (but not close enough to break any social distancing statutes), but for a minute or so, I was completely alone in the mall.  There was a girl at one of those middle kiosks that sell body wash or perfume or whatever, looking so bored and lonely that I longed to approach her and say, "Now you see, my dearest.  But when this is all over, you will still be attractive.  And maybe you will now have empathy for the rest of us.  Goodbye."

But I didn't.

Now, it wasn't quite deserted enough that I could hear the music of Goblin playing while I walked around*, but boy, it was surreal, and I actually felt guilty walking around there, like I was doing something wrong.  And maybe I was--maybe everybody else was smart enough to not go to a place where hundreds of people normally congregate.  But that's the mall my mother took me to see RETURN OF THE JEDI at in 1983 (and '85), so it will always be a special place for me.

After I turned tail and ran from the tears-thirsty revenants** that roam the empty mall, I got my writing done and, though it was cold out and I had already done the stairs, I went running again.  I didn't experience a repeat of that weird phenomenon from the other night.  But I will say this: the first half mile was harder than the second, or the third.  I'm still fat and I'm still slow, but I'm improving.

Words Today: 1782
Words In March: 26,309

*That's a DAWN OF THE DEAD reference, kids.

**These are the souls of all the shoppers trampled over a Cabbage Patch Doll or stabbed for a Tickle Me Elmo or those that hanged themselves when KB Toys went under, or whose hearts just exploded when teenage girls first started wearing leggings.  A motley assortment of undead beings.