walkies

Remember last month, in the midst of Charlie's health crisis, when I said I was never doing any more of those Meetup events? Yeah, I lied.

I mean, it certainly wasn't a lie when I said it, I was dead serious but after a few weeks, I decided to give Meetup another try and got together with a bunch of strangers to walk around 2 of the Disney hotels.

We met at the French Quarter, which as you can see is themed after New Orleans. There were about 15 of us. French Quarter and its sister resort, Riverside, have very pretty grounds so we walked on the path by the river through the French Quarter, up to Riverside and back down again. The whole walk was probably a mile or two and took about 40 minutes. I kept up with the fastest walkers which was a lot faster than I would have liked to go so next time I'll probably stay more in the middle.

Riverside has a lot of memories for Taz and me, especially the horse and carriage ride where we got re-engaged back in 2011 so I wondered how I would feel being back there but I was too busy keeping up with the pack to have time to feel sorry for myself.

Everybody was very welcoming and the people up in front were quite chatty. The leader asked me a whole lot of questions at the beginning, trying to get to know me, about when I moved to Florida and why. I was a bit taken aback when she asked if I'd moved here because of retirement. I know it's been a hard few months lately but I'm not nearly at retirement age yet and hope I don't look it!

I think I felt like retirement age by the end of the walk, whew! Florida is humid and I was pretty sweaty by the end. Some of the walkers were going to do it all over again and walk up to Riverside to eat dinner. A younger guy (20s) in the group who was not the fittest said out loud "we're going to WALK up there?!?" and we all laughed. I was thinking, "I feel ya dude" but I laughed too like I wasn't horrified by the thought of more walking. I had already decided to pick up something to eat at French Quarter so I said goodbye to the group but promised I'd be back next week.

The line for food was so long and slow and all I could think of was getting back home, stripping off my soggy clothes and jumping in the shower (and right now I can hear Taz's voice in my head saying "don't jump in the shower, it wouldn't be safe" because that was a running joke with us) so I decided to skip food and head on home.

Good thing I did, I had forgotten to give Charlie her pill before I left so I really did need to get back there and do that.

This is me all squeaky clean again after the shower. 

So I survived another Meetup and actually had a good time. But now I face a dilemma - do I want to take it a step further and do a Meetup at a local Disney dancing place? There's one coming up and a day before there's a Happy Hour Meetup with many of the same people so I'd have a chance to get to know them before going dancing.

The shy girl inside of me is so not sure about what to do. Part of me wants to go and just have fun, listen to music, maybe dance although I'm not a great dancer because I'm too self conscious. Part of me is afraid I'm a little too vulnerable at this stage and might be opening myself up to making stupid mistakes and possible heartbreak. I'm really not sure which part of me is going to win this one.