NaBloPoMo 2021.12 I'm incredibly inspirational apparently and also I save turtles

Over the pandemic, I engineered a new workout routine. I basically phone it in. I've been walking around the neighborhood. I'd call my route a loop except it's probably more like a chicken foot. Or a lopsided rake. There's a few out-and-backs. 

I'm saying all this to say if you live along my route and you are looking out your window, you will see me a minimum of twice. Sometimes, I go around more than once. So maybe you'll see me four times or six times a day.

I also wave at everyone who drives by in their car. And when I say I wave, I mean I wave aggressively with a giant fake smile. I do this because it's an experiment. My hypothesis is that if you make eye contact and wave at people who are driving like maniacs through your cul de sac, they slow down.

At the beginning of the pandemic, no one waved back. Also no one else was walking in the neighborhood. Also everybody drove 55 miles and hour and practically laid rubber getting into their driveways.

Fast forward 18 months and you can just call me the pied piper of the walking set. There's so many people walking around now. I give them all half-ass smiles that become increasingly awkward the fourth time I've passed them within twenty minutes.

I was tooling around the other day and a woman with a stroller coming from the other direction said, "I saw you out here and I told myself I didn't have any excuses, so I came out too."

Then some guy who had stopped by the curb with his dog commented, "Your husband's not out today, huh?" 

Right. 

Because Tom did a loop with me the day before. 

You see what I mean, it's kind of creepy.

In the good news department, last month I saved a turtle. It was in the middle of the road and I put it in the grass:

Instead of thanking me and/or waving,
the turtle clamped up in his shell
when i picked him up and put him in the grass.

Then I ran home and washed my hands because I hear turtles have salmonella.