No padding here!

I find it rather annoying that authors have forgotten how to have their characters “walk” from room to room. Especially female characters. Oh, sometimes they do walk, but with increasing frequency they seem to “pad” from room to room:

She padded from the bedroom to the kitchen.
She padded from the kitchen to the living room

This usually happens in the morning when she first gets up or in the evening as she is winding down.

And so it goes with variations.

Last night I cracked the window a good 5 inches and fell sleep listening to the chorus of spring peepers in our pond at the edge of our pasture.

And I woke up at 2:45 to thunder and lightening and pouring rain, and it took a while to fall asleep again. Our place has been struck twice by lightening; fortunately, both times it was just the well pump was that damaged, but still. I say fortunately (although replacing the pump wasn’t cheap either time) because a friend at the aerobics class lost her house to a fire caused by lightening. One tends to be a little “concerned” when a thunder-and-lightening storm moves through.

So I was rather groggy when I woke up a little before 5 a.m., and I most assuredly did not “pad” from the bedroom to the bathroom and from there to the kitchen to get my morning cuppa coffee. I might have lurched, staggered, or wobbled. I may even have walked.

As I headed for the coffee pot, I looked at the floor and found myself remembering with surprising clarity the summer of ’62, when I was 12-going-on-13.

Two of my dad’s sisters and their families were going to the Seattle World’s Fair, and Aunt Vera invited me to go along with them. Her oldest daughter, who was the first grandchild born to that generation (I was the second) is about 18 months older than I am. Our ages were close enough that we could really enjoy each others’ company as we grew older.

We stayed in a campground outside of Seattle at the edge of the rain forest. Some of us had a close encounter with stinging nettles. We saw huge yellow slugs. We had a wonderful time. 

Back to the real world: no, giant yellow slugs were not oozing their way across the kitchen floor, but there were 2 (!) garden-variety slugs laying down a trail of slime.

I knew better than to use my fingers (have you ever tried to get slug slime off your fingers?), so I used a scrap of paper to scrape them up and deposit them outside.

And launched myself into the day, profoundly grateful and feeling very blessed to have had such a wonderful Aunt.