Treadmill Goals/Tracking

• Get on the treadmill (or equivalent exercise) daily
• Pace is fine at 30 min/mile, although I may up it on occasion
• Time range between 30 minutes and 1 hour per day
• Distance 1-2 miles per day
• Read the chosen book. I’m officially modifying my original rule of not reading the book-of-the-week off-treadmill. I’m usually going to look at length and try to divide it up somewhat evenly per day, even if that means either closing that book early (if it’s short) or continuing after (if it’s long).

Week 177: April 12, 2020 – April 18, 2020

DAY	PACE	TIME	DISTANCE
Sunday	30 min/mile	30:14 min:sec	1 mile
Monday	30 min/mile	30:10 min:sec	1 mile
Tuesday	30 min/mile	30:18 min:sec	1 mile
Wednesday	30 min/mile	30:14 min:sec	1 mile
Thursday	30 min/mile	30:05 min:sec	1 mile
Friday	30 min/mile	30:11 min:sec	1 mile
Saturday	Mowed front & back	1-1/2 hours	Per Fitbit @ end-of-day: over 12k steps + 48 “flights of stairs”

What I’m Reading

Note: Although I will try to avoid them, my weekly reading snippets may or may not contain spoilers, so read at your own risk.

I’ve been looking forward to reading this book since getting an early peek at the beginning chapters on the author’s website. 💖 It held up wonderfully to that promise of and exciting well-told tale! 💞

What I #amreading: The Beast of Bodmin Moor by Zakarrie C.

Two years ago Jake McCain encountered a compelling stranger at the Glastonbury festival. Two days later his life, as he knew it, was over. Enter Jack. They have…cohabited ever since. Much to Jack’s despair, Jake has remained dogged in his bid to be the most bloody-minded human a jackal ever had the misfortune to manage.

Phin Finley has embarked on a magical mystery campervan tour of Cornwall. Free to potter about, doing as he pleases for the first time, he wants to prove he can do just fine without having a fatal mishap. Or causing one. Or losing his trusty bicycle clips. Even if he is a tad too…Phinish for most folk’s comfort, his mum’s peace of mind and dad’s constitution.

Theirs is a tale about finding your (happy) place in the world, making (foxy) friends, and the legendary Beast of Bodmin Moor.

My favorite lines this week…

✿✿ SUNDAY ✿✿

Phin hated feeling like a fraud. Everyone seemed to do concentrating on things he couldn’t care less about; the impression they made on others, how they were ‘ween’. A concern that had nothing to do with donning orange jumpers, which would have been an understandable worry. Phin wouldn’t be seen dead in such a detestable hue. That was an idiom, not a fact, as it didn’t make sense in the scheme of things. He would be dead, and ergo, unable to see. Let alone be in any fit state to insist that his corpse was not desecrated by a despicable sweater.

✿✿ MONDAY ✿✿

Phin shoved the loo door shut with his back and slumped against it, scrunching his eyes tight shut. Then slid downwards, until he was curled as small as he could make himself and pressed his forehead to his bent knees. He never knew how long he stayed put, listening to what loneliness felt like. Long enough that his bum went numb.

✿✿ TUESDAY ✿✿

Jack had snaffled Phin’s robe when he’d needed something to wear, so why hadn’t he taken what was being offered so freely, if he wanted Phin? Too freely, was p’raps the problem. Phin was supposed to do ‘playing hard to get’ to tickle someone’s fancy, wasn’t he? It was a bit bloomin’ late to start now, even if he knew how the bejeezus to go about it. Lying-starkers-in-bed-with-a-stiffy didn’t seem the most subtle of starts, on the whole. Even with all the will in the world (and Phin possibly had a smidge too much, according to …most), he couldn’t sheer-force-of-will Jack to want him.

✿✿ WEDNESDAY ✿✿

That was when the penny farthing dropped—on Phin’s head—which was very much how the clatter-crash of realization felt. Phin had gone loopy. He’d either not cottoned onto the fact staring him full in the face. Or he’d hallucinated said fact into fruition. Two facts that added up to an impossible sum. One and one did not make one. Not even all-for-one-and-one-for-all pulled that off, and Jake was not a Musketeer moonlighting as a foxy friend. Did it matter what he was?

✿✿ THURSDAY ✿✿

The scent shimmering off Phin’s skin was akin to inhaling flame. As intoxicating as it was life-giving. Jake’s nostrils flared in recognition of a truth he could no longer deny. Jack had never tried, of course, a fact Jake had been hell-bent on blanking. Intent on blissful ignorance. Jackals mate for life. Plural. Phin smelled of home and hearth, of flickering warmth on a bitter winter night. It was far too late now. It had been from the very first.

✿✿ FRIDAY ✿✿

‘If you love someone, set them free’ had always seemed more cliché than sound advice. ‘If they come back, they’re yours, if they don’t, they never were’…? Too impressed with itself to offer much comfort. More to the point, it was scant consolation when sacrificing a future with someone was far from setting them free. It was just denying your self to safeguard theirs. Jake had proved too weak to withstand the doggednes of one. In cahoots? Jack and Phin were an unstoppable force. Irresistible. He’d failed Phin…and now it was too late. Far too late.

✿✿ SATURDAY ✿✿

The smells saturating the night air had never seemed so heady, but all were eclipsed by the sylvan, cassia-steeped scent that had stolen Jack’s heart. How he’d longed for this moment…fearing it might never come. That he might never find Him, despite some inner certainty insisting that He was out there…somewhere…waiting for Jack to claim him as his own.