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bowling or PlayStation Rock Band?”

Day 9
6511 steps
    “ STRUCTURE IS KEY ,” I SAID . “ AND I DON’T THINK IT WOULD hurt for us to set some goals, either.” Rosie Stockton, who owned the lavender farm, had cut through the woods to my backyard, and Tess came out as soon as she saw us.
    “Yeah, yeah,” Tess said as we walked across my side yard to Wildwater Way. “I still can’t believe your name is Rosemary and you own a lavender farm.”
    “They’re related, you know,” Rosie said. Her red hair was short and curly, and she was tiny, maybe five two, if that, so unfortunately she didn’t wear an 8½. “Sage and thyme are related to lavender, too. And lavenders belong to the genus Lavandula of the family Lamiaceae, which is the mint family.”
    “So, can I have mint in my garden, too?” I asked. The plan was that I’d try to exchange a pair of the sneakers for a size 6½ for Rosie, and in return she’d plant a starter lavender garden for me. Tess would get a bar of lavender chocolate for brokering the deal.
    “Mint is really invasive,” Rosie said. I noticed that we were falling into a pattern already. Only two of us could fit on the sidewalk at the same time, so we’d walk three abreast in the middle of the road, whenever we could get away with it. When we had to move back to the sidewalk, we’d take solo turns up in front of the other two. “It’ll take over your whole garden. I can bring you some frommy garden, but the best thing to do is plant it in a pot to keep it contained.”
    “I thought I planted mint one year,” Tess said, “but it turned out to be catnip. Every cat in town started coming to our yard to get high. Like I didn’t have enough problems with two teenagers in the house.”
    “Whatever you think,” I said. “I’ll try to exchange the sneakers tomorrow. I’m meeting some old friends from work.”
    “Catnip is a kind of mint,” Rosie said. “It’s also great for getting rid of mosquitoes.”
    “Maybe,” Tess said, “the mosquitoes are just too busy laughing at the cats to bite anybody.”
    We’d reached North Beach already. We walked single file through a narrow opening in the seawall, and then spread out again to walk the beach. It was getting close to high tide, so only one of us could fit on the hard-packed sand, and the other two had to walk on the loose, dry sand at the top of the beach.
    Last night I’d gone on the Internet to research walking and found out what anybody who’d ever tried it knew: walking on the sand requires more effort than walking on a solid surface. Because your foot moves around more, the tendons and muscles of your legs have to work more than twice as hard. Supposedly walking on the sand used up to 50 percent more calories than hard surface walking, too.
    Whatever the benefits, the best reason to walk the beach was that it was so amazingly beautiful. Especially early in the morning like this when the walkers owned the sand. In another hour or so, it would become an obstacle course of chairs and towels, pails and shovels, and throngs of sunscreen-slathered, bathing suit–clad people in all shapes and sizes.
    Out of the blue, Rosie started to sing “Walk On By,” maybe in honor of the shoes I’d promised her. Tess joined in. Then I did.Actually, we didn’t really remember the words, so we just kept making them up as we went along.
    We kept going until a couple of guys walking their dog got close enough to hear us, and then we started to giggle.
    “That was fun,” Rosie said. “I always wanted to be in a girl group. I was devastated when I didn’t even make my high school chorus.”
    “I had this great fantasy I’d become a rock star,” Tess said, “and run a private school for the band’s kids on the side. Not much job security though.”
    I didn’t say anything, mostly because I couldn’t seem to remember anything I’d ever wanted to be. Maybe being made redundant had wiped clean a portion of my brain; with my luck, it