Bah-tee-fly
It’s now 4 pm, we have been on our usual trail for 20min max, moving at a 2-year-old pace. 50min/mile according to Apple Watch, that somehow « detected a workout ».
I'm developing friction blisters in an unusual location due to my Crocs. I thought the slow pace and heat were a good reason to give the Crocs a go, but apparently, it turned out to be a rather crap idea. Thus every 2 minutes, while waiting for kiddo to catch up, I’m on REI.com looking for sandals on sale and other bogus Google searches like « do people hike the PCT wearing sandals ». Followed by bouts of shame for not being present in this glorious moment of bonding with my child and nature.
We reached our usual snack spot. The kid-sized granola bar takes about 15 minutes for my little one to consume fully. Mister is a connoisseur and really takes his time to enjoy every bite of this nutritional monstrosity. Yet, I appreciate his presence with his food. Mindfulness aside, he takes a long time because in the process he often poops. I don’t blame him, great sights, freedom of movement, and food intake are a perfect setup for a glorious dump. Which happened took today.
I’m engaged for 5 of the 15min. My blisters are bad enough for my genius to realize that I should let go of my sandal fantasies and follow all of my doctor's advice: wear close, padded, supportive shoes - I’m not a monkey (at least not that way). My phone is back in my pocket. Naturally, my attention is drawn to my watch which shows up every time I mop a bit of chocolate or drool, about every 30 seconds.
I inherited my mother in law Apple Watch a few days ago. The main impetus was to enable better communication with my wife. Meaning, allowing her to track my location more accurately and make sure I see her messages (and reply). I tend to forget my phone in a corner of the house for hours (like the stroller in the garage). On the first day, under « new gadget excitement » I set up a modular watch face with a bunch of stuff (complications for the snobs). I ended up checking it very often and mostly obsessed over the activity timeline and rings - such a neat piece of designery-design.
I’m sitting in the middle of the trail, browsing the watch faces again.
I set up a few for kicks. My kiddo reacts to the one called « motion » which reveals an absurdly high-definition butterfly ( or flower or jellyfish) every time the watch wakes up. I’m no Apple fan boy but it is neat and smooth. I shake my wrist a couple of times. He repeats bah-tee-fly (it sounds very cute IRL).
Each animation takes about 4s, which is at least 4x the time I usually spend glancing at my watch, resulting in absolutely no information getting recorded by my big fat brain. So I decided to give this a shot. Maybe I will get tired of butterflies, jellyfish, flowers, or even Mickey Mouse showing up but it won’t be dumber than staring at my caloric expenditure…
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