The Monument reopened yesterday and I wasn't there to run stairs

Thursday 3/5/26

Fleming! You lazy, disgraceful log! What is wrong with you?

What's more, with the warm weather about to settle in, yesterday may have marked the first day of the Monument being open without interruption.

Okay, relax. I ran 5000 stairs at City Hall, walked six miles, did 100 push-ups. The plan all along had been to go about my stair-running business, not assume the Monument was going to be open, confirm that it was indeed open on their website, and return to run stairs in the Monument the next day.

I could have walked to Charlestown yesterday and done some stair-based double duty. I was pretty thirty, though, and after much deliberation and internal conflict, I stood down, drank, and showered.

I actually had a slight chill yesterday, too, and may have been getting sick. I didn't get up until after three this morning, which is rare for me. I feel fine now, though.

The chill may have been a result of me being walking a bunch of miles in soaked clothes in cold and cool temperatures and that catching up with me. I realized I spend a lot of time outside in very wet attire after I'm done running stairs because it's common for me to walk after.

I was talking to my mother and I told her the Monument was open. She knew what I had just done, and eventually she just laughed at me. I said, "What?" and she said that she could hear the conflict in my voice, and despite me saying that no, I'd wait, she envisioned getting a text shortly saying that I was in the Monument after all.

To be honest, I still don't feel great about it. Even when I have a sound reasoning for doing things a given way, I feel bad when I could do more and I don't. I'm not just talking about stairs now. When I talk about stairs themselves, I'm never just talking about stairs. There's always the metaphorical, extrapolatable component. The life reach and resonance.

The theme of yesterday was melting snow. Puddles were general. The sound of water dripping. The steady sight of drops falling from ledges.

It's thirty-two degrees here at four in the morning. If it keeps warming up, I can go to Charlestown in just a sweatshirt instead of a sweatshirt and fleece. I feel like this is the start of Monument season, just like there's a start to baseball season. New year! Even though I run stairs in the Monument year round.

I find myself with these aims in mind. Ways I want to do better. I have the unbroken string of months in front of me, barring the two days a week that the Monument is closed.

I've done a good job I feel with this stairs-in-abeyance period that the snow necessitated between City Hall and the Haymarket T stop stairs. I'll still need to work my way back into Monument mode, though. Remember: All stairs are different. No two sets are the same. Monument stairs are even more of their own thing than other stairs, I guess you could say. But I believe I'm in a good position to do okay there at first and start doing better quickly.

That is the new plan, anyway.