What exactly does "Take it easy" mean?

Yesterday I donated blood at my former community college.  I try to donate often, and it has been almost 6 months since I last donated!  Not the point though.  When I got my finger pricked I told the guy that he had to squeeze extra blood out to get the right hemoglobin levels for me to donate.  Something about the freshly picked skin mixing with the blood usually results in levels too low for me to donate.  Any way, he got a little carried away so when he finally put the band-aid on it quickly filled up.

He takes me over to the chair, hooks me up, and starts draining me.  The whole time he was standing close by, which is highly unusual, asking me how I am doing.  Because he keeps asking I figure he wants a different answer besides fine, so I start complaining about my finger.  First response, thinking he would laugh, I say "I think I am hemorrhaging from my finger!" To which he quickly starts defending himself, saying "You told me to squeeze it extra.  You told me to."

So then he asks how I am doing again, and I say "well, my finger really hurts!"  He quit asking.  Still not the point. 

The point of this post is, just as I was leaving he tells me to "Take it easy."  I didn't think much of it, until I started trying to take it easy.  By about 6 o'clock I just couldn't stand taking it easy anymore, and I suggested to Mark that taking a "leisure" walk would qualify as taking it easy.

So we head down to the MO River, and start off on our leisure walk with the dogs pulling us.  All is going well, we get across the beautiful Ped bridge, and start heading towards Harrah's, which happens to be a riverboat casino (and no we weren't going there to gamble, that just happens to be where the trail goes). 

For some reason last night Mark decided that he was going to walk fast, and about this point I am starting to realize that for the first time Mark was walking ahead of me, which continued the whole way.  Not to mention I ended up with Polly's leash several times, and she is a handful to keep up with.  She is about 40 lbs of almost solid muscle.  (The nurses at the vets office have mentioned several times how strong she is, usually just as they are sticking a needle in her butt.)

After crossing over the bridge and then under the freeway, there is suddenly this large cloud hoovering around our heads, which I was unable to see clearly because I had once again forgotten my glasses.  Mark starts swatting, and complaining about the swarm of mosquitoes and we start to run, with the swarm close at our backs.  Luckily we were able to get far enough ahead of them that when a jogger came past going the opposite direction they changed directions and went after the jogger.  We made it to Harrah's then turned around.

Then on the way back we were heading up the Ped bridge, and realized just how steep the Iowa side is.  Yikes!  ( Sorry about the bad pictures, but what do you expect from a camera on a phone?)

So I posed Mark the question, "What exactly does "take it easy" mean?  Does running from mosquitoes, being drug around by a dog, and climbing up a fairly steep bridge count?  If so, then I guess I complied with the blood sucker's orders!