The other day I was wearing a t-shirt, long pants, socks!, and a big college sweatshirt.

Today, it’s oppressively humid (in comparison) and I’m sitting in my room, typing with both fans on, and only my t-shirt and underwear.

I took the giant dog for a walk, and tried to get zen with the whole experience. While humid, the evening has a lush greenness to it that is relaxing. I let the dogs smell all they wanted, and took the brush along with us so I could get a little hair off each of them. And I imagined that next summer, I will be taking a very similar walk with a stroller. As much as I worry about making money and insurance and all that, it is because I want to be able to take a leisurely walk with my child that I need to go back to Indiana for a bit and stay home. I know some people can do both, can work and be present for their children. I don’t think I can. I think the constant stress I’d feel would overshadow all my interactions. Life would be a constant go-go-go, and while I’m sure that it will be that later anyway, I want some time to just be.  

Back to the giant dog, the impetus for my attempts at zen:

He’s pretty wiley. If I don’t lock the back door behind me, he makes a break for it. He is the master of nudging open doors. He can get out of his latched crate–I don’t know how–but I have to slide the locks, then attach carabiner clips to keep him caged in. I know he’d like some more play time, but he really frightens Ruby, and he doesn’t seem to play well with other dogs in general. He needs his human back.

In other news, I had a former life flashback type of experience yesterday. A friend of a friend relayed her first marathon time, a marathon we were supposed to run together. And her time was great. I don’t know if I could have matched her time, but I really think I could have broken five hours this time (which represents over an hour off my first marathon time). Again, so funny to think about plans I made in January, how I was going to really do a lot of running to prepare for this spring marathon. What’s that expression? Something about life is what happens when you’re busy making plans?

I know the marathon and the running will still be there when I’m ready, after baby. But it’s starting over, from square one, almost. It’s a little daunting. It’s not like missing the ability to drink (which I don’t); the margarita will still be there, and there is very little prep time for ordering and consuming one. I think, reasonably, it might be a couple of years before I can start really distance running again. And that might be optimistic. I’m certainly not going to push it; I’ll go with whatever feels right. It might be five years before I do another 10-miler.

Speaking of being irritated to death by the Chicago Marathon–it still makes me mad–the organizers published a Results Book. It looks really nice, got a full-color cover, lots of pages; I can’t imagine what it cost to print. Many pretty pennies. WASTED. This marathon “fun run” was a debacle. It continues to gall me that the organizers blamed the runners and then moved on like . . . this was all nothing. I will never run another Chicago Marathon. (Yeah, I know–big deal. The field of 45,000 is already sold out for the October 12th marathon. They’ll really miss me . . . )