Tag Archives: nablopomo

Oooh, I Hear Laughter In the Rain

I have been jogging — I was calling it running, but Trombone, age 6, was kind enough to point out that I don’t actually RUN — on the regular for almost two months now. Usually I go on the mornings that Fresco is at preschool. I do a thirty minute tour of the neighbourhood, work up a good sweat and come home. This time has become a very important part of my mental health maintenance and though I may or may not ever get past 5 kilometres or thirty-some minutes, being able to go up and down hills without expiring is something I am proud of.

There are a lot of hills in this neighbourhood. Sometimes I think I would like to live somewhere flat, just to see how far I could go on flat terrain but then I remember my horrifying ‘flat terrain in rural Ontario with deer flies chasing me” experience from the summertime and I would gladly take hills over bugs that like to eat your sweat. Any day of the week. I choose hills. HILLS, I SAY!

Speaking of sweat, this week I did my first jog of the season in the pouring rain. Now, some people will tell you that sweating/heating your body in the rain will make you sick but a) I was already half-sick, have been for weeks now and b) I am not one of those people who believes in the sweat / cold voodoo. Even if today I am sicker than I was at the beginning of the week. Shut up. It’s my sinuses, which flare up like fireworks every year at this time. (pew! pew! crackacrackacracka! pew!)

Anyway, I am here to recommend jogging in the rain over jogging in the stupid, hot, sweat-inducing sunshine. Suck it sunshine. We don’t even WANT you back. *sob*.

Why #1: You know when you pass other people on the street, many of whom are also jogging, some of them RUNNING even, and you have to do that whole “do I say hello / is there a jogger wave / I can’t breathe so I can’t really smile right now / but it’s rude to just look away / oh he’s looking away / fine then, asshole, look away / what am I some kind of LESSER jogger? I don’t warrant even a smile? / fine, screw you.” thing?

I hate that.

In the rain, there are 90% fewer people out on the street to do that thing with. And, this week when my music player ran out of battery power, I could carry on a very nice conversation with myself, as I jogged, in the rain, without anyone calling the nice policepeople on me. In the sunshine, the park would have been full of go-getter running types who would have shamed me into carrying on my internal conversation, well, internally.

It’s better out loud because then I can pace myself and not expire on hills. And because also I like the sound of my own voice, see also: blogging about it.

Why #2: You may or may not BE totally hard core, but you certainly feel that way with rain dripping off your nostrils.

Why #3: You’re going to shower anyway, right? Well if you’re me you are. The wetter the better. (TM)?

Why #4: In the sunshine, there are hazards. Once, I got stung by a wasp on my foot while I was jogging. Once, I was blinded by the sun and nearly ran into a house. Those things have never happened to me in the rain.

Why #5: Thirsty? Just lick a tree. I have done it. Can’t do that in the middle of summer. Without tearing your tongue off and looking like a person who has eaten too much glue.

Is it raining? Do you have shoes? Go out in it! Lovely.*

* unless you are in hurricane country, in which case, sit on your couch and enjoy a beverage and some chips.

I Promised Patio Lanterns

Can you see them, all stretched across the front of this page? Blue, orange, purple, red, blowing slightly in the OH GOD IT’S NOVEMBER WHO HAS PATIO LANTERNS OUT ON THEIR BLOG IN NOVEMBER.

Patio Lanterns. Kim Mitchell Styleee.

Hi!

Last week I was sitting around thinking about myself, as I do, and I thought, “It might be fun to blog again for November. November is traditional pulling-out-all-the-stops-and-hair month as concerns blogging and writing and I could do it. Just one month.”

The next day, totally unpredictably, my laptop computer died. Of course I took this as a sign that I should definitely blog every day in November, despite not having blogged since February, and I would just write up the blog posts in my (handy dandy) notebook with my pen and then type them up into Saint Aardvark’s computer, which I was borrowing, later in the evening and walla! Blogging! Again!

After day two of using SA’s computer, which is like an old VW Bug being held together — barely — with tape and spit and good wishes, I had resigned myself to the fact that I would not be typing anything on that machine at the end of the day because a) the trackpad is slow and wonky b) the lid just kind of..lies down periodically (backwards) and c) come on. Really? I have enough time to draft a post BY HAND in the morning and then rewrite it in the evening? Have I met me?

Have I met me? Wow. Good question.

Not only all of that, above, there, but SA’s computer is located in the living room portion of our open plan living room dining room kitchen area, and the living room is traditionally the Zone of the Children, so when I sat down in their Zone to do some important Tweeting, it was kind of like walking into a monkey cage at the zoo and bringing your statistics homework for something to read.

“Whatcha doing?” asked Fresco, now 4.5 years old, perched on my shoulder, I am not even kidding, “Can I see? Can I type? Can I play SuperTux?” (that’s Open Source version of Supermario and it’s pretty cool but NO you can’t play it all the time whenever this computer is awake.)

The next day or something, we decided to buy a new laptop so we went to Future Shop because they had the best prices and selection, and picked this one out. It’s pretty nice.  If we stay on the car spectrum, it’s a hatchback Kia. But it has working wipers and stereo and it’s clean and doesn’t need much gas.

With a pine-scented air freshener dangling from the rear-view mirror.

I am going to try out blogging again for a month and see what happens. As it turns out, it’s hard to choose a new name and title for a blog when you’re at the end of the blogging timeline … all the clever stuff has been done and the stuff you think is clever is not, on reflection, and you just want to get something up dammit because it’s November 1st, so I guess what I’m saying is: forgive the title, it might change, or it might not, all is fluid, kind of like the cold November Rain.