I finally did it… after roughly two years since I first decided to try, I ran a marathon yesterday. There’s not much else to say about it, really. It was the worst pain I’ve ever intentionally inflicted upon myself. And I’m still recovering as of today. Since I went to bed at 7pm the night before the marathon, it was also the most well-rested I’ve ever felt at 3am when I woke up for the marathon. Lotta firsts… lotta firsts.
While running with Katie recently, pursuant to a discussion on a friend’s boyfriend, I told Katie she was “the best I could do.” I was attempting to prove that this was actually a great complement, contrary to my aforementioned friend’s assessment that it was extremely pejorative. Of course, she took offense, proving me wrong (in a joking manner). I then offered her the alternative if she didn’t like being “the best I could do” then what must be true is that “I could have done better, but settled for her.” That didn’t go over very well either. It was around this point that she won the conversation… and I was proven wrong. I still think it was a complement. Love you Katie. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
This morning I realized that I’ve had my alarm clock since I was 14, at 32, my alarm clock is now old enough to vote (I probably have some T-Shirts that are in this same position and I’m pretty sure my old Nintendo is married with kids, but that’s a different, and possibly weirder, story). Maybe I should tell that other story since this one clearly isn’t going anywhere… just… nevermind.
11-11-11, a date (just like every other date) that won’t come around again for another century. We act like that’s special for some reason… I guess we just need a reason to celebrate.
And I never thought I’d see the day that I would say “I sure am glad Walking Stick mating season is over.” Really, Florida?
We’re adapting to country life… trying to be self-sufficient and all that. You know… “farming.” The idea is to save money by not buying the processed stuff that goes through a handful of middle-men with markups at every opportunity. This weekend we got some sweet potatoes fresh out of the ground. And I mean fresh, we went to the farm around 10am on Saturday and got the potatoes, and Katie made a pie out of them around 2pm. We got some other stuff for the pie… a crust, cream cheese, half and half. All told, the pie probably cost about $6 in ingredients. And then some trivial amount (possibly trivial) in electricity to boil the potatoes and then to bake the pie. The kicker is that a whole pumpkin or sweet potato pie at the grocery store is anywhere from $4 to $7… so, we might have saved close to a dollar. How is it possible that it costs more to make food at home (not to mention the labor that went into it, though that’s not really a cost since it’s just fun to do things together as a family) than it does to get some pies made halfway across the country, frozen, shipped, marked up, etc etc etc? It makes less sense to try to be self-sufficient. Technically, I guess if we’d grown the potatoes, made the crust, and not fancied it up with cream cheese, it might have cost about $2… I guess it’s an all or nothing thing when you try to be self-sufficient.
Chicken is another thing… A couple weeks ago I was going out for lunch, and I could get a footlong sub for $5… or an entire fried chicken at the Publix deli. How can it possibly be profitable for chicken raisers to raise chickens when the entire chicken only sells for $5 after it’s been feathered, skinned and cooked. Sometimes I feel dumb for not understanding how the world works.
This is a story about a whale. No. This is a story about a man.
Last night, I was crawling into bed with a particular thought in mind… I think you all no what it is, so I don’t have to say it, but I will anyway. I wanted to watch the next episode of Desperate Housewives. So I’m laying down and just getting situated under the sheets when I feel this sharp pain in my hip. It slowly grows to the point where I realize it’s something external and not just a pinched nerve. I throw back the covers and, just like in the movies, see the back end of something slinking just out of sight. I immediately get up and tell Katie to get out of bed and get Bombadil. Then we pull back the covers until we find it. A scorpion. There was a scorpion… in our bed. I got stung by a scorpion… in bed. If we had eaten Chinese last night, my fortune would have read: “You will be stung by a scorpion… in bed.”
On the bright side, Florida scorpions are fairly harmless. You grow up thinking that they’re this vile, scary bug that should be taken very seriously… movies probably contribute to that a great deal. Turns out there are only four species of scorpion in Florida (out of something like 1200 worldwide) and none of them have more than a mild neuro-toxin.
Still. It’s disconcerting to find a scorpion in your bed. What’s next? A rattlesnake? President Millard Fillmore?
We don’t really censor anything from Thalia. We don’t swear too much around her, but we let her watch all the same movies and TV that we do. If there’s something that she doesn’t know about, we explain it. She loves scary movies and so far hasn’t been haunted by nightmares of Jason or any clowns that might just be killers and come from outer space. Maybe she’ll grow up without any fears or taboos, or maybe this’ll backfire on us. In the meantime, it creates hilarity. I’m playing God of War 2 for PS3 right now and she likes to watch sometimes. There’s a lot of gore, and occasionally nudity. For some reason the nudity stuck. It had been about a month since I’d played, and I mentioned that I should play it again to finish the game… she remembered that it and called it the “naked lady game”… I wonder what she tells her friends at school.
This afternoon we went for a run around our normal 5k loop. It was moderately cool (i.e., 90°) because there had been some rain a bit earlier and the sky was still cloudy. At the farthest point from the house, it started raining again… and when we were still about a mile from home, it started coming down torrentially. Big old raindrops. Thalia was in the stroller and had a good time, she didn’t get cold until we got home. The dangers of running in Florida.
We’ve finally been overwhelmed by our yard. We couldn’t keep up with the mowing with just the manual mower, it required too consistent maintenance, and my cold/sinus infection, I fell behind and became incapable of catching up. The grass is now too tall for the manual mower to mow. So with that in mind, we went to the local mowing place today (Eastside Mowers) and asked about getting our ride-on mower fixed. When we gave them the address to come pick up the mower, they said they lived on the street next to us, and it turns out they’re our backyard neighbors. we see them out and about every now and again, just hadn’t met them. It seemed like a neater coincidence when we were there than it does now typing it up, oh well…
