You're Doing It Wrong

Someone on nextdoor posted a photo of a bald eagle snatching a little critter from one of the neighborhood roads. The eagles must be nesting nearby because I have seen an eagle floating around more than once in the past months.

The person posting thought the eagle had a cat. It was a tiny blurry photo so I’m not sure how anyone could identify anything.

Someone else claimed to have seen the snatch happend and said it was just a bunny.

Just a bunny! I know an eagle has got to eat and I know bunnies love to multiply. But still, who says that, just a bunny.

I think I have posted before, I like to have a string of Christmas light in my writing room. We keep them on all the time in winter.

Those lights are only about $5 a string and last barely a year.

The string I just bought was screwed up out of the box so I looked up if there was a way to troubleshoot a messed up string of lights and there is: but it would take way more than $5 worth of my time and patience so I tossed it and bought a new string.

But before that string, I found a string that was powered by batteries. I thought that might be a better solution. I set it up and put the long-lasting batteries in and it was dead in less than a week.

That was the end of that experiment.

When I lived in Oregon I was a runner and by runner I mean a person who slogged slowly but without stopping for several miles on a regular basis.

I can’t remember if I ever ran when I moved to Washington. Maybe a little? Or maybe I took walks by myself?

I do remember that I was bitten by a dog in Dec 2002 while on a walk by myself and after that I didn’t like to go around the neighborhood by myself. For a long time I was nervous walking with Bob, too, but at least I would have someone who could help me if a strange dog bit me. [Aside: the dog bite thing was majorly traumatizing. I even did hypnosis to try to get over it. At this point, it’s far enough in the past that I’m not afraid of every strange dog I see.]

Long story omitted but recently more than one doctor has strongly encouraged me to get more cardio into my life. One doctor suggested that once fitness is gone, it’s hard to get back so better hop to it now.

I’ve been walking more and thought it would be fun (and to be completely honest, more time efficient) to try running again. Not train for 5 or 10k or anything like that. Just try to get enough fitness to wobble along for 20-30 minutes a few days a week.

Yesterday my industrial strength fitness bra and running capris with sweat-resistant pocket arrived.

Today was my first run.

For the first minute I galloped down the street in the spring sunshine. Running is amazing! Look at the birds and the flowering trees! Why haven’t I been doing this?

This was quickly replaced maybe thirty seconds later by, wow, already my legs feel heavy.

I couldn’t quit that easily. It’s beautiful out! Fitness is fun!

Legs only got heavier. Breath a little short.

But there’s a family with kids and dogs and bikes. Me and my sweat-resistant pocket can’t stop where they can see.

I had a simple goal in mind that seemed attainable so I kept pushing but was astonished by how gruesome it was.

Then I had to poo.

I pushed a little further before I gave up. I was going to cut across to do part of my normal walk because it has a big hill but #2 was calling so I walked home very quickly.

Estimated mileage: 1

A few more from my limited tulip photo collection.

I’m on a work related mailing list and they send out a notice to a large group of people, not “bcc” so you know what happened next. People replied to the whole list which created a ton of extra email that I did not need. They said they were open to suggestions so I suggested they use “bcc” so everyone doesn’t get inundated with email they don’t want.

Then someone on the list announced their retirement which set off another flurry of unneeded email.

Is there some official name of the syndrome where the moment you need to rely on your phone — for a ticket, to pick up something you bought, for some critical piece of information that you specifically saved so you could reference it — that your can’t make your phone work right?

It is astonishing how often this happens to me. I stand in line with my ticket app showing and then I get to the front and I can’t pull up the app. I stand in line with an email receipt that I need to pick up something and the minute I get to the front of the line, the email disappears.

I feel like this should be named and recognized so when it happens you can say: oh, I suffer from technological failure disease. And they will have a method for dealing with you kindly and patiently.

More than one of my doctors was on my case about my exercise and cardio so I just clicked a button and bought a heavy duty sports bra and I’m going to try running — well, jogging, again. Very short routes. We’ll see how that goes since right now walking uphill seems to be sufficient cardio.