Ok, I love alliteration. Get over it. lol. I seriously spent 10 minutes trying to decide on a title for this blog post. THAT is how much I love alliteration. Ha!
Sunday was interesting. I was woken up by my brother texting me to ask if I could bring him his spare car keys sometime before lunch. He was out doing some fieldwork at a local preserve (Irwin Prairie for you NW Ohio peeps) and had accidently locked his keys in the trunk of his car when we cleaned out his pants pockets. I shook my head and texted him I'd be there as soon as I ate breakfast and got dressed for my run. If he wanted them sooner, too bad. Mom and dad are clueless as to where Irwin is (even though they've driven by it tons of times and we've TRIED explaining where it is) so I was going to have to be the one to bring him the keys. Since I had to drive up that way, I decided to just get my long(er) run in at Secor Metropark. Secor has a nice "multi-purpose" loop that's a couple miles long and I wanted to give my knees a break by getting off the pavement (plus it was going to get WARM and I HATE running on hot roads).
On my way up to Irwin, I got a phone call that made the rest of my day. My friend Laura was driving from Chicago to Boston to watch her fiance run the Boston Marathon. He'd been in Boston for almost a week already, but she couldn't get off work until after her Saturday night shift (she's an ER nurse). The fun part was that she was driving with their 1-year old boxer pup, Luca. Sorry, Laura, but I may have been more excited to see Luca than you. Oops. Anyway, about an hour before she reached Toledo, Luca was getting super antsy and agitated from being in the car for so long with all his puppy energy. We decided she'd meet me at Secor and we'd run a couple laps with Luca and hopefully that would tire him out enough he'd cooperate for another couple hours. It'd be good for him, too, since they're trying to train Luca to run on a waist leash. I wish I would have thought to get pictures. That dog is a complete goofball. If it helps you imagine his personality at all, he already answers to "goober" along with his actual name. Uh huh.
From the start, we knew we had to let Luca set the pace. I was happy to do this since it was another long(er) run for me and, if you've been reading my sparse posts for the last couple weeks, you know I've been having difficulty on my longer runs. We decided to try alternating running 2 easy miles and walking a quarter mile so none of us would tire out too quick in the heat and Luca would have a chance to get drinks in-between runs. It worked well up until about 4.5 miles in when Luca decided we weren't interesting enough and tried to take off into the woods after a squirrel ... while attached to Laura by the waist leash. Again, sorry Laura. I couldn't stop laughing. She never actually fell over, but the look on Luca's face when he realized the leash was too short and he couldn't even get off the path was PRICELESS. After the next walk break, he just didn't want to run anymore ... unless he saw another squirrel or bug to chase. By the time we made it back to the parking lot after the 2nd lap, he was one pooped pup. 6.21 miles in 75* is tiring for a dog his age.
We headed back to my house so Laura could get cleaned up before heading back out on the highway. No matter how tired Luca THOUGHT he was, he found the energy to play with my dad for a while (new people = instant energy, apparently). Laura wasn't even back on the highway yet when she called, laughing, because Luca was already passed out on the back seat, on his back, tongue hanging out and leg propped up against the back of the seat like a dead cartoon dog. I guess he stayed like that the rest of the way through Ohio and most of the way through Pennsylvania. Mission accomplished.
But like the post's title says, the day was only semi-sweet. Despite my best efforts, I spent 3 or 4 hours of the evening curled up in the fetal position with a pillow over my head and an empty garbage can next to me. I'd guess it was a dehydration headache just based on WHERE it hurt, but DANG it was bad. Like, someone took a sledgehammer to my skull bad. As soon as I felt it starting, I sucked down a ridiculous amount of electrolyte drink and nuun and tried to relax. This usually HELPS if not completely averts the worst of it, but not Sunday. I finally gave in after 2 hours of suffering and took painkillers and crawled into bed, practically in tears. It took a while, but the painkillers and anti-nausea meds finally kicked in and I was able to spend the rest of the evening only mildly icky-feeling, at least able to speak and hear and see without splitting pain again.
As for the second part of the title, Solitary Shower Squabble ...
I believe I've addressed before the fact that the women's locker room in our student rec center only has 1 shower "stall". Technically it's the handicap stall, but many of us use it instead of showering in the "big room". 99% of the time, nobody says anything about it. Heck, quite a few people even use the handicap toilet stall (1 of the 2) to get dressed. It isn't like we're denying a handicapped person the ability to use them, they just aren't there and we are. And we're in there for MAYBE 5 minutes (the shower, not the toilet. lol). Well, today a woman was coming out of the shower (probably a grad student or prof) and some skinny little biotch stopped in the middle of the locker room and yelled at her "Don't you know that's for cripple people? I don't see you being all handi-capable." Besides her choice of words and grammar, I wanted to slap her. The woman didn't even flinch, calmly said "just because you choose to have no class or modesty, doesn't mean I shouldn't. If a handicapped person wanted to use the shower, they were more than welcome to it." and walked away. I wanted to clap. Oh, did I forget to mention the skinny biotch was walking around the locker room in JUST a thong? Yea. I was trying SO HARD not to snicker as I gathered up my shower gear and headed into the stall myself.
So what are your thoughts? Would you use the shower stall or the main shower room? What would you have said to the girl?
I think that woman handled it PERFECTLY!!!! I would hope I'd have the same grace under fire :)
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