I caved on my diet tonight and ordered pepperoni on our Thursday night Mark's pizza. We've done really well on the mostly-vegetarian meal plan, and I've been behaving VERY well on my might-as-well-starve-myself diet of cardboard and grass. I felt so terrible about binging on two slices of pizza that I dug my jogging shoes out of the cubby, shook off the cobwebs and went jogging.
Kind of.
First I should explain that my jogging shoes are more like "lawn-mowing shoes." I wear them when Brian is home to bitch at me for not wearing shoes while I mow the lawn. (I think I've mentioned that I *hate* wearing shoes) Other than that, they sit in the cubby collecting dust.
Second, I should explain that I've never jogged before. Well, maybe I jogged a little before I hit puberty - back when I had all the energy in the world and was not an angsty teenager mooning over boys in my bedroom, silently cursing my mother for not letting me paint my walls black or allowing me to scribble the words to morose Marillion songs on them in secret black light letters. Things have changed since before those pre-pubecent days of yore.
Now, I'm about as graceful as a badger stuck in a hammock. So I patiently waited until the more experienced joggers had made their way home for the evening (dusk) and slowly eased myself into the road, the road, which was apparently freshly oiled and stoned today. (Not THAT kind of stoned.) We're talking a hundred million pieces of tiny, wobbly, unstable gravel and slippery oil that tried to kick my legs out from underneath me with every fancy prance I took.
To those pesky stones I say, "HA! BASTARDS! YOU FAILED! I WIN!"
It was a dirty run, but I made it to the end of my dead-end road and turned the corner and stopped, completely out of breath, wanting to lay down in the grass and let the wild bunnies eat me alive. I immediately thought of my upcoming kickboxing class and how badly I am going to be beaten by it. I forged ahead, though, not willing to have my a$$ kicked by ROAD. Pffffffff.
Jogging turned to gallopping, turned to skipping, turned to walking, and in the end I walked two miles, jogged maybe 1/4 mile, but I savored every step. It's unbelievable how completely different everything is at dusk from the daytime. The daytime, on my road, smells like a combination of milkweed, sweet clover, dill and a hint of fresh hay, intensely warmed by the sun. At dusk all the musky-clean earth aromas dance in the cool evening air to mingle with the sounds of crickets and wild geese eating corn in the field. Over it all I could smell a hint of a brush pile burning in the distance - not too overwhelming - just enough to bring back campfire memories of my childhood summers spent on Lake Ontario. I glanced at the treetops, barely visible by the setting sun and noticed they've all changed to yellow. Autumn is here, summer is leaving and I'm sad to see it go. Every one seems shorter and shorter and I haven't quite figured out how to slow them down.
If you figure it out, let me know, because that's one secret I would hold dear.