3 miles
treadmill, basement
35 degrees / feels like 28
windy / earlier, snow
It snowed last night. Maybe 2 inches. I decided to run in the basement instead of going outside in the cold and the wind. While I ran I listened to a You Are Good episode about the horror movie, The Changeling. I’m not familiar with the movie but it’s on the horror movie puzzle we’re working on right now, so I was curious. Now I think I want to see it.
Not much to remember about my run. Can I think of 10 things?
Almost 10 Things
- I forgot my headband and even though my hair was pulled back in a ponytail, stray hairs kept flying out and into my face. I think running on the treadmill must cause static
- the hairs feel like little spider webs and are annoying
- I thought sweat would help tame these hairs, but it didn’t. They kept harassing all through the run
- I briefly stepped off the treadmill mid-run to set up the podcast. The belt made a loud whirr that sounded like it might fly off at any minute
- sometimes, but not all the time, I forgot my feet were touching the ground and I felt like I was floating
- on the podcast they talked about how the main character, George C. Scott, was an old dad — he was in his 50s, but was an old 50s — Sarah Marshall called it a 70s 50s. She also compared him to her dad and said that they were both born smoking cigarettes, which aged them more rapidly
- why is that what I remember?
- my left hip was a little stiff
- treadmills are boring and I kept looking at my watch, hoping the time was going faster
I don’t like running on treadmills that often. We just rejoined the Y for the winter so maybe I won’t have to? If I do, I’d like to do some interesting experiments. Maybe more reciting poetry or listening to more podcasts or audio books?
It’s Halloween, and here’s a wonderful poem in celebration of it:
Ode to Halloween/ Joanne Durham
The Crayola crayon box on skinny legs
squeezes close to the patch-eyed pirate
on my doorstep, goodie bags outstretched
like ours were long ago—We knew
we were the lucky ones, living
in the apartments, where we scored more
M&Ms and Snickers bars in twenty minutes
than the kids in fancy houses did in an hour.
But it wasn’t the candy that enticed us,
most of mine forgotten on the kitchen shelf
for months after the initial gorging.
It was the whole town complicit
with superheroes and monsters, my sister
morphed into a frog in Mom’s t-shirt and
green socks, Mr. Carson dressed in fluorescent
skeleton bones we dashed past to reach
the fairy godmother at the front door,
our faces upturned and open—
We forgot if we were a kid who couldn’t spell,
a boy sprouting acne at nine. We just fastened
a lion’s fuzzy face over our own and roared.
Speaking of Halloween, we have had the same decorations for 6 or 7 years. Cheap Target skeleton lights, a styrofoam tombstone, and hands and a skull that light up and look they’re coming out of the earth. It’s not amazing, but I like decorating a little and it looks cool from down the street. For the past week, the lights haven’t been working and I couldn’t figure out why. Scott finally checked: someone cut the cord. Why? Such a bummer.