might as well jump

2015
happy new year.

day 368
I made it: a year-long running streak. how many times have I thought about what I would write in this moment? and yet I am mostly without words. in maryland I only ran the trails on one day, in part because I was frequently without a vehicle, and in part because my leg was consistently bothering me (and still is), and also in part because when I come home for christmas I'm lazy and sleepy and I really would rather just sit in my pajamas watching netflix with my sister than do nearly any other thing at all.

the one day on the trail was glorious. so there's that.

I arrived back in portland the night of 12/30: day 364. I had not yet run when I got home. it was 7 PM. I'd been up since 5 AM EST. I was exhausted and lonely. I ran one slow mile. the calf pain I have been carrying around for six months had localized to a point at the top of my achilles, rather unexpectedly, and had hurt for the entire day of travel.

on day 365 I ran 1.4 miles at lunch, more slowly than I wanted because of the leg. I listened to music and wore my hair in a braid and it was sunny and cold and I momentarily choked up, but mostly the run felt strangely uneventful. I had been imagining this ending for the last three weeks, sometimes playing it out in my head as I ran, so maybe I had already lived it. I came inside and one coworker high-fived me and that was that. I was jet-lagged and coming down with a mystery ailment. I left work an hour later and missed by ten minutes the flowers my mom had had delivered as a congratulatory gift. when I found out about that the next day I felt doubly blue; they would have made the day feel a little more ceremonious.

that night I fell asleep at 6 in front of the TV and was woken by jennifer, who had showed up with balloons (after repeatedly trying to text and call to no avail, since I had slept through all attempts). she hadn't known that I had been feeling bummed by the lack of pomp of the last day, so it was especially nice, and probably funny for her since I opened the door in a fleece leopard-print PJ set my sister gave me for christmas, my hair rumpled, half-asleep.

I have been surprised by how immediately the fervor of the streak has declined. which is not to say that I am throwing in the towel, but I wouldn't have guessed how much motivation I was drawing from the approach of the one-year milestone. on these post-365 days I mostly go out to check off the boxes. I am not into it. I'm also trying to stop this leg from hurting. and january generally kind of sucks.

the homestead
my family has an elf on the shelf, even though my siblings are 17. the sense of humor required for the elf is pretty solidly in our wheelhouse. normally it's my mom who plants him around the house, but when I got home my sister and I commandeered him.

(bonus: admire my world's geekiest senior photo, far left)

my mom's cats are ridiculous.

on the whole the trip was kind of weird and a little bit of a bummer. I always forget how much of the difficulty I have with visiting people and getting out of the house has to do with not having a vehicle. some years I can borrow the '94 buick century station wagon (with wood paneling) but this year it had a radiator problem and was out of commission. my sister is driving now (and I discovered on this trip that driving with someone who's been licensed for a month is FUCKING TERRIFYING for me, as I nearly had a panic attack in the car and tried not to let my sister know; we all have to learn somehow), but her truck also is in need of work and I was hesitant to borrow it. so I was largely housebound, and then we nearly had to put down our 14-year-old black lab, who rather suddenly lost the use of his back legs and who had to be carried in and out of the house by two people for several days. it turned out to be a bad vestibular system problem -- doggie vertigo. he just was too damn dizzy to walk. it was exhausting and I definitely spent the entire afternoon of 12/23 intermittently crying because we felt sure we were going to have to say goodbye to him on christmas eve.

he got better but still required pretty intense care and also had to go out like every forty minutes because the drugs he was on made him have to pee every second.

otherwise I sat around in my pajamas. I saw almost no one. I did almost nothing.

adventures in the new year
I developed some miscellaneous ENT illness upon arrival in PDX. I still don't know what it is, but I do know that it made my tongue hurt and look really weird, which is how I can advise you to not spend too much time looking at your tongue. there's like some sort of semantic satiation that happens, like how if you repeat a word too much it loses meaning -- that's what happens when you keep investigating your tongue. don't do it.

strep? thrush? I seriously don't know. I took a picture but I'm not that big of an asshole. nobody needs to see that shit.

also, I cut new bangs today. living on the edge.