A Broken Rule, a Tragedy, and Catch-up

Sorry I didn't get a chance to post last Thursday.  I went to work (the only day that week due to MLK Day, a snow day, and my telecommuting days), but I ended up sitting with a bus friend who wanted to chat the entire time.  Yes, I have broken my cardinal bus rule: no more bus friends after Jacqui, especially male bus friends.  The reason I became friends with Jacqui in the first place was because she was rescuing me from a male bus stalker who wanted to sit with me all the time.  She started sitting with me so that he couldn't and it saved me (the guy was actually mad at her and yelled at her for sitting with me all the time - he had serious problems).  When Jacqui stopped riding the bus I promised to stop making bus friends and I really promised to never make a male bus friend because they always turn out to be creepy.  All rules broken.  As hard as I tried not to, I made a new bus friend.  And he happens to be male.  He was just so friendly that I would have had to be down right rude to get rid of him and that's hard for me to do.  He seems happily married with two young girls so I am hoping that he never invites me for coffee or to stay the night in his "condo" or any other creepy gross things.  There are only so many different buses I can take to escape the weirdos.  But the point of this long tangent was to say that the bus was crowded that morning so I sat with him and then couldn't write my blog.

Saturday morning I headed out for a run.  Amazing, right?  Well, now that I have joined up with the TNT  group to do my long runs (not fundraising, just running with them), I feel more compelled to go.  It's a good thing too because it was like 13 degrees but felt like 5 due to the wind.  Yup, it was chilly.

That was my running outfit.  It kept me nice and warm (kind of, I was still a bit frozen).  The face mask was useful in keeping my mouth from freezing off, but it did get some condensation on it that froze.  I ended up doing 7.18 miles in one hour and five minutes, and that was including our water break stop.  That was pretty fast for me..I was tired but glad I kept up that pace and survived.  I admit I am a bit sore but I'll just have to push through.  Our half is coming up in like a month.  Yikes!

And on Sunday Evan and I decided to be brave and go back to church (the last time I went we got "the Look" because Evan hasn't figured out the difference between an indoor and an outdoor voice and so I stopped going - but I've decided I am going to try and ignore "the Looks" and persevere).  There had been a random shooting in our mall the day before and church was on my mind as a place to go and find peace (no matter how often you hear of gunman shooting at random people on the news, it feels very different when it happens in your own community).  This morning driving past the mall on the bus there were four or five reporters reporting early this morning and the mall is still an active crime scene.  I could also see police headquarters set up in the parking lot too.  Just very surreal.  Evan wasn't too bad at church and the nice woman in front of me specifically told me that it didn't bother her if Evan made a lot of noise.  I was thankful for this.  I am glad we went mass because the homily on the shooting was very good and I did feel better afterwards.  The thing that stuck with me the most was the priest made a comment about how it is much easier to buy guns and ammunition in this country than it is to get decent mental health care and that is sad.  And it really is very sad.  People are hurting in this country (mentally/emotionally/physically) and it's our responsibility to take care of them but we seem to be doing a really bad job of it.  And I wish I knew what was causing people so much pain and making them want to kill people and then themselves rather than getting help.  It's easy to be dismissive and say people are crazy - but that is not helping anyone.  As a society, we need to start figuring out why and what we can do about it because it it getting scary around here.  Ok, that's enough on that topic.

Onto something much happier: Evan!

And now I am gonna update you on some funny things Evan has done.  The other night he was eating dinner and put this bag over his head.

He ate his entire dinner like that.  He'd lift the bag up and I'd put some food in his mouth and then he'd put the bag back down over his head.  It was hilarious.  And surprisingly he ate more than he normally does - he actually finished all his dinner!  I'm debating whether I should put a bag over his head every night for dinner (don't worry, I made sure he was safe and wasn't suffocating himself and I don't let him put bags over his head without supervision).

And take a look at his new seat.

Ivan caught him sitting on Dolce and looking out the window.  It was so cute!  Then he started bouncing on Dolce and that was less cute.  Now he tries to climb on Dolce every time he can.  Less fun and way less cute.  Pretty much I have to separate the two of these creatures these days because I try not to let Evan bother Dolce too much.  You just never know when a dog is going to have enough and the last thing I want is Evan hurting Dolce and making him snap/bite him (this has never happened and the only time I've seen Dolce snap is at the vet when having stitches removed).  Plus, Dolce weighs about 65 pounds and Evan is about 18 pounds - so there is a big difference there.

Ok, I'm gonna banana split.  Hope you have a great Monday!