I washed my running shoes today.
How is that blog worthy? Here in the southeastern part of the country, we have had 14 straight days of rain. Flash flooding is all around us, yards and fields are saturated, the crops are suffering and it is SO humid and cool. You know how uncomfortable it is to be cold and clammy? That has been our air for 2 weeks.
It has primarily been rain, thankfully. We have no storms or tornadoes, no high winds, just monsoons. During the 2 weeks, I had the pleasure of jetting off to Boston on a business trip. The weather those few days was just perfect! No clouds, sunshine, in the 70’s and no humidity. Oh how I didn’t want to come back! The plane landed in Memphis, the door opened and a cool damp blanket was thrown over the passengers as we exited.
For the past two weeks I have felt the lack of adequate sunshine in my mood. I am akin to snakes, I need to lay on hot rocks in the sun from time to time to stay alive. Just before the rain set in, my new replacement hammock came. I was so excited to finally get it! I envisioned myself basking and napping in the sun in the back yard. Sigh. It is still in the box as no one can use the hammock in the rain.
Rain stops me from doing many things like laying on my ass in a hammock in the yard and hanging my clothes out on the clothesline to dry. The off-site airport parking lot where my car lives gives me coupons for free car washes after so many paid parking days. I have two in my possession right now that I will not use while we are under the monsoon season. The weeds in my flower beds just love all this rain and there is nothing I can do about them right now.
But there are things the rain will not stop me from doing. It does not stop me from running.
For the past 2 weeks, I have been out on my routes in the mornings every chance I had. That meant having my neighbors and passersby question and discuss my sanity amongst themselves. All of my routes had standing water at times and puddles everywhere. The route to town and back had flooded sidewalks with underlayers of mud. I ran through it all anyway.
My shoes got nasty. But why wash them if I was just going to get out and do it again tomorrow? Even if I did wash them, the humid air would prevent them from drying overnight, so I’d have wet shoes the next morning.
I knocked the mud off when I needed to and just wore them dirty and wet. But today – TODAY is supposed to be the last day of rain for at least a week! Yes!
For once I am completely believing in the lying-ass weatherpeople. I am believing them because I want to. I want it to stop raining. I want some sun.
Yesterday I had the radio on in my office. The radio stations were giving the lying-ass weathermen all the air time they wanted to yell and scream about how the rain is leaving! Sunshine is on its way! We promise this time! I thought it was ironic that every so often during one of their proclamations, they would be cut off by the severe weather warning and the national weather service giving the flash flood warnings for counties getting 3 inches of rain in an hour.
My husband and I run together on Saturday mornings. We got out today and we could look really hard and see maybe a square foot of blue sky here and there. We were hopeful. However, the national weather service had flash flood warnings out for adjacent counties, so we were trying not to get our hopes up too much. Sure enough, during our 5 miles, the pregnant gray clouds rolled in and the rain started. We kept running anyway.
Tomorrow is the official day of sunshine according to the lying-ass weathermen that I really have faith and hope in this week. When I cleaned up from my run, I looked at my now gray, nasty wet running shoes and thought tomorrow would be the new beginning….sunshine….no more standing water to get through. I have hope!
So I washed my running shoes.
