18 hours and Alain de Botton

This is the essayist I saw tonight. In person, he’s witty, polished, and has great presence. I was so excited to see him on the schedule for Seattle Arts and Lectures, and he didn’t disappoint. His 50-minute talk went by like 5. I would seriously listen to his accent and ideas for 5 hours.

But before that happened, this happened:

6:30am Wake up
7:30am Take A to school
8:30am Teach at the intermediate school (easy day, didn’t embarrass S too much)
3:30pm Pick up A
4:00pm Take kids to S’s guitar recital (fun times, she did great)
5:30pm Go home, finish making dinner, pack dinner for B and me
6:00pm Leave for the 6:30 ferry
7:30pm Attend Alain de Botton’s lecture at UW
10:05pm Get the ferry back home
10:40pm Run home alone along dark pathways, get scared silly and arrive home breathless, sweaty and with seared lungs.
11:30pm Cuddle up in bed and let my mind churn and churn and churn:

So many frogs at night
It feels like everything’s been done before
Maybe some mint tea would be nice
Up too late again
But look, we’re one of the first generations to navigate non-religious life
Smartphone flashlights are not bright enough
There are definitely gaps in the secular world

The path along the harbor is beautiful and weirdly frightening at night
There’s so much that we mean to do, but we just don’t get around to it
Things jump and quiver in the dark
That’s what religions do well; they infuse life with ritual
Running must kill hunger, motion being its own food
Actually it was all the chocolate

Food, drink, music, art, these are all important aspects of religion
It’s late and getting later
The kids are all asleep now
All the major faiths structure time
An outer structure for an inner phenomenon

Ordway jogathon

A beautiful sunny day on the BHS track, lots of energetic kids, fresh white jogathon t-shirts, and an orange Sharpie in my hand = smiling for hours. Here I’m telling S. “Good job, kiddo!”

When we drew bright orange slashes down the kindergarteners’ shirts to mark their first lap, they stopped completely and stared in horror and confusion. Grownups writing on me with marker?! It took them a couple of laps around to get used to it.

S’s new blue Chucks.

And A’s hand-me-down Keens. Those things last forevah.

4th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st, and kindergarteners, you ran so well!

Cycling Spokane

Yesterday morning Auntie M had to run 5 miles for her training regimen (1/2 marathon in Coeur d’Alene this month), so we rented bikes from Spoke N’ Sport on Division Street and had a great Saturday morning ride. There were a lot of people out in the sunshine on the Centennial Trail, some just out for the fun of it like us, and some already in town for Bloomsday.

Running in the rain

My path:

This is the Arch of Arachne, aka The tunnel where you have to employ preemptive spiderweb swimming. Unless you like cobwebs across your face.

The rain I don’t mind. It fell on me and I caught it in my open eyes.

All-Comers Track Meet

Monday night was the last all-comers meet of the summer, and we’re kind of bummed because we’ve had so much fun watching the kids run.

To watch a news clip about the all-comers meet, click here.

(if you’ve got lightning-fast powers of observation, you can see A___ running in a striped shirt, and a close-up of S____’s name in the paper!)