I have been having trouble focusing on my Sunday long runs recently. What should be a straightforward long run at a pace I’ve done a million times on a million weekends (7 miles @ 9 min) has become a – not quite a struggle – but a bickering within myself in which the side that always argues to stop because I’m hot and tired has been winning. I’ve been stopping a lot for really no good reason (you know when you are at work and working on something and being productive, and then you find yourself searching for the latest sale at Nordstrom or go looking for youtube vidoes on corgis or Trump’s latest tweets? Same thing. Why, why did you stop working? Who knows. One just wanted to stop working.) and then I get mad at myself for stopping and then it turns into a thing where I’m like – omg, I can’t even do this long run, how am I ever going to (*insert ambitious project idea here*). Paul suggested that I go run with a group and then that’ll help with the not stopping, but honestly, I like the time I spend running alone. It can be complicated adding another person to the mix. I get hung up on the pacing! What happens if they are too fast? or too slow? With some hesitation, I showed up to a (what was advertised as) a low-key long run group this morning and asked what the general workout was as various thin, youngish, fast-looking people started to gather around me. The workout was 12 miles starting at 8:15 working down to 7:30 pace. Hmmmm. I can not do that. Even though I did, in the end, find someone to run with, I’m not sure this particular running group is the right one for me. Maybe. Maybe the person I found to run with will run with me on our own. She is a faster runner than me & older than me and told me I should focus on dropping my 5 mile pace to 7:30. I told her I thought I’d need to up my mileage to at least 35-40 miles a week for that to happen, and she was like – you can do that. sigh.
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Edda and I spent the mid-day together working on the next quilt.
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Vince came into the room at about noon and we FaceTimed my parents. We also had a long discussion about the coming school year. Vince wants an extension on curfew. He doesn’t really have a true curfew, he has an electronic curfew of 9:30 and he can stay up as late as he wants without his phone/computer. I’m hesitant to extend it because if we extend it to 10, it really would be relying on him to enforce it because by 10, I want to be asleep myself. Last year, at 9:30, we collected his electronics and brought them to charge in our room. If we extended the time, I see a few problems: I also don’t want to encourage last minute homework efforts at 10 pm. Also, I really enjoyed collecting his computers at 9:30 because then he’d come into our room for 10-15 min and tell us about his day, things he found funny or things he’s worried about. This is our time for private parent/son discussion and considerations. This is not always possible at dinner (our other discussion time) because Edda’s there and usually a caregiver is there too – there is a lot of talking at dinner, but not necessarily a place for more heartfelt discussions. I think this would disappear with the 10 pm electronic curfew.
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Sunday night dinner!
Hamburgers!
Don't give in yet. Get one more year out of it or maybe only extend it on Friday and Saturday. Those heartfelt moments are so rare and technology can really be addictive without realizing it has happened. Your quilts are coming along so nicely.