Tap Tap Tap

Sam had some sort of crazy nightmare last night, and she ended up being awake from 9:00 until 10:00. She was so tired, but she kept crying and crying, and practically hyperventilated any time we mentioned going back to bed. All she wanted was for me to hold her, and to not be in her room. So we read a few books, and relaxed in the semi-dark, and finally, she calmed down enough that we went through the final steps of her bedtime routine again and she went back to sleep. Poor little one. The only upside to this whole episode was that once she went back to sleep, she slept until almost 5am, and then went back to sleep until around 6:30. So that was nice! Not that I slept through or anythings. Darn pre-conditioned middle of the night wake-ups! Ah well. In any event, she woke up happy so the whole thing didn't seem to affect her at least.

After I dropped her off at daycare this morning, I figured I had time to squeeze in a 5 mile run. But although it was nice and sunny, and not too warm, I just wasn't feeling it. My legs felt heavy and I felt tired. But I headed out on the powerlines anyway, figuring I'd just see how things went. Soon after I got onto the gravel road heading up to the Mt. Ararat tower, I noticed a group of crows sitting on the high tension power lines, cawing away. I looked up and caught a glimpse of a big red head creeping around the back of the pole. A Pileated Woodpecker! I stopped to watch. The crows cawed, irritated by the intruder, but the woodpecker didn't care. He kept tap tap tapping away, and creeping his way around and up the pole. By the time he reached the top, the crows had flown away, and he sat up there, preening himself and spreading his wings. It was very cool. I've never had the chance to get such a long look at a pileated! I finally had to tear myself away, and keep running.

A few minutes later, I stopped to eat a few ripe blackberries - yum! - so as you can tell, I was really pushing the pace with this run :-) Ha! I ended up getting in 4.75 and just running out of time to do the final loop that would have rounded things out to an even 5.0. Ah well. There is always tomorrow! :-)