End of the Week

The dreary, wet weather and the better-but-still-sick child who is not sleeping well and whose cough is waking her up in the early morning hours have conspired against my running this week. Thursday, I meant to run, I really did, but Sam was up every hour in the night, and then woke up early coughing. I managed to get her to lay down with me in our bed, and poof, before I knew it, it was almost 7:00 am and I had just re-awoken. She was still asleep, peacefully, finally, so I snuck downstairs for a cup of coffee. Alas, she woke up 5 minutes late, wondering where I was :-) I knew there was no way we were going to be able to get her out the door with Ryan at 7:30, and I didn't have time to run after dropping her off, as I needed to finish up a project that I'm helping Ryan with by 9:00 and then leave the house by 9:30 to get up to the gallery. So scratch the running that day.

And yesterday, we were up numerous times in the night too, and then at 5:00 am, Sam was coughing so much she had not one, but two, spit-ups of phlegm. YUCK! Poor kiddo. The funny and amazing thing is that after all that distress, she was in a wonderful mood for the rest of the morning. Gotta love a kid's ability to bounce back! Ryan and I, not so much. Neither of us were in the mood to get out and run in the rain in the dark on the first official day of winter after a tiring night. So instead, I took advantage of the fact that Sam wanted Ryan to take her to daycare and the fact that I wasn't running, and got some things crossed off my to-do list instead. I got the sheets all laundered and back on the beds, folded a load of laundry, cleaned both bathrooms, cleaned the upstairs floor, took the recycling to the transfer station, took the returnables to Shaws, stopped at the hardware store for more screws for screw shoes (should we ever need them...), bird seed and cat food, and still got to work a few minutes early. Amazing how productive I can be in 2 hours if I'm not trying to cram in a run and shower!:-)

Which brings us to this morning...when I finally got out for a run. After two days off and not a whole lot of sleep, I didn't feel great, but hey, what can you do. I ran down to the river and back, splashing through puddles and tiptoeing over slick bog bridges. I was surprised to find that although the thermometer was reading 36 degrees when I headed out, it didn't seem all that cold out. It felt sort of damp, and almost spring-ish? Weird. I could hear the river long before I reached it, the roar of the water reaching my ears as I ran along the wide gravel path past the ecology center. The churning water looked like hot chocolate, overflowing its banks and rushing down the riverbed. Between the river and the saturated ground in the woods, it was clear that we had indeed received a whole lot of precipitation this week.Just wish it had been snow! Oh well, hopefully it will snow again soon enough!