Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Just When You Think Things Are Going Great

Life comes at you when you aren't really paying attention and gets you right in the junk.

Every. Time.

Monday, September 18, 2017

Monday Morning Stories With Mookie - Episode 155

The Time Mookie Saw Underwear Along The Highway


Bear with me here.  The title will make sense in a bit.

Here lately I have been trying to get into the habit of running on a regular basis. I do this because I find it to be a decent stress reliever, and because I could stand to lose a few pounds (cough-twenty- cough-cough).  I am currently in a good pattern where I set a goal of 10,000 steps a day, regardless of what I do.  To achieve this goal, I alternate days of walking and running during my activity time.  The walking days I try to get in about an hour of solid walking, plus whatever steps I get in throughout the day. That usually gets me over 10,000 steps. On the running days, I run a MINIMUM of 3 miles.  A lot of days it's more than 3, but some days it's 3 miles on the nose.  Then I walk the rest to get up to my 10,000 step quota.

I'm not a terribly fast runner, but I do enjoy going longer distances for some reason (Long and slow - That's what she said).  Recently I've went as far as about 7 miles without stopping, but for the most part I top out around 4 or 5. These outings be anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes, depending on the activity and distance we are talking about.  Naturally this can difficult to squeeze into a day sometimes, but I make it work.

People often ask me: What do you think about during these runs?  It's an excellent question that can very much depend on the day.  Sometimes it's work.  Sometimes it's how I need to handle something with my kids.  I often run with music playing in my headphones, so sometimes it's a visual concert in my head.  Then there are times the stuff I think of is SO far out there, you can't even explain it.  Some days it is absolutely NOTHING.  Seriously.  Just blanked out to the world.  To be honest, most days I don't care what I think about as long as I can keep my mind preoccupied from the fact that I'm sweating like a whore in church, and my legs, knees, and ankles hurt so much they are screaming at my brain to STOP THIS STUPID PERSON NOW! The funny thing is that most times when I get home, I often don't remember what I thought about.  It's pretty much like when you have a dream, and you wake up sort of remembering the dream. However, by the time breakfast is over and start your day.....you realize you have totally forgotten the dream.  This usually holds true to many of my running thoughts....except for this one particular day last week.  The round trip path I set out on was approximately 6 miles, and it took me out into the country where it involved some gravel and dirt road running. This environment forces me to be really creative because country road running is BORING. So there I was, trudging up the gravel shoulder of the local highway, coming back into the city limits of my small town when I saw something lying along the highway: a pair of ladies underwear.

As I passed by, it was apparent they had been there for some time as they were covered in gravel, and had been subjected to the elements of Mother Nature as well.  I see stuff along the road all the time and usually pay them no mind.  Beer cans. Trash. Soda bottles. Even nuts and bolts that have probably rattled off the traffic that has traveled by in recent history.  But this random pair of white underwear with pink seams and some sort of floral print intrigued me. Now, before you think I am a total skeevy guy: NO! I did NOT stop and pick it up or anything.  However my water-deprived brain began to wonder HOW this undergarment wound up along the shoulder of the highway and I began going through the following thoughts:
  • How did this underwear get here? 
  • Did the owner shit themselves and throw it out the window?  
  • Did some girl leave these behind in her boyfriend's car, and the boyfriend threw them out so his parents/spouse wouldn't see them? 
  • Did the owner stop and change her clothes along the road and misplaced her underwear? 
  • Did the owner find this underwear uncomfortable, and just took them off while she was driving and threw them out the window? 
  • Or simply - were they in a laundry basket in the back of a truck, and accidentally blew out of the truck and fell along the road?  
Seriously, the scenarios were endless and went on longer than what is shown here. But the best part of all of it was that this thought process lasted me over two miles, and distracted me enough to allow me to run all the way back home - uphill - without stopping.

So to the poor girl who lost her underpants, I say thank you for providing me a distraction so I could run all the way home.  Also...I hope you have more underwear.