run on sentences

Today I ran at noon.  I am usually a morning runner but I barely passed the coffee test this morning (coffee test  = waking up feeling like crap + drinking coffee and feeling better = passed).  Sore throat, runny nose, ear stuffed with stuffing because last week I had the drum repaired for the third time - and I am not supposed to blow my nose or cough or sneeze.  Anyway I felt better after coffee and sudafed.  I knew I would feel better if I ran.  I put my running clothes on which caused the dogs to be excited cause they might get to go for a walk.  I walked them, thinking that this was better than doing nothing - 2.5 miles.  I felt a little better after that but I knew I would. After doing my stay at home mom stuff including washing bedding, hanging it on clothesline and vacuuming it was getting close to 11am.  Strangely I could not bring myself to take a shower which to me was a sign that I still had to make myself run.  Strangely...

I have weird dreams.  Some of them are so bad that I don't share them with others, and they cause me to question my sanity or lack thereof.  Like the one where my calf muscles really weren't muscles but Orio cookies nicely stashed inside the back of my leg. My most recent weird dream involved my grandpa Ojanen - my dad's dad.  He died when he was 94 and was a strong Finnish man of few words - but a wise man who worked hard his entire life after leaving Finland when he was 18 as a result of a fight with his drunk father.  He swore he would never return to Finland and never did, leaving behind a twin brother and other siblings we never met.  Instead he settled in Greenland, MI and later in Mudd Creek, after building a home and a farm there and raising a family - the youngest who became my dad.  I was closer to grandpa (despite that he would not let me drive a tractor because I was "just a girl") than my grandma Ojanen, who was not very affectionate and seem...

Last week I was in Winston Salem, North Carolina, at this great place called the Graylyn.  I was at a meeting, but that's not important to this blog - not really - or at least this is not what this post is about - I will save it for another time.  My room was originally a horse stable.  That's not so important either.  It was a nice room with rock walls and a long weird area where if I was so inclined, I could have practiced yoga.  On the last morning of the meeting, I woke up at 5:45 to the alarm on my not smart phone.  I set the alarm cause I wanted to go running.   I have just gotten back into it after the shoulder surgery.  But when I woke up I didn't want to go even though I wanted to go.   My meeting started at 8.  I didn't have coffee in the room and I need my coffee before running.  I had a Crown Royale and Coke (fancy crabby juice) and a few glasses of wine with dinner and my head was a little sore and my throat parched....

I have been trying to complete this entry for the past month, since having surgery on my shoulder.  Everything  I wrote sounded self- pitying and I am not good at that.  At least not outwardly, and who wants to read stuff about how I can't run, can't style my limp hair, can't drive,  etc, etc.  Some people have it a lot worse, my mama taught me. March has always sucked for my sister and me.  Our mom died on the 10th, and our dad would have been 88 on the 17th.  Siggie died last year on the 28th.  So the shoulder thing and my lack of being able to run added to the general gloom.  That's enough of the moping though.  Slowly I am getting better.  Still have the sling and have to sleep in the basement in the recliner.  Yeah, I can't run but can ride the stationary bike and get some exercise to keep my once perfect ass from spreading from too much sitting.  I can walk the dogs with one arm.  Lot's of people, friends and...

It was 15 degrees this am so I put off my run till about 930 when it was at least 20 degrees.  The little dogs were not happy to be left home. If you look closely you can see the little dogs in the window I started out thinking that I was going to just do a short run - 5 miles maybe.  I know five miles is a respectable distance and I don't mean to brag.  It's just that when one is training for a half marathon, 5 miles is a shorter distance.  The older I get the more I appreciate even a two mile run....I am just happy to be out there and I don't care about how far or how fast.  On this day it was just me and the iPod.   I put it on "shuffle" and it played so many good songs that I kept telling myself that I would just keep going until I heard a song I did not like so much and then I would turn around.  I started out with an old tune by Melanie "Look what they done to my song, ma".  Reminded me of my sister cause we always liked this on...

As my friend Suzanne and I neared the finish of a 9 mile run in 9 degree weather, we chatted about various things.  For some reason, I remembered how my mom's favorite term of endearment to my dad was "Jesus Christ, Ray".   This phrase has become common in my family and we (lovingly) use it on each other when the situation calls for it. After I got in the house and warmed up with some coffee and added the dregs from the Bailey's bottle, I started thinking of my mom's entrance into heaven.  The first thing she said to my dad was probably, yup, you guessed it - "Jesus Christ Ray".  She probably said this because, as I have been told by the minister who performed both my mom and dad's funeral, you get your best self in Heaven.  So my dad probably looked like this: My mom looked like this but she didn't realize it yet since there are no mirrors in heaven because finally looks become unimportant and we get to see inside each other's soul.  ...

As I sat in church last Sunday, I looked around me.  Not many people were there since it was the first Sunday after the holidays.  More people come during the Christmas season...and Easter, and other traditional holidays but then slack off and stay home and drink coffee and read the newspaper. I have been there.  That's okay though cause going to church every Sunday as we all know,  (and as Garrison Keillor said) "won't make you a Christian, any more than sleeping in your garage will make you a car". I felt some sadness as I looked around at the empty places where some of my old friends used to sit.  In the years that I have been going to this church, I have met and befriended many elderly people, who, it seems have been plucked out of their pews, one by one - plucked out of this life and placed somewhere else.  And let's face it - whether we go to church or not, we don't exactly know for sure where they go. No one has come back to tell us unless you coun...