What she actually said was, “You have been running for 13.13 minutes. Your distance is 1.0 miles. You are running at a pace of 13.13 minutes per mile.”
I might have responded with something like, “Shut up bitch! It’s been a long week. I KNOW I’M RUNNING SLOW!”
She didn’t answer and that pissed me off even more. Her silence felt as accusatory as her snide announcement that I was running at a turtle’s pace. So I walked her through my litany of woes (in my head this time because I’m pretty sure a guy watering his lawn thinks I called him a bitch).
My dog almost died on Saturday.
She is diabetic, and went into hypoglycemic shock. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you it was one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen. She seized twice at home and again at the vet’s office. My 17 year old son had to carry her rigid, 90 pound body to the car. He held her, stroked her, and crooned softly in her ear while I drove. When she went into full seizure for the third time in the vet’s ER, he knelt on the floor next to her and openly sobbed.
They stabilized her, brought her blood sugar back up, and kept her overnight, and today, I’m happy to report she’s almost back to her normal self. But emotionally, the whole experience felt like being run over by a truck.
So yeah…I’m running slow.
(Side note…I know that technically, I should say “slowly” but I’m ignoring that green squiggle under “slow” because I’m intentionally using the vernacular AND because I’m tired of computers telling me what to do.)
Sunday, I had to do the stinking taxes. Yes, I know Sunday was the 15th. Don’t judge me. My first career was as an accountant, and honestly, at this stage in my life, I’d rather have my fingernails pulled out slowly than do taxes. The software downloaded wrong, and I spent two full hours on the phone with tech support. So that was fun…if your idea of fun is installing and uninstalling the same program 3 times and then thinking you’ve lost the whole return you spent all day preparing.
So yes, it’s a 13 minute mile! STFU!
Four days of school done this week, and I’ve lost my planning period for three of them because of state testing. Losing your planning period SUCKS for reasons too numerous to list. The biggest? You don’t get any time to catch your breath without kids in the room.
Don’t get me wrong. I like the kids. I love my job, but I am human. I need that hour to not only grade papers, return emails, plan lessons, meet with parents, meet with my department, and a hundred other things that come up, but also to breathe. On any given day, the pregnant 16 year old in my freshman English class might tell me she wasn’t even f’n texting when I ask her to put her phone away. Zen is critical in a situation like that. While reading Shakespeare, I might have to answer the smirking kid in the back of the room when he asks what a girl’s maidenhead is. When ten other smirks turn my way, I can’t afford to be rattled.
Today, a student told me I seemed edgy. Nevermind that he had just randomly asked me why women didn’t lactate all the time. Yesterday, we discussed the fact that the nurse had indeed “nursed” Juliet as a baby, but he asked the question today in the middle of a discussion about Mercutio. AND NO! He didn’t use the word “lactate” in his question. The question was not artfully worded. My reservoir of Zen was low, and YES! I was edgy!
So excuse the hell out of me and my 13 minute mile!
There’s more, but really, do you want to hear it? Probably not. The stupid robot woman in my phone wasn’t interested.
I hit the mile and a half mark and realized I was sprinting. Uphill. Where was the snarky bitch now? I kept the pace thru all of the Eminem song blaring through my headphones, and when I hit two miles, she informed me I had increased my pace to just under 11 minutes.
I would have been triumphant, but my sustained sprint left me sucking wind. I staggered home short of the distance I had intended to run.
I’m not blind to the fact that the new feature did, in fact, make me pick up the pace, but I wasn’t smart about it, and I missed my distance. I’m self-aware enough to know I have to play mind games with myself to meet my running goals. Until Johnny Depp or Kiefer Sutherland’s voice gives me distance and pace, I’m turning that sucker off.
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