Self-pity days are what your union fought for.

Dear Diary,


13.  So I guess I'm doing a triathlon on Saturday.  I was actually feeling pretty good about not having a ride to the Chile Harvest triathlon this weekend.  Outwardly I was all, well darn it, I guess I'll have to miss it. And inwardly, looking forward to A Day of Sloth, as well as not humiliating myself in front of hundreds, given that
A) I haven't been in a pool during 2011, and
B) I have been on a bike once, and I've ridden 10 miles total, on a flat bike path, during 2011.

Police were posted at all trailheads, including this one near
my house.  

The Chile Harvest triathlon, you may recall, is the scene where, two years running now, I have done the bike portion WITH MY BRAKES ON and then struggled on the run which, I might add, occurs in temperatures upwards of 90 degrees.  It's the state team championship.  All the New Mexico Outlaws, the multi-sport team of which I am a member, go in full Outlaws regalia.

So, but, then I made the mistake of posting publicly on the New Mexico Outlaws message board that I wasn't going to be attending because my ride (Captain Baboo) has guard duty that weekend.  No sooner had I done that then the club president, herself  Dreadpirate Rackham, emailed me at work and said basically, oh no you don't missy and added some other stuff I can't quite remember.  "Your complacent ass" was in there; I remember that.

In the very center of the picture at top is some tall TV
antennas.  Can't see them?  That's how high
it is.  And THAT'S where the finish line is.  

12. Then, the next day, at 6 am. I'll be doing a foot race that goes from around 6200 feet up to 10,400 feet over 9 miles..."race" being a very loosely used term here, but after all, you get that "finisher" shirt at the finish whether you're first or last.  They do not allow earphones, given that it's a fairly narrow trail up the mountain, so I guess I'll sing to myself to keep me company.  That'll also keep the bears away.  Trust me you haven't heard me sing.  Win-win.  

Blonde.  With an E.

What makes this race even more interesting (other than the ass-busting altitude climb and the fact that I get all drama queen with gray-blue fingernails and gasping at high altitude) is that I didn't have much of a chance to do a lot of practicing on La Luz this year, owing to the fact that for a sizable chunk of my training period the trails were all closed (see picture, above) and THANK GOODNESS they opened them up just in time for me to humiliate myself TWICE in one weekend.

11.  Wednesday, I
took a SELF-PITY day (it's in your human resources manual.  Go check) and went and spent Groupons.

9. I also decided to be a blonde again. That's BLONDE.  With an e. Because I'm worth it.  And yes, I used a Groupon.

8. I will be meeting the head of behavioral health for a local hospital soon to discuss my new internship placement.  A bit more about it: It is in a local hospital.  Both of our largest hospitals here have acute psychiatric wards, which is where you go if it is determined that you, due to a mental disorder, are an immediate danger to yourself or others.
Note: Acute psychiatric wards are not for you to threaten your teenager with or to take your kid to because she throws temper tantrums.  They will be sent home, and you will have lost ground in the war against bad behavior.

As you well know, I lurves me some crazy people.  We'll see if that holds up after 9 months spending two days a week in an acute psychiatric ward.

7.  Wednesday's Pity Party slothful day of indulgence, courtesy of Groupon, was fab.  Got my nails done, got my toenails done (I pretended to be asleep to avoid the inevitable questions about missing or half-grown-in toenails).  I got a massage.  Then I ate cake.  YES, CAKE. I'VE HAD A TOUGH COUPLE OF WEEKS.

One of the pairs I bought.  

6.  I also bought some shoes on Ebay, so, I'm all healed now.  And yes, I am that easy. If you're a man, you don't want someone more complicated than that.  If you're a woman, you don't want to be more complicated than that.  I like to stick to the same thing, over and over and over.  For work shoes, I like Aerosoles, Clarks, and Indigo by Clarks.  For fun shoes, I like Naughty Monkey.

And no, they aren't wedges.  I think wedges are ugly.  I don't care who that offends.  They're frankenshoes.  So there.

5.  Text message from Daughter:
I had to block [roommate] from facebook.  
She has decided to hate me this week.

Hmm.  What to reply?
What'd you do - eat all her food?
Have you run her her long distance bill yet?
Is she sick of cleaning up after you yet?


In the end, I went with   Oh, my, girl drama.  Hope it all works out.

Taken in our back yard about two weeks ago.

4. It is officially "Monsoon Season" in New Mexico.  I talk about this every year, but here it is again: Monsoon season is a time during the year when, in the afternoons, the sky fills with dark, threatening clouds.  The wind blows, sometimes lightening starts fires up on the mountain, and there is a hell of a lot of noise that scares the shit out of my dog.
Sometimes it rains.

3. In the past two days, I've slept about 18 hours.  That's so not like me.  I feel like I could sleep more.  I suspect a creeping depressive reaction to the VA debacle.  Maybe not.

2. I'm really pissed that one of my Italian cypress trees out front apparently took a serious hit this past winter and has dead spots on it.  I always wanted some of these, and now I have them, and now it has dead spots.  I know that's a very minor thing to complain about, but it annoys the hell out of me.

1. Sweet Baboo feeds birds.  We spend a third-world family's annual salary on bird seed.  We have about a 1/3 of an acre, so there's lot of birds.  We also have a large pond.  Most of them are natives - mourning doves, finches, quail, and so on.  Anyway.  Some of them are pigeons.  At any given time, there is a large number of birds at the north end of our back yard, pecking away at the ground, looking for some of that seed.
The end result is this: in addition to all the other things that are cool about the Dream House, whenever I walk into the back yard - either from the driveway coming home or from the house, leaving - a large flock of birds rises in a mass ascension in a cloud of wings, and the end result is that every day I feel like I'm in my very own romantic movie set in Italy - you the know the scene where they run through the square, hand-in-hand, disrupting a flock of birds.  EIther that or Mary Tyler Moore.  Either way, it's kinda cool.

...