Even good changes are sad.

Dear Diary,

13. Saturday morning I ripped about 100 CDs to The Cloud. I will try to sell them in Garage Sale, ’12, the Sequel. It turns out that since it was Mother's Day, things were a bit slow.

12. Also on Saturday, Sweet Baboo and I started stacking up books, and movies we no longer wanted. We held onto some. I'll gradually let go of these, just wasn't quite ready to, yet. The way I explained it to Baboo was, we had over 300 books, movies, and CDs. items. If even a third of those sold, that's $$$ we didn't have before, for things that we don't use or look at.

11. Having Satuday off was a miracle. The weekend was so lolong. It was fantastic.

10. Sunday, I had the garage sale. I wasn't able to put out signs, so we didn't sell much. We made about enough to buy a printer/scanner, which we did. Meanwhile, I'll be having the same garage sale next Sunday. With signs.

9. Also on Sunday, I cleaned out my dresser and my exercise closet. To do this, the book I'm reading suggests you just completely empty it out and then start putting back things that you absolutely use. So I wound up with extra socks and shirts, and the pile of little things that have fallen into drawers over the years: random, single earrings; pens, change, paperclips, safety pins, jump drives, etc.

8. Monday, Old Job took me out to lunch. I've never had a farewell thing before, and it was nice. When I left teaching in 2008, nobody said goodbye; nobody cared. It was all, "Did you turn your keys?" These guys act like they might miss me. They gave me a thank you card, and a gift card to Buffalo Wild Wings.

7. Also on Monday, my cough seems to be nearly gone. I'm looking at this Saturday, at the Jemez 50K.They changed the course because of last year's fire. Of course, as you know, I have barely trained this year, and I've been sick for the past three weeks.

In the words of the immortal Bridget Jones:fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

I am thinking that miles 10 to 15 will be particularly unpleasant.

6. With the new scanner/printer thingie. I will soon begin scanning in the oldest of the photo albums that I inheirited from my parents. These included many, many newspaper clippings of my parents when they were champion bowlers in Ohio, and when my mother was a respected artist in Alabama.



5. Wednesday. With no small amount of bittersweet feelings, I packed up the last of my office and said goodby to the coworkers I'd known since 2009. I won't be completely out of touch with them. The mental health community in Albuquerque is pretty small, after all, and we have active Scrabble and Draw It! Games going.

They gave me a placque. Placke. Plaque. A wooden thing with my name on it, thanking me for my service. And chocolate.

I turned off the light, locked and shut the door, and turned in my keys, and drove away. I hope I left good mojo to whomever occupies that office next.

It's a brave new world. One in which I only have to work one job, have Saturdays off, and can run to work. And back. I'm stoked.

4. Also Wednesday morning,I did a practice run to my new job. As in, I really ran. Turns out it's about six mikes, and takes about an hour. I'll start next week. I'm taking baby wipes and extra makeup and stuff to work, to stay there, along with cereal bars and protein drinks. I loaded a reminder for every Tuesday morninG into my calendar to take a change of clothes in.

3. Friday is ride your bike to work day. For first time ever, I'll get to do it.



2. I totally want to hire the three middle school popular girls to follow me around so that whenever I get ready to eat they start saying, Dude. Seriously? So gross.

1. I was pretty much in despair over the three weeks I spent coughing until I peed. You're welcome for the visual. I got pretty depressed and felt like a sick old lady. Three damned long weeks witout running. I was thinking, well, there goes my training. The climax, or low point, came when I was coughing AND had diarrhea AND my period. All at once. And then, as you recall, peed blood after trying to run a marathon. Clearly, god hates me.

Just kill. Me. Now.

Hey, are you coming out for hills runs? Said DreadPirate last week. Well, NO.

Then on Saturday, I went the entire day without any cough syrup. It faded quickly after that. On Tuesday, I DID go on the hill run. Still, as I said to Baboo, the 100k at Vermont in June is going to be a cluster fuck.

It's not in June. It's in July, said Sweet Baboo.

Oh, thank fuck. I may actually be able to pull this off.

All I have to do is get through a 50k and two marathon doubles, in the next month.

Yeah. That's all.

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