Rolling, rolling, rolling...

Somehow we survived the weekend without drowning in Hurricane Hanna's intense rainfall. Our official DBRM (dog bowl rainfall measurement) shows about 3.5 inches. I'm just glad our trip to the shore was last weekend and not this one. And our plants are happier than they've been in weeks.

It's been a crazy week with Melrose starting at her new school (and getting sick and sent home on Day 2) and Mommy and Daddy struggling (Mommy rather unsuccessfully) to overcome post-vacation fatigue and dig out from piles of work. Knock wood Melrose seems to be over her illness, I caught up on some of my sleep deficit this weekend, and hopefully we will all have a better week. Mommy needs to be better about concentrating and staying motivated, along with being better about eating lightly and exercising diligently. She hasn't been good about any of this in some time, except the exercise.

Back to first person. I have been working hard with the running lately. Other than racing to catch a train, I'd never run on purpose in my life until 4 years ago, when I tried it in desperation to lose some baby weight and successfully ran a 5K. I kind of fell off the wagon after that, and one more kid didn't help matters. I tried to gear up for a 5K last summer but we ended up going out of town the weekend of the race and I slacked off afterward.

Right now I am getting ready to run a 5K in three weeks. I don't care about my time, just about finishing. My goal is to do the entire thing running, but I went over to check out the course and they weren't kidding when they mentioned "rolling hills." Covered bridge notwithstanding, this has me a little concerned. Also, I haven't built up to running more than 1.75 miles straight. This has me a lot concerned.

I've done one 5K before. This was in 2005, when Melrose was 1, and I was about 15 pounds lighter (despite all the exercise, this number appears to be climbing, sad to say). I used this awesome program, which I can tell you works, since I am the ultimate couch potato (in more ways than one, as my college friends will attest). It was also a flat course. Completely flat, and along the Schuylkill riverfront with a nice view of Boathouse Row. The road I run on near here is rural but more or less flat - a couple of small rises here and there, but not "rolling."

Adding to my insecurity is the fact that my brother is a triathlete and my brother-in-law a marathoner. The latter has been a very kind and patient mentor, and has even offered to join me on my little races as motivation, but given my 13-minute miles, I hate to put him through the torture.

The key after this 5K is to keep signing up for subsequent 5Ks, just to force myself to keep in shape. Assuming I don't have a heart attack on the covered bridge, my next goal is to run in the Valley Forge Revolutionary Run 5-miler next spring, and maybe a 10K after that. The following year, if I really am a glutton for punishment, I would like to work up to the 10-mile Broad Street Run, if only because it would be really cool to run through the city holding up traffic all over downtown Philly. But that's as far as I could go. And for a person who has never been an athlete, completing any race at all is pretty darn good.

To keep in shape and maybe take off some of this blubber, I'd like to be able to run 3-4 miles as a regular workout. Then I could be like this enviably petite, skinny, smug mom at one of Melrose's friends' birthday parties who accepted a small slice of pizza, saying airily "I think I deserve this - I ran six miles this morning."

Don't worry. If I could do a six-mile run just for the heck of it, I wouldn't mention it later at the party. Probably because I'd be too busy beating people away from the pizza with a stick while inhaling as many slices as possible.

The sweetest thing

There are many reasons to love living in Chesco, but this is my favorite:

The poison mind

So the strep is slowly diminishing. Now I have poison ivy. All over my legs. While the itching is driving me nuts, what is making me even more nuts is that I have no idea where I got it. I'm suspecting either one or both dogs. They got baths last weekend after all this started, and I washed their bed, but I have no way of knowing whether my decon got all the poison oil off them, or whether they spread it to places like our carpets and sofa and other places. I'm also washing pretty much every piece of clothing I've worn in the last 10 days in case there is oil on those. Trying not to touch anything in my own house is getting a little old.

Today's Philly newspaper was incredibly depressing. First of all, these people should be kicked out of the human race. This is an outrage. You neglected your severely disabled child until she died alone and starving with her skin rotting off, and then you sue the City of Philadelphia for not doing its job? You've got to be f***ing kidding me. It makes me cry to think of what that poor girl endured, and what she could have been if someone had cared for her properly.

And then these guys. They should both be put in wire cages and infested with vermin for a couple of years, then brought out to the compost heap and shot because their owners didn't want to drop $50 on their care and maintenance. I wish their victims could come back to life and collectively chew their limbs off one at a time. No name I could call them would be insulting enough.

Here's what I don't get. Everyone complains about puppy mills, especially here in Pennsylvania where they abound, but maybe, instead of changing state laws*, we should be outlawing selling dogs in pet stores nationwide. The pet stores (and their clueless customers) are the reason these profiteers make a good living from mass-producing dogs in substandard conditions. Take away the pet store market, and it's going to be hard for these scumbags to make money, plus the clueless general public won't be shelling out to a pet store because they see a cute little puppy in the window. A decent breeder wouldn't sell animals to pet stores. Only a profiteer would. So why not eliminate that option altogether?

As for me, I think when the time comes, we'll be adopting our next dog from a shelter. Given the not-so-savory reputation of our fine state's dog breeding industry, I'd rather not contribute my money toward furthering the work of this so-called enterprise. Not to knock all the good and legitimate breeders of greater Pennsylvania, but given the mass rescues that have been going on, I'd rather rescue a needy dog from a date with the needle than pay to create an expensive new one.

*While Rendell's proposed dog law changes are well-intended, they also create some major obstacles for keepers of sporting dog packs - but that's a whole 'nother post....

The cutest little donkey, you'll never see him kick!

My random commentary on various random things:

The Amazing Race premiere: Loved it, even though Phil seriously OD'd on the hair gel in the opening scene. Especially when the whiny effeminate unbelievannoying Ari snipes to his immobile donkey, "If you make me lose, I'm going to cut you up and eat you!" The donkey's like, "So?" and refuses to budge. If you were the donkey and these two idiots were whining and "talking trash" and smacking you to move, would you carry 15 peat logs for them? Didn't think so. Then Ari and his hag teammate come in last and lose big. Ha ha! Go donkey!! Also, I discovered that the bizarre snorting sounds made by my dog when he gets something up his nose are not too far off from a hee-hawing Irish donkey.

Finally, my next top choice for elimination is the Goth couple. Not only are their names (Kynt and Vyxsin) way too affected, but they look like disturbingly androgynous byproducts of a clown and mime liaison in a back alley somewhere. We all know I'm not a fan of clowns or mimes. These two contestants just seem like prepackaged and overcoordinated stage caricatures somehow. Go back to playing D&D online and following Marilyn Manson and sci-fi conventions while you work in dead-end jobs to pay the bills under your real names, which are probably Jason and Jennifer. Speaking of jobs, I can't believe either of these people would get hired to work in a typical Louisville restaurant in their Goth getup, unless the Texas Roadhouse is a Goth theme restaurant.

King Tut unveiled: Fascinating. It's just incredible that a mummified corpse can survive so many centuries in such an unforgiving climate, despite having been rudely exposed and manhandled far too much by overconfident archaeology cowboys. But this unveiling only gives further support to my desire to be cremated upon my death, so nobody can ever dig me up and investigate how I really died or gape at my remains. I also don't understand why this revealing didn't happen BEFORE the big King Tut exhibit started traveling the world.

The Jessica Seinfeld plagiarism thing: The one question I'm not seeing addressed in all of the recent flap over this book is whether a woman who is extremely wealthy and married to a famous comedian and very much involved in the party-pictured social and philanthropic scene would realistically be regularly cooking her kids dinner all by herself. How many rich New York socialites or Hollywood big names cook for their families in between the benefits and facials and shopping sprees and Yogilates sessions? How many of them delegate such menial tasks to their nannies or personal chefs or housekeepers? I want to believe that Jessica is that rare exception, a person on the social fast track who persists in trying to give her kids a more "normal" home life, even if that home life is in a palatial house in the Hamptons or a zillion-dollar Manhattan penthouse. But maybe what we don't know is that she told her nanny that "my kids won't eat [name the vegetable], and YOU need to figure out a creative way to get it down their little gullets!"

My other beef is more philosophical. As a picky eater, and mother of same, I think deceiving kids about what's in their food will only make things worse, if and when they catch you. It's one thing if you simply dislike something, but if you have a major aversion to anything, deceptively adding that ingredient is cruel. For someone who is strongly averse to, say, eggs in all recognizable/tasteable permutations, discovering chopped-up egg embedded in a food where one normally wouldn't expect it will only cause dislike/distrust of even more foods, not to mention shattering trust in the person who made it. And in an era of food allergies, it's pretty important to be able to know exactly what is in your food, rather than encountering unexpected ingredients. In any case, I don't think I'll be buying the book.

Bishop Charles Bennison of the Diocese of Pennsylvania gets inhibited: Truly a sad moment for all Episcopalians, and proves that the Catholics don't have a monopoly on clergy sex abuse--they just get 98% of the media coverage. The bishop was already in deep trouble over blowing millions of diocesan funds on a camp in Maryland (that I doubt your average parishioner would ever set foot on because most churches that have adult retreats seem to use Catholic abbeys or monasteries these days, not rustic seasonal camps with bug juice and campfires). When news about this scandal with his brother first broke last year, people in the diocese had already been calling for his resignation over the alleged misspending for months. The reception was civil but clearly not warm when the Bishop visited our church a few weeks later as part of his rounds--his presence during the service almost seemed like an afterthought. My prayers and my props to the accuser and her family, who are bravely seeing this through to the bitter end, and have waited far too long for justice and healing.

The Eagles lose again: Oh, boo-frickety-hoo. Cry me a river. Along with love of cheesesteaks and familiarity with Rocky, Eaglesmania is one aspect of Philadelphia culture that continues to elude me completely. But don't tell that to the yahoo in the Eagles-flag-bedecked pickup tailgating me right now....