?Pain lies on the riverside??

For the first time in my life, I dragged myself out of bed before 6am this morning, got workout clothes on, and went running. Yes, running. Well, more like jogging, but faster-moving than walking. I alluded to this in yesterday’s post, but I’m going to attempt to train to run in the Hobo Day 5K race in October. Katie decided a couple weeks ago that she was going to try to run it, and tried to talk me into it. On Friday afternoon at work, aliens absconded with my rational thought, and I agreed to give it a shot. I am not a runner. I fully admit to being lazy, and despite my ability to haul arse when I slaved away was a shift manager under the Golden Arches, I do not move quickly unless my son is about to be harmed by something or is about to cause harm to some expensive inanimate object around our house. But there I was, huffing & puffing my way around my neighborhood as the sun was coming up. I took some before & after shots, because I thought it might be fun to document this…But my after shot looked a lot like the pictures of me right after I gave birth to the bambino (which are locked away and will never be seen by anyone other than myself, Jay and the poor old lady at Lewis Drugs who developed the film), so they were promptly deleted from the camera.

I cleaned out the rest of the bits from my last jar of Dark Chocolate Dreams before I went out for my run, and was starving like mad when I got home. Even with as hot as it is right now, oatmeal sounded good (and more filling than simple cold cereal), so I got that going:

And I thought a bowl of oatmeal would be a good reason to toss in some of the trail mix I bought yesterday:

I scarfed down quite a bit right off the bat, as my stomach was grumbling, and I could feel my blood sugar dropping.

That bowl was enough to keep me full until about 10:30 or so (I made it around 6:30). I had my customary coffee to go with it:

Jimmy let me have that mug on Friday–It came with a sticker on the bottom that said it’d been made with chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and reproductive problems…I laughed but at the same time, I am slightly unsettled by those notices (I’ve seen them on other things). Hal pointed out that everything causes cancer to the State of California, and while I drank my coffee anyway, I’d prefer to remain blissfully ignorant. I know I’m probably going to die of cancer…Just let me live without knowing that my coffee cup probably gave it to me!

So, around 10:30, I started to get hungry again, and it was too late for breakfast as well as too early for lunch. I’d promised the bambino last week that he could have some popcorn the next time I went to the grocery store, which I did yesterday. He’d been watching a Batman cartoon and in the cartoon Bruce Wayne (as a child) was watching some old TV show & eating popcorn. The bambino asked if he could have some, but since it’s not something we usually keep on-hand, I had to tell him no. He was going to get it last night, but he didn’t eat a good enough dinner, so he didn’t get the treat. But he was being good, and ate about half the banana & peanut butter I’d cut up from him earlier, and it sounded really good to me.

And being the unhealthy slob that I am (and also because I don’t have a popcorn popper), I got out the peanut oil too:

Really, I just needed an excuse to use the fun popcorn bowls my friend/college roommate Jenny got me as a wedding gift:

Jay’s not big on popcorn, so I’ve never used them for the two of us. I figured that once I had kids (since I’m only planning on having two, and even that second one is up in the air at the moment), that would be a fun thing for them to use whenever we watched movies at home. The bambino thought they were pretty neat, and he sat with his on the couch, watching “Ice Age.”

Meanwhile, Jay was puttering around outside, picking what is now our third first official harvest from our pathetic attempt at gardening:

He ate the pepperocini, and at some point (when I get off my butt and wash the cutting boards), I’ll cut up the sweet peppers for him to snack on. The tomatoes are most likely going on a pizza margherita…If I get off my butt and make the dough (my knees are really hurting at the moment, and I’m doing laundry)!