the saga of conference saturday

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The Night Before
Last night Neil and I had a "late night date" babysitting trade with some friends. We watched their kids last weekend, so yesterday we went out together and had chocolate fondue, wandered around the historic registry places downtown (walking together! hand in hand! in the dusk! never happens anymore!), did a little shopping, and hiked around campus looking for Neil's lost pocketknife (which we found!) It was a lovely, lovely evening and I was so excited for the weekend.

When we got home, Isaac woke up and was fussy. I put him back to sleep, then we fell asleep. Then Isaac woke up again (he's been sleeping 12 hours lately so this was totally unusual). The next time I woke up, Abigail was screaming about a nightmare. When I woke up after that, Juliet was screaming that Abigail had tickled her to wake her up because she (Abigail) was bored (this was about 3 am). Juliet ended up in our bed, which then meant that Abigail screamed about sleeping by herself (standing next to our bed at full volume). It was awful--Neil and I both slept on couches which Juliet slept in our bed (she has a cold and she was SO NOISY that I couldn't sleep next to her, plus she started singing the ABCs about 4:30 am and wouldn't stop) and Abigail griped in her room. I should also say that every time I groggily woke up, Neil had usually been up for the last half-hour or hour with the crazy kids already.

The Run
I think we got three or four hours of sleep, tops. It was hands-down the worst night we've had in ages. We were groggy and tired when we got up to run our ten miles this morning while the kids played at a friend's house.

Let me just repeat that: ten miles. Ten. Double digits. As in three times longer than the hours of sleep.

It started raining when we were about three miles out. After another mile it was really starting to rain hard. When we hit six miles, we were both soaked to the skin and shivering. The wind was gusting so hard that it was hard to run in a straight line. Icy water was driving at an angle against us with the full force of the wind, and I could see rain sluicing off my face and feel the water squishing up between my toes inside my shoe each time my feet hit the trail. Our clothes were literally plastered to our skin--I have never been so wet and cold in my entire life. We stopped, shivering, to eat some energy bloks and put on the long-sleeved shirts that we'd tied around our waists when we first started running--both of us were so numb that it took (I'm not exaggerating) about five minutes to thread our arms through the shirtsleeves. I couldn't even feel the fabric on my skin.

It was about this time when the goose pooped on Neil. Right on his shoulder, which was shirtless at the moment since he was taking off the wet one and putting on the sort-of-dry one.

We started laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. It was farcical--we were both exhausted from no sleep, standing in this torrential rain on the top of an exposed hill with the wind whipping around us, puddles inside our shoes, and completely numb skin. And then there was this crazy goose. Neil said,"If we've done this run, we can do anything. Anything."

We took a shortcut across a field to our house, picked up the Jeep, cranked the heat on high, and drove over to pick up the kids. I finished out the last mile and a half on the treadmill when we got home, and I felt so much love in my heart for that treadmill. I took back all the mean thoughts I've had about it lately like "boring" and "too hot" and "takes up too much space."

So that was our Saturday morning. I was SO grateful that it was Conference weekend, and we could just curl up on the couch in our pajamas and listen (and then fall asleep as soon as the first session was over and EVERYONE, except that little stinker Abigail--who apparently suffered no ill effects from her night of disrupted sleep--slept for the next three hours. Oops. We woke up some time during the third talk...)