Okay, so what's the deal with potatoes?

Look, I distinctly remember that there was a time that you could buy a bag of potatoes and they would never, ever go bad. I mean, you could practically hand potatoes down from mother to daughter.

Now you buy potatoes and within a few days they're a seething bag of yellow and black goo.

WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO POTATOES? HUH? HUH?

I am particularly steamed because I bought five pounds of some fairly expensive new potatoes last week and yesterday morning I happened to look into the bag and saw that some of them have already gone bad.

Grrrrrrr.

Also contributing to my somewhat sour mood was the fact that a rotting gas line means that the spousal unit's truck is at the garage for the next few days awaiting parts and then repairs. This means he is using the Marnmobile.

I hate this.

As my wee blue car disappeared down the hill without me yesterday morning, I knew exactly how Rapunzel felt about that stinking tower. This is completely stupid because it's not like I had plans to go anywhere. I mean, truth is most days the car sits out in the yard. I work at home. I have no commute unless you count me rolling out of bed and walking about eight steps to the computer.

That part doesn't matter. What matters is that I have the car and the freedom it represents.

A mature, reflective, self-aware person would have airily waved off the situation, sat down to work, and been productive. Tuesday isn't even a gym day for me. Instead, I sulked. I drank some ice tea. I grumbled to my cat, Zoe about the potato tragedy, about my lack of wheels. She regarded me with the feigned interest that only a 20-year-old completely deaf and almost blind cat can provide.

I drank more iced tea.

Hopped up on a serious jolt of caffeine, realizing that nothing productive was going to happen, I pulled on some ratty running clothes and those stupidly expensive silver running shoes that have absolutely no discernable super powers. Down the hill to the road I went, meeting up on the valley road with our neighbour Linda who'd given up on running because the deerfly were unbearable.

This just made me crankier. I could feel the deerfly already accumulating around my hair, their needle like bites on my neck, scalp, any unprotected flesh.

I started to run. I glanced at my left wrist and realized that I hadn't remembered to put on my wristwatch so I wasn't even going to be running proper intervals. That Really Bad Word that rhymes with puck escaped my lips. Several times.

Oh man, I was so insanely steamed.

When I leave my house I start my run towards the dead end portion of the valley road which is pretty much an upward incline all the way to the end, 1.4 km (0.87 miles). There's one small dip at Clara's road and another at Ian and Lucy's house and that's it--it's an effort of will almost all the way. Before Tuesday I've never come close to making it to the end in one continuous run.

But yesterday I was so absorbed in my anger, so busy internally fuming at the Injustice of It All, so annoyed by the deerfly that it wasn't until I was almost there that I realized that I'd made it to the end of the road. No dizziness, no real pain, just the same slight burning in the calves, the same sweat-soaked hair and back I've felt before.

When I realized where I was I had a moment of pure euphoria. All that piddling crap I'd been feverishly obsessing over just floated off. It shouldn't be so easy to make me this stupidly happy, but apparently it is. I stopped when I came to the end of the road and started to walk for a bit to give my calves time to relax before starting the run back home. I was almost immediately enveloped in about 3,452 deerfly all doing their best to carry off a hunk of me, so the euphoria of doing my very best run ever lasted oh, say, 2.355 seconds.

It was wonderful while it lasted.

The run back was far longer, thanks to that downhill grade, but less of an achievement. I walked for about a minute and then ran far past my drive, covering 1.8 km, which is more than a mile. I know this because after supper I hopped into the Marnmobile and actually clocked the distances involved.

Me? Obsessive? What makes you say that?

I wish I could say that I love running. It still bores me to tears. What I'm hoping is that now that I have made good form second nature and built up some stamina maybe now the fun part begins.

Oh be quiet. These are MY straws and I'll clutch at them if I want to.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 346.13 miles (557 kilometers)
Goal for 2003: 500 miles - 804.5 kilometers