Running Ruminations

Here we are, friends: a new month, yes, but the same story. 

Still in a pandemic (and within the past week, California surpassed the 700,000 case mark and rolled out a new four-tiered color-coded system that’s supposed to help everyone better understand the data and where their county stands). 

The state’s still on fire, though the nearest-to-us fire, the SCU Complex, was at 72% containment, last I checked. Our AQ is improving with each day, for the most part, though of course it all depends on the weather and literally which way the wind is blowing. 

DT is still being his dumb self, which in the past week has meant that he (somewhat incredibly, somewhat not-so-incredibly) managed to say nothing about Kenosha police shooting an unarmed Black man named Jacob Blake in front of his children, in the back 7 times, and instead opted to defend, if not also revere, the 17 year-old white kid who crossed state lines with an assault rifle and shot three people at the Kenosha protest, killing two of them. I mean, where do you even begin with this. 

And of course, let us not forget the upcoming presidential election in just 62 days. I’d rather not speak anything into existence that hasn’t yet manifested, but maaaaaaaan. We’re likely just getting started. 

Here in California, in the “potentially good news” department,  we’ve entered the “bill-signing period” that’ll end on 9/30, so it’ll be interesting to see what Gov. Newsom ends up signing into law, and a lot is at stake that could have some pretty big ramifications, both in the immediate and near future. (I find this stuff fascinating, though I know some would rather watch paint dry instead. Not sorry!).

Naturally, even with all the Big Stuff in the News going on everyday, 24/7, all of our personal lives charge on, and for us, it’s been more of the same. The kids will close out their third week of distance learning in the next few days before the Labor Day long weekend, and by my observations (and from the kids’ testimonials), yes of course they miss physically going to school, but they actually kinda like the DL set-up. I think the same is true for my husband, pertaining to WFH. 

We are lucky that the groove that we’ve managed to foster seems to be working, at least for the time being. Some days flow more easily or better than others, without question, but just like everyone else is doing in this weird time we’re all living in, we try to figure it out as we go.  

I hope the new month brings you some sort of reprieve, ideally, but barring that, some sense of transition, as we all inch toward the final quarter of this weird-ass year. 

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On occupying time and settling mental unrest

Reading. I’ve found Eloquent Rage interesting so far, though it’s a completely different read and feel than most of the other books I’ve read in the past couple months. I’m a huge fan of Rukmini Callimachi from the NYT, and her Breonna Taylor story put an even deeper, greater, grander mirror to the travesty that is that woman’s death. Callimachi doesn’t typically cover domestic news, but how she conveyed Taylor’s heartbreaking and infuriating story was powerful and memorable as hell. 

Listening. I’ll call this listening/watching because if you haven’t seen Lady Gaga’s VMA performance broadcast a couple days ago, a compilation of a few songs from her Chromatica album, you’ve gotta watch it. The kids and I love that album and were diggin her performance. (And everyone on the stage wore masks, which was cool as hell!). I still haven’t been very interested in listening to a lot of podcasts (probably going on a month here), though for some odd reason, I keep downloading them for my (ever-growing) queue. 

Running. We were lucky to experience AQI scores in the green (40s!) for the first time in weeks on Monday, in the early morning hours, which has been making me feel way more at ease with running outside. The kids still haven’t resumed running or even playing outdoors much because by the time they’re done with school and homework in the afternoon, most of the time the weather is the warmest it’ll be all day by then and/or because the AQI score had jumped considerably from the early morning hours. 

So as to help them get their wiggles out and not go completely feral in the absence of running and playing outside, we’ve been doing a lot of at-home routines together, like child-developmentally-friendly kickboxing, plyometric-type stuff, Barre-type stuff, and the like nearly every night. They really seem to enjoy doing it (even when we do it literally right before bedtime), so if nothing else, it’s good to know that it’s something that we three can do together without a bunch of whining or complaining. It’s actually a lot of fun, and I am eternally grateful that we don’t have downstairs neighbors.  

Girl Scouts! Tonight my eldest’s Brownie troop bridged to Juniors. Never in a million years would I have ever imagined hosting a bridging ceremony virtually, but alas. 2020. You weird.

62 days until Election Day.  

Stay healthy and safe, take care of yourself and others if you can, and keep reading and listening. We can do better. xo