quarantined-ish day 25
Quarantined-ish Day 25
Saturday, April 11, 2020 - OKC, OK
4:21am
I beat my alarm out of bed, this morning, because I woke up still me. I impress myself with my ability to successfully make a home cup of coffee and two to-go cups (one for me, one for Wendy, sanitized, of course, because COVID) while getting dressed and packing my bag for a day of trail running in under fifteen minutes. I’m additionally impressed that I packed both socks and shoes, this time.
6:18am
Saw Ishmael in a Stillwater convenience store. Apparently he’s friends with a bear, a bison, and a dinosaur. This is a fascinating and peculiar place, where the inside walls look like the outside of a log cabin and an unnervingly lifelike butler is serving up a tray of nothing to its customers. I can’t possibly describe its peculiar charm so I’ll stop trying here.
7:32am
We finally start the run. There are six of us (yes, we distanced ourselves), and I file in at the back. To pacify those who don’t know me well (which is to say everyone but Wendy), I stay with them for the first five miles and then break away on my own. It’s freedom to roam as I choose and mentally write to the beat of my footsteps.
-number of times to get lost: 3
-number of times to bushwhack to another trail: 4
-number of songs my brain played for me: how many songs have been written???
-number of shoes changes: 1 - my very first time to changes shoes mid-run, but my feet needed to breathe. They also needed not to seep into the side soles and get pinched for another six miles.
-number of cows seen: perhaps a million? one of which was standing up to his legpits in a pond. I’m sure he was awfully hot, given the cloudless sky and his black, leather clothing.
2:49pm
Waiting for the rest to finish, Wendy and I occupy ourselves with nuun tablets, topochico, stretching, and baby wipe baths.
Wendy (as she’s trying to touch her toes): Adi, are our butts ever going to be the same??? Mine hurts so bad!
Me (as I’m baby wiping the dirt off my face and arms): We want the funk. Gotta have that funk.
3:38pm
We’ve been driving for less than ten minutes when my watch vibrates and tells me to ‘Move!’ in its aggressively red text. Fuck you, watch. I just moved for twenty-four miles on rugged trails while you casually enjoyed being strapped to my wrist, taking in all the views and doing none of the work.
5:23pm
Grateful for salty salsa and leftover tempeh that is the base of a taco salad the size of my head, I start today’s Isolation Journals Project entry. Stumped, I decide to stop for twenty minutes.
7:33pm
Twenty minutes - give or take a hundred - later I restart and finish the prompt. I don’t like it. It’s probably my least favorite. It’s an incredibly humbling experience for me, but I embrace the humility and upload it to the space I’ve carved out for it because it’s good for me. This is the broccoli of writing exercises, and with that, I’m going to bed.
