Toot! Toot! Peanutbutter!

2002-09-15 - 6:38 p.m.

Since last I saw you, quite a bit has happened. Most of it did not go as expected either. After a two day hiatus, my stomach ache was back with a vengeance.

First of all, Stretch made it to the race at the same time as we did. I was at the traffic light just before the parking lot and I saw his truck about 5 or 6 cars ahead of us. So that made finding him easy. He and Grandpa got registered and we all pinned our numbers on and milled about for a while before the race started. Then we all packed into the starting area. I convinced Stretch to run at his own pace and let me run at mine. So when the air horn went off for the beginning of the race, he took off and I never saw him again. The race was actually pretty fun. It started out really crowded with everyone jostling to get around the slower people in front of them. But soon we'd sort of settled into our general positions and got more spread out. The sound of all of our feet on the asphalt was like the sound of rain on the roof. It made me want to be a buffalo or some sort of herd animal so I could just run with the herd. The race took us through a housing area and there were people sitting in lawn chairs in their front yards cheering us on. I thought that was fun. I should always have someone cheering me on in my jogging efforts! The first mile came quickly, but it took forever to get to the second mile marker. By that time everyone seemed to be passing me up. I got passed by someone in a wheel chair and several people pushing baby strollers. The third mile marker came as I was chugging up the last hill. I don't know who's idea it was to put that hill there. But I made it to the top and then picked up the pace significantly for the last 0.08 miles are so--probably not quite a sprint, but at least a fast run. Stretch was waiting for me at the finish line. He walked with me as I fought off the urge to throw up, which wasn't super hard since I hadn't eaten breakfast. I finished in 31:40, another personal best! I ended up getting 395th overall (out of 1026 or so), 181st in the women, and 24th in my division (out of 49), so really that's not so horrible. Grandpa was the oldest person in race by 4 years. He ended up getting 3rd (out of 3, but shush) in his division so he got a medal. That was really cool. We took pictures and sent the story to the Quincy newspaper to see if they will print it. Lynn, Kyle, and Mark ran the 12k. Mark ran it in about 57 minutes while Lynn and Kyle took almost 2 hours. Lynn says she was waiting for Kyle, his Tourette's started acting up around mile 6. So anyway, that was more fun than I expected.

After we all showered and the rest of the family left, Stretch and I went out to lunch with my parents. Then we got our stuff together and took off for San Francisco and the Giants game. I really didn't want to talk about anything until after, because it would really suck to be stuck in a car with someone you've just broken up with, but he ended up bringing it up and pushed me to talk about it. So how did I broach the subject? I'm a big dork and have a huge problem just spitting out what's on my mind when it comes to something serious. So I said, "OK, Stretch, I have a question for you. What do you see us doing together in the future?" After a bit of clarification about the question he said, "Well...I see us being pharmacists..." "Ok, yes, but what are we going to do together?" "Well...we can talk about pharmacy issues...." "So we're going to be pharmacists who discuss pharmacy issues?" "Yes, and in a few years we'll have kids and we'll be involved in raising them." OK, so we're pharmacists with kids who discuss pharmacy issues?" Long pause. "Do you think that's enough?" So anyway, I thought that was very telling that even he could not think of things that we could do together. Then he said, "Well, I think we can have a happy marriage." "Why?" "Because you're a wonderful woman!" "First of all, I don't agree with you, and second of all that's not enough." We didn't get a whole heck of a lot further than that at that point. We wandered off topic.

So I don't know what to think. We had a lot of fun this weekend. I only got annoyed with him a few times. I still feel like something is missing, though. Maybe I'm too stuck on the fairytale version of love? I don't know. I want to have someone I miss when they are gone and makes my heart go pitter-patter (hee hee, whatever) when I see him. I want someone who makes me want to get "rambunctious" too. I think he's slipped into the friend category somehow. I don't know. So we talked a lot this weekend and resolved nothing other than getting stuff more out in the open. He's coming back in two weeks. Perhaps more will be resolved then.