*!

Today I went for a jog.

I know, there are gongs sounding and everyone is cowering in awe.  Ra, ra, me!  I went for a jog! 

But despite the fact that it seems like an inconsequential thing, it means a lot to me.  I actually put on my shoes, and I ran somewhere.  I did this deliberately.  I am taking care of myself.  I've been noticing lately that my overall stamina is shot, and once I pushed myself with a fast pace for the jog I realized that my lung capacity is just shot.  Two blocks, and my diaphragm was aching.  My lungs and throat burned.  I could feel those weird "I'm exhausted" tears in the corner of my eye.

So I played a game with myself.  I told myself that if my legs (not lungs) were tired when I passed the next tree, or next house, or next road, I'd slow down.  Fortunately for me my legs are far stronger than the rest of me.  So I told myself to not be a wimp.  I was stronger than a little burning.  I was stronger than a weak lung capacity.  So I kept going, and I kept going, until right before that point where you know that there is absolutely no way you can keep moving.

And then I didn't stop.  I just slowed down.

And despite the fact that right now I still have that wobbly feeling in my gut, I feel good.

Because I'm marginally stronger than I was this morning.  As my body goes through the process of healing and being pushed, healing and being pushed, healing and being pushed, I will continue to grow stronger.  I will become more flexible.

And while it sucks compared to maybe staying at home and catching up on Reaper, it's good.  My forty year old self will thank my twenty five year old self for not being a wimp.

Ra, ra, me.  I went for a jog.

I also made rhubarb crumble.  And now I will eat some.

Tonight is awesome.  Boring, but awesome.

I realize that it is part of one of the many traditions I was raised in (in my early teens my dad pastored a Non-Denominational Evangelical church) but I'm not that way now.

I'm talking about it in more detail on WordPress today.  Go thou and comment.

Tagged by Charms-

Summarize your life in six words- photo/video accompaniment optional.

So...

One Girl Army will overcome.  Seriously.

Is Sexual Fantasy sinful?  That's the question I'm asking on my WordPress blog.  Go thee, and comment!

We fixed the computer, but the new Ubuntu only has the new FireFox, which apparently hates Vox.  And thus blogging here is a REAL chore as I can't format posts at all, no bold or italics or EVEN LINKS.

See, I was going to link to shushnow.wordpress.com and tell you all to keep your eyes on it, but, hey, can't format.

Freaking FireFox.  I usually love it, just not this week.  Anyway, copy and paste that sucker into your navigation bar for me, why don't you?

And I really will catch up with comments and posts at some point, I swear to God.  Life is just kicking my butt right now.

Just listening to NPR on the way home from Panera Day and guess what?

They were calling yesterdays primaries a definitive win for Obama, and EVERY SINGLE COMMENTATOR, even the ones who were Clinton supporters, were saying that there is now NO WAY CLINTON CAN WIN, and it's only a matter of time until Obama is set forth as the Democratic Nominee.

Are there angels singing?  I think there are.  Is McCain shaking in his old man boots a little?  I think he is.

Can I get an "ooooh, yeah..."

Oooh, yeah...

I know, I'm a political junkie and too into words and my whole "Obama is like totally the greatest orator in contemporary history and he'll go down in history as an icon of the African American community and this is a great day for America" thing gets old, but...

Oooh, yeah.

I'm a happy girl.

SIDE NOTE:  IN has open primaries, and there have been reports of Republicans who went to the Democratic table so they could "vote for Hillary just to stir the pot" mourning the fact that this means they can't vote in their own primaries.  Uh...  duh.

Stole this from someone who stole it from someone, as these things tend to go.  This is the meme:

Below is a list of the 106 books most likely to languish, unread, on the bookshelves of people who only want to seem cultured and well-read. If you want to play along: 

bold the titles you've read on your own,

underline the ones you had to read for school,

italicize the ones you started but didn't finish,

bold and italicize the ones you hated,

bold and underline those you'd recommend

strike through those you'd like to/plan to read

A personal note:  I didn't bold and underline any, but I'd happily recommend almost any book I've ever read to anyone, even if I DIDN'T like it, because I believe that most literature is worth reading for any number of reasons, not merely for pleasure.  Oh, and while I did underline a few books that I read for school, everyone should know that I was homeschooled on a self-taught curriculum for high school which had an extensive reading list, and several of these books I bought to fulfill my "choice" credits.  But I probably would have read them anyway.  After all, several of these books were read when me and my junior high best friend decided we were going to read a whole bunch of those books that people say are stuffy and only read for English credits (Anna Kerenina, the Iliad, a few others).

I like to read.

Also- I didn't strike through any because I'd like to read a lot more of these books, but the list of books I "plan" to read is getting so extensive it's simply not possible to achieve.  So no wishful thinking here.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

Anna Karenina

Crime and Punishment

Catch-22

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wuthering Heights

The Silmarillion

Life of Pi : a novel

The Name of the Rose

Ulysses

Don Quixote

Moby Dick ? (I'm wondering- shall I count this one if I skipped huge passages but DID finish it?)

Madame Bovary

The Odyssey

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Eyre

A Tale of Two Cities

The Brothers Karamazov

Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies

War and Peace

Vanity Fair

The Time Traveler's Wife

The Iliad

Emma

The Blind Assassin

The Kite Runner

Mrs. Dalloway

Great Expectations

American Gods

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Atlas Shrugged

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Memoirs of a Geisha

Middlesex

Quicksilver

Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West

The Canterbury Tales

The Historian : a novel

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Love in the Time of Cholera

Brave New World

The Fountainhead

Foucault’s Pendulum

Middlemarch

Frankenstein

The Count of Monte Cristo

Dracula

A Clockword Orange

Anansi Boys

The Once and Future King

The Grapes of Wrath

The Poisonwood Bible : a novel

1984

Angels & Demons

The Inferno

The Satanic Verses

Sense and Sensibility

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mansfield Park

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

To the Lighthouse

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Oliver Twist

Gulliver’s Travels

Les Misérables

The Corrections

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Dune

The Prince

The Sound and the Fury

A People's History of the United States: 1492-present

Angela’s Ashes : a memoir

Cryptonomicon

Neverwhere

A Confederacy of Dunces

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Dubliners

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Beloved

Slaughterhouse Five

The Scarlet Letter

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

The Mists of Avalon

Oryx and Crake : a novel

Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed

Cloud Atlas

The Confusion

Lolita

Persuasion

Northanger Abbey

The Catcher in the Rye

On the Road

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values

The Aeneid

Watership Down

Gravity's Rainbow

The Hobbit

In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences

White Teeth

Treasure Island

David Copperfield

The Three Musketeers

Some of my plants didn't survive without me.  :(  Unfortunately I'll have to replant my Italian herbs and mint- but that which did survive is doing MARVELOUSLY. Look, look!

An approving Rabbit?  Truly?

I'm doing my first open forum on WordPress.  Feel free to go there and explain whether or not you believe homosexuality is a sin and why.  Any comments that attack other people will be immediately deleted.  I just want a polite, moderated discussion about belief.  I feel it's only fair that people be given the right to air their opinions without being reprimanded or attacked.

Especially since on my last few posts I've seen good people whom I like go for each other's jugulars, which is a shame.  There's nothing wrong with holding a belief as long as you don't use it to marginalize and belittle others.

So- go to the Open Forum on Homosexuality and comment if you so desire, and trust that if anyone attacks you I WILL delete it.  No bleeding, just sharing.

(Note:  for those who aren't aware, I have "open comments" on my wordpress blog.  You do NOT need to be a member of wordpress, and your email address will be kept viewable only by me.)