a run, a rant

Everything about today's run was ridiculous. The humidity, my outfit, the nagging pain in my left patella, and how the turnaround point seemed to move farther and farther away the longer we ran.

- Humidity: no sense complaining about that.
- My outfit: don't run in yoga pants.
- Patella: sick of going to doctors only to be told there's nothing wrong.
- Magical moving gas station: damnit, would you please stay put.

Eight miles. My patella asked me to please walk the last mile, but I so hate being the last one in that I walked half of the last mile but jogged into the meeting area with Steve and Annette. Steve, a veteran marathoner who remarked that he used to do everything by the book but now only runs on Sundays, gave me my best running-related compliment to-date: "You and my daughter make this look so easy." My sweaty hair was plastered to my face a la Chae Min-Seo in "The Wig," but hey, Steve said! I'm taking that one to the bank ...

Next week: TEN MILES. Oh, and we're supposed to be getting in three hours of running time between Sunday runs.
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Boy. If I were a SAHW, maybe I'd have enough time to indulge more frequently in one of my favorite guilty pleasures: commenting on WaPo human interest stories and Carolyn Hax. While being a SAWH could only happen in my wildest dreams, I don't know that given the opportunity I would actually take it. I know I'd love it for at least three months. The house would be tidy, we'd be eating delicious and nutritious home-cooking every day, I might actually make some headway in my writing. But then boredom with domestic engineering would set in. Take-out containers would appear in the trash. Vacuuming would no longer thrill me, cooking would repulse me, and I'd start snapping at Cub to make his own lunches (when he never actually asks me to make them, and quite prefers when I don't, because I feed him healthy things in such moderate portions that lunch hour finds his entire circle of coworkers gathering round his lunch bag, laughing uproariously, after which they go back to their chicken katsu plate lunches, shaking their heads, tears of mirth still streaming down their faces. The only solace I can take in being the laughingstock of a bunch of people (most of whom I've never met) on a daily basis is that my husband's arteries are clearer than theirs.

Gosh, I'm so easily distracted.

I have just a few minutes, so my thoughts on the aforelinked story, which could be entitled "Oblivious Parents and their Rude Offspring Vs. Snarky Childless Yuppies with Big Dogs and Bigger Egos":

Kids are great. Dogs are great. Kids don't belong in nice restaurants, movie theaters (I don't care if it's a Pokemon matinee or a nine-p.m. screening of Avatar), or department stores until they can act like adults. Dogs don't belong in small kids' faces. It's incredibly unfair to expect kids to act like adults, and incredibly unfair to let your dog run around off-leash and expect it not to greet tiny folks with the kind of exuberance that is often mistaken by non-dog-folk for murderous intent to remove their child's face with a freakishly long tongue or razor-sharp teeth.

There are kid people and dog people, kid-hating dog lovers, dog-hating kid-lovers, kid-loving dog lovers, dog-loving kid lovers. The article's not even about dogs, I just got totally sidetracked because I can see both sides of that particular coin at once. However, that coin is not the issue. The coin is: the childed vs. the child-free. Both have rights. Neither is better or worse than the other. Why is it so hard to play nice? Fundamental differences in priorities. Half the time, the child-free person's complaint that someone else's stroller is too damn big is really a judgment on how the stroller owner spent their money.

Also, the freaky phenomenon of new parents becoming exactly what and how they swore they would never be is a doozy. I'm not a parent yet, but Cub and I hope that once this marathon nonsense is over, that will be the next chapter in our lives. I love kids, I want kids, but I do not love nor want to be around the situations that we will surely perpetuate when we ourselves are parents. Obviously, no matter how often or how loudly you repeat "I WILL NEVER ALLOW MY CHILD TO ACT THE WAY THAT CHILD OVER THERE IS ACTING RIGHT NOW!!" or "I WILL NEVER BE AS RETARDED AND INCONSIDERATE AS THAT PARENT OVER THERE!!" ... it's going to happen. You can try as hard as you want (God love you) to keep your ridiculously wide Combi out of people's way, you can conscientiously shush your kids or even remove them from the store or church service or theater when they act up, but there's always going to be the time(s) you don't do it fast enough to appease the judgmental (or simply weary) child-free person who will berate you in public, on his or her blog, in a WaPo column, and you'll feel like you can't win, but then I hear that's what parenthood feels like a lot of the time.

Child-free people deserve to eat, watch movies, and ride the bus in relative peace. So do parents and their children. (Key word: relative. Did you catch that?) Here's what I dislike about the childed set's argument: "Children are people too!" Yup, they are, but what parents mean by that is, my child has the same rights as you in any given public arena, which I do not agree with. In order to have the same rights, you need to accept the same responsibilities. Your child does not have the right to be in an upscale restaurant because he or she cannot - should not be asked to - sit properly for the whole hour-long (or longer) meal. Your child does not have the right to "watch" a movie in a theater if he or she can't stay seated and quiet for the whole thing. These things your little person does not have the right to do - it isn't his or her fault. The dirty looks they get when you put them in a situation and expect (or don't expect) them to behave like the miniature adults you insist they are, those are your fault.

Amen, Bentley.