Lessons from the Hell House

1. No matter what the context, shirtless men whipping each other is gay, gay, gay.
2. Annual elevator inspections are important.
3. Don't allow your employees to bring their pet rats to work.
4. Pest control is important, don't leave dead bodies just lying around or you will get rats.
5. Affordable health care is a necessity, otherwise people are forced to go to Haiti for surgery and get turned into zombies.
6. Internet porn + whisky -> incestuous molestation.
7. Incestuous molestation -> messy shootings and suicide
   
8. "Normal" white kids carry guns too.
9. School canteens are scary places, even before the gun comes out.
   
10. Keep abortion legal or women will be forced to have late-term abortions performed in sheds by men with butcher's knives and a midget carrying an extra arm.
11. The right to bear arms extends to midgets and actual arms.
12. No good comes of bearing arms (see 7, 8, 10)
    
13. Men with butcher's knives like girls that are into bondage to hang out in the corner while they work.
14. Gay men are predatory and get to spend eternity in a leather bar.
15. Lesbians are hysterical and must spend eternity in women's prison.
16. All of this is real. Even the zombies.
17. This will all go away if you "Get right with god"...
    

The Mars Confusion

I don't eat much chocolate, or at least not in the giant chocolate bar kind of form and if I do occasionally fancy something it's usually a packet of M&Ms or even more rarely a Snickers both of which are the same as their UK counterparts. This may in part explain the vast delay in realising bizarre differences in naming of their chocolate bars by the Mars corporation...

Snickers (UK) = Snickers (US)
Mars (UK) = Milkyway (US)
Milkyway (UK) = 3 Muskateers (US)

Mars (US) = a Snickers (UK) but with almonds instead of peanuts! The UK should feel jipped.

I stumbled upon this last night while eating my spoils from my chilli cook-off winning veggie chilli. I ate a mini-milkyway and there is was, caramel. What madness is this, I thought?! Amanda and I then had to go step by step through the names of Mars manufactured chocolate bars. There were lots of "no wait, a milkyway has what now? Oh no, I think you'll find that is a mars bar!" Step by step we managed to pinpoint the differences. I still can't get my head around a mars bar having nuts in it. My world has been turned upside down.

Oh what a beautiful morning!

The view from my morning run along the lakefront path of Lake Michigan in Chicago. It was perfect running weather and clearly the whole of Chicago thought so too. In fact I'd be entirely unsurprised to hear that business and industry ground to a halt due to everyone being out on the lakefront enjoying the beautiful Summer morning.









To the right I have added the route, I'm sure this satellite image wasn't taken on the actual day I ran (although the route itself comes from my garmin) but the water is blue and not icy white with snow so it's at least the right time of year. Note the graveyard in the North-West that caused me some getting-lost-and-having-to-use-the-compass-function trouble!

Harley makes himself at home

"Dude, I didn't even know this was an option!"

Gary England Blues

I hear the rain a comin'
It's rollin' 'round the bend,
And I ain't seen the sunshine,
Since, I don't know when,
I'm stuck with Gary England,
And time keeps draggin' on,
But that rain keeps a-rollin',
On down to Lexington.

When I was just a baby,
My Mama told me, "Son,
Always be a good boy,
Just keep Gary England on,"
But I stepped out on my front porch,
Just to watch the sky,
When I hear that siren soundin',
I hang my head and cry.

I bet there's rich folks eatin',
In a fancy beachside bar,
They're probably drinkin' coffee,
And smokin' dry cigars,
But I know I had it comin',
I know I can't be free,
'Cos I moved to Oklahoma,
And that's what tortures me.

Well, if they freed me from this t-storm,
If that sunshine sky was mine,
I bet I'd hang my laundry out,
To dry upon the line,
Far from the Storm Season,
That's where I want to stay,
I hope that lonesome wall cloud
Don't blow my house away.

The bathroom meets Iggy's lounging needs

"Why didn't you fix the bathroom up like this before?" The bathroom renovations meet with Iggy's exacting standards.

Bathroom Renovation Phase 2 (or maybe 3)

So the next phase of the project is to fix the sash window as one of the cords had broken and I'll be damned if I'm going to paint the window frame and walls and make it all pretty only to have to remove the window frame and damage the paintwork to make the window functional. To do this I had to remove the sash window itself and open up the frame in order to get to the weight mechanism inside. This whole project is kind of fascinating to me as I get to see how houses are built and what's hidden inside things like window frames (cobwebs, giant counterweights and dirt) and walls (cobwebs, razor blades and dirt). So as you can see I've managed to get the frame off (after another trip to Lowes for a pry-bar) and am ready to replace the ropes and put the window. Of course it's never as simple as you want it to be and I've now realised that actually the top part of the window is a sash too which has never been properly functional so I have to decide whether or not I want to do that bit too.

I might be more into the demolition part than the actual repair...

And with the bathroom in a renewed state of dismantling and like a proper labourer I've decided that I need to stop lunch...

The Iggy Lick of Approval

For those of you following my bathroom renovation saga, the sink (and floor and wall tiles) is finally installed. It's been very trying not least because I don't have access to my dad's huge pool of tools and also because Americans call tools and materials different things so it's been a linguistic as well as practical application experience.

On top of that Iggy was not entirely sure about this whole mess we were making and gave me many imploring looks about what on Earth we thought we were doing and why on Earth we would remove his favourite perch. I explained it slowly to him about having more space to move around the bathroom and how the water would taste much better coming through a tap that wasn't clogged up with limescale and after much thought he decided that I was right afterall and leapt up to investigate.

He is now pleased to give the new sink his lick of approval and thinks that maybe it might be his favourite new drinking spot even though there's not as much space to sit and watch us in the shower.

First Non-Annual Post Pneumonia Run

Well, this was a great way to launch back into running. A little jaunt around the southern end of Central Park with hundreds of other runners. I don't see this many people running in Oklahoma unless it's a race and even then only at the big races. It was a weird sensation.

Start spreading the news...

The Eye of the Tiger

...Went the distance, now I'm back on my feet
Just a girl and her will to survive…

I am the girl in the class with the gym bag.
I am the girl with wet hair straight from the gym.
I am the girl who never takes the lift.
I am the girl who can’t make appointments earlier than noon on a Sunday,
As I have to run.

I am not the girl who looks down on others for not going to the gym.
I am not the girl who feels superior because I do some exercise.

I am the girl that needs to run to survive.

Running for me isn’t about being slim (though I have to admit that is where it all started and an undoubted benefit). Running for me isn’t a way to make others feel bad. It’s the way I’ve found that I like myself. It’s also the way I’ve found to stop taking the handful of pills twice a day to keep my moods stable and seizures at bay.

Running is me responsibly looking after my body, mind and finances. I can't afford medication. I can't afford to lose years more of my life to depression. I can't afford to keep buying clothes in larger and larger sizes. I can't afford to keel over from a heart attack. I can't afford to stop liking myself.

Most of the time running isn’t fun or easy, sometimes the weather isn’t nice and I don’t feel like getting out of bed. Often I have other things I need or want to do instead. But I still run and I do it because I have to.

Sometimes it seems like a lot of people split the world up into two groups, those that exercise and those who don’t. Those who don't seem like they're on the defence all the time like somehow those that do are judging you. We're not. We're just doing what we have to. Or at least I am. I often feel attacked by those who don't for running. How dare I work so hard to conform to the male stereotype of the female figure? How dare I look after my mind, body and finances...?

There's also the idea that those that don’t “just aren’t sporty people”. Guess what? Very few exercisers (if any) are. I was the girl picked last for every PE team in school you could imagine. I was the girl that hid in the music room rather than do the annual “Cross Country” run around the streets of Ealing. Even now I’d probably rather lie at home on the bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to Radiohead while eating icecream. Unfortunately this natural tendency makes me a nightmare to live with both for myself and other people.

I don’t run for the fun of it. I don’t run for the superiority of it. I run because I have to. Because it’s the responsible thing for me to do.

We Don't Do Duvets!!

This is Iggy. Many people that come to visit us may come to wonder whether or not we actually have two cats. Rufus is all up in your face begging for love and attention and this ellusive cat called Iggy is nowhere to be seen. Well rest assured people, I have photographic proof, and not just your bog standard here-is-my-cat-asleep proof but Iggy being the cheeky monkey that you never get to see proof.

This is Iggy at the beginning of his monkey escapade. He has dug himself into the duvet cover and is purring. A lot.

















"Iggy! Where are you?!"

"Here I am!"

I am apparently a floating head.

Mmmm.... Cat heads.... (the biscuit and gravy sort, not an actual cat head, that would be gross)









"Peekaboo!"
















"I'm here! Look! Look at me!"











"I'm so cool. Just hanging. In my duvet."

Sadie is not entirely sure about all this...

Yay! This is exactly the weather I love to cycle to evening classes in... At least it's stopped hailing!