It's been a while, has it not?

Room key numbers perhaps, for your fantasy bnb?

I've been gone from the blog for the worst of all reasons: I met someone. I disappeared like all those people that went before me that I judged harshly and became embittered towards. I'm on the other side. Now I understand all those lost friends, those lonely weekends when bffs found bfs. This is the reason I started to hang with couples; it kept me from suffering the ever-impending loss from coupledom with single pals.

Anyhoo, life has changed in a lot of ways, and I don't know if I'm quite ready to try to write about them. My shop remains the same. Summer was good. I have health insurance. I've continued to run, surprisingly; I went out last night, in the dark (my secret love). I felt strong. I feel like I'm getting better at it, which I attribute mostly to my genius idea to get gel inserts for my shoes (ah, bliss). I went out and did a 12K in San Francisco about a month ago, and it changed me, which is surely something that should be relegated to the marathon finishers of the world, but seriously, I feel different about physical exercise now.

The middle of the race was back and forth across the Golden Gate Bridge with a swig of Gatorade in the middle, and plenty of botched tourist selfies with runners sticking their tongues out in the background. The wind was blowing in my face and I was feeling a bit high on endorphins, and I realized that my high school swim coach, who died this year of pancreatic cancer, would be so proud of me, at thirty-one, for still doing something with my body and taking care of it. And in that moment, all those pregnant ladies and their realizations that their bodies were "magical, wonderful" things with all kinds of creative power, made sense to me. I was no longer an athlete, but I was still doing something with my body, my flawed hurting body. I wish I could bottle that feeling and those thoughts together. They were really, really important. That was the day I stopped being a former athlete, and I became an adult-who-takes-good-care-of-herself.

The plumber just left. He installed a new toilet. I asked him to leave the old one so I could do something with it. I hated to see the original 40s/50s toilet be thrown away like trash. I'll take a good picture of it and share it later. He noticed all of my paintings and asked if I was an artist. "Well, kinda, I guess, a writer, but really, not really" is what I said. So I was motivated to write a little. There ya go.