More things I found in my storage unit yesterday

• Clear salt and pepper shakers shaped like cats that I got as a housewarming gift when I bought my first house in 1993
• A teacup from my grandmother’s Blue Willow china
• Chinese-inspired objets d’art are called chinoiserie
• You’re welcome
• An Army rubber ducky that I got from my friend Mike who's a kick-ass Army veteran
• A plaque I bought at the Museu Picasso in Barcelona with a shimmery sky-blue frame that has never gone with anything in any house I’ve ever owned
• Picasso is tacky and his stupid “art” will never catch on
• Loser
• An authentic finger bowl or flower vase or vomit bucket or who knows what the hell it’s for that I rescued when I survived the Titanic sinking
• Or maybe it’s just a reproduction that I bought at a Titanic exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago
• At my age, my memory is shot so its provenance is now lost to the ages
• So shut up
• A French sign about reading on the toilet that I bought at a Euro-charming little shop in Montmartre high above Paris
• A Norwegian kitchen witch that I cross-stitched and framed at Skogfjorden language camp in 1983
• Shut up
• It’s totally not gay
• So shut up
• A stone coaster printed with a vintage Eiffel Tower print
• Though it’s neither real stone nor authentic vintage
• But I like it so shut up

YOU'RE WELCOME

M-ICY!

1. I’ve been kind of smug in my good luck regarding never having run in extreme weather all summer.
2. Well, THAT sure changed this morning.
3. Brrrrrrr.
4. My typing thumb is so cold right now that it’s hard to type with any accuracu.
5. Cheap joke.
6. Anyway.
7. trump is a catastrophic-dumpster-fire piece of shit.
8. Whoops! Where did THAT come from?
9. Anyway.
10. When I bought this Mickey shirt, it hugged my arms and shoulders in manly-man ways.
11. Now it hangs on me like a Mayan burial gown on an immolated corpse.
12. Not that I think the Mayans begowned their dead AFTER they burned them.
13. But I like the imagery and rhythm of line item #11.
14. So I stand by my reporting.
15. Anyway.
16. Deflated showoff muscles and drapey T-shirts are what happens when you stop lifting 3+ times a week and start running 3+ times a week.
17. Poor, poor me.
18. But I have another half marathon looming in five weeks—and I plan to finish this one—so run I must.
19. And shrink I will.
20. Just like this morning.
21. Three miles. 11:32 pace. TINY twinge of knee pain.
22. Not much body-shrinking sweat though.
23. Because it was freezing.
24. Brrrrrrrr.
25. Gratuitous typo jokd.
26. Random mention of running buddies Rob and Scott.
27. I have to pee now.
28. TMI.
29. So you’re getting only 30 line items today.
30. You’re welcome.

I’m not saying Rob is an ash ...

but he totally blew off this morning’s run because he was “tired” after being “up really late” trying on “négligée” so Scott and I totally replaced him in our post-run selfie with an ash tree:

Plus! PLUS! Scott’s and my GPS running watches always get as much as .05 miles off from each other sometimes by the first mile, but on today’s Robless (Rob-robbed?) morning OUR WATCHES SYNCHED UP LIKE WOMEN’S PERISCOPES WHEN THEY’RE LOOKING AT THE SAME STARS so clearly Rob is a planet that’s throwing off the satellites triangulating our watches and see how neatly I brought that periscope fake-out full-circle you’re welcome.

What have you done today to make you feel proud?

June is pride month for most cities, but Cedar Rapids has our pride fest in July out of sisterly courtesy to Chicago so they don’t lose out to us on all the good parade float rentals. (YOU’RE WELCOME.) But somebody wasn’t so considerate and beat us out on the readable-size pride-fest banner we’ve hung over our entrance. Ours may be slightly small, but it’s just as mightily jubilant.