I slept like shit last night.

The tail end of my dreams had me somewhere in Alaska, seven hours from home (Anchorage) by car with $15 in my pocket to fund the trip and some guys laying in the gutter of the on-ramp with assault weapons trying to sell me a bottle of beer for $12 as safe passage. The last thing I remember before I woke up was trying to convince a man hovering over me with a beard that a bottle of clear nail polish in my purse was worth $6, and him telling me it was from a drugstore and worth $1.28.

I was hoping for better dreams.

For probably only the second time in six months I made time for myself last night, strapping on the running shoes and setting out for 1:55. It’s a much different route than I used to take, traversing through the neighborhoods between here and the park, weaving through The Path and the buckled paving stones that – once decorative and practical – are now a knee hazard.

It’s been too many weeks since I admired the skeleton trees against sporadic grey clouds, and far too long since the heat helped me work up a sweat.

This is the first winter that I’ve curled in on myself and thought of the temperature as “too cold, I don’t want to be out there” or of the late sprint “too warm, I don’t want to be out there” as if I was Goldilocks and talking about porridge. In near tandem I’ve grown increasingly intolerant of the noise a singular car can make and even the volume of the birds that wake me.

I’m irritable and tired, and it has everything to do with not running.

After an incredibly unfortunate trip with the girls to a local shop to try on swim wear for our annual trip south in two weeks, I finally put 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 together and made 5+ pounds that I’ve packed on since my treaded lover and I parted ways.

So I ran, and I walked, and I found the peace again.

I’d forgotten the high my little treks bring. I’d forgotten the cleansing. I’d mistaken our falling-out for a falling-in and reclaimed a bit of myself with a bit of my health.

My calves are sore this morning, which will be nothing compared to the dose of lactic acid lock-up tomorrow has in store. My ass, now perched happily on a padded cafe chair on the patio in my bathrobe with a jumbo citronella candle lit a foot below attempting to keep the skeeters off the legs connected to said ass is begging me to find another way. I won’t, this is it.

It’ll never be about the marathons or crossing the finish line first in a 5k, it will always be (I hope) about the movement and the solitude and rewarding my body and mind for being so good to me.

The birds are getting loud again – which is less a signal to pull out a BB gun and more a sign I need to get in the shower and start my day in earnest, washing away the bad dreams and the smell of sleep and the remnants of pillow drool.

Happy Monday, babies – kissy boo!