I've always thought it was cool how our subdivision sits right on the edge of the city, hardly even IN the city, which I really like because I AM just a country girl at heart. While I admit to being moderately infatuated with big cities and love to take trips to ANY of them, I really do just love solitude and wide open spaces.
No local around here would ever think to call Santa Rosa a "city", but to me it's still a big huge metropolis. Did I mention I grew up on a pig farm? If there are taxis and city buses and more Starbucks in a square mile than there are houses, then it's a city.
I even made up my own word for where we live - "rurban" Santa Rosa (rural/urban). The city has spread and sprawled out so much in the recent years, mostly from people trying to get up further north away from San Francisco. The land developers have gobbled up tons of acreage in the surrounding farmland, and our neighborhood is only 10-15 years old, and still growing!
So it's not unusual at all to go to Target and shop with the smell of the nearby cow pasture filling your nostrils. Or I guess to go for a run and dead-end into a cul de sac that adjoins to a farm.
On my usual jogging route, I run on my street, from one end of Blue Sky Lane to the other, which is about 1/4 of a mile long. My husband, ever the safety conscious one, likes to be able to walk out our front door and look up and down the street to "get a visual" of where I am and check on me. The one end of our street dead ends into a beautiful community park that hooks onto the kids' school, and has the most perfect view of the mountains. The OTHER end of the street, as I found out the other day, dead ends into a pasture with lots of sheep and goats, and a few llamas thrown in. I had to do a double take because it was so out of place to see all those farm animals basically in our neighbor's back yard!
But it's all good. I know that when I've stared at the goats 6 times, then I've done my 3 miles and it's time to slow down to my "cool down" walking lap and call it a day. And I kinda like feeling that I live in the country, sorta by a farm.... with animals. I don't want to be a TOTAL city slicker.
Last night I'd barely started my run (Day 3!!) and it started to rain! I was drenched and frozen, so I went inside, made a pie, put it in the oven and went back out again after it let up. Got back in perfect time to take the pie out of the oven!
And something else I'm learning... Controlling my breathing is crucial to NOT swallowing bugs. I must look like an air-sucking guppie when I run, but I'm getting that one down real fast.
All in all, a good "Day 3" run. When I got back in, my dinner consisted of the previously mentioned pie, a bowl of rice and half a box of Whoppers. What can I say? The heart wants what it wants. And I'm already depriving my body of coveted latent activity, I'm certainly not going to take away carbs and simple sugars, too. That would be down right silly.
Hmmm.... I think I found my next 10 Day Challenge.
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