I’m tired.

And drained.

And ready for bed at 8pm, except The Simpsons are on and then The Celebrity Apprentice, and I will no doubt stay up to watch. (Side note: Second wind is upon me, and I’m surprised to note that Donald Trump Jr. seems to be evolving his own [heinously ugly] hairdo. I thought baldness and unfortunate thinning were inherited from the mother, but apparently in Trumps it descends directly through the male genes. Or maybe it’s just a matter of bad taste? The world may never know…)

Is it me, or is this filled with icky, boiling blood?

Anyway, as it happens, I’m no longer the spring chicken I once was.

Actually, I’m not even sure I ever had a heyday as such…but I’m most definitely not in the midst of one right now.

Today was the 12k race, and from the get-go it was off to an inauspicious start. To begin, I didn’t get home from my trip until almost midnight.

Then, I slept like crap. I have this weird thing where sometimes I’ll sweat like I’ve got autonomic dysreflexia, post-traumatic syringomyelia, autonomic neuropathy, and a bunch of other stuff WebMD said can be the cause of night sweats that don’t sound like good things to have and hopefully aren’t the reason this happens to me every few months.

Actually, I once recorded the sweats for a solid year, and took all the dates in to my doctor (who probably thinks I’m nuts, although not quite nuts enough to have me committed against my will), and he pondered them for a few seconds Then he declared that the dates were too random to be a symptom of tuberculosis, but if they pick up in frequency, to let him know. Case closed.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I sweat it up and soak the sheets and it’s super gross and always leads to a crappy night’s sleep, partly because I wake up freezing, and partly because I have to get my freezing body out of bed and find new blankets and, in this case, crack open a window.

So that happened, and then it’s up at 6:45am and off to the races. It was cold and they called for rain all day, so I dressed more warmly than I have in past years. Then, I waited in a 45 minute line to use a disgusting portable potty which was probably riddled with tuberculosis and god knows what else, and then, the next thing I know, I’m off and running.

So the goal was to run the entire thing in less than an hour. Which meant 8 minute miles (or less). Which immediately did not happen. Mile one – 8:20. Mile two: 8:37 and so on, until I drug back down to my usual 9:00 or 9:15 minute by the seventh mile.

I was in sorry shape.

You wouldn’t have even thought I trained, which I did. Sort of. Admittedly, I only started said ‘training’ two weeks ago, and I probably didn’t kick my own @ss as much as I should have, but the  point remains: It didn’t work. And I refuse to blame my own lack of initiative and effort. I blame advancing age.

And the fact that I was wearing a polar fleece jacket, which had my race number attached to it, so I couldn’t take it off. Rather than pouring rain, the sun came out and it actually got quite hot. All in all, I was happy about this, but it didn’t do much to increase my need for speed.

Ouch and double-ouch. At least I wasn't in bare feet.

Then there was the ankle timer.

They make you wear this timing chip on a Velcro strap wrapped around your leg, and the thing had dug four holes into my ankle by the second mile. Then my leg started to feel all crazy and painful, and I got paranoid that I was running on a stress fracture or having some kind of random – but serious – problem.  In the end, I think I had the strap on too tight, but ultimately I stopped and attached the ankle timer to my shoelaces…and problem solved.

And two minutes lost.

So there you have it, mission not accomplished.

I got through the race, just not (remotely) as fast as I’d hoped.

In conclusion, and not to dwell on a topic that I am personally quite sick of and have come to believe is more hype than reality, if there is rampant swine flu epidemic out there, I’m probably in some serious trouble. Today during the race, no less than 50 people spit within three feet of me. And I”m sure I stepped in at least a quarter cup of human gunk of some kind or another during the 7 1/2 mile course.

That guy needed one of these.

But the worst of all?

And I swear I am not making this up.

At the end of the race, in the middle of downtown, right after the place where you pick up your ‘thanks for playing’ t-shirt, I saw a man – a mere four or five feet in front of me – plug his nostril and fire a giant wad of snot out of the other one. And then he plugged the other nostril and did it again!

In public!

Where people could see him!

Oh, the humanity.

At the same time, let me give you my solemn promise:  I will never, ever unload a noseful of snot onto the ground in public. And if I absolutely must do so for some unknown reason that obviously involves a complete and total lack of paper products, I promise to ask you to look the other way and plug your ears first.

Cross my heart and hope to die.

It’s 4:12 a.m. where I live, and I should be giving my dog her heart medication. However, I got up and couldn’t find her…anywhere. I scoured the whole house and then went back inside to get a flashlight and after ten minues of searching, my flashlight caught the reflection of her open eyes on the hill in the back yard. From the looks of things, she went out to do #2 and had a heart attack and died. It strikes me that she’s kind of like Elvis, dying on the toilet, only without the fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. She actually ate on her own tonight, and I finally allowed myself some real genuine hope that the nightmare of the last 96 hours could end happily. My beef with god has just gotten that much bigger.

Why does it seem all my pets die with their mouths open? And I can’t get them to close after they’re gone? Pixie didn’t look as tortured as Jerry – my cat who died a year and a half ago of skin cancer – but finding her that way will haunt me. My brain simply doesn’t know what to do with all this pain.

Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking a lot about Neil Young today, probably because I have never felt more helpless in my whole life than I have the last few days. I keep hearing his sad singing:

“Leave us

Helpless, helpless, helpless

Have you ever listened to Lou Reed’s Magic and Loss? It’s an album about death and how to cope with it. I have the CD out in the other room. Tomorrow (or today I suppose it really is) is probably a good day to play it. I first heard the album with Lukas, someone else who’s gone now too.

Life’s like a mayonnaise soda

And life’s like space without room

And life’s like bacon and ice cream

That’s what life’s like without you

Life’s like forever becoming

But life’s forever dealing in hurt

Now life’s like death without living

That’s what life’s like without you

Life’s like Sanskrit read to a pony

I see you in my mind’s eye strangling on your tongue

What good is knowing such devotion

I’ve been around – I know what makes things run

What good is seeing eye chocolate

What good’s a computerized nose

And what good was cancer in April

Why no good – no good at all

What good’s a war without killing

What good is rain that falls up

What good’s a disease that won’t hurt you

Why no good, I guess, no good at all

What good are these thoughts that I’m thinking

It must be better not to be thinking at all

A styrofoam lover with emotions of concrete

No not much, not much at all

What’s good is life without living

What good’s this lion that barks

You loved a life others throw away nightly

It’s not fair, not fair at all

What’s good ?

Not much at all

What’s good ?

Life’s good -

But not fair at all

What a terrible few days this has been. I’m simply stunned – and so terribly heartbroken – by it all. Life is good, but not fair at all.