A Viking, running: Happy Sweater Day

ORN: I ran 5.04 miles in 50:04. We had our first sunny day in several days. In fact, it rained for a couple days straight and parts of the city, especially along the river, are flooded. The wharf area, where I planned to run today, was under water up to and into River Road.

I tried to make the following as free of snarkiness and irony as I could. Where I could not avoid it, it's because I was trying to keep a wobbly train on the tracks.

Today is Sweater Day, so I'm wearing a sweater. It commemorates what would have been Fred Rogers's 80th birthday. I'm what you might call a Fred Rogers fundamentalist. I think the guy was a frakkin' Saint, anointed by the Lords of Kobol and given to us for a too-brief time to bring us the message that we are good people and worthy of Love. Even today, five years after his Transition, the world is a sadder place without him in it. When my therapist notices she hasn't made me cry uncontrollably for a few weeks, she just has to bring up Mr. Rogers, and I'm a slobbery, hysterical mess.

Some people, like my wife, think Mr. Rogers was kind of creepy. Others don't get why he was such a big deal. Don't even get me started on the haters. There will probably be a time when his shows are no longer broadcast, and children won't grow up with his earnestness and love beamed directly into their emptiest, loneliest parts. All these thoughts make me sad, too. Tales of his incredible life and examples of his Saintliness are all over the internet, so I will leave it up to you to read them for yourself if you are so inlined. Keep tissues nearby. I'd post links here but then I would just turn into a blubbery mess at work, and that would be a tad embarrassing. Again.

Enough with the off topic stuff. I ran today for the first time all week for a host of reasons. I have no excuses other than laziness. Monday, I was sore but could have toughed it out. On Tuesday and Wednesday, it rained constantly; but as I am not made of sugar, I could have toughed it out. My motivation has just flagged. I guess I was due for a bad week after a couple months of consistency, but it is nevertheless disheartening. It's a negative feedback loop of missing a day or two, feeling bad about it, missing another, feeling worse, missing another. I could use a kind word from Mr. Rogers right now.