a day in extremes
The quote of the day:
Running news:
9.4 miles. My current record.
I decided that today would be a long run day. I put on a coating of SPF 45 (even at 7:30 in the morning, you can't trust that sun) and drank a glass of water. Then I prepared a thermos of cold water and put it on the porch before starting.
I did it the same way I did my last 8 mile run--I did the first 5 miles, which brought me back to my house, drank some water, and then did the remaining parts. I did the first 5.3 in 51 minutes, and the next 4.1 miles in 42 minutes, which means I slowed somewhat.
My important realization during my run was that running is mostly about bodily fluids. ("Bodily Fluids" would have been the title of this entry, had not the rest of the day not intervened.)
Running covers me in sweat. Sweat in and of itself I find pretty disgusting. But the sweat, combined with the sunscreen, covers me in a slick coating. It makes me want to go straight into the shower. It makes me feel grimy and untidy, and if there's anything I can't stand, it's feeling untidy in my person.
I also foam at the mouth--well, okay, not literally, but my mouth gets covered with white paste, which I wipe off on the sleeves of my t-shirt. If I brush my teeth before I go running, it doesn't make any difference--still I get the sticky paste.
The most horrible thing though, and not one that I've seen covered in many books on running, is that running opens my sinuses. Doesn't matter how many times I blow my nose before I start--the nasal passages just open up while I'm out there. What am I supposed to do? Take Kleenex with me? And put it where? I blew my nose on the street. I wiped my face (especially my nose) and hands on my t-shirt, which left the already sweaty t-shirt covered with streaks left and right. I had to wipe my dripping nose several more times.
I finished, came inside, stretched. I drank lots more water and made my morning bowl of oatmeal. I felt completely drained, but sort of psyched that I'd done 9.4 miles, a personal record.
Then Darin reminded me we were due at Brent and Therese's at 10, to help them move.
Perhaps, I thought as I ate my steel-cut oatmeal with brown sugar on top, just maybe, running 9.4 miles right before doing something like helping people move was not the best idea.
Naaaaah.
I had an entry in December 1996 entitled "Airport Karma," but due to circumstances probably within my control I have since lost all copies thereof. When you agree to drive others to the airport, you increase your "airport karma" (a term posited by Michael S.), thereby making it more likely that others will agree to drive you to the airport--even if they're not the same people you drove to the airport.
I believe that "moving karma" is the same kind of thing. You help others to move, they help you. When I moved in with Darin (6 years ago! I can't believe it!) a bunch of his friends came on down and helped us load up my apartment and unpack at his condo. I remember this quite well--it was right around the time of the LA Riots, and we kept yelling, "Come and loot! Come and loot!" because we were so tired of packing up my crap. But Darin and friends took charge and my apartment miraculously emptied.
Yesterday was my turn to pay off my moving karma debt.
Brent and Therese have lived on the second floor of a run-down apartment complex in North Hollywood for the past few years. They had a small 2 bedroom apartment, dominated by Bunchkin's toys.
The U-Haul truck (which wasn't really--the U-Haul guy had taken an old Penske truck and painted the whole thing yellow; it was a total rip-off, but the quality or lack thereof of the truck does not figure into this story, though it threatened to, at one pont) was already half-packed with boxes when Darin and I arrived.
We packed and loaded and packed and loaded. Put the contents of the closets into the backseat of Therese's car.
At noon Therese ordered a couple of pizzas and we loaded up on carbohydrates (which just made me wanna nap afterwards). I played with Bunchkin for a while--she was Esmeralda, I was the Prince, the Frog Beanie Baby was Esmeralda's castle--before we finished loading the truck.
Then came the moment of decision: should I stay and help Therese continue to pack, or go with Darin, Brent, and Harry and unload the truck?
"I'll go," I said. "Might make unpacking go a little faster."
Good choice? Well...depends on your definition of "good."
Their new apartment is in Santa Clarita, a bedroom community about 30 minutes north. It's out of the San Fernando Valley. Valencia, the section of Santa Clarita where they are, is a gigantic housing development--it's very nice, it has every chain store and restaurant you can think of in brand spanking new buildings, but the entire area is pre-fab. There will be no ghost stories set in Valencia for years to come.
On the drive there, Brent told me that he'd wanted to get a ground floor apartment, but there were none to be had. So they had a second floor (or, for you Europeans, a first floor) apartment.
Oh, okay, I thought. They're currently on the second floor, one flight of stairs...no problem.
Ha. Ha ha. Hahahahahahahaha.
Three flights of stairs. One from the parking area to the ground level, one from the ground level to the ground level apartments, and one from the ground level apartments to the second story. And not consecutive stairs either; no, the first two flights were separated by 30 or 40 paces.
It took the 4 of us the better part of 4 hours to unload that truck. I moved most of the lighter boxes--I love Brent and Therese dearly, but no amount of affection will get me to risk irritating my herniated disk--which left the guys with the heavier stuff.
Some movers from Cort Furniture Rentals were moving furniture out of the apartment next to Brent and Therese's, which meant that the staircase that served only those two apartments constantly had someone on it, carrying something up or something down. And someone else waiting to use it.
After my 40th or 50th flight up the 3 flights of stairs, I turned to Brent and said, "This was a bad day to do 9 miles."
"You don't need to do anything on the Stairmaster, that's for sure."
Darin got pains in his chest. Harry, who did most of the heavy lifting, was completely covered in sweat and his face was as red as a beet. I sweated as much as I was going to, which after the morning wasn't much. Brent was pretty exhausted from having loaded the truck in the first place.
And what the 4 of us kept remembering was that we were going to go back to the old apartment and do it all over again--this time with the furniture...couches, entertainment center, refrigerator.
There was a lot of discussion about that refrigerator. None of us looked forward to the experience.
To make the whole thing go a lot faster, Harry tried putting 10 boxes on the dolly, which weighed as much as a couple of boxes in and of itself. The first time, he made it all the way to the apartment; the second time, he had to stop. One of the Cort Furniture Rentals guys saw the condition he was in--unhappy--and said, "Let me spot you one. I do this all day every day." And he grabbed the dolly and fairly bounded up the stairs with it.
Well, anything over a crawl at that point seemed like bounding.
We finished--toward the end, when the number of boxes had been greatly reduced to, say, 20, Darin would helpfully point out, "Only 5 more trips a piece!"--I thought we would all cry when we returned to the car and truck to head back and start all over again.
All of the remaining boxes were waiting for us on the lawn when we returned. Therese had corralled the neighbors into carrying the stuff down there.
We asked if the neighbors might accompany us to the apartment, because the unloading was the tough part. They refused. Brent offered them money, which Therese had told him not to do. I felt myself getting really angry: Do you know how hard what we just did was? The more people the better, dammit.
First Harry packed the truck with the boxes, and then it was time for the heavy stuff: two couches, the king-size bed, the entertainment center, the refrigerator. I was not much help during this end of it, my excuse being that I was conserving my strength.
The refrigerator went last, so that it would come out first. However, at first they couldn't get it in; Harry was afraid that they would have to put it on its side or, worse, make a 3rd trip back for it. There was a lot of incentive to get it the hell in there this time, which they finally did, upright and everything.
Unloading the truck the 2nd time took less time, although the refrigerator caused lots of concern. (They couldn't take it out first, because there wasn't enough maneuvering room. So we had to take up a whole bunch of boxes first.)
This time, however, we had Bunchkin with us, and she was constantly getting underfoot. I know, she's 3, that's her job description ("Acts cute, gets underfoot"), but I yelled at her once. I apologized immediately afterward and felt terrible. Moving tip: if you've got a tot about, hire a babysitter and have the kid taken somewhere else. The child won't feel left out and nobody will trip over her.
Darin figured out how to manage Bunchkin--let her carry something. He found something her size and she was thrilled to be helping. Then he tried to give her a cushion from the couch to carry and that proved to be too much. But he did a good job.
I couldn't help with a lot of the big stuff, so when it finally came down to the couches and entertainment center and bedroom stuff, I did things like move stuff out of the way in the apartment and push furniture to the edge of the truck for unloading.
After everything had been finally unloaded, Harry and Darin took showers and put on fresh t-shirts. Brent and I discussed stretching techniques--Brent does martial arts and showed me a killer set of ab exercises. (I don't really need a 6-pack, myself.) The group considered sacking out on the floor, but we decided to go eat instead.
One thing about Valencia is that it does have every chain restaurant you can think of within a 5 minute drive. We went to the Claim Jumper, an Old West-themed restaurant that gives you the big food. No, I mean BIG. They include an entire apple as garnish on the plate.
When we arrived they told us it would be a 45 minute wait. I'm not exactly sure, but I think we waited an hour and a half. As each minute ticked by, we got that much closer to comatose. Therese and I did not help ourselves any by having a drink--she had a pina colada, I had a Cosmopolitan--but it sure tasted good. Every so often one of us would get up to walk around, because if we stayed still for any length of time, our muscles would freeze.
We ordered way too much food--considering how big the plates were. I ordered a salad with chicken tenders on the side, and I ate maybe a third of it (if even). Therese and Harry got slices of prime rib that were bigger than my head. Brent's chicken pot pie was the size of a soup tureen. It's crazy, the size of the food there.
Of course, I ordered a slice of their 6 layer chocolate cake anyhow. As in, each layer was about an inch or an inch and a half thick. I ate most of one layer, everybody else had some of it, we boxed about 5 layers.
Bunchkin was asleep the entire time we were at the restaurant--while waiting for the table, at the table (she was stretched out between Brent and Therese)... she only woke up when we walked outside and everybody said goodbye to her.
I drove us home--the Cosmopolitan, not particularly strong to begin with, had worn off, and Darin could barely move--and we sang along with Chess on the way. Neither of us had listened to it in years, but we still knew all the words.
Fell asleep really quickly.
I have to say, now my moving karma is paid off, and I will never do it again. It's not worth it, at my age. Hire some movers. This is LA: hire some illegal aliens--they're easy to find, and they don't cost much. (I point this out as a simple fact of life here in LA.) And I know that my resentment builds way too easily over a big job like this, so I'm not a good person to call in the future.
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