Rock ‘n’ Roll, Baby

Belated post for my first half marathon of the running season, last weekend! The inaugural Rock ‘n’ Roll Clearwater Race finally happened Sunday the 8th, after being postponed from last year due to Hurricane Ian.

Having done only two other Rock ‘n’ Roll races before (Savannah in 2021 and New Orleans way back in 2001), I had forgotten what huge races these are! Thousands of people made for a late start but the weather was unexpectedly perfect and for sure the bands playing on the side lines every 3 miles or so helped with the energy. 

Besides the bands and the finish, my favorite part was the “Biofreeze” station somewhere near Mile 8 or 9, where you could pull over and get the pain relieving spray on various body parts, like you were getting new tires and gassed up at a NASCAR pit-stop. 

The medal is small and my time slooow at about 2 hours 38 minutes (there were 3 big bridges soooo), but I had a great race and I am still and always - 

Baby Love

I’ve never been a person who is wild about babies. 

I mean obviously, since I chose not to have any of my own, but in general terms also. Probably due in part to my starting to babysit younger sibs and neighborhood kids at a very young age (shockingly young in retrospect and compared to what I believe is standard age to start babysitting today). The in-home day care center my mom ran for most of my childhood didn’t help either!

But maybe I was also just “built” that way. I have a pretty strong opinion that the assumption many people have, that all women want and need to have children, is inherently sexiest.

And yet, I recently fell in love with my granddaughter. 

To be fair, I was pretty well primed for it, hearing my equally not-wild-about-babies husband gush non-stop since returning from New Hampshire, where he visited his son & partner, and met Jubilee for the first time. 

He visited in August for Jubilee’s first birthday, but I waited to meet her until this recent trip to Milwaukee, to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 100th birthday. So much to celebrate! And to be grateful for, too.