Superbowl!

We have moved in! Right now we're sitting on the landlord's stuff and not our own, but hopefully by the end of the week that will have changed. Meanwhile, the live feed of Superbowl is on (this will be a cable-less existence) and a very sad dog is staring at us: no carpets yet.

At any rate, no more nicotine-saturated motel. It was a surprisingly nice place for $35/night, everybody was really polite and it was mostly quiet, but there was too much smoke even though it usually didn't smell in our room (maybe we got used to it?) I was feeling more and more jacked up and we have been joking about my habit. Maybe e-cigarettes would cushion the drop?

The last three nights, I've slept about 4-5 hrs a night---the night before last, I finally fell asleep sometime after 3:30 am but a cab playing loud dumb music drove up around 5 am. This is the weak point of the open window strategy: I'm ok with planes, cars, even sirens sometimes, and not ok with truck-backing-up-beeping, breaking glass, or some songs. Or maybe the culprit is instrumentation: one little slide guitar lick, and I'm up!

the dog and I jogged about three miles.

Last night, I just couldn't get to sleep until 4 or so. Nothing was bugging me but I was wired. I made myself get out of bed when I woke up around 8:30. That's too late but it was uncomfortable. Apparently, a good way to reset one's sleep clock is to stop eating 12-16 hours before the intended time of levee...this means I have to stop eating these chips soon! This leads me to another thing about our new life here: no Smartfood popcorn so far. Or dill pickle Doritos. And these stores have so much variety otherwise. The choice puts my head in a vise. I couldn't find baking soda today in the baking section. Don't they have Arm&Hammer in the orange box? Or is Arm&Hammer blue now--I don't know because, at home, my eyes are trained for yellow NoName packaging. Shoot, it was a blur what with umpteen types of sugar, single serving sugar portions, single serving sugar substitute portions, stevia, etc; maybe some of that was baking soda. It's bewildering. Mind you, the largest store I went into regularly back home was the downtown IGA which seemed big enough but it's probably Big Box's Little Brother. I've had culture shopck* in other countries, too, but the expanded scale of the US experience wields the largest hammer. One of the stores we went to was a Walmart so big it had encapsulated another Walmart (it had a separate discount section...isn't Walmart a discount store already??!) Fortunately, not all stores are like this: there are smaller stores in this town which I'll be frequenting, I'll sign up for a CSA basket, and I can order online.

Before the shopping trip, the dog and I checked out our new neighbourhood, the historic town of Leavenworth, KS. I planned a route beforehand but my memory got hazy during the run and I thought I was cutting it short. I meant to go down Shawnee further but the sidewalk ran out just before a rather sharp hill; at times like this, I believe in signs. Turns out that's where I was going to turn anyway but I misremembered the street; we ran around a park and then the sidewalks ran out again and we jogged around trying to catch them before heading home.


There is a small downtown here, a few blocks away, with sidewalks on both sides which extend completely to the corners...outside of that, it's not quite hit-or-miss. A unbroken stretch spanning a few blocks invites complacency and then, bam! Cross the street, mofo! Oddly, sometimes there is a stretch for a few houses which then disappears into grass. Sometimes this is because the sidewalks, sometimes quaint brick sidewalks, are sometimes overgrown, but sometimes a newer concrete path also starts and ends here or there, like a large partially subterranean worm. this makes me wonder if this design is totally accidental or it reflects or influences social circles: Jane goes down two houses to talk to Sarah every few days but doesn't want anything to do with Anne one more house down past the sidewalk end. Sometimes the sidewalks go almost all the way to the corner, leaving a metre or so of dirt. Are we not supposed to cross the road?

I grew up in a place where there were complete sidewalks, and I've gotten used to living in places where there were no sidewalks, but this half and half biz is oddly disruptive. Eventually I'll find a route with fewer transitions.

It was a neat feeling running back to the house for the first time--I didn't recognize anything, didn't remember the yellow house or the churches from the car, and then I got to the back lane and things swooshed into familiarity. I love that feeling.

We will run on post too which will be fun. I've seen a bit of it but there is much more in store for us, especially once we hit the dirt away from the buildings and housing areas. Lots of wildlife, including cougars, or one cougar at least. I'm not sure I want to meet a cougar, but I would like to reexamine the feeling of being watched by a predator (this may have happened while I was running in Calgary. I didn't know there were cougars until after the run, and I didn't see any cougars or anything, but this strong feeling of being watched suddenly hit me while I was running in a wooded area between subdivisions; I thought it was a perv but then I was told that there were cougars and then I was reminded of my husband's experience of being watched by a cougar...it is a very strong primal feeling, at any rate, and more intense than being watched by a human has ever felt).

7.02ish miles today.

Another thing: the slippery things you know are not as slippery as the slippery things you don't know. I nearly bailed once on the wet porch and several times on mud. Ice isn't usually such a problem!

And props to Animal Control! We were barked at by scores of dogs ranging from the half-bear chained to a jewelry/pawn store to the three little Yorkie-ish dogs which barked themselves into such a frenzy they started fighting each other, not to mention the dogs one street over which were barking. My favourite duo were a frenzied lab and pug...I looked back to see the lab's mouth around the pug's head. This was for just a split second or so, but admittedly I looked away before they separated. My dog ignored all these yappers at first but by the end of the run, he was a little rattled. HOWEVER, NOT ONE OF THEM WAS LOOSE!! KUDOS!

I haven't trained my dog yet; I'll have to hang out in the backyard and tell him "no" every time he barks at something beyond the fence. This is what I've done at the three places he's lived in with us so he learns to not bark until someone actually enters the property.

So, yes, we're finally out of limbo. It's been a crazy >month.

* it's taken me nearly 7 years to coin a suitable term. Enfin!