A Day of Friends

This morning I woke up in a particularly ugly mood. I had trouble sleeping last night, and I wanted to get up and do the Turkey Trot in Urbana. It's a 1-mile fun run/walk for the family. I wanted to do the event -- as a family.

But in the middle of last night I kind of got kicked out of my own bed by my boys (who are all bed hogs) and I ended up in X-man's bed. The alarm went off at 7 a.m. and MacTroll wandered into X-man's room. I was aware he was in there, but all he did was crawl into the bed, pull the covers up and fall back asleep. Some time later I woke up with a start, ran into our room and saw that it was 7:53. I was supposed to meet Libbygirl and her family at 8:30 a.m. Both boys were still sleeping and there was no way they'd be up and dressed and ready in 15 minutes. So, I got dressed and went by myself. It was uber crowded for a cold, rainy Thanksgiving morning. I saw one of the ladies from my weight management class there. But it was crazy.

Libbygirl showed up with her family and we all lined up at the start. I ran with Lightning McColin the whole way. He did the whole mile running except for about 30 seconds -- three 10-second segments where he said, "But if I walk I won't win!" and started up again.

Afterwards, I went home to start working on the turkey. It was a little nutty for a while, but I felt better once the sucker got into the oven. Then I went on a long run, came home and continued to set up for the 11 people that were coming to dinner. I ended up in the shower and dressed about the time that Libbygirl showed up with her family. A little bit before 4 p.m., Quigs walked in with her family, and we ate around 4:15 p.m.

It really is lovely getting together with nice people. And it was very enjoyable to have my sister and her friend, my mom and my friends all in my house. And we had enough low calorie, gluten free, dairy free and "loaded" to go around.

Now it's 8:30 p.m. and I'm exhausted. I'm seriously thinking about putting on my pajamas and going to bed. Tomorrow we're headed out to Karen's Kloset, Ten Thousand Villages and Body N Sole to do some shopping. I've got to do another 45-minute run. I'm hoping to do it at Meadowbrook, and we'll arrange to see our friends Mitra and JF from Montreal at her parents' house in Urbana. It was a lovely, full day.