Day 4,398—Unexpected Downpour—

 

    I am not going to say that I didn’t want to get up, but when I looked at my clock, I wished it were earlier, so I could get another hour's sleep. The first thing I did was make coffee, which made me think that I should get the coffee grounds ready the night before. It would save me a little time, but I wonder if it would change the quality of the grounds being exposed to air for so long. Tonight is my last class in a while, which makes me feel a mix of things. First, I wonder if something will happen to prevent me from graduating. Will I suddenly have to take another class? I have no reason to think this, but the whole process has seemed to take so long with so few guarantees, so I don’t know what to expect.

    When I started running, I didn’t look at my watch at all. I was determined to go as slowly as I wanted and to purposely not think about pace, only about form and breathing. I was just starting to think how nice the morning was when I saw the flashes of lightning followed by the crack of thunder. I had about 30 seconds to wonder what that might mean when the rain started. It was a classic “caught in the rain” moment: it was raining hard, and it started while I was already outside. I started thinking about how often that has happened to me over the years, and it isn’t that frequently.

    I went to Blackburn Park to sit under one of the pavilions to meditate. It was a different type of meditation. One might just call it sitting down for an extended period of time while I observe the world around me. I saw a car pull up in the rain, and the owner came out wearing a headlamp. I saw they had two dogs with them. It was raining, but the owner needed to take their dogs out, so they had to drive to the park. It seemed odd to me, but I don’t know, maybe they just like the park when it is raining in the dark, or they don’t have much of a yard. They had two dogs, and when I ran past, one started barking at me. I looked over at her, but I couldn’t catch her eyes, so I headed to Edgar and went into Old Webster and then over the highway and down Laclede. I couldn’t remember exactly what the distance would be, but I was happy when I got home to see it was almost exactly 5 miles!