plan ahead

Driving between the clipped interview and some volunteerin' at the library, I anticipated a bit of happiness to become this evening. Even if the cafe closes at 10:30 p.m., leave early before the lights domino from the games area to the bar counter and the front. Leave and time a green light to start my car through Main St. and Mill St. And if one of the discs I requested ask for stock surround sound, play a soundtrack or motets. But leave by 9:30 because I'll be hungry for leftover food.

fine, I'll just start small again

There are trees, from the first branch and below, that catch a bad side of rotting wood in the summer and a bad side of all the other damaging natural elements. They are logs, they will be firewood when we get around to them and around came this afternoon. It's not time to cut, and this I've always been thankful about my dad for, it's just time to plan what he'd like out of the woods by the time temperatures near a single zero. Trees that have fallen can rest for years if they collapsed during a storm and they've uprooted or, like here, are just on a slope.

He'll cut with the chainsaw next week. My work continues soon since I didn't just dig out tunnels beneath the logs at spaced out intervals but bow sawed and mauled my way through one log to try to roll away and prop up. Not only was the longer side that I thought "I might have more trouble with" impossible to lift more than six inches up or in any direction but the shorter "man, I'm really going to clean this place up and I'm not even supposed to be working today" log has some limbs attached that I did mistake for piled brush or just off another fallen log.

I dug the tunnels for the two logs that would have been impossible to cut with a hand saw. What is it about sawing that a minute in you think you're making good progress and the blade begins to curve and you realize these cuts will never connect? No, what is it that the first minute appears to be the first of only five?

I'm rarely outside working past 6 p.m. but as I decided to not go into town and I needed to shower, I sweated some more first. That heat has totally moved on hasn't it? Because it August and last week with Beck riding bikes was the fallest summer day.

sprint up, high knees down

The only decent - the only, really - shirt in my car for covering so I could walk into this cafe in Dalton is the argyle sweater I wore to volunteer at the Dalton library and that I just wore just because to the Massillon library. It is soaking sweat especially at that mid section of the back that pops out the most in a sitting position until I push the laptop screen away from me and stick my chest out the same amount.

If I'd have stayed at the library until 8 p.m., guess what, I would have finished running at 9 p.m. Since there is a construction crew there - trucks not men at that time of night - I doubt if the gates are ever closed or the water turned off or the goal posts folded up or the needle taken of the track after spinning a bunch of slow songs all day. What did I tell them? "Pop off" or "Get out"? No, I said, "I'm going to knock off 15 minutes early" and then I checked out Clevnet items - a David Bordwell with Jerry Maguire on the cover and "Little Women."

A man and woman passed. I stood at the bottom of the bleachers between a set and as they were alone on the six lanes, they walked in the middle and the man said, "You'll get a good workout that way," and she agreed with a laugh. I answered how I'm trying to do it in as short as time as possible - "Cram it all into one month." Closer to the reason I am out there doing something I don't like and has previously ended in a light headed head between the knees - running - is for someone who wasn't there tonight. She works later on Mondays and Thursdays by an hour. I'm trying to get Beck to try to get Beck in shape. It's been a month plus and a couple days ago while lying stomach and chest down and face to the side and waiting for Amelia to put her shoes on, she said she's added weight after losing weight before vacationing in Germany in April.

I tell her I'm not a trainer. I tell her what has worked for me, what I read online through whatever appears first on a Google search and how running the bleachers must be more intense and show results faster than half running, half walking the track. It's all in those thoughts. I saw this at our first workout at the stadium. Cut out the huge track and focus on 15 steps. She couldn't even run 100 meters without stopping, but she's slowly coming to - I believe - to do five sets at a time rather than four. It's significant. Results though, where are they?