Mouse on a Wheel

I just ran 3 miles in my basement. Which wouldn't be anything for me to post about since I normally run about 8 miles a day, except my treadmill broke weeks ago and I haven't gotten a new one. Here's an alternative title for this post....The One Where You Seriously Question Whether Or Not I Have Undiagnosed Bipolar Disorder. I don't, but if I didn't know me, I would probably think so too.

I have been in kind of a melancholy funk for quite a while. I believe it was Mrs Chicky who coined that phrase, but I'm too lazy to search through her archives and find the actual post. Anyway, when I thought about when this funk began and tried to figure out how to fix it, it occurred to me that it started exactly when my treadmill broke and I realized that since it is freezing cold outside and my husband is never home, I would not be running for a while. It was depressing. Maybe it bothered me more than it should have, but when something is routine, it really sucks when you can't do it, and have no way to fix that. I don't really like for things to change unless I am the one who wants the change!

I have been using our elliptical machine, but I hate it. I hate using it, but more than that, I hate what it does to my body. I have the same problem when I bike a lot in the summer. That muscle on the top front of my leg that I can't think of the name for right now (but I'm sure you nice people will leave the name in a comment) gets huge. It gets huge and bulky and makes my pants not fit right. Then I feel like I am gaining weight, when really I am not. My clothes fit different, and since I am a girl, that bothers me more than it should. I can tell myself I am not looking chunky until I am blue in the face, but it doesn't change the fact that my pants are uncomfortably tight in that area and make me feel sort of bad about myself.

When my treadmill first broke, I seriously considered running laps around my basement, but decided against it because the part where I could run has windows that look right out of my house. We have a basement where half is a walk out basement, and half is a garden basement. There are windows all around the basement, and we haven't covered them yet. We have been busy with having a baby, cancer, etc. We figured it didn't really matter because I used to run on the treadmill at 5 in the morning. If you are up at 5 in the morning and want to take a peek at me when you are leaving for work, go ahead. No one except me is ever awake in our neighborhood at that hour anyway.

Today, my 3 year old fell asleep at 4:00 (which probably means he is getting sick or will be up all night) but I took advantage and went into the basement with my twin 6 year olds. My 9 year old is at drama class, but she probably would have been too cool for my little game anyway. We went downstairs and while the twins jumped on the mattress on the floor (because we are so classy that we still haven't thrown away our old king size mattress, but whatever, it is exercise and fun for them) I ran laps around the basement. It felt amazing. Then I checked my foot thing (which I also can't think of the name of right now, but I'm sure you will tell me in the comments) to see how far I had run. I ran my first mile in 7 minutes. I thought it was definitely wrong, so I did what any normal person would do. I counted my laps to see how many made the foot thing said was a mile and then measured to figure out if it was right. It was right! I ran a mile in 7 minutes! So then I kept running and my lungs reminded me that my normal speed is somewhere around 10 minutes a mile, or 9 in a race. I never said I was super fast, but maybe the elliptical machine has made my legs stronger and that is why they are bigger. Even if that is true, I still don't like it.

Running laps around the basement has an extra bonus. There are hurdles...or remote control dinosaurs and a bunch of crap laying around, but they worked like hurdles. Although you feel a little like a mouse on a wheel running around and around, but going nowhere.

Then the terrible thing happened. I thought I saw a cabinet handle laying on the floor. That's odd, I thought, why would there be a cabinet handle on the floor in the basement? I stopped running and went over to look. It was a dead mouse on the sticky paper. I think I have written before about how I don't believe in killing animals, so we first tried the catch and release traps and when they kept coming back and there were so many mice in the basement that it freaked me out, we called a guy to take care of it. I didn't want to know what happened to the mice, I wanted to believe he just came and carried them out and gave them a stern warning not to come back. He actually used poison traps, which I know because a few days later, we found a dead mouse. A sweet looking little guy that could have stayed alive if only he would have listened to me and stayed OUTSIDE my house. The mice have been gone (or so I thought) for months. Every time the mouse guy comes, he disappears into the basement (to give the mice another stern talking to) and then comes back up and tells me everything looks good and I hand him my husband's entire paycheck. This system was working great until he decided to use the sticky paper traps. Then I saw a dead mouse, got a little sad, and had to stop running tonight. But I ran 3 miles in my basement with no treadmill.

Just a note to my neighbor: if you happen to look into my basement and see me running around in circles, I am aware that I look a bit crazy. You absolutely don't have to rap on the window to get my attention and then stare at me after I wave to see what I might do. I'll just be running in circles, so you can go back to whatever the hell you were doing in my front yard. Because I'm the crazy one.