Yankee Drawl

Posted By jayna on December 8, 2011

At 9 o’clock tonight, I figured out the number one reason that it was a good thing we bought the house we did. It has nothing to do with resale value or rent-ability, schools or neighbors. Nope. When it comes down to this house, nestled snug in a tidy little neighborhood, and the countless others we looked at, far out in the country, there is a major perk that I hadn’t realized in the 6 months we’ve lived here.

I can run at night without seriously fearing for my life.

Baby boy (will someone please give the poor kid a nickname already?!) is nearly 7 weeks old. Plenty old enough for me to begin kicking my own rear end back into shape. When we moved away from Baltimore, we moved away from the most awesome YMCA ever. So, for 6 months I haven’t done a single thing that could be considered working out. Not a one. Now, the baby weight might be slowly melting away – thank you breastfeeding! – but my belly still shakes like a lovely bowl full of jelly and my rear end has way too much junk in the trunk. Enter the running challenge between the husband and I.

He, an on-again-off-again runner that is perfectly capable of far surpassing 5k, picked a training program for a 10k. I, a wheezing mess that has bad knees and whines a lot, chose the ever popular Couch to 5k. We hadn’t picked a start date or anything, so it was on a complete whim that I loaded the app on my phone tonight and took off on the sidewalks of the neighborhood. Not only did I have no problem with the first day of the challenge, I had fun. I came home smiling – half frozen and still sweating, but smiling. I don’t usually find myself still smiling at 9 o’clock at night, so this is an awesome development.

As I ran down the narrow path lit by my headlamp, I jumped at shadows, nearly peed my pants as a dog came charging across a yard and sprinted past a very, very creepy lake. It was on the way home, just after passing that lake for the second time, that I realized that there was no way I would have been able to slip on my shoes and dash out the door had we moved to any of the other houses we had wanted. The stone monstrosity set back from a major highway? No running there. The century farmhouse nestled at the foot of the mountains? Definitely not on those deserted dirt roads. The odds of being hit by a car, snatched up or . . . eaten by a bear . . . seriously, a bear . . . are a million times higher compared to where we are now. Granted, it is a false sense of security about the whole abduction thing and I’d be far more sane to run while it is still light out, but it kind of kills the day when the sun sets at practically lunchtime. However, it’s definitely a sure thing on the whole getting-eaten-by-a-bear issue. I seriously doubt the HOA allows bears in here.

Hardee-har-har.

So, every other day for the next few months (at least) I’ll be enjoying this new perk of living in a Pleasantville kind of neighborhood. Here’s to a few less jiggles and far less bears.

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