_DSC0958, originally uploaded by underthedeltablues.

So, while other people were sitting their little people amongst the pumpkins and cooing them for smiles, we had our drooling, clumsy dogs.

and our sunday. Caramel, evening bike ride, and curling up in that spot I love.

"The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself - the
invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us - that's where it's at."

Jesse Owens, American track and field athlete and Olympic gold medal winner

I start sentences off with things like, "I found a way to make me more interesting" and I follow it with talking about a new local coffee shop I found about 6 blocks from my house. The music is good and I love sitting next to the window, alone, with hot tea and my textbooks.

Because I think things like that make me more interesting, vs my usual corner seat at panera hiding behind a laptop screen and underneath textbooks and notepads.

I bought a new journal. I agonized and paced the back wall. I held a dozen in my hands. I weighed them in my palm, I flipped through the pages, I examined the width between the lines, and I pictured them in my backpack or my The Greater Good bag.

and I'm addicted to hot tea and candy corn.

THAT is the kind of 20 year old I am.

Did I ever tell you how much I'm inlove with October?

Which is kind of ironic since I almost died in October a few years ago. And no, I'm not being a melodramatic blogger, I'm serious.

I'm sitting in a lawn chair in my backyard eying a pretty calico who's eying me back. Tank is gumming his pink elephant and I'm not letting any of this weather go to waste. There's just something so right about the way Don Henley and fall go together. I'm a little sad paramedic school has robbed me of it this year though. I'll miss the best part of this year inside a windowless e.r. and o.r. Even though intibating and watching surgeries close enough I can smell the electrocautery through my mask is amazing and addicting; I'll miss the best parts.

But the air is crisp in the morning when I leave for school and work and in the midst of staring down a hellacious year, where 130 hour weeks are normal and my life is still kind of falling apart and he's on a completely opposite schedule, I'm excited. The air makes me excited for life.

And there's me, in a healthy adult relationship. Not running, not balking, not saying, "I have to piss". I'm different than I was a year ago.

"I think I get used to, even addicted to, the feelings associated with the end of a long training run. I love feeling empty, clean, worn out, starving, and sweat-purged. I love the good ache of muscles that have done me proud. I love the way a cold beer tastes later that afternoon. I love the way my body feels light an...d sinewy."

Kristin Armstrong, Author and runner