a long, long, long day (part 1)

and i'm exhausted.

i'll start with practice last night because i did go. it was a really good practice - great weather, and i worked hard.

we ran from 90th down to about 81st and back 6 times. on the way down, we'd run easy, and on the way back, we'd run hard. the first 3 times were a 3.5 or a little higher. then the last three times we were supposed to run 10-15 seconds faster. of course i forgot my watch so i had to go on feeling. i pretty much kicked ass, worked hard and felt really good after.

i came home and wrote a post...but i couldn't post it so this is what i wrote...(warning: it's sad)

grizabella the glamour cat

grizabella is my second cat. my first cat, midnight, was an outdoor cat and after following us on a summer’s evening walk was chased into the woods by a ratty dog that lived at the end of the road. i think i was ten, and not only did i make a plethora of crayon-drawn missing cat signs, but i made my dad drive me up and down the stretch of road where he ran into the woods while i hung out the window shouting “miiiiiiiidnight! midniiiiiiiiiiiiiight!”

after a few weeks of that and mysterious black-cat signings around where he disappeared, i sadly gave him up to a life in the woods.

and then along came grizabella. she was a surprise that i got in the parking lot of yankee spirits, in a cardboard box, and i immediately burst into tears of joy. i was 13 and had been desperately begging for a new cat pretty much since we lost midnight. she’s 1/2 siamese, a little petite thing, with a star between her eyes and little white boots. i thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world, and i was in my musical theatre phase and so after one of t.s. eliot’s felines she was named.

grizz nursed me through countless jr. high and high school troubles and heartaches. she slept in my bed every night, crying outside my door if i accidentally locked her out. she always knew when i was upset and would come sit on my lap and cuddle accordingly – i cried a lot into that fur. she didn’t like anyone outside my family, but she was our girl.

but when i was 19, we broke up. i don’t know what it was, but when i came back for christmas sophmore year, grizabella had decided she wanted nothing to do with me. i think she was mad because i left her. regardless, no amount of coaxing, begging, bribes or trickery would get her to be my friend again. all i ever got for my trouble was hissing. i was really sad for a long time, and then it just became The Way Things Are, and i didn’t think much about it. when i would go home, i'd try to be nice, she’d ignore or hiss at me and that would be that.

she’s 17 years old now, and she hasn’t been doing so well lately. she’s been having trouble finding the litter box, and has spells of not eating or drinking. when i went home for thanksgiving, i went down to the basement to see her (that’s where she hangs) and she was laying in her favorite spot down by the furnace. i went over and sat down cross-legged beside her and softly said hello. grizz was tinier than ever, so skinny, and seemed extra whiskery. her breathing was really labored, made more dramatic by her tiny little body. she looked at me, and slowly got up and came and sat in my lap, and started to purr like crazy.

i started to bawl like a little girl, because it surprised and touched me so. but i also knew that it was probably more of a measure of how sick she was than how much she wanted to be friends again. i hung out with my girl in my lap, talking to her and crying and scratching her head and under her chin. i didn’t realize until that moment how much i had been bothered by her not liking me, and i was really sad that i knew it meant it was probably time to say goodbye.

i went upstairs and with a quivering chin told my mom we had to have her put to sleep, because she just wasn’t well. i cried more, and she cried and she wanted to see how she did for a little bit because there were days that she was better than worse. mom didn’t want to go do it, and i didn’t blame her. we decided we’d wait a bit but that an appointment probably had to be made, and if mom couldn’t do it, i'd go over christmas break.

i was home last week, and grizabella seemed to be worse. i got really upset again, and mom said they might take her in this week. i was lucky to be home, and i said my goodbyes, but when my sister said that they made an appointment for today, well, i just don’t want her to go. i kind of want to be there, with her, when it happens, but i can’t tell if she’s in pain and if she is i know we can’t wait because no one wants her suffering. it’s just awful.

yesterday's mileage: 5.5
total mileage: 282.5