In Memoriam

I only ran 8 miles last week because I started getting sick on Friday and spent the rest of the weekend in bed. Luckily, I had the NCAA basketball tourney to keep me occupied. Normally, I am not a huge sports fan, but this is more of a gambling experience than a sporting event since I have money riding on some brackets at work. Unfortunately, I am in 106th place out of 118.

I babysat Kaleb, my nephew, for two days on Wednesday and Thursday while my sister was doing some job interviewing in Big D. He had a cough, and I think I caught an upper respiratory bug from him. I read an article about sick kids and daycares, and one study found that if a virus is introduced into the daycare in the morning, 80% of the children and 50% of the parents will be infected by day's end. No wonder it seems like children are perpetually sick. When I picked Kaleb up from daycare, we were counting tractors and other various construction equipment (which there is no shortage of due to all of the road construction) on the way home. I spotted an unusually clean, white dump truck and asked him if he saw it. He commented that it was a very clean dump truck, and I agreed. He then said, "I like nasty dump trucks." I don't know why I thought that was so funny, but I laughed. Kids say the darndest things.

I previously posted that I was going to run the Texas Roundup 10k because I thought it was for a good cause, "a statewide effort to encourage Texans of all fitness levels to incorporate daily physical activity and healthy choices into their lives." Now, I have even more reason to run the 10k and have recruited the family. I have dedicated this run to my mother. My brother, his fiancee, my sister, her fiance, and I are running the 10k in her memory; she was tragically killed in a car accident 10 years and 1 day from the date of the run, April 30th. We miss her dearly, and I find it hard to believe she has physically been gone from us for almost a decade. However, she will forever be in our hearts, minds, and prayers.