The Great Motivator

I have found someone someone more irritating persistent than my sister.

It is this person below.

Do not let her sweet exterior fool you. Underneath she is all pit bull. Which will serve her well later in life. And probably me, too.

But right now it is like having that little angelic voice of reason on your shoulder. Living in your house. Who just won’t go away.

Three times she asked me today if I was going to run.

“Later”, I said.

Later came and went. She saw me on Facebook. Doing laundry. On the phone.

Then came the great idea.

“Hey mom, how about if I run with you?”

Now, if you know my daughter you know how hysterically funny that is. She runs every day. She runs on the cross country team for North Andover High School, does multiple 5K’s each year. And she even enjoys them. She’s weird like that.

Kind of like drag racing a Yugo and a Porsche. I think you know who the Yugo would be.

But she would not relent. And when she gets an idea in her head she will not let it go. I knew that if I did not get out the door on a run she would not leave me alone all night. And I so wanted to enjoy my glass of wine watching the Red Sox without her giving me that I-can’t-believe-you-didn’t-run-mom look.

So I decided I would get off my duff and run through the neighborhood with her. To level the playing field she decided to take Lucas in the jogging stroller. I was pretty sure she could walk as fast as I could run.

She lent me this:

I had tried to run with my iPhone but all the jiggling and arm movement is read as shuffle so it was changing the music every 2 seconds. This one was much better and came complete with beat-infused, raunchy music that I should probably not let my children listen to.

But never mind, it was great to run to. Very "get-it-in-gear".

So out the door I went, down the driveway and around the neighborhood. I did pretty well until I hit a hill.

Okay, it was a slight incline, but it felt like a hill to me.

That’s when I spotted the bats. And that motivated me more than the music. Creepy, flying, winged blind things flying from tree-top to tree-top. I had visions of them dive bombing my head.

I sprinted all the way home. When I got home, I looked like this:

I think I was a rather unnatural color red. Regardless, I made it home with no creepy crawly flying things in my hair, only a few swallowed bugs and two mosquito bites.

Next time I am running in the morning. Bats sleep during the day, right?