Half My Life

in

Baby John and Kathy circa early 2000.

(Sunday Paper, Year VII, Issue 5)

This week marked the anniversary of when Kathy and I went on our first date.

It’s a date we recognize and acknowledge, but we don’t do anything special.

But I wrote a pretty funny tweet about that day (or the day before, actually) 22 years ago.

And when I wrote that I realized that Kathy and I have been together for half my life.

(Less than half her life, though, haha.)

So here’s the tweet.

I am not great on the phone. I’ve definitely mentioned this before.

Kathy and I were work acquaintances - maybe friends - but certainly not regular phone talkers. So this was an incredibly stressful thing for me to do. And it’s crazy to me that people don’t really have to do this anymore.

I guess this would be happening by text nowadays.

Or through an app.

Which, I guess is too bad - I think I’d be really good at charming someone over text or whatever kids do these days. Writing is my thing! Not talking on the phone.

But I digress.

It’s kind of wild, that ‘half my life’ thing.

I guess you could divide my life up into pre-Kathy (pre-K) and post-Kathy.

I like the idea of pre-K because that was probably my maturity level back then.

In retrospect I was so young when all of this happened - marriage, kids, house. Well, we were so young. Despite my opening joke Kathy’s not that much older. But she’s always been much more mature.

That’s why I’m lucky half my life is post-K. Or maybe we should rephrase that as with-K. Whatever.

The important thing is that now we embark on the exciting third chapter of John’s life:

Marathon-Running John.

Which, I guess if I don’t stop talking about my running…could very well lead to a post-K existence.

(Just kidding.)

What I’ve Been Enjoying

This week’s roundup:

  • ‘Stranger in the Alps’ - Phoebe Bridgers

  • ‘Punisher’ - Phoebe Bridgers

  • Lady Bird

  • Honey, I Shrunk The Kids

Last week I told you that I was trying to see/hear things I hadn’t seen/heard before. Honey, I Shrunk The Kids does not fall into that category - but it was new to the girls. It was a good family movie, but two things: 1) It was as perilous as I remembered. We watched it in the theater growing up and my biggest takeaway/remembrance from that experience was how scary it was for a movie that wasn’t supposed to be scary. And 2) I’m pretty sure this was only the second time I saw the movie - but so much of it stood out to me because there was some kind of behind-the-scenes in the early days of The Disney Channel where they showed all the oversized sets and everything that was cutting-edge movie-making back then. We must have watched that 100 times, with the oversized bowl of Cheerios and the cookie and the ant - so many of those scenes have been hammered into my brain.

Notes

*Running Update: Because of the pending blizzard (running makes me pay closer attention to the weather than ever before - so I was aware of a potential snow situation earlier than, I think, most people), I did my 10-mile long run on Friday instead of Saturday again this week. It is a good feeling of accomplishment knowing that I got the run in, rather than sitting and waiting for things to clear up to get a run in and having that weigh on you.

*Superbowl Squares are going fast! If you want information about the charity you can find all of that here. Let me know if you want in and we’ll work out the details like payment.

*A reminder if you care about such things - you can Like my Facebook page here, you can follow me on Twitter here. And I have a new(ish) Instagram where you can keep tabs on my running - that’s @johnnyrunsalot.

*For those of you keeping score at home, our final hope for a new Super Bowl matchup is the Rams. The 49ers have played both Kansas City and Cincinnati in the Super Bowl, and the Rams have played neither. So I’ll be rooting for the Rams today and just a good game in the AFC Championship.

*That’s after I finish shoveling the plowed snow out of the driveway and digging out the cars.