Sunday, May 1, 2011

Life goes od

The last ten days or so have been a slow, somewhat off time for me. After the half marathon two weeks ago, I ran with the cross-country kids on Wednesday, feeling fine, but on Wednesday night I had that ominous tickle in my throat: another cold coming on. I only ever get colds, but they whomp me upside the head pretty good.

My hashing friend Choopa contends that an extreme running effort leads to lowered immunity, and God knows my effort at the half looked extreme...
...though this was just in the last minute of my race, when I was busting a (n ample) gut to try to finish in 2:20.

But really the race wasn't that hard, and the last time I was sick, which was enough to cost me two work days, was under three months ago, three months after my marathon. So I don't think that's it.

The next day, Thursday, our school took a field trip, to a farm a couple of hours outside Seoul. I was feeling pretty cruddy. (As you can see, my hair went mysteriously white overnight.)

We had a good time, though, picking strawberries,
learning how to make tteok (rice cakes), which involved whacking huge mounds of rice with big honking mallets ("Okay, when I nod my head, you hit it with a hammer"),  and tofu...
...and riding rail bikes, four-person pedal-carts on a railroad track.

We got rear-ended at one point; somebody's car got derailed, my spine separated slightly, and I said a word I really shouldn't say at a school function.

I got home exhaustipated and each day thereafter I went through more Kleenex, slept less at night and more in the daytime, and blew my nose more frequently but less melodiously than Chuck Mangione on the flugelhorn. (The song I kept playing was "Feels So Bad".) According to my scale, I lost six pounds in a week, and I think it all came out my nose. (Sorry for the lovely mental image!)

I sleepwalked through the height of the cherry-blossom season...
(It's nicer when you can smell them.)

...and tried to focus on my planning and my classes, but I've been just so fuzzy and so snotty. (And not in the usual ways.)

I haven't run in ten days; I attended the Yongsan Kimchi hash each of the last two Saturdays, but could only walk each course, rather slowly last week and with a bit more alacrity yesterday. Every day I wake up thinking I'll be all better and every day I'm not quite right. (Actually, the last six words are always true for me.)

In the realm of longer-term importance, it's only six weeks till Lauren's gone for good and most of our teachers scatter for the summer. The school is going to find me a new, larger apartment. And the noisome recycling center across the street from the school is being demolished to make way for an apartment building.

It's got to be good for the school that we're accredited and the kids will no longer be telling the cab drivers to drop them off at the garbage dump.

So, even working at half-speed with a bad cold...
...life goes od. Bra. La la how da life goes od.

(By the way, it's a sharp picture; it's me that's blurry.)

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