Adventures with Thing 1 and Thing 2 or The Rose Run 2010

The 2nd annual Rose Run was awesome, everyone! There were several more runners/walkers this year than last which means more support for The Breast Cancer Research Foundation! Just like last year, there was a beautiful balloon release as the starting gun went off and in my mind I could imagine Rose looking down on our small town of Petersburg, smiling and shaking her head saying: "All this because of me?" That's just how she was for those of you who didn't have the honor of knowing her personally.

How did *I* do? Hmm...it was so hot that day that I have now seriously started to consider having the sweat glands removed from my armpits. Yes, I just said that. I do not glisten, folks...I sweat like Kwame Kilpatrick when someone mentions strippers named Strawberry. Uh-huh.

Pair the humidity and heat with two 7 year olds named Thing 1 (Meg, my daughter) and Thing 2 (Nate, my nephew) and you have a recipe for disaster. After about the first 1/2 mile my lovely, athletic daughter starts whining about how hot she is, if we're close to being done, how she's tired, and how she needs to eat RIGHT now because she's "eeee-sausted". Meanwhile my nephew decides that I cannot live one more second without knowing, IN DETAIL, how many scabs he's had in his lifetime and how they occurred. The boy can talk. FAST.

At this point, I look over and see my little sister...Nate's mom....shouting out the times as we run by mile marker 1. Yes, you read that right....MILE MARKER FREAKING 1. This is a 5K y'all. I have 2.1 more miles to go with Thing 1 and Thing 2 and I've already started to consider what would happen if I just broke into a sprint and left them behind. I mean, it's a small town. Everyone knows who they belong to, right? RIGHT??

*sigh*

I think I vaguely remember telling Meg to "suck it up" and asking Nate to "Please slow down the chatter"....to which he responded by literally slowing down his chatter. No matter what age men seem to be literal creatures, eh? At that point, Meg turned into a floppy spaghetti noodle and was almost run over by the golf cart that was herding the runners through the course. Great.

I sure do love those little critters but I have NEVER been so happy to see a finish line in my life, people.