Jayden woke up too late for us to make it to our Baby Boot Camp class.  15 minutes is just not enough to shove down breakfast, get dressed, and manage to get out the door.  So, I figured since it wasn’t raining this morning, we’d just take our time and go for a run instead.  Today was not a good day to go running.  I thought it was going to be, so did Jayden, he jumped right in the stroller and immediately pointed down the road and said, ‘other way’ (a.k.a. get going down the road and move on out of the driveway).  However, somebody forgot to inform me that today was the day that a bunch of drivers were going to be too concerned with their own lives to look out for someone else’s.  Someone should really put out a news broadcast or something on days like today.  “Stay off the sidewalks today, I know it’s not raining and you might want to go for a run, but not today.  There’s a lot of bad drivers out there”

Jayden and I were only about a third of a mile into our run, when we encountered our first incident.  We made it down Marvin Rd to The Wave carwash.   This is always a dangerous spot, so I’m usually on high alert when we come to it.  When it’s freezing outside, all the wet cars drip onto the sidewalk and then the sidewalk becomes a sheet of ice, which isn’t good when I don’t have my studded tires on my stroller (that would be all the time for those that might think I have studs for my stroller…i’m not that hard core of a runner…sheesh)  Today, there was no ice, just a clean and shiny silver car with a bad woman driver in it.  She comes screamin’ out of the car wash, she must of stopped by the espresso stand first and her coffee was just kickin’ in or something because she was flying out the carwash to the road, and doesn’t even look to see if maybe there is a pedestrian actually using the sidewalk.  That is why they are there, so people can walk safely down the road.  So, as I almost crash the stroller into the side of her clean car (one of these days I’m just gonna do it, but I guess it would need to be on a day when Jayden wasn’t in the stroller and who goes running with a stroller w/o a kid in it, and it would just mess up my stroller anyways, it’s not like it would total the car of anything, and then what would i do???), anyways, as I was saying, I almost crashed into her car, but luckily stopped short.  My stroller is equipped with this fancy little bell for letting people know you are behind them and that you want to pass (then you get to yell, ‘On your right’ or ‘On your left’, it makes you feel like an olympic racer or something, passing people all the time, it’s great.  really, i hardley ever use my bell except to entertain Jayden), however today my little bell got used more like a horn.  My inner-angry-Seattle-driver came out and I was ringing the bell like a mad-man, until the driver finally looks my way as she’s pulling out into traffic.  I give her an arm gesture (no I didn’t flip her off, last time something like that happened someone beat my car with an umbrella, but that’s a whole different story…yes I was in Seattle and my inner-angry-driver was rearing it’s ugly head) and I glare at her and say, ‘watch where you’re going!’, to which Jayden says, ‘watch it!’ (such a good little kid), and the lady just looks at me and smiles and waves.  I must not have been glaring very good if she just thought I was waving at her.  But whatever, I figured I’d got my close call out of the way for the day.  My close calls with cars often happen near The Wave Carwash.

However, it turns out today was my lucky day.  I wasn’t going to get run over once, I was going to get run over twice.  About a mile and a half down the road, Jayden and I are cruising along and we get to an intersection.  Me, being the rule follower that I am, even though the street lights were green, my walk signal was red, so I stopped running and went over and hit the button.  Viola!  The walk signal says go.  I took a quick look behind me for cars that were turning left, there were none, so we ventured out into the crosswalk.  Obviously, in the time it took me to turn around and start running again, a crazed young guy in a truck decided he was going to turn left.  And that he was in too much of a hurry to wait to see that we had a walk signal, and just couldn’t wait the 5 seconds it would take for us to actually get across the street.  So, he turns in front of 2 lanes of traffic, in front of cars that were too close, which makes all those cars start honking at him, distracting him even further from the fact that he is about to run over a couple people in the crosswalk, and he about nails Jayden and I.  I like to think that the people in the car were honking in my defense.  Probably not the case, but I like to think that I just might be that important.  Luckily I have reflexes like a cat and I am able to jerk the stroller to a stop before he runs us over and my bell ringing finger was practically smoking, ringing away like a mad-man.  It probably was a good thing I was running, so all my muscles were warm, you wouldn’t want to pull a finger muscle.  I say, ‘holy smokes’ (I wanted to say something much worse), to which Jayden says, ’sheesh’.  It was also probably a good thing I was running, so my heart was already pumping good, because almost getting run over by a car is almost enough to make your heart feel like it’s about to blow up.  And luckily from running my heart was already warmed up, so it didn’t pull a muscle when all the adrenaline came shooting through my veins.  Nobody wants a pulled heart muscle, can you imagine pulling a muscle in your heart?  Dang, that would hurt, like all the time, like everytime it beat.  It’s not like your legs that you could just rest for awhile, that darn heart has to keep working.  That would suck majorly.  Lucky for me, that didn’t happen!

Jayden and I made it the rest of our 5 miles without too much incident.  When we got close to the house, a sheriff’s car passed by me and waved.  I was wishing that I had a photographic memory and could memorize all those license plates of the cars that have tried to run me over, because I would so report them.  That’s just the kinda girl I am.  Guess Jayden and I should of just gone to Baby Boot Camp, I think it would of been much safer.