Have you seen the phrase/meme/t-shirt/coffee cup, “You have the same number of hours in the day as Beyoncé”? It’s been around for awhile now, but it’s still making the rounds.
This is supposed to be somehow motivating, but I’m sure I’m not the first to call bullshit on this. I can’t help but surmise that Beyoncé is probably not assisting with second grade sight word homework while knuckle-deep in steel wool in a frying pan where she burned the peppers and onions as she watches the sun set, literally, on what will be the last daylight opportunity for a quick run. For the record, I’m sure she works incredibly hard, and if I had to choose between a 90-minute aerobic stage performance in 4-inch heels and scrubbing up some dishes, I’m honestly going to choose the latter, whatever that may say about me. But the point is, Beyoncé’s 24-hour cycle runs differently from mine.
Summer vacation ended three weeks ago, but this was our last week “off”, when all we had to do was get ourselves to school (and work) and back. Technically, we still had places to be most nights, but not regularly scheduled places. (Granted, one night was a philanthropic trip to Yogurtini to support our school for restaurant night… the noble things we do for education…)
Next week, summer is officially over. Next week, soccer starts on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Dance on Tuesdays from 5:30-8, and there’s Girl Scouts, and on Wednesdays there’s other Girl Scouts. With the time that’s left, Sam wants to find an archery class and Eva wants to play basketball. I’m just saying, Beyoncé probably doesn’t have to pull down the crock-pot recipes cookbook that she got while standing in line at the grocery store, to try to figure out how to get everyone fed.
I was running in the mornings, and I thought I was loving running in the mornings. It turns out, I love running in the sunlight. It was confusing because, with the sun rising and shining at 5am, I wanted to rise and shine, too. But now the sun isn’t coming up til almost 6:30, which makes snuggling into a snooze or two all too tempting. But being the flexible person I am, the last few weeks I’ve been running in the evenings during the week, which worked through the first week of school, the no-homework, we’re just getting back into the groove week. It worked through the next week when we were still in the middle of the summer-activity into fall-activity hiatus. This week, though, has been a taste of what sticking with a routine means when the routine gets all shot to pieces by your other routine.
“I was hoping to run today,” I said as my husband came into the kitchen.
“So, go run,” he said. Men tend to simplify things. It’s beautiful and frustrating.
“Now? It’s almost 7:30. We just finished dinner. It’s getting dark. The girls still have homework to finish.”
“Go run,” he repeated.
And so I did. It wasn’t the best run I’ve ever had, in part because this is the state of my laundry, since laundry is on the list of things I’ve been meaning to get to, and so I had to wear my least-favorite, but nearly always clean workout sweats:
And running in the gloaming isn’t quite the same as running in the dawn. There’s a day-is-done vibe instead of an up-and-at-em vibe. There’s more reflection on what came before the run – the morning rush to pack lunches (will be more on top of that tomorrow), the emails that didn’t get responses, and the ones that did, wondering if the temper tantrum brewing when I left the house hit flash point since I’ve been gone (odds are good) – whereas a morning run feels like more of a clean slate.
But there’s something to be said for cataloguing the day’s thoughts before my head hits the pillow. And wow, who knew where we were in the moon’s cycle?
“Go run.”
I missed the sunset, but I caught some perspective.
