is everything really meant to change?

Numbered list Monday! (Shush, that's a thing now).

1. I am definitely an inclement-weather runner. 70 degrees and sunny... all of Iowa City is hitting the pavement, and you can usually find me napping. I don't like sunny runs! You won't convince me to wear a hat (that would involve buying a hat) and running with sunglasses is just awful. No sunny runs. 46 and raining, now THAT'S where it's at. I don't mind being wet when I run (not that it happens between my water resistant pants and a windbreaker over my shirt) and Vibrams have a super-special-awesome power of not holding onto water. It's my idea of perfection.

2. Not that I've been to the gym in a while but... my speed training treadmill experiment may have paid off? I've brought my 5k time to 32-ish minutes (give or take) and I'm learning how to kick. I'm not in the habit of ending runs with kicks, usually because I'm beat towards the end, but I managed to run an 8:50 mile the other day and it was exhilarating. My body felt like it was dying but I survived to brag. Good times!

3. I've only gone on short runs as of late, but it seems like my average pace has increased. I want to believe it's because of the speed torture experiments I was doing at the gym, but it could just be that I have less weight to carry around. I guess it doesn't really matter. The fact that my natural pace is at 10:30/mile is AWESOME and I'm proud and if you're judging then you suck. The first time I ran a full uninterrupted mile, it was almost 17 minutes and I spent the entire time praying for it to end. Now my tempo is 10:30, my PR is 8:50... that is undeniable progress.

4. Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo and as a Mexican in denial, I have some things to say about this. First, I love celebrating pretend holidays, but this one in particular barely even registers on the radar in Mexico. Valentine's Day, Son's Day (that's a real thing)... basically everything is bigger than Cinco. I'm pretty sure Bud Light or Jose Cuervo or some other awful company hijacked this holiday for PR purposes and it was a smart play. Way to go. But for serious, white people, LAY OFF THE AVOCADOS. I swear it's absolutely impossible finding avocados this time of year because they've all been picked over by the hoards of douchebags who equate May 5 with guacamole and margaritas. Tomorrow, the grocery stores will be full of avocados. Today, the grocery stores are probably already full of avocados. But yesterday and Saturday... no dice. And that really pisses me off. It's not uncommon for me to eat an avocado as an entire meal, in fact most of the time that's what I do with avocados. It's not a side, it's not a garnish. It's a fruit just like an apple or an orange and you should treat it as such. So yeah... my feathers are all ruffled because a pretend holiday has motivated tons of people to clean out all the avocados from the grocery stores on the weekend that I went shopping for food. I NEED AVOCADOS, I'M DYINGGG. For serious. That shit's not a commodity in my house, it's a staple.

5. In case you're wondering, I did find avocados. But they were super super super green and I'll probably have to wait a week for them to ripen, and once that happens I'll have to eat 4 avocados in a day or else they'll start to turn. I have so much anger. #mexicanproblems. Speaking of which... I had to drive an hour out of town to find my favorite tortillas. Normally we pick them up from Sam's Club when we visit my family in Des Moines but trips to the 515 have been sparse lately. We tried the Sam's Club in Cedar Rapids and they don't stock that product there which really broke my heart. I had to make the drive to the QC for a Craigslist thing anyhow so I convinced boyfriend to come with me under the guise of hunting for these tortillas at the Davenport Sam's Club. [Side note, I love Craigslist, but it's really pissing me off that they've added the LOCAL RESULTS feature at the bottom of the page because I always seem to find the PERFECT item 50 miles away. It's always 50 miles.] The Quad Cities delivered and we walked away with SIX BOXES of tortillas. Thank goodness we happened to go shopping on Cinco de Mayo or else people might have thought I was Mexican or something. HAHAHAHAHA ethnic denial aside, why do I have to drive an hour to find the perfect tortilla? I'm not exactly sure if that's #mexicanproblems or #ruraliowaproblems.

6. Surprising fact: IIH will get you permanently deferred from donating plasma (and depending on the state in which you reside, your name might be added to a D0-NOT-ACCEPT registry) but donating blood and blood products is perfectly okay. The only reason this bothers me is because donating blood is a voluntary activity and donating plasma pays you for your time. So... you're healthy enough to do things for free but not healthy enough to get paid? I call bullshit. As it was explained to me, plasma cannot be collected because the idiopathic nature of the condition makes it impossible to tell the effects of the plasmapheresis and it's "for our safety." Except... they're perfectly happy to collect platelets which is the same effing process (down to the same machines) they use for collecting plasma. Now, I hope I'm not giving off the wrong vibe here. I wholly support the blood DONATION industry, I think it's a marvelous thing to do and if you're healthy you should consider doing it as often as you can (I am a proud O negative and no stranger to the UI DeGowin Blood Center). They have worked with me for years navigating the details of my condition and they've been happy to take my whole blood (double units, sometimes) and platelets on many occasions, and I would never complain about sitting in those chairs (SAVE A LIFE, FOLKS). But places like BioLife... suck it. Greedy bastards.

7. Two weeks and a day until my next neuro appointment. I don't know if I should hopeful for news or just prepare myself for the same routine? Things feel different, but I'm not sure if I'm just reading into it more than I should.