Women's Health and A Jog in the Park

I've been immersed in news coverage on women's health for the last three days, and trying to get my act together on research on sexual and reproductive health stuff otherwise. This has led me to the following conclusions: Americans really need to pay more attention. Not way more attention, but just a little. It would make a big difference. We love oppositional arguments, but paying just a little bit of attention - and starting from giving women credit as whole people, who think about the consequences of their actions and are capable of weighing costs and benefits, and also assume that accurate information is generally useful for informing decisions, those arguments look ridiculous. There are just too many other problems. Ugh. On the other hand, I did learn that women are generally willing to travel pretty far for health services, and to put up with a lot in order to look out for their own health - more than I would have assumed otherwise. So go, women.

Anyway - that aside, because the heat broke a bit, I took a break last night to go running in the park for the first time in about 3 weeks, and it was chaos. First, there was a lot more two-way traffic than usual - and no one was staying in their lanes. Then, I happened onto the beginning of a 5K or something - there were HUNDREDS of runners, and I passed the starting line just as they did. Or, rather, after watching a confrontation between an asshole on a bike and one of the run's organizers (admittedly, it MIGHT have been averted by better signage for the run), I passed just ahead of the run and was immediately overtaken, and decided I was a jogger. I ended up veering off to do a lap around the softball field - where I returned a foul ball, passed - but, because of orange cones and a big crowd, did not get to cross, the finish line for the race - and then went along on my merry, slow, way - only to jog along with a labradoodle and his/her? owner, stop for a bunch of horses to cross the road, was nearly outrun by an 8 year old (whose mother was struggling to keep up with her), and passed what I think was marching band practice - I could hear the snare, but couldn't see any members- and oh, did I look. And then raced the sun down the hill. Pretty good day back, but I ran a little over an hour - which I had definitely not planned on. . .

Then I went home and scrubbed every surface in my kitchen. I can't lie: it was deeply satisfying. Though it would have been more so if I had either a fresh set of dish towels or a washing machine. But, alas. No.