Mer was sick of much of last week, so we actually had a slow week. On Sunday, Mer kicked my butt at a new word game called Snatch-it (she beat me by over a two-to-one margin) . I got a massage on Tuesday, and Mer got one on Wednesday (she had been too sick to get one on Wednesday). My massage was supposed to help me relax before my marathon on Saturday, but my therapist kept finding muscle knots in my shoulders and then in my quadriceps. Getting the knots worked on was painful enough that it was not relaxing, although I think it was good for me since I have been feeling better over the last few weeks since starting the massage treatments.
On Tuesday, CVCA’s boys’ soccer team won their game, and so they were on to the state finals. As such, the administration gave everyone Friday off so we could go to the game if we wished. Mer and I would have liked to have gone, but I was supposed to run a marathon in Indiana on Saturday, so for weeks we had been planning on going to visit Ellen in Michigan, and I would just make the hour-and-forty minute drive to the marathon from her house. We used the day off productively – I got the oil changed in Mer’s car, and then we signed papers that refinanced our loan on our house (we went from a 30-year loan to a 15-year loan). Even with all of this, we were able to get on the road at around 2:00 in the afternoon. When we stopped for a late lunch, I got on the wi-fi network at the rest stop and found out CVCA’s guys won the state championship game 3-2. That was very happy. That makes six times in nine years that CVCA has made it to the state game, and they have now won it three times.
Anyway, we got to Ellen’s a little after 5:00. Ellen greeted us and we looked over her ever-cuter home. Ellen is very talented at decorating, and had made a few changes since the last time we had been there. The guest bedroom was particularly striking – it was all redecorated in black and white, from the walls to the bedspread to the pillows to the decorative boxes to the coasters on the night stands, and it really worked well.
After Ellen ran one of her students home (the student had been doing some waterproofing on the deck), we went out to eat. Ellen took us to one of her favorite places, the Saucy Dog, a BBQ restaurant. We all got huge portions, and I allowed myself to eat it all and then throw in a huge dessert as well. I figured it was all fuel for the race, and excuse I had been using all day Thursday as well.
Once we got back to the house, we introduced Ellen to Snatch-it. Ellen was very good at making large and obscure words, but missed some simpler words that I got. Once I had the small but simple words, Mer usually stole them and made them into bigger words. The end result is that I think Mer beat me and Ellen by more than both of us combined. On that note, I headed off to bed to try to get some sleep.