Week Twenty-Four: February 28th to March 6th

Maybe there are times your beard occludes your vision in such a way that you take horrible spills and ransack the skin on and around your hand. Or maybe you just shouldn't run at night....

There are sometimes harsh penalties to be paid by those who run at night, and my hand was the recipient of one of those penalties. In keeping with pop-law, this accident happened close to home, which was probably a good thing considering the blood loss. Just as with the infamous bike accident of a few years back, when an oncoming car turned quickly in front of me from a center turn lane and found me doing a tumble up and over their car, this accident also happened within sight of my home. Of course, in this accident no one yelled at me ("Boy, what the HELL are you thinking?") and no one was really around to witness it, as it occurred at about 10:30 on a weeknight.

Sometimes the sidewalk jumps up and bites you, what can I say? The hand is in recovery, though painfully scabbing over as I type. I still wear a glove to bed so I do not bleed all over our sheets and make my side look like a murder victim's chalk line. (It's already bad enough that my sweat so discolors the sheets on my side that we have to rotate and wash them a bit more frequently.) It is the rib on my right side that bothers me a bit more, and time will tell if landing on that hand and another chunk of sidewalk was enough to crack it, or just bruise it. Breathing is an issue, but the lack of bubbling, rattly fluid tells me there is at least no puncture, and I was back to running the next day, so it cannot be all that bad, right?

The beard is becoming evermore increasingly difficult to tame. Some of the mothers of students at our school asked me this week if it drove me nuts or, again, if my wife was tired of it. I told them the only tricky part was that grooming/combing this face-rag took longer than it did to push my hair into position day after day. As for my wife not enjoying it, well, her affinity for it is well-documented in past posts.

Next week? To the ruler! I fear the length is not all the same, and one must worry--or not--about uniform facial growth.