My brain frightens me.

The sun is shining, leaves are appearing on the trees after a long, long winter, the birds are singing and none of that matters because it’s Monday. I’m not normally a total Monday hater but I woke up this morning absolutely drained. It’s completely understandable since I spent my entire night with auto theft rings ((Mercedes, BMW, Lexus and Oldsmobile??)), spiders ((Oh, holy CRAP it was huge!)) and muggers ((He did not get my wallet, I screamed bloody murder.)) all while schlepping around a prom dress and a wedding dress because no one would tell me which one I needed to wear. So. Clearly I cannot be expected to be shining, blooming or singing today. Also, just as clearly, there is something really wrong with my brain’s wiring ((Please just act surprised by that admission, OK?)).

In an effort to turn my day around I’m focusing on this…yesterday Eric lost his mind announced that he was going to restart a 5K training program. He decided that he would use this particular program because it would have him in 5K shape faster than the Couch-to-5K program we used the last time we lost our minds decided to run a 5K. I am fairly sure that he purposefully told me this in the car, while I was distracted by Subway Surfers ((Thanks for the heads up Allison & Parker!)), because there is no other explanation for what happened next…

“OK. Hey, CALEB and I should do it too!”

Eric immediately agreed that was a great idea.

Srsly. WTF?

When we got home from shopping we all changed into running clothes, it was then that I clued Caleb in on the fact that he’d been sucked into Money’s colossally stupid plan too. We managed to get him out the front door but the dude immediately put on the brakes and informed us he had to pee, poop or, since we didn’t buy either of those, spit (vomit)…complete with amazingly realistic sound effects. We cheerfully ignored him and marched his little bum up the street toward the park. After we completed our five minute warm up walk, Eric and I dutifully began jogging when the audio signal played. And we jogged and jogged and jogged…in place, forward, backward and in circles but we did not make any overall forward progress because Monkey was now cheerfully ignoring us. Where on earth did he pick up that habit, I wonder?

Eric decided that the problem was where we were running so we walked the remainder of the way to the park. Eric restarted the timer and when the audio signal played again we began jogging. Monkey even jogged! Three steps. Then he announced he had to pee, and grabbed himself just to illustrate since we suddenly both seemed to have become deaf. Now, if we hadn’t known for certain that he did not have to go (this is his favorite delay tactic), we would have felt really bad about telling him, “No, you do not. Let’s run!” Instead we only felt a little bad because everyone who was walking, jogging or biking around us clearly thought we were being assholes to this preshus little cherub. Meh. Mind you’re own business. And now…RUN, soldier….RUNNNNNNN!!

Nope. Not gonna do it.

So Eric and I do what we always do, eventually, we adapt. I generously told Eric that he could run and that I would just stay with Caleb and walk. Heh. Eric did the first cycle alone and while Caleb and I were walking I realized something really, really weird…I’d actually wanted to run and was a little disappointed. Srsly. WTF?

I wracked my brain for all 90 seconds of that first cycle and Eric returned to us to do the walking portion. When the audio tone sounded again, Eric took off and I suddenly had an epiphany…audio signals…C had no timer! They were completely random as far as he was concerned and completely random is bad ((Very, very, very, very bad!)) for kids with fragile X induced anxiety. D’oh! So I found a visual (a fence post) and told Caleb, “When we get to that fence post we are going to jog until the end of the fence.” When we reached the fence post, we BOTH began jogging, and instead of whining and grabbing his crotch…he was laughing. I’m a frickin’ genius.

We finished our entire run this way. We didn’t make it through Day 1 of the program officially…and our time was glacial…but we did it. We went for a run as a family and we had fun. Woah. How awesome is that? Totally worth shining, blooming and singing over!