Sad things. Spent the weekend at the memorial of a high school friend, who died the morning of my surgery. He had lung cancer, was diagnosed a year ago. Died at 38. And I can’t claim that I was good friends with him, though we were slightly more than acquaintances. But he was very close to Ren, and when a good friend loses someone so close to her, you support her. So along with some other friends, we drove several hours to North Louisiana and celebrated the life of Jay.

The memorial service was appropriately full of tears and laughter, and later, the memorial hoedown (yes, you read that right) resulted in a sore throat for me from all the karaoke-ing I was doing. As Jay would have wanted.

Because we went to high school with Jay, this was kind of a mini-reunion. My roommate Betsy, from senior year, flew in from L.A. for it. I’ll see her again next month for our (gulp) 20th reunion.

And then yesterday. The Boston thing. I felt a kind of (self-absorbed) personal affront to the whole thing. Because I ran two marathons a decade ago? (This one was eleven years and two days ago, to be precise. And yes, that is a fanny pack.)

Because, even though I’m slow, I consider myself a runner? I have had friends and family support me at the ends of many, many races, and the thought of them, and the people who worked their asses off to run a marathon (and Boston, no less!) being attacked like that. Maybe it’s because I can actually imagine it. It’s not like I’m trying to compare it to other tragedies, but I guess I can just relate to this one more than most. And so it just makes me extra sad that I can’t run right now, and go sign up for a marathon (okay, fine, a half) and do whatever I can to show my solidarity. I dunno. I hate even writing about this, because it seems so “me, me, me” but whatever. This is my blog.