My mom WALKED a MARATHON today, but I already knew that lady had patience. Did you know me at 14? Let's just say doors were slammed.

She said she was passing time in her hotel room last night, and was getting through some pages of What is the What by Dave Eggers. There she was, "relaxing" before her seven hour walk the next morning, and she gets to the part where the Sudanese refugees are trekking hopelessly by foot across the desert for months, many dying of starvation and illness along the way. "Suddenly I was thinking, maybe I should just see if Law & Order is on," she said.

I joined her for the last six miles. I'm embarrassed to say that I was hurting by the end.

Sjanneke's 5K raised FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS for orphans in Uganda and if I think about it too hard it makes my heart explode.

Whenever I get hit on, and it's rare, my first reaction is to assume that it's a joke I don't get, or that I'm being made fun of. Once I get past that, I feel 10% flattered and 90% annoyed because I am just trying to be a person and you come along and make me laser-focused self-aware. Maybe it's the whole Groucho Marx wouldn't-want-to-belong-to-any-club-that-would-have-me-as-a-member thing.

Chris Rock does a bit where he says that white women don't need to own scales, they'll know when they're getting big when a disproportionate number of black guys start hitting on them.

Time to hit the gym, then?

I like to count things when I'm running. It helps to silence the Kerrigan-esque scream of every cell in my body: "huhwhyyyyyyy."

Sometimes I count porch cats, who follow me sagely with their eyes as I jog past. I typically imagine them thinking, "Ah, the illusion of control. We're all gonna die someday, sweetheart."

Sometimes I count election signs. I usually lose track of the number of Obama signs.

Haven't seen a McCain sign yet.

Lauren attacks a post-race victory omelet while finding absolutely zero humor in her runner's number. Really nothing to laugh at there at all.

We ran a 5k for universal feline suffrage or whatever today. Participants could bring their pets. Let me just say, some aging black labs kicked my ass.

Upon leaving the diner, we realized that we'd parked in a handicapped spot. While wearing athletic clothes and runner's numbers. Because why just park illegally when you can be a dick about it too.

The window in my old bedroom. Tough weekend up in my brain.

I've had grand fuckin' plans to get myself together for years. I must've always known I was sort of kidding, deep down. This summer I'll train for a triathlon. This school year I'll do the goddamn dishes instead of drinking coffee out of a soup bowl. In Athens, it's been easy for me to be a person. Running. Eating better. Eating less. Being organized. Managing my time. Getting enough sleep.

But depression is always there, even when it sort of isn't, even if it's mostly white noise. The most docile pet dogs will still draw blood if you surprise them. Just because they sleep in your bed and kiss you on the mouth doesn't stop that electricity in their nerves. They're cuddly, affectionate beasts, but still beasts. And it's more than a beast, it's a bitch. And I'm not sure whether people who haven't experienced it can ever understand. It's not just feeling down. When it's bad, it's jogging uphill through maple syrup with a hangover.

I know this. I know this. But still, I'm embarrassed that after a sunny, productive couple of weeks, I thought I'd somehow "beat it". Like it's a cold.

On my run today I noticed this weed flower, muscling its way into view from behind telephone poles and mailboxes so that half the street was dusted yellow.

It reminded me that it was almost exactly three whole years ago that I spent an important weekend in Freiburg, Germany. It was sometime after the friendliest dive bar served midnight spaghetti. It was probably after we were led to the secret dance party in the warehouse basement. At some point these pink-cheeked boys speaking fast, drunk German approached us as we tread carefully around the tiny canals that vein the city (we learned earlier that day that if you step in a Bächle you have to marry a man from Freiburg) and presented the three of us with enormous stalks of uprooted goldenrod, doffing their newsboy caps with gravitas.

I'm sure that before then, I'd seen goldenrod along the highways and in fields in Ohio, but I never noticed them. Now, and at the risk of sounding saccharine, they're forever linked with that city, and that summer, and being 19, and what a strange, hard, drunk, warm time that was in my life.