Happy Birthday AJ

I was the first person to wish AJ a happy 6th birthday this morning when she came in to the bedroom at around 4:30am, en-route to the en-suite. She toddled back to bed and I failed to get back to sleep. It was about 24degrees and humidity was well in the ninety percents. I got up a bit after 5 and took Rowlf for a shorter than usual walk so I could be home while AJ opened her presents. I got home just after 6 and all the presents were open. Frozen dolls, a Frozen board game, an Elsa wig (Elsa is in Frozen, which you may have missed if you've been living under a rock for the last 12months. Or if you don't have kids.) There were some clothes and books and off to one side a distraught little sister, wailing theatrically because she didn't have any presents. Not your birthday H, toughen up princess!

Let me get the running bit out of the way first. It was truly fucking horrible this morning. I sweat my arse, tits and bollocks off. By the time I got to the bridge I was a dried husk, drenched in sweat after pretty much all moisture had beaded out of my body. I'm surprised I didn't burst into flames as I ran across the bridge, the sun hitting my head horizontally in the left ear and microwaving the tiny brain that was melting inside my skull. It wasn't pretty. Mind you, I don't mind sweating when running and prefer it to simply sweating. I passed plenty of non-running blokes with big oval sweat patches on their shirts. It's going to be that kind of day. At a shade under 12km via North Sydney and I passed 300km for the first two weeks of January.

So, in the blink of an eye, AJ is 6. I struggle a bit to write about things that really matter, like my wife or my kids. I can drone on about running or diving or all manner of other fluff with relative ease, but closer to home I struggle.

So it's a good job I wrote that this morning and I've just been for another run and have that to prattle on about. It was quite hot out there. Thirty three degrees of hot. And mostly sunny, so fuck knows what the temperature was in the sun. Not much breeze. But other than the  slightly unpleasant feeling of gulping down hot air it wasn't too bad. Of course I sweat my arse off, and I could have done with grabbing a drink at a bubbler, but the bubbler I usually stop at had a queue 8 deep and I was in no mood to stand around waiting. I finished my 9km-ish loop to bring up 21.1 for the day. When I got back to my desk I found out why the run had not been too bad. I was about to stuff my shoes with newspaper to dry them out but didn't need to - first time in a while. I checked the Bureau of Meteorology website and humidity had dropped right down to 31%. Chances of it staying there? Slim I'd say, but I'll take it when it's on offer.

I have 1500 pictures of AJ, or rather 1500 pictures in an album I created for pictures of her; I'm sure I have a lot more. 1500 is 250 a year. Is that a lot? I don't know. She is a lovely little thing. Independent, smart, funny, pretty. I'm going to be biased - of course. Most people say she looks like her mum and a friend once told me she looks like my mum. I'm fairly hopeless with things like that. She drives me mad at times but over little nothings; mucking about at dinner time, not doing what she's told when she's told. She's 6 for fucks sake, what do I expect!? I suppose I am a bit "Victorian Dad", but it seems to be working out OK and I suppose time will tell. Besides, it's always the mothers who do the real psychological damage. Give it another 6 years and maybe she'll be alcoholic or bulimic, but we're tracking well at the moment.

I don't do the starry-eyed wonder thing particularly well sand I can't tell you what her first word was or when she said it. I can't tell you when she took her first steps. Maybe I've missed out on some things, but that would be me trying to think like other people think. We've not been unlucky; others might say we've been lucky, but luck doesn't really come in to it. We had a healthy little baby girl and we've now got a lovely little 6 year old.

That's all your getting. Told you I wasn't very good at that.

I did toy with the idea of having another run before bed, but I've had enough for the day and Sal isn't feeling well.  I need to referee the kids who might be a little jacked-up on ice cream cake. I was thinking I could swap tomorrow morning's commute for a 12k to bring up 100miles for week 2. Would have been nice, but it's a a zero-sum game if I'm shuffling runs I'll be doing anyway. And rehydrating might have been an issue. Us old blokes need to train smarter, not harder. I might wait until all thee of the ladies are in bed and then have a beer instead.

That sounds like a much better idea.

Janathon total 310km