Running Stitch

Today we said goodbye to Lady J. She is moving over the mountains. I’m not sure who gave her permission to leave but I’ll find out their name and number and put them on the rotten fruit of the month list for life. Don’t even think I’m kidding.

She is leaving. And taking Missy E with her and her adorable baby cheeks. Which is pretty much the salt in the wound right there.

Lady J and I go back thirty years, okay ….not really but sometimes it feels like thirty years. We have seen each other through graduate school (that really was thirty years) she has driven me up and down the highway, pulling over so that I could throw up ( I love being pregnant) on our way to classes an hour away. Also I treated her to some vomit in her own driveway, it was kinda like undergrad, but more embarrassing because I could remember it. Later though, when it turned out that her pregnancies were going to be just as nauseating as mine, except her lack of body fat landed her in the hospital on Iv’s, she said she was less freaked out because she had gotten to see my pregnancies up close. So you know, all that vomiting paid off for someone.

Later on, we ran together during weekend classes, we ran together in the wee hours of the morning and lots and lots of times when we didn’t want to.

One time she asked me why I called her Lady J on my blog, she thought it made her sound snotty. But I told her it was because of all the people I know, she is acts the most like what I imagine a Lady would act like. She always knows the right thing to say, the right thing to do and the classy way to pull it off. Sometimes it’s annoying so I say things on purpose to make her snort her diet soda out her nose, just to get her back for being right about everything.

She is stylish, intelligent and reserved. Pretty much my complete opposite and yet we found out that we had the same sense of humor, the same sense of social purpose and the same strange luck to attract the REALLY REALLY CRAZY.

Weird how you find your polar opposite and they end up being so much like you.

I will miss her. She promises to be back in a few weeks for the Turtledash. But it’s not the same. I can’t call her to meet me for lunch at our favorite restaurant or the second half of my long run, the part where I can’t talk or remember why I run but can count on her to run out those miles with me and then tell me how awesome I am while I collapse on the ground and wait for the ambulance….she can even make me believe her…sometimes.

I feel like I’m failing her with this post, I’m not able to find the right words to express my sorrow at her leaving. But then I guess I should get used to not being able to find the right words, or actions or the classy way to do things, now that she is leaving me alone to fend for myself….