An expensive T-shirt, but cheap coats

After the painful ordeal of running a half-marathon in 84 degree heat in June, I had decided to take a time-out on races. While I like to run, and like to run long, the hassle of driving somewhere, parking, waiting at the start, and then dealing with race conditions, did not hold much appeal for me anymore. But then, a few weeks ago, I saw that the Philly half-marathon was both not sold out, and not going to be on the same day as the marathon (so, not so crowded). When I did OK with my 8.6-mile training run, I decided to go for it and signed up.

I wound up with nothing more for my race entry fee than a race T-shirt.

Unfortunately, shortly after that 8.6 mile run, I came down with a cold, which did not improve over the course of the toddler getting the cold and not doing well with the time change. When the cold settled into my chest, I had a pretty good sense the race wasn’t going to work. I decided to pick up my bib and T-shirt anyway, partly just for the adventure of driving downtown. I ate at Reading Terminal Market for lunch. This made for great people watching. I found a Cajun food place with stools at the counter, and had this ridiculous sandwich called a “train wreck po’ boy.” The gentleman next to me tried to convince me to run despite the onset of bronchitis. “But you trained so hard!” he said. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I really didn’t. I came home, ran 2 miles, and found it semi-painful. So…nope.

However, I had already arranged for a sitter to come on Saturday morning, since my husband was going to take our 9-year-old to a swim meet. So I went for a very slow but pleasant 5 mile run along the river. We are past peak on the leaves, but there is still some gorgeous fall color. Then I showered, changed, and did some solo shopping at King of Prussia mall. I wound up with a great winter coat, 40% off at Eddie Bauer, just in time for the temperatures to dip below freezing this week.

So, expensive race T-shirt, cheap coat.

The cheap coat theme for the weekend continued. We did some winter gear triage for the children, and figured out that the big boys needed new coats, and our 9-year-old probably needed new gloves and ski pants (while technically the 7-year-old could have worn the 9-year-old’s old coat, it was really ratty after 2 years of daily use). After dropping the 7-year-old off at yet another trampoline park birthday party, I took the 5-year-old to Costco.

Costco on Saturday afternoon before Thanksgiving is pretty much its own circle of hell. At one point, I could not even move the cart down the aisle, I was so blocked in by the crowds. But I did manage to get two nice winter coats for the boys for $25 and $35 respectively, ski pants for $15, and nice gloves for $10 (compared to $25+ at outdoors stores). Also, 3 sets of youth long underwear at $8/pop. So…go me.

Another Costco purchase: lobster tails. My husband and I had an in-home date night on Saturday night: lobster, steak, asparagus, and Champagne.

So Saturday was pretty decent. Sunday, less so. Our adventure for the day was a behind-the-scenes tour at the zoo, where we got to see the animal hospital and commissary. But that was it, and that only took about 90 minutes of what was a really long day of kids feeling under-the-weather. Actually, several of the kids were whiny during the zoo tour too. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.