Fun things to do on a Friday night

It's 9:47pm on Friday night and you know what I'm doing? Scrubbing the feces of some unidentified large animal off the sides of my bathtub. But I'm getting ahead of myself here...

Today started with a lot of high school kids. I do a lot of work with our local high schools with health and phys ed programming for kids who otherwise wouldn't be caught dead getting exercise, so it seems like a lot of my days lately are spent with that demographic. I absolutely love those kids and would never complain about spending time with them. BUT: what is with their fashion sense? Anybody have any answers here? cause if I must continue to stand in line for coffee with a bunch of teenagers in high-waisted acid-washed Jordache mom-jeans that bunch up at the bottom and have to be cinched with a leopard-print belt around the wearer's navel, I swear something really weird is going to happen. Slouch socks are going to make a comeback and we'll have to start doing the 'fan bangs' thing again...

So I gave up on cafeteria coffee and wandered out to my car, mulling this over this strange phenomenon as I went. I tried to justify it: high-waisted jeans actually are more comfortable if you can get used to the moose-knuckley feeling. But as far as I can tell, the onus for wearing hideous 80's knock-off clothing comes from the same place that made me love poofy peasant blouses, tie-dye, and embroidered freakin' everything. So I can't hold it against them.

Speaking of high school, the other freaky thing that happened today was that I got added to a Facebook group dedicated to tracking down people I went to high school with, because our 20-year REUNION is NEXT SPRING. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Would I go? I was kind of a reclusive band geek in high school and I'm still in contact with the people I really want to be in contact with. But I confess I have a strange voyeuristic urge to see where life has taken all my old classmates. Tricky.

I drove home with high-school-y thoughts whirling around in my brain-cave, and decided that I'd make my decision while I went out to our local off-leash area and mapped out a good 5km loop with some stairs and some hills to use for training. I got home, snarfed some food down, grabbed my favorite hoodie (which just happens to say, in large letters across the back "SHOW THE WORLD WHO THE FUCK YOU ARE") and my dog and off we went. The off-leash ravine is maybe a seven minute drive from our house.

Now, under normal circumstances, Valley is a stellar workout buddy. In spite of having way more steam than I do, she kindly hangs back while I drag my butt up and down the hills and stairs on our favorite trail. She amuses herself by chasing squirrels, sniffing and peeing on whatever gross stuff is lying around, and she knows where she should and shouldn't jump into the river for a drink and a romp in the water. So when we came across a ginormous #2 in the middle of the trail, I hardly gave it a second thought when Valley, who happened to be maybe ten feet ahead of me, paused to sniff it.

I have to pause here and stress that this was the grandaddy of all piles of shit. No little lavender-scented poop baggie was going to touch this; it had to have come from an animal that was 150lbs PLUS that had chugged its coffee in record speed so as to not even make it a safe distance from the trail. This was a wookiee-with-the-cold-sweats ass-blasting baby mountain.

So you can imagine my horror when instead of peeing on it and moving on, Valley mushed her pretty face into the massive heap and gleefully rolled over in it. I shouted "Valley, NO!" and ran past it so that she'd run to keep up with me. Which she did...for a minute. But the temptation was too great and a moment later she bolted back to Shit Mountain and this time, despite my protests, made good and sure that she was thoroughly coated in it.

Gaaaah. Well, there wasn't much to do but finish our trek, and according to my phone we had a good 3k to go, which was good because I needed to formulate a game plan to NOT get wookiee shit all over my vehicle when we got there. So on we pressed. We arrived presently at the opposite end of the trail, where it exits out onto perhaps THE MOST affluent road in the city, a candyland of privelege, exclusivity, and luxury 4x4's. I turned in the direction that I imagined would lead us back to our car, and eventually found a path that went between the backyards of these multi-million dollar estates and the top of the river bank. Perfect!

Except suddenly the path ended, and now I was a crazy woman with leaves in her hair and a hoodie with a big ol' F-bomb on the back, accompanied by a shit-coated mutt, bushwhacking creepily along the back fences of these gorgeous estates. We walked and walked and walked and walked. My phone's battery died. Finally we came out of the woods...

...at the exact spot where we'd left the street. We'd gone in a circle. Dammit! We turned and went the other way. The road twisted and turned and we walked and walked and walked, not really sure which way we were going. Eventually we came to a road I recognized, but we were a long way from the car. Like, easier to walk straight home than to double back for the car - and this also eliminated the need for a strategy to keep wookiee crap off the car seats.

We arrived home nearly three hours after we left, and just in time to be home for the children to arrive home from school. Valley went straight into the bathtub where I spent the next half hour shampooing the poop out of her fur...which is why I am spending my Friday night washing mystery excrement off my bathroom walls.
And I still haven't decided on the high school reunion.