Entitlement and Heartbreak in Everyday Ramblings

A clear (ish) crisp fall day here in the Pacific Northwest. If you look carefully in the distance in this photo you can see Mt. Hood. I have been looking for an opportunity to get a walk in back above my place in the exclusive neighborhood that hovers expensively over us and contains the Castle House that after all these years I remain infatuated with.

I have been so busy I haven’t made it up there in a year. I was so happy to have the time, inclination and weather to get a hike up in this morning.

This is after a timed workout on the track.

Yesterday I had this annoying day physically as I started off at the gym and did a 35 minute workout on the elliptical and worked hard enough to get all sticky sweaty but not hard enough to hit my cardio heart rate zone. I then went and got on the treadmill and did a little better getting 19 minutes of cardio in a 25 minute workout.

I was listening to the new Tana French book.

Then I went for a walk and talk and then tea with Mrs. Sherlock and a rowdy Frida and came home, did chores, went to the grocery did more chores and ended up getting an absurd amount of steps and all of them except those mentioned above were all in the fat burn heart rate zone.

I don’t actually burn significant fat in the fat burn zone I just get tired and put wear and tear on my joints and feet.

Today I will get half as many steps but they are more efficient ones.

When I got to the track this morning, all geared up for the just at freezing cold there were two groups of parents of Lacrosse players who had the center field standing in the middle of the track, chatting and drinking coffee.

I admit it, my frustration with this; they do it every week, boiled over as I jogged by. I called out exasperated to the second group, “I don’t see why you have to stand in the middle of the track?!? It is a public track, you can stand there or there…it is so entitled!”

Like many many people I have a huge aversion to confrontation but I was pissed and this had been building for a time. I desperately wanted to leave the track after I said it, go off and nurse the flame of my resentment and annoyance but I stuck with it.

When I came round again they had almost all moved off the track!

There were two men that did not. They stood smack in the middle of the track for my whole 30 minute workout. One, the older one was wearing a camouflage jacket and the other, I kid you not, was wearing camouflage tights with baggy black shorts over them.

I bet they are Trump supporters.

Not willing to be publically shamed into pro-social behavior.

I asked a man that I see on the track often doing drills, he is good looking and super fit and clearly by his kick someone who has been on tracks a whole lot in his life if he knew if there was a nickname for parents who stood in the middle of the track.

He laughed delighted but said no, not that he knew of.

So we need to come up with a collective noun for them…

A Privilege of Parents?

An Entitlement of Parents?

Kes suggested “Lacrosse Eyes” which is pretty good.

Meanwhile California burns. It is absolutely heartbreaking.

Last updated November 11, 2018