If you watched myInstagram stories enough, you'll know that I listen to a range of music, particularly when I'm cooking.  After a year of being inboxed about my musical selection, I created a few stations via Spotify that might give you an idea of things that I love listening to while on the move.
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Remind me again that it’s women’s history month.  Tell me that International Women’s Day eliminated injustices committed to people who identify as women.  Excuse my eye roll...

“You should smile more often.”
“Don’t be so mean beautiful."
“Goddamn goddess!  You’re colder than the snow outside.”
“Ugly bitch.”
“Damn girl...I was just giving you a compliment.  They making y’all hoes fragile in 2018.”

Matter of fact, in the middle of my Instagram story, my viewers watched me curse off a guy who blew a kiss at me and said some pretty disturbing commentary about what he would do to me.  What’s the solution? The first five statements were just a fraction of the commentary received by walking a twenty block radius and not responding.  Perhaps, I should smile and act like it’s okay, right?  But then I’d be justifying his -or her- behavior and if I do, I might still be called a whore after I turn down their advances.  I am humored when another human, despite their gender, asks me what did I do--I existed in their same space.  Over the course of four years, women asked me how do I feel running alone and what should they do and I find myself aggravated giving my most honest responses.
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Without being long winded for a change, I don’t have a proper answer.  Running while being a woman or even a person with a disability, looking different from others or anything in between is an express pass to idiots to harass you.  It’ll be close to five years since I thought about training for any type of race -whether it was cycling to road events - and I’m loaded with mediocre ways of ‘reducing’ the loads of street harassment that I get while running.  Here’s my response:

Allow me to be frank:  I NEVER heard of a skin care company that tailored to sweaty individuals like me who love working out.  I didn't know whether I should jump up for joy or to be exceptionally skeptical.

A few weeks ago, I tried out a trio kit from Fre Skin Care and I can honestly say that I'm shocked by the results.  Before I give you the details, let me give you a bit of background about the company.

Contrary to the delusion that I may have unintentionally painted through my Instagram posts or Facebook feed, I do NOT have this stellar background or this glorified history of being a runner.  In fact, my interest in sports was limited to watching boxing matches on my once pirated cable box from a dude name Courtney.  If one person in the projects paid for the Tyson fight, EVERYONE who received illegal cable from him watched that fight for sure.  Boxing was -and still is- whimsical to me.  I admire the awkward dancing in the ring, the disturbing shit talking that takes place and the art of skillfully throwing an upper cut--but I wasn't intrigued with the regimen that came along with it.  In fact, it's the only sport that I took seriously at one point and at times, I bare knuckled a few bullies with those skills--but that's another story.

Running is one of those things that people from other sports use as a form of conditioning or even punishment if the team screws up.  Until five years ago, I thought runners were absolutely nuts for going great distances.  I knew nothing about cross country work, sprinting on the track and field, a fartlek was a funny juvenile word and if someone could've told me that I would be doing endurance running, I'd probably let out a hearty cackle until I was begging for an oxygen mask.  In my hood, we ran for the ice cream man during hot summer days or to kick someone's ass in a game of tag.  On the contrary, the speediest people that I knew were crackheads and drug dealers who ran from the cops--and no, I will not turn this into a glorified sob story.  But I get this question often:  "Why do you run--and stick with it?"

My son didn't go to school this morning--this was after nagging him for a bit over a hour to get dressed, eat and stop complaining.  I misplaced my keys once again and it's not the first time that I've ever done this.  Forty-five minutes prior, I saw this orange tag sitting on my coffee table nudging me to pick them up; and so, I nuzzled them into my large palm before going to the bathroom.

My plan was simple (or as simple as my life can be):  Shower, eat, drop off my son to school, swim practice, 4 mile run, workout, pick him up, eat again, work from home and destress my mind with a friend.  See, I told you I'm not that simple.  Instead, I found myself shaking, muttering and nestled in a fetal position as I had a full blown anxiety attack in front of my son--I'm the mother of the fucking year.  This too is nothing new for me but maybe for you.
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