My husband told me he slept great every night this week except Thursday night… well.. he slept good those other nights because we have skylights and windows all over the house that were echoing the thousands of raindrops that fell each evening… so I said guess it was because you didn’t have the rain to lull you to sleep…

On one of the rainiest nights this week… I turned into our driveway and in the empty field to the right there were two deer just laying down with their heads up as if they had the most ideal sleeping conditions ever… to my left was another deer in the same position.. they reminded me of the animal statues like you would see in a Nativity Scene… any human being would have been miserable… just soaking wet laying in the wet grass… those deer looked so peaceful and content I could almost see them smiling…

Finally, today the rain let up a little bit and I didn’t sleep great last night either… so I got up extra early to get my 10 mile long run out of the way so I wouldn’t have to do it over the weekend… I get two miles into it and there in the middle of a back country road is a small turtle.. I love turtles and feel like they need extra help because they are so slow… I am guessing that maybe he had been hunkered down for four days cozy and dry inside his shell and that since the sun was out so was he..

So, I stop running and see a car coming toward the little guy… I thought… if that car hits the turtle I may not be able to finish the next 8 miles of this journey… it was my father-in-law and he actually slowed down and stopped briefly to say hi… I said Gene - I really want to save that little turtle… a car was coming up behind him… so he played “blocker” for a brief moment and said, “Well, go ahead and get him…”  it did my heart good to give the little thing a quick lift to the “other side of the road…”

Well… some of you know that turtles can carry Salmonella on their shells so.. I thought now what am I going to do?  I don’t run with anti-bacterial hand gel.. but did have water bottles on a belt around my waste for my journey and knew that I could not go 8 miles without touching my face with my left hand… so my run was re-routed and I ran to the nearest convenience store to use the rest room to wash my hands… it may have been for nothing…but I wasn’t willing to risk getting sick if I didn’t have to…

Funny enough… when I explained to the clerk inside why I made the abrupt pit stop at her store… she didn’t even act surprised.. it was as if people saved turtles all the time and stopped at her store to wash the possible Salmonella contamination off of their hands!

and told me this morning that he didn’t know why he didn’t sleep much last night…