Cheese and Mud

Pants comes home tomorrow, and not a minute too soon. Our tiny, rose-strangled town is hosting a three day pizza festival in recognition of the fact that we are the nation's largest supplier of mozzarella cheese. No shit.* They're building a pizza nine feet in diameter and I plan to be on hand for my own personal slice, not only because I like all kinds of free food but also because I'm anxious to satisfy my curiosity about how you can make a pizza that big and not burn the edges while leaving the center all undercooked.

*If this claim is false, I'm moving.

In the spirit of investigative journalism/nosiness, I'm also going to see if I can't get a tour of the cheese factory downtown and find out what the ominous noises coming from it at night are all about. They recently had a huge cheese-making mural painted on the side of the building, and while it's a lovely work of art and I went several blocks out of my way every morning for two weeks to monitor its progress, it leaves a few questions about cheese-making unanswered for me. More details, hopefully, to come.

Aside from questions of cheese, the other thing occupying my mind is whether or not I should sign myself up for the Marine Mud Run taking place on base in early June. It looks awesome. From what I gather, it's a 10K with regular intervals of slithering around in mud beneath a network of wires, climbing over logs stretched above a waist-high water pit, climbing walls, and swinging on ropes. I hold no illusions that I can do these things quickly or even correctly, but it's been decades since I've been full out coated in mud, and I'm suddenly and acutely feeling that loss.

I just wish I could sign my dog up as well. We could be a team-- her loud, glass-etching bark and maniacal two-tone stare regularly scare me into running through a cramp when we're jogging through town. Pants, sadly, is scheduled to be out of town again when the run takes place, and when I first discovered this I almost gave up on the Mud Run entirely, but then I started thinking about it on the treadmill last night. The workout was boring because I wasn't going anywhere, and it was hot, and stupid things were on TV above my head, and everyone was ignoring each other, and I was worried again that my face was turning purple and my hair was frizzing out... and then I thought how good it feel to be covered in mud, and how the whole point of a Mud Run is that you work really hard, as a group, to become utterly repellent. I'm signing up.