CONvergence has come and gone and we had a fantastic time. My parents actually came to see what all this nerdy con stuff is about and apparently had a blast. They went to panels, some music shows, and even got in on the cosplay game!

Sarah and I got to perform with both our friends Kayla and Marina at HarmCon, putting together some truly amazing harmonies, parodies, medleys, and a good deal of live snark. Honestly it’s one of the best shows we’ve ever done and I would love to perform with them some more. Also, Sarah made her way to the Late Night Music Circle while I was on shift late on Saturday, and I happened to walk by just as she was starting to sing one of our songs. So I ducked in and sang it with her in a drive-by duet.

For general CVG stuff, I’ve gotten better at keeping my list of the funny moments I want to remember. I don’t want to record them here for lots of reasons, but it makes me happy to know I can look back and remember how I did the best “Not It!” of my life to Ben or giggle about the discovery of the weird snoring noise outside ConSuite (it was a distant party’s music but it did not sound like it). For all the stress leading up to the convention, and for the icky moments that come part and parcel with the rest of it, I truly love the work of volunteering. It makes me a better person and it gives me a chance to do something positive in a world where it sometimes doesn’t feel like any one person can make a difference.

Con is a lot, though, and not just in the packing (look at how Tadashi helps!):

After all that, I needed more than just a week of rest at home. Something about this year’s con kind of wore me out without feeling like a release. I found myself oddly restless afterwards, unsettled and kind of stuffed up in my own head. I always take time off after the convention to recover, but somehow I wasn’t getting back to a point of rest and clarity.

And then Marina and I discovered a local, extremely low-key mud run the Saturday after the convention wrapped up.

For context, we’d done one of these years and years ago, back in 2012. That one was a Warrior Dash race and it genuinely kicked our asses. The race was laid out on a ski resort, so the first tenth of a mile was a run straight up the hill. We didn’t really attempt to run as such, but it still wiped us out and we had to sit in the shade for a while to recover. After that, though, we had a pretty good time climbing over obstacles and helping each other along. We didn’t really try to “race” and we didn’t track how long it took us to complete. We just ran it for fun.

And we’ve always wanted to try another one, albeit one a little less intense.

So early Saturday morning, we found ourselves at the Minnewashta Mud Run outside Chanhassen. It was nothing like the Warrior Dash of 10+ years prior, but it was exactly what I needed.

The course was a mile and a half long, and the obstacles were mostly geared towards kids and families. The tallest of the obstacles was the haystack I nearly fell out of, and most of the over or under type things were just…steppable. But it was glorious.

Marina and I did a light jog for the first lap, following the course at our own pace. It was like a nice walk in the woods with a stop every now and then to wade out into the lake to ring a bell or to crawl through a muddy tunnel. After the first lap, most people stopped, but we decided to keep going. We had plenty of energy and we decided to get some pictures.

We were so clean at the start.

The only problem I had crawling under the netting waws my cute little space buns kept getting caught!

No, I did NOT fall off the haystack. This was a perfectly controlled landing and I definitely didn’t let out a little shriek on the way down!

I’ll be honest, I did not love the tunnel. It was hot and some gravel and rocks had been tracked in there that cut up my forearms a bit. We could have just gone around, especially on the second lap, but I will not be defeated by a tube!

NOW we look properly dirty as we took a moment on the second haystack that I also definitely didn’t fall out of.

By the time we finished the second lap, most people, including the race organizers were gone. They knew we were the last ones (the vast majority of the people who ran only ran once), so it’s not like they abandoned us. They still had snacks and such. But what had been a bustling crowd was now mostly a cleanup crew and normal parkgoers who were very curious about the two muddy women wandering around. Even though Marina and I skipped the obstacle where you could literally swim through a small pool of mud (we learned from Warrior Dash that it is less fun than you’d think to have mud in allllll the places), we were still dirty as hell. We teamed up at the back of one of the cars to strip and put on alternate, non-wet clothing for the drive home. The shirt I wore was beyond saving:

It was exactly what I needed. A walk outside in the sunlight, an adventure, a challenge that made me laugh without pushing me too hard, and a moment to step out of myself and my life completely. For the duration of that muddy walk, I was not just my volunteer self from the convention. I was not just the person at my job, or even at home. For that short moment, I was only and entirely myself giggling my way over a haystack.

Life is too short not to wear the fun cosplay, not to crawl through a tube, not to laugh while changing in a parking lot. Life is too hard not to take a walk on a Saturday morning with mud squishing in your shoes and a branch in your hair. Life is too beautiful not to laugh.

The convention was everything I wanted, and the mud race was what I didn’t know I needed.