What I see when I run...

Before I begin on what I see when I run, I've been having weird dreams lately.  Sometimes it's a dream about a girl in my run group not being able to workout with me because she has to get the tattoo of a middle finger on her butt touched up (true dream story).  Sometimes it's a more terrifying dream like last night.  Briefly, I had a dream that I was talking to a guy near my home and my garmin was quoting horror movie lines (not real ones, made up dream ones).  I kept trying to get it to stop and couldn't. Finally I told the guy, "I don't know what's wrong with this!"  He then proceeded to take me by the throat trying to strangle me.  I was crying and pleading with him to stop.  Not sure where but there was another guy there too.  I was stabbing my guy with a butcher knife but he still wouldn't stop.  He was also trying to stab the other guy. Needless to say, it was a violent and bloody mess of a nightmare.  I woke up crooked on my bed and afraid to move.  I felt almost confident that if I moved, someone was going to be there to kill me!  After about a minute of lying awake, I reached over to grab my phone to see what time it was.  I was thinking it had to be between 2 am-5 am.  It was midnight (12:05 am to be exact)!  I just went to bed an hour before that!  I finally got the courage to straighten out on my bed but it took a while to fall back asleep, at least 1/2 hour.  I'm no stranger to horrible nightmares, where people are trying to kill me.  It may seem weird but I've been having these dreams since I was little.  Usually I can't get any help no matter how hard I try.  I've always wanted to find a dream expert to help me decode these dreams! 

On to the more fun topic...neighborhood art...

Often times I run in my neighborhood around my house.  I take different routes depending on weather, distance and whether it will be light or dark outside.  A main street in Tinley Park is Oak Park Avenue.  If it's dark or I just want straight flat out and back, I will run down this street.  It goes right through the heart of Tinley.  Out and back from my house is a total of about 4 miles.  Last year (and maybe before), they had benches that are displayed along the street as art.  I'm not sure of the history behind this (and I'm sure I could google it) but I believe the original ones were done by schools and children.  Some of you may be from this area or surrounding area, so if you know, go ahead and fill me in. 

While running along this street, it's kind of nice to have something different to look at.  This year they changed most of them.  They also have a theme this year (not sure if last years were a theme or not).  The theme is musical (movies, etc).  Last night I decided to take an evening walk before it got dark.  I had a family party and ate more than normal and needed to get the food moving around.  And the weather felt pretty nice so I thought a couple mile walk sounded good.  I headed out close to 8 pm so I knew I wouldn't get to all the benches as I had limited time before it got dark.  I also missed a few benches because people were sitting on them and I didn't want to #1...take their photo, and #2...tell them to get up for a minute. lol.  Also, some of the benches are so large that it's hard to get the whole thing in a shot without standing in the street.  I did stand in the street for a few but sometimes I didn't want to get hit by a car so I did the best I could!  :-) 

I thought you might like to see a few of these benches!  I probably took pictures of about 2/3 of the benches and took an hour walk.  This equalled to 3.11 miles (or a 5k), which was not planned so I thought it mildly amusing.  Ok, I don't get out much!  Anyway, I plan to take photos of the rest another time.  Here are the ones I did get.

Behind a fence so it's hard to see

My favorite one!  My mom was a piano teacher for 25 years!





I'm wondering if this was left over from last year??

In front of the VFW building

What do you think??  Kind of interesting feature of my neighborhood.  And nice to look at when you are out running for a change.  I'm kind of excited to show my mom these (she never gets out to my neighborhood) and I think she would appreciate the music theme to them.