The Running Woman

Millions of people do it every day.  Lace up their shoes, pop in their earbuds and take off.... running.  Add me to the ranks of those millions.  Just not the really fast ones or the ones who can go for miles and miles and miles.

I'm only up to almost 2 miles (and at least two-tenths of those miles are spent walking and trying not to DIE).  My knees are slightly achy, my shins hate me and my chest is thinking of burning my sports bra in protest.  But I'm doing it.  I don't LOVE it.  But I'm doing it.

For a person who has always thought of serious exercise as a mostly spectator sport, this is a real revolution in thinking!  Being on the dark side of 35 and possessed of a genetic history of heart problems is an excellent motivator.  So is the sense of pushing through and doing something I really didn't think I could do.

 (Blurriness not due to speed, but a rather poor attempt to take a picture of my own foot, which I lack the coordination to pull off effectively)

I may not look glamorous doing it and the weight isn't falling off like I'd dreamed it would, pounds and pounds laying in my wake as I pound out the miles, but it feels.... kind of good.  And in deference to the serious eye-strain I might inflict on others, I do try to run after twilight (and after homework, booksbags, baths, etc. for the kids) when my huffing/puffing, sweating like a pig, ancient ipod packed with uncool music (okay Tina Turner will ALWAYS be cool, the Captain and Tenille.... eh), running shorts uncomfortably bunched by thighs that are NOT toned and slender and a crazy dog darting in front/behind due to the slow pace won't cause anyone to drive up a tree.

It's worth it.  The sweat, the soreness, the commitment to doing it 5 times a week.  Even if I set small milestones (I can make it to the mail box... the third pine tree up ahead.... the curve in the road.... the light pole at the end of the drive...) towards the 5K goal.

I'll get there..... eventually.

Schooled

And you thought school started in the Fall?  No.  It has drifted, week by week, day by day, all the way back to August 1st!  Ah... back in the day we had the ENTIRE month of August to pedal our bikes around the block, run barefoot until our feet were coated in dust, dirt and bits of grass, drink lemonade and wear out our library cards (the ones they put used to manually put through the carbon copier when you checked out a book).  School didn't start until Labor Day weekend... September!  Those were the days kids.  The golden, halcyon days of a three month summer.

I may be repeating, "already??" in my head over and over, but it is indeed time to purchase new shoes, school clothes, paper pencils, erasers they will never use, pens they'll leave at home or school or both, hand sanitizer and boxes of tissue and new lunch boxes.

And... my wee boy, the one who really was starting kindergarten yesterday, I swear it, will be in the 6th Grade.  Rob took him shopping for new shoes last week and the child wears a 9.5!  In a man size!  His foot is bigger than Rob's by one full size.  Today we went for a check-up and he measured 5 feet 1 1/2 inches!  He needs a small shift from the men's section.  He's leaving boyhood behind, quickly.  And I'm not ready yet! 

When did he quit needing a hug before bed and outgrow bedtime stories?  He needs deodorant and a good face soap and he still can't remember to brush his teeth without a reminder (or 12).  And when on earth did I blink and not put it all together that we have been marching past milestones, never to be repeated, at light-speed?

 Middle school.  The age of puberty and teasing jerks and learning about girls.  I am trying to "keep calm and carry on" but on the inside?  I'm freaking out a little bit.


So tonight I am going to sit on the back porch with a glass of wine and watch the full moon and soak in the stillness and the last few hours before we start a new chapter... one I hope is tucked in the adventure category and not the horror section lived out by many a geeky, awkward tweenager!  Gulp!  Maybe Tower of Terror WAS a fitting open to our summer vacation?

Summer

Long days that begin with lazy sunrises and end with 8:30 p.m. sunsets.
The scent of sunscreen and chlorine in humid air.
The happy screams and splashes and calls of "Marco!  Polo!" from kids in the pool.
The white flakes of a peeling sunburn.
"It's not the heat, it's the humidity!"  (Really.  It's both)! and "Is it hot enough for ya?"
Star gazing on the back porch with a glass of wine (Ursa Major, Hercules, Lyra).
Line-dried towels and pillow cases and sheets.
The rumble of thunder in the afternoon and the flashes of cloud-to-cloud lightening... a free fireworks show.
The whine of mosquitos and the hum of cicadas at twilight.
Ice cream and popsicles and frosty drinks.
Fresh garden offerings:  Blueberries, peaches, watermelon, okra, tomatoes, squash and cucumbers.
Freshly cut grass and the stinging bite of fire ants on bare feet.
The icy blast of air conditioning vents, flipping the pillow to the cool side and the lullaby of ceiling fans.
Sweating at 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. . . .
In the summertime.

We Were Riding, Riding in My Car (but Not Fast)

I confess I've given serious thought to how much it would cost to install one of those privacy screens that seem to come standard on limousines.  Or all the limousines in the movies anyway.   It would be especially wonderful for the 300 mile trip to Orlando and Disney World, the happiest place on EARTH!  Can you see Rob's happy face in your mind?  Yes.  That is sarcasm.  Rob isn't going to be happy because Walt Disney decided he should be.  He really isn't going to be happy while Disney is telling him to be happy and plucking money from his wallet.

The silence would be greatly preferred to the constant squabbling, poking and complaining that emanates from the rear passenger seats, it would also mean missing out on some pretty interesting, sometimes baffling, conversations that take place on the way to here, there and everywhere.   And I wouldn't channel my mother so often with the words:  "Don't make me pull this car over!" and "Don't make me reach back there!"  and "I WILL turn this car around RIGHT NOW!" Which should be yelled through clenched teeth for unintelligible yet effective conversation stopping capability.

I guess it's only fair to MY mother that I get paid back for some pretty terrible renditions of 99 Bottles of Milk on the Wall and "How much furrrrrrrrrrrrttttttttttttthhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrr???????" pestering.

Recently overheard from the backseat:

"Such and such would be a great idea!"
"I thought that before you did."
"But I said it first."
"So.  Have you seen Jurassic Park?  Do you think it mattered who discovered the dinosaurs first or who said they discovered them first."
(Yeah.  Doesn't make sense to me either.)

"Mom.  When we get home I want to FaceTime with Imogen!"
"Abby, it's 3 a.m. in Queensland right now!"
"Oh.  So I can't FaceTime with Imogen when we get home?"

"Knock, knock."
"Who's there?"
"Interrupting cow."
"Interrupting c-"
"Moooooooooo!"

AND

"Mom.  Did Dad leave his CD in here?'
"Nope!" (technically it was IN the car, but it wasn't IN the CD player if you want to Bill Clinton the definition of the word here). 
"Great.  It's Mom's boring music again."  Why yes, yes it is.... if by boring they mean AWESOME!!

Happy Mother's Day!

Thursday I left home at 8 a.m. and didn't return until 8 p.m. Never have I been so happy that the following day was the every other week cleaning lady visit! To make the weekend all the sweeter, she made AN ENTIRE MEAL and brought it over on Saturday. I'm thinking about asking her to adopt me.

We've had a tiny health scare with my own mother. She woke up in intense pain that required a visit to the ER. Turns out she had kidney stones (probably the result of calcium supplements) that were quickly passed. The CT scan also showed some spots on her liver. When someone has had cancer, the word "spot" looms in neon letters in an otherwise boring medical report. After several weeks of waiting, the good news from her oncologist is that liver spots are very common and that these spots pre-date her breast cancer diagnosis in 2007. Phew!

So of course this year, spending the day with her will be all the more special. Two weeks of waiting meant a lot of time spent reflecting on how important she is in my life. In our lives. No matter that I don't need her to help bandage cuts or create science project displays or depend on her to put a hot meal on the table every night, she is still a tremendous support... particularly now that I am old and wise enough to realize she might actually know something!

My mother-in-law is pretty fabulous too. She carts the kids around from school and to dancing and horseback riding. If I'm sick, she steps up and makes sure everything that needs to get done does, even taking care of me along with the laundry, homework, etc. She is a big part of J.T.'s top writing and MAP testing results.... she loves to work with both kids on their homework. Appreciating that I am quite lucky to have a wonderful mother and mother-in-law. They make my life better. The kids, of course, love them to pieces. I think that they wrote cards for their grandmothers without prompting, but might have needed a nudge from Rob to complete my cards. Might have something to do with the yelling and fit throwing?

Fresh cut and color? A little slice of happy for me.

The Happiness Project

"Contemporary research shows that happy people are more altruistic, more productive, more helpful, more likeable, more creative, more resilient, more interested in others, friendlier, and healthier. Happy people make better friends, colleagues, and citizens." - Gretchen Rubin in The Happiness Project.

Let me preface this post by saying that I am not unhappy. Do I appreciate how lucky I am to be married to a good man, to have two healthy, intelligent children and to have family and friends who give of their love, time and friendship generously? Yes! Does it ever cross my mind that the pure chance of not being born in poverty in the third world means simply by having enough food to eat I am happier than the great majority of people on this earth? Frequently! Should I be grateful for the life I have? You better believe it! I am grateful. But could I do with a little more contentment... a bit more "in the moment" joy? Not only could I do with it, I crave it.

Much like Gretchen Rubin describes in her book, I find myself looking at my life and thinking, so this is it? Married, two kids, working, fighting off under eye wrinkles and gray hair and a gnawing sense of, THIS IS IT! Who I am, living the life I've got, waiting for everything to magically become perfect. If only the mortgage were paid off and the kids wouldn't smear paint or fingernail polish all over the table. If only those stupid unmatched socks would pair themselves up and march to the sock drawers. If only I could fit into my skinny jeans and the dog wouldn't chase the UPS man. If only I had more time and less to do.... wouldn't life be deliciously, deliriously, wondrously wonderful?

So how do I let go of the elusive perfect and find the happiness in the good?

By embarking on my own happiness project. Implementing small strategies and setting small mile markers to up the happy quotient in my life. After all, a happier me will mean happier people surrounding me.

This month's goals are to get more sleep (people who are well-rested have more energy to do the things and make the changes that will make them happy) and to wrap up at least one nagging task I've let go too long. Yes I am mimicking Gretchen's first month goals almost exactly... but I think this is a good place to start for me. I never sleep all night long. Waking up ten times is not unusual. When I do get enough sleep, I have more energy, get more done and feel more satisfied with my day. My upstairs space is almost finished. But it has been over a year since I did anything with that room! The blinds need to be hung, the paint splotches cleaned up and the furniture placed and arranged. I've found a thousand reasons (probably literally, a thousand) not to tackle these boring tasks... and the unfinishedness of it hangs over me (also quite literally) like a gloomy what-if. I think the satisfaction of completing this long overdue job will be worth the drudgery of actually tackling the tedium of paint scraping, window cleaning, furniture staining, etc.

With that said, I do realize that there is no magic secret to contentment. But I equally realize that exploring what makes people appreciate what they have, what they are actively doing to achieve contentment and gratefulness is an endeavor worth undertaking, if only for the journey and not the destination. Here's to happiness!

A Smaller Footprint

I just finished reading an article about the importance of reducing our carbon footprint. As the population of the world increases, the strain on resources grows greater. Are we in danger of collapsing under the weight of our own "progress"?

We are sometimes good environmentalists and sometimes, lazy environmentalists at our house.

The good:

• hot water heater seat on moderate (a genuine sacrifice as I prefer my shower hot enough to scald off a layer of skin) and cold water washing machine use.
• Lights off! Our house gets enough natural sunlight that we don't need to turn on any lights until it gets dark. Rob is great about going behind everyone and making sure we turn everything off, but that MIGHT be as much about money as saving the earth.
• Drying rack. I have not used my dryer AT ALL this week. If Bob the Wonder Dog wouldn't snatch the clothes of a clothes line, I'd love to install a one of those umbrella style outdoor racks. Our summer heat would have a load dry in no time!
  
• Recycling. The kids help sort the plastic, cans, paper etc. for the recycling center. We don't have curbside pick-up, but we live less than a mile from the recycling center. Our trash to recycling ratio is probably about 50% now.
  
• Keep the clunker going! Changing out cars frequently (even for more energy efficient ones) adds some size to the old footprint. We have managed to keep Rob's 1997 truck going with some mostly minor repairs and a little duct tape for the seats (how redneck is that)!
• Consolidating errands. Three days a week, I drop the kids off at school and just continue on to work instead of going back home and leaving for work an hour later. That saves 10 miles per trip or 30 miles per week. We combine errands so that we drop the kids off for one activity and do the grocery shopping while they are occupied for an hour (this is less stressful than shopping with two kids, so BONUS), which also saves a trip.

Struggles:

• Home Garden. A giant FAIL last time I attempted it. Trying to maintain an organic garden against the onslaught of bugs and weeds was more than I could do. I had every intention of attempting it again this year, but didn't get my act together in time. Thinking about doing an above ground container garden for tomatoes and okra on the back porch as a compromise. The Farmer's market is open on Saturday morning, but is the 14 mile round trip. Our grocery shopping is done on Sunday, so that adds to our gas total.
• Grocery store packaging. I find myself really frustrated with the grocery buying. I can manage to buy unpackaged fruit/veggies for the most part: bananas, cucumbers, tomatoes, cantaloupe (but not the blueberries or strawberries), but it seems that the bulk of what we buy is packaged and then packaged some more! Yogurt, cheese, crackers, tea bags, bread, meat.... all packaged and then shrink wrapped for good measure!
• Reusable shopping bags. This would seem to be the easiest thing of all... but I always forget the bags!
• Clothing. Trying to find locally made clothing is almost impossible! Every label I read says: "Vietnam" or "China" on it!
• You all know I ADORE my kindle. Is it really more sustainable to purchase ebooks than paper books? We have LOTS of things that plug in: ipad, kindle, PC, laptops... is the balance in raw materials vs. electricity usage really balanced? Abby absolutely loves to facetime with her friend Imogen in Australia! I doubt she is willing to give that up.