Earthmovers and Sandcastles

I just casually Tweeted, in the course of a conversation, that the military races feel like Pokemon to me: “Gotta catch ‘em all!” The Marine Corps Marathon, the Air Force Marathon in Dayton, the Army 10-miler, and the Navy 5-miler - it’s probably not an unusual goal to complete all four and collect the medals and finishers’ coins, but just saying it out loud made it officially one of mine. Just got to get the timing down. The Air Force and the Navy races are in September, and the Army is in October; Air Force is in Ohio, and the other two are back east. These fall races in far-off places are a bit of a pain, the way they collide with the kids’ school schedules; Marine Corps is going to require them to miss at least a little, since although I could fly in by myself, I think the grandparents waiting at the other end of the flight might be a bit perturbed to see “just” their daughter exit the plane.

I’m climbing out of my funk a bit. Today’s run was a great step toward that; I did 4.75 miles at sub-8 pace for the whole way, including a couple of short but steep hills mixed in. Boy, my quads felt those! I didn’t let myself slow, though - just powered on through and felt like queen of the world at the top of each one. Today I was thankful for headphones; a bicycle rider passed me on one hill, going the other way, and after we waved and smiled at each other, he looked like he wanted to shoot the breeze for a moment, but I pretended I couldn’t hear. Stopping at that moment wasn’t an option!

Eric’s off work today, a lovely treat. We’ll all get to hit the farmers’ market together! He’s only had the opportunity to be surprised by the things I find, so today he’ll get to do some of the choosing. Then we’re having a relaxed lunch before I go back to tackling the kids’ playroom. My goal is to get the old train table out of there, which they never use as such anymore, and replace it with a long conference-type table from our basement, which will be better for Lego work. Maybe we’ll even stick on some big flat Lego base pieces for them. Possibilities abound!

Unrelated, I could be more chipper than usual because my usual breakfast was usurped by a Morningstar Farms Mushroom Lover’s burger. Oh, my word! Can I get put on some sort of weekly subscription order for those things?

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Eric reminded me that I still haven’t “cashed in” his Christmas gift to me, an overnight stay at the Olympia resort, complete with two spa treatments (mmmm, massage). It seriously is exactly what I wanted, and now I’m glad I held off on it, because if I ever needed somebody to pound on my back and work the kinks out of my shoulders, it’s now! There are probably still knots in there left over from the marathon, even!

Oh, and turns out my parents won’t be here until a day after they planned, so that’s a bit more breathing room in terms of clearing a path through the clutter. Mom fussed at me on the phone a bit ago for even worrying about it, but…you know.

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I actually did manage to stay out last night until everybody was asleep (it’s aggravating to think that’s what will be the case, only to find an overtired kid yelling from his bed, well past his bedtime, that he’s NEVER going to sleep, not EVER), and it was good to not have to speak, to just crawl under the sheets in silence. Today is a rest day in my running schedule, so I also got to sleep in a little bit (to 6 o’clock instead of 4:30 or so).

Unfortunately, I’m also beginning to feel overwhelmed by the work facing me for the coming couple of weeks. My parents are coming on Tuesday for a week, and the house is a wreck, and I’m in the middle of a couple of purging projects that have things looking even worse than usual, and I have to figure out what to cook and what we’ll need to have on hand (somehow, I doubt my dad would be thrilled to go mostly vegetarian for a week ). Both kids’ playground programs have little parades today, and Gabe is technically supposed to either push a baby buggy (we have none, and I don’t think he’d go for that anyway) or be on a ride-on toy; he has a tricycle, but he’s refused to ride it up until now, so we need to get out and practice this morning to see whether he’ll change his mind and we should decorate the thing. Otherwise…I dunno, maybe I’ll just wrap the provided streamers around him: my kid, the Human Float. Sam’s parade is later this evening, but the paper isn’t even clear about whether the stated location is the parade’s destination or the starting point. Hurray for ambiguity! And nobody has said whether he’s supposed to ride a bike or anything, either, so we won’t know about that until about an hour before the parade’s start.

I’m also cracking up about how it’s very overcast out there right now and looks like it could rain at any second, despite the forecasts of “partly cloudy.” Memories of last year’s parade ran through both my own and Sam’s minds this morning…

Anyway, Mom: if things look a bit chaotic when you show up, I trust you’ll forgive me?

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I haven’t felt “good” for a few days now. Tired. Worn. Fragile. Anything that helps a little is so fleeting; running only works so long as I’m actively doing it, and by the time I’m out of the shower, I’m back to dreading the next sound I’ll hear, as it’s sure to be either some demand or else the sound of somebody being angry with somebody or something. I think if I was surrounded by cheerful people, I could probably muster up some of my own enthusiasm, at least in part, but since I’m not, we’ll never know.

Pardon me if I’m lacking my usual habit of finding the bright side in most everything.

So I finally had it tonight, and I told Eric I was bugging out for a while. I’m at Caribou Coffee, and I sort of hope I can make this escape last until everybody in the house is asleep for the night. Coming home to a dark and silent place sounds really good right now. I know better than to believe that’s what will happen, though.

I’ll regret posting this later, when the part of me that feels like I need to just suck it up and be the one who holds it all together kicks in. Whatever, though. Sometimes I’m weak, and I’ll confess that tonight, this week, this…everything…is getting the better of me at the moment. And of course, my gut reaction to it was to “self-medicate” with copious amounts of sugar, so now I’m dealing with the negative feelings of that, as well as the resultant crash, but I can’t blame that for it all. I was in the mud and muck before I reached for the jelly beans.

I need an honest laugh. Seems odd to have to search through one’s journal to remember the last time one had one.

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Yesterday was one of those days that just feels too “voluminous” to try to recount in detail. Too many little things, and they add up and make me feel tired just remembering. It was a day made for bullet points!

• Slept too late to get in a walk before church; didn’t have my bike back from the shop yet, either.
• Got ready for church, but Eric woke up too late for that…so we changed plans and decided instead to head down to Chicago via the Metra.
• Missed the train. Waited for the next one while eating lunch at a hot dog stand by Lake Michigan. Very pretty.
• Rode to Chicago. Kids were in heaven; Eric and I were kept “entertained” by a trio of three young women across from us who didn’t come installed with filters between brain and mouth.
• Shopped. Eric’s entire aim had been a particular marked-down notebook cover from Levenger, so that was the immediate goal. Also hit the Lego store for the kids and the Garmin store for me (I was hoping they could help me out with my now beepless Forerunner, but, alas, they could not).
• Realized on the way down to Chicago that the dress I was wearing should have been removed from circulation long ago - a real issue when said dress is strapless and one no longer has the ability to fill it out. Looked for a dress to replace it, but found nothing I liked. Glad to have brought along a cardigan.
• Gabe threw tantrum to end all tantrums over leaving the Lego store. Apparently, my dress is “stupid!”
• Eric and the boys shopped at Lush. The salesgirls were enchanted by Gabe. Somebody should be.
• Ate at Pizano’s. They had good pizza and excellent Merlot.
• Everything closed, but we missed the earlier train back, so we sat outside the Metra station and let the kids run. And run. I staged races for them across the plaza, getting them good and tired so they might sleep on the train back.
• Annnnnnnd Sam cooperated by sleeping, stretched out with his head by my lap. Gabe? Not. So. Much. Dude.

Today is another day. Though, honestly, I’d rather undergo about ten of Gabe’s epic shriekfests (”YOU ARE THE WORSTEST MOM I COULD EVER HAVE! AAAAAAAA–”) in the middle of the Magnificent Mile crowds than deal with the dental appointment scheduled for 7 o’clock tonight.

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I could have put this over at the foodie blog, but I want to share the love far and wide. I Twittered about doing this yesterday, and I got mixed reactions of horror and intrigue. Mind, it’s far from my own original idea! Near as I can tell, the first person to blog it may have been Polly, but it’s been adopted by many people across the net, and I was eager to try it myself.

Spinach oats.

Now, now, I need to be crystal clear: it does NOT taste like spinach. That big handful of spinach leaves that I blended to bits in my pot of oat bran and sliced banana just…vanished! The oats were dyed green, and all the nutrition stuck around, but the flavor? Gone. And I was more than prepared for a spinach taste to remain, as I love spinach and would have been fine with then searching out a way to flavor the bowl to complement a more savory profile. Nope! No “green” taste at all! Yesterday, I then added some pumpkin, granola, and walnuts; today, as pictured, I added cherries and blueberries, ricotta cheese, and slivered almonds.

In fact, I’d say that the bigger adjustment I had to make was getting used to the oat bran I prepared in place of my usual steel-cut oats - an unnecessary change for the addition of spinach, but a choice I made based on finding a big bag of bran at my health food store. They’re very nutritious, and they cook up super fast! But they are much stickier than regular oats, which Eric, for one, found disagreeable; he plans to mix oats with oat bran, rather than have straight bran in his bowl. I don’t mind the new texture a bit, so I’m happy to have an alternative cereal choice for days when I’m more pressed for time.

Anyway, why not give it a shot? I promise, if you like oatmeal, you will like spinach oats. Heck, eat ‘em in the dark if the color freaks you out.

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First, look what came in the mail!

I still think it’s funny that, before I knew I’d placed second in age group, I went back to the race site after they cleaned up, and nobody knew anything; when I asked about it, the people I asked were all, “Why, were you in contention to win?” It felt weird answering in the affirmative, so I just said, “Anything’s possible, I guess.”

Anything, indeed.

So that was last Saturday, and today, I ran a much more relaxed ten miles in the company of a friend (Hi, Lorma!) who wanted to push her own pace. I had no problems slowing mine to match hers, because honestly? That’s an important skill, too. You can’t just blast through every training run as fast as you can and expect to improve; in fact, I’ve had real problems learning to slow down, which you’d think wouldn’t be a problem, but…

It might be especially important now, when I’ve officially begun training for Marine Corps and I’ve also honestly and sincerely begun thinking about this. Hey, don’t look at me like that! It’s only 6 miles longer than a marathon! But even expanding the distance by that “small” amount, from what I’m reading, takes it into a realm where if I don’t slow myself down, the race will Slow Me Down anyway, and in ways that will be way less pleasant. Walking breaks aren’t unexpected in an ultra; in fact, they’re the norm.

Finding the balance between fast running and slow running will be an adventure in self-discipline this summer. To that end, I’ll be adapting my Tuesday runs into speed workouts, so I won’t feel the temptation to turn my long runs into them. Every run has a purpose, starting now. No more junk miles!

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Monday through Thursday, we’re hopping from school to playground programs, and it’s a lot of fun, but Fridays are blissfully unscheduled. Some weeks, that will irritate me, as those are the “I have nothing to dooooo…” days, but this week, we really needed it. Last night, both boys came home utterly exhausted from their playground programs’ field trips; Gabe was tired to the point of mental breakdown, sobbing with heartbreak when Sam changed the channel on the television. “I won’t ever get to see the show, ever, ever again!” Early bedtimes for all ensued, but I believe a day of rest is still required.

Of course, we still have plans. I need to do the farmers’ market this morning, and I think I’ll take them to the library on Friday afternoons throughout the summer, based on the emptiness of the day. There’s also a free concert on Friday afternoons downtown, but Sam made a face when I mentioned that, so I doubt we’ll stick around for it. We’ll see.

Forgot to mention that my appointment with my new/old doctor went really, really well. She really couldn’t tell me much more beyond what I already knew, but she listened a lot more, and she brought in another athletic doctor who also listened a lot, and they both agreed that my issue has to do with the weight loss finally catching up to me - or, rather, that the rest of my body is trying to catch up to the weight loss. She wrote me scripts for a pelvic ultrasound (to make sure that the endometrial lining is as it should be) and for a bone density scan, since a big problem with amenorrhea is bone loss. If both tests are normal, we’ll do a wait-and-see, and if I haven’t gone back to normal in a year, we’ll do another bone density scan. The male doc suggested using birth control pills to regulate my cycles, but I’m reluctant to do that, and they didn’t seem concerned that I didn’t want to go that route.

One thing they also suggested was having my body fat tested; if it’s under 15%, apparently, that’s sort of a threshold point where it would pinpoint definitively why I’m not cycling. You need fat over that point, I guess. I have no idea what my level is, and it’s difficult for me to tell, since I have loose skin that would make calipers all but useless. A local facility has a different method of testing that my doctor says would be accurate, so I might give that a shot. The male doc surprised me by saying that, just to his eyes and without me standing or being undressed, he’d guess that I’m not far from that point, based on my shoulders, neck, and chest (I was wearing a spaghetti-strapped sundress). I don’t believe that one lick, honestly, since I’m really more bottom-heavy. Still, knowledge is power, right?

The heat broke this morning, though it was more of a slow bending than a break. My 4:30 run was still very warm, and I came back inside covered in white pellets of salt, but it’s not supposed to get a whole lot warmer than that all day, and it’ll cool from there a bit. Summery, yes, but a Wisconsin summer!

In the heat yesterday, I prepped a chilled carrot and parsnip soup (didn’t wind up eating it, as it didn’t have enough time to chill fully before dinner), and the tastes I nipped of it were good. We’ll have it tonight with grilled Cornish hens, roasted beets, and the beet greens. I’ve been cutting back on meat to only about once a week (usually on the weekends), and I’ve got to start clearing the frozen meat out of the freezer - need to make room for casseroles, soups, and baked goods!

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So I got up at 4:30 AM to try to beat the heat for my run, but it was already 75 degrees and so muggy I felt like I’d turned triathlete without noticing, doing a swim leg around my neighborhood. (Could have been worse, though; by 8:30, it was in the upper eighties, and I happened to drive past a running woman who looked like she was in a world of hurt.)

Got home, showered, forced Sam to do the same and endured the dra-aaaaaaaa-ma surrounding that (we made a deal that he could shower this morning instead of last night, in exchange for no whining, but he’s a dirty deal-breaker). Was just beginning to recover my stride after that when he tearfully informed us that a friend of his is taking summer school class with the teacher whose class Sam’s just left, and the woman is criticizing Sam to all those kids in the summer class.

No.

Got us all dressed, dropped Eric off at work, and drove to the school. Ushered Sam off to his art class, then found the principal and laid it all out for him. We went through “progress reports” for wiggling and finger biting; severe and frequent punishments for ordinary silliness; and even an incidence where she reported that another teacher had had to scold Sam “repeatedly” for misbehavior, and when I talked to that teacher, she said it never happened at all - turned out that his teacher had asked other kids about Sam’s behavior, and they made up that part. This was the final straw. She’s not even his teacher anymore, and she’s still giving us grief. The worst of it is that Sam really likes her - or he did before this blow. He’s hurt and bewildered now.

Anyway, the principal seemed shocked, and he wrote down many notes and said he’d talk to her. I assured him that we didn’t want to cause trouble, because Sam had liked her and because we had another child who would be coming up through the grade eventually, and he promised he’d take care of that. We’ll see, I guess. I just don’t know that I could have met my own eyes in the mirror if I let this happen to my child without saying anything. I tried calling her after the whole “she [didn’t] say, they said” experience, but she didn’t return my calls.

So! Then! I picked up Sam and took both kids to the dentist! Because I’m a masochist like that! Sam does fine, but Gabe…this was to be his first “official” cleaning, and it went as well as I expected it to - meaning that they had to actually remove us to a separate room, close the door, have me bear-hug him on my lap, and muscle our way through the trauma. Mind you, until a year or so ago, it took three adults to hold him down so the barber could cut his hair, and he’s only gotten stronger and more stubborn since then. It was BAD. By the time we finished (skipping the flossing and intro x-rays entirely), we were both sweaty, he was missing both shoes, and I was bruised from neck to waist from his kicks and thumps. The dentist did a quick check, and then Gabe went FERAL, running to the corner, hiding under a counter, and - inexplicably - doing HANDSTANDS OF RAGE while the dentist tried to make nice. I stood there, sort of laugh-crying with my hands over my face, while the hygienist tried to console me and reassure me that he wouldn’t be the last child to do this. Well, no, of course not: we’ll be back in six months!

And then we went back to Sam, and the dentist informed me that his laterals might be coming in crooked and might require straightening. Shave and a haircut…

I fully expected we’d be hit by a semi leaving the parking lot, just for good measure. We weren’t, but it would have felt appropriate.

Too hot for Calgon, too early for merlot. What’s a girl to do?

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“It’s just a virus.” Apparently, most of the kids coming into the doctor’s office recently have the same darn rash. “Summer virus,” she said, “which isn’t bad, since it means summer is on its way in?” Yeah.

Gabe relished telling everybody in the office (at the top of his lungs), “I’m acting like myself!” I guess in his head, that means that he’s not sick at all, so he has license to flee anybody who approaches with medicine.

Well, I got the primary answer I wanted, which was to know whether he needed to be kept home and away from activities. Verdict: he’s fine to participate in things, so long as he doesn’t spike a fever over 100 degrees under the arm (getting the thermometer into his mouth is the Funniest Joke Ever). Bible School and Kiddie Korner are a go for today! He was tickled, er, red.

I have my own doctor appointment this afternoon; don’t let me forget to print and fill out all the preregistration paperwork. If she seems amenable, Eric said to go ahead and make arrangements to switch our family back to her. We really liked seeing her when she was still in town, and if we have to drive a tiny bit further to see her, it’s probably worth it.

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