Earthmovers and Sandcastles

It’s all in how you see it. Is it spring or is it winter? Is your town lovely or scary? And is that distance doable or an impossibility?

Thanks to David (Pehrhynplodder) and Gordon (Run to Disney) for their contributions, and to Ted (You Don’t Have to Run Alone) for his shout-out. Music on the show comes from the Podsafe Music Network. Tracks used were:
42 shades of grey – State Unsteady
Audio Spaghetti – Accurate Perception

You can subscribe through iTunes or download the show here. Voice mails are always welcomed at 206-350-9501, or you can email or leave a comment!

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Last night, Gabe got verrrrry emotional just before bed. He was cranky with Sam for reading when he wanted to be playing with him, and then when I tried to put him to bed, he got angry and agitated over that (in part because he had coughed his way through his naptime, making him both overtired and anxious about doing the same thing all night long). I got him into bed and then went to deal with doing the same with Sam. By the time I came back around to Gabe, a few minutes later, he was sobbing in his bed.

“I don’t feel good!” he said.

“Well, try to go to sleep, and you’ll feel better.”

“No, not that kind of not good! I mean…you’re always nice to me, and I’m not nice to you! I say bad things to yoooooooooou!” And he cried and cried. I tried to console him, telling him that I love him and would always love and forgive him, but that didn’t seem to help much. He was hot and sweaty, which I assumed was from the crying…

…but then he woke me up at 5:30 this morning to tell me that he kept waking up with his bed all wet. He was completely drenched from head to toe. I pulled his soggy clothes off and plopped him into a bathtub, where he shivered and whimpered (until I washed his hair, and the whimper became howls that brought the much-preferred Daddy in to finish the job), and then I put him into clean pajamas, since I had no idea whether he was sick and would stay home from school or not.

By an hour later, he felt fine and dandy. At this point, I think what happened was a fever in the night that broke, leaving him sweaty and shivery, and now he’s all better. Good appetite, good spirits, wholly normal. His temperature is fine; of course, I didn’t take a temp last night, so that doesn’t tell me much.

(Of course, it’s also possible that he just peed the bed. I’m not burying my face in the sheets to check!)

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You know, it’s such a pleasure to see your child reading. That’s not a surprise, is it? From the moment they’re able to toddle over to you with a book, there’s something so incredibly warm and fuzzy about seeing your son or daughter take pleasure in the written word, especially if you’re a bookworm yourself.

Sam is not a bookworm, a fact that rips me inside. He likes books; don’t get me wrong. What he likes, though, isn’t the story or the drama. He likes the information he can glean from the pages. He likes the facts, the figures, the diagrams. He enjoys reading about the sinking of the Titanic, studying the cutaway illustrations to see where the flaws lay. He relishes studying the names of various trains and planes, knowing which ones are the fastest and which ones are the biggest. In short, he’s male.

When I worked at the library, I came to see that, yes, there is a difference between how boys and girls approach reading, as much as my feminist heart wanted to decry it. Exceptions acknowledged, for the most part, it was the girls who skipped into the stacks, hauling out troves of their favorites to take home with them. It was the boys who were dragged in by their moms, who were muttering things like, “I don’t care what book you pick, but pick one!”, and the boys who would sigh mightily and grab the nearest book to hand without even glancing inside it. (Funny how I so rarely saw a father filling the role of the dragging parent.) We librarians even kept a list of books handy that might entice boys’ interests. We lauded the creation of Guys Read.

And now I have my own little guy who would much rather draw or play than flip pages. I cringe, but I look at his father, who is one of the smartest men I’ve ever met…and who isn’t much of a recreational reader, either. He loves books deeply, but he primarily reads for purpose. That’s reasonable and good, and I respect that in him. How can I adjust my thinking to respect it in Sam?

He’s reading this morning, though. Last night spiraled into family chaos, and I wound up fleeing to the bookstore alone to select his book (after him telling me he wanted a “city” book). After much searching, I came home with a couple candidates, and he chose Number the Stars. He read some last night, and this morning he read a little more at my gentle request. No urging required! He says it’s “great,” though without much enthusiasm; I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he’ll find some excitement in it as he goes deeper. If not…maybe he’d prefer a history text over a fictionalized tale. Maybe a compilation of World War II tank diagrams is more his speed. (Hard to write a book report on that, unfortunately. Why must all report assignments presume a preference for fiction?)

They just keep on growing, keep on changing. I guess my best bet is to continue to surround him with as many choices and chances for learning as possible, not steering it in the direction of my own tastes, even unconsciously. Eric and he have recently been talking about electricity and circuits, following an assignment from school. I know nothing about that, and, honestly, I have no desire to even know about it. That doesn’t make it less worthy of his energy, of course! It’s all up to him to pick his paths, and I’ll be content…so long as he’s learning, learning, and never stopping the learning.

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So glad to have Eric home, finally. Even when he’s at work, unreachable and in meetings, just knowing that he’s here in the same town with us, only a mile away, takes a ton of weight off my shoulders and makes me feel whole again.

On the other hand, it feels weird today because I’ve started into the training plan, and what would ordinarily be a running day suddenly wasn’t. I dropped Gabe off at school, and suddenly everything felt off-kilter. I went to the gym (which Karri found amusing: my “rest” day) and did strength work, and then I went on a walk. The morning felt so…long. Not in a good way. I suppose I’ll get used to it. The weights will do me good; I’ve been skimping on them lately, which isn’t great for me. Lifting heavy things is beneficial in so many ways, not least of which will be to strengthen my core for the trails.

Sam’ll get home here in a bit, and I have to haul him right back out to find a book for an upcoming book report. Man, I thought I was doing good, stocking up on a variety of chapter books for him, and now he keeps getting assigned book reports for which none of the books I procured are a match. This time, he has to read a book set either in a city or the country. You’d think that would be easy, but almost every book he has is set squarely in the suburbs, which I think would be stretching the point of the assignment. Meh. I’m also a little aggravated because he’s not a particularly fast or voracious reader, so we get caught in a tough spot with these reports that are due in less than two weeks. Last time, he got chastised for reading a book (Cam Jansen) that the teacher said was beneath the level he should be reading right now. Okay, fair enough, but if he’s to actually be able to finish the book and write a report within the given time frame, it has to apparently be a hard but short book. (Or, you know, she could give out a list of upcoming assignments further in advance, so we could be better prepared. Maybe she’s trying to train them to read faster as well as thoroughly?)

In other news, it was warm enough today that I wore a running skirt out for my walk. I got honked at repeatedly. I’m wondering if I should be flattered or whether they were just trying to tell me that, despite the sunshine, March in Wisconsin is in no way the season for bare legs.

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Okay, figured out now. I’ll be using this training schedule, with some slight adaptations, for the 50K in July. It accommodates the Mount Pleasant Half, Green Bay, and Lighthouse pretty well, which saves me some headaches. My only reservation is the initial brevity of the midweek runs and the early weekly mileage totals, which are a lot smaller than what I’m currently doing; however, it could be that my legs will thank me profusely for a back-off right now, before I beat the crap out of them later.

My running club buddies are finishing up their long runs right now, as I type this. Bummer. There was just no way I could rationalize doing a long run with the boys here by themselves, though, and no way I could make myself believe it would be okay to drag Gabe out in the stroller and Sam on his bike at 6 in the morning in sub-30-degree weather. Parenting skillz: I has them. So it’s the treadmill for me, where I’ll put in 12 miles while the boys are safely supervised and mostly unfrostbitten. Sam will enjoy that; he’s already had his Moment of Pique with me this morning because I made him write in a journal for a short period. See, at his conference, I found out that while he’s doing well in most areas, his weakest ones are writing-related…and I saw his most recent efforts to write on a prompt. I decided that more practice was definitely in order, and so that’s what we’re doing. He grouched and moaned and whined, but he did it; I told him that tomorrow, if he wanted, he could start doing it on the computer, which made him a little less upset, but it’s looking like I’ll have my hands full with it. Mind you, it’s not that he can’t do it; he just daydreams and mentally wanders, and the paper reflects it.

Got to get ready now. Have a great Saturday!

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Eric called this morning at 5:30 AM by accidental time zone miscalculation. I don’t mind; it was wonderful to wake up with him in my ear. But then I spent the rest of the morning feeling more bereft than usual. MOPS this morning discussed friendships, which first had me missing Alysia, and then switched to how our husbands are our best friends, which…didn’t help my mood, to say the least.

Sam’s home early, which helps liven things up. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take the opportunity to sweep the boys off to someplace fun, because we have some sort of “student-led conference” in a little while. I have no idea what this is all about; it sounds as though the teachers are only participating on the sidelines, while the kids take us through what they’ve been doing and discuss what they’ve done well and what has been a struggle. (Pretty sure it’s part of this, which his school continues to pursue.) I wish I could have done it without Gabe, or that Eric was here to participate, but if wishes were horses, we’d have to hire a lot more street cleaners.

It’ll be interesting to see if there are any surprises, which I sincerely doubt. I mean, if a teacher were leading this, I’d be prepared for some, since perceptions vary widely, but Sam has never held back on what his feelings are about his work. He loves science and social studies; he hates math, except for a few of the factor families (”The three and five times tables are fun!” he says). He likes gym, but gives me the impression that he prefers the rough-and-tumble parts over the follow-the-rules parts. If anything unusual crops up, it’s going to be something straight out of the woodwork, but I don’t think it will.

Hope Gabe cooperates. He’s been in a mood all day, beginning with howls over clothing, complaints over breakfast, deep questions about how to help the poor and hungry when I was struggling to get him out of the car at MOPS (what the heck?), tantrums about not eating lunch at a restaurant, and now incredible bossiness directed at Sam, which can’t end well. I think that’s my cue…

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I’m awesome. Several months ago, when I was planning out my running and racing schedule for the future, I examined several 50K training schedules before selecting one that looked pretty good to me. On a piece of paper, I sketched down the back-to-back Saturday and Sunday distances for the plan, figuring out how they’d work with various races I had in mind besides Devil’s Lake, and I was happy with things.

A few weeks ago, I went looking for the site, to examine more of the details, and I couldn’t find it. Rather, I couldn’t find anything that matched the distances I’d written down. Finally, I decided that whatever plan I’d found must have had the page changed slightly, or else it was gone. I was relieved that I had the written copy, and I decided to just figure out the midweek runs based on a similar plan I found. Not ideal, but workable.

This morning, I found the original plan, purely by chance. The reason I couldn’t find it before? It’s not a 50K training plan. It’s a plan to train for a 50 mile race. I guess I’d have been really, really prepared for Devil’s Lake! On the other hand, there does exist the phenomenon of overtraining, and the whole reason I’m doing a 50K as my first ultra is to allow my body time to accustom itself to higher mileage. Maybe it should have seemed strange to me to have planned for myself seven training runs of twenty miles or more, but I clearly am a genius who is above such earthly logic.

Now, to try to patch together a training plan that encompasses what I liked about this one and still coordinates nicely with Green Bay and the half-marathon I’m doing in about six weeks…

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Where does the best motivation come from? Inside you? From somebody else pushing you harder? From a need to get to the other side of a flock of something terrifying?

Thanks to David (Pehrhynplodder) and Adam (Burning 2010) for their contributions. Music on the show comes from the Podsafe Music Network. Tracks used were:
42 shades of grey – State Unsteady
I Fight Dragons – The Faster the Treadmill

You can subscribe through iTunes or download the show here. Voice mails are always welcomed at 206-350-9501, or you can email or leave a comment!

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Huh. Maybe I am that lucky. Sam didn’t throw up last night, and he continues to feel healthy. I, on the other hand, spent a good portion of this afternoon lying on my stomach in an effort to quell spasms (they thankfully dissipated as mysteriously as they came), and Gabe just came up to me with a look of misery, claiming a massive headache. I feel like the landlord who evicted his tenants and found that they demolished the place as they were leaving. At least the discomforts are coming in waves, with increasing time between them.

Eric called this morning, but the connection was crappy. I could hear him fine, but he could barely hear us unless we shouted. Yelling to Germany: I love you. Come home soon!

Unrelated, for some reason, both boys have lately taken to trying to get me to say which one of them I love more. It doesn’t appear to be something coordinated between the two, as they don’t generally ask in front of the other; Gabe sidles up and coyly asks probing questions while Sam’s at school, and Sam corners me while Gabe’s in another room. The funniest line of questioning came from Sam, who finally asked whether he had been my favorite child when he was a baby and we didn’t know Gabe would ever even be here. Gabe, meanwhile, prefers to take the emotionally-charged route, asking me which one of them I’d miss more if they were both “destroyed.”

I’m weaning myself off the amount of coffee I was drinking. Trying to resume my normal drinking habits since my initial night of illness has proved yucky, and it’s probably a good opportunity to get myself down to a more tempered level of consumption, anyway.

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Prepare for TMI.

So, on Thursday night, I found myself violently ill. In a useless surge of optimism, I convinced myself it was food poisoning. You see, if it was something I ate, then I alone was likely to be affected, as everybody else in the family seemed just fine. The illness and general ugh-itude carried over for almost all of Friday, though it was hard to tell how much was being sick and how much was exhaustion and caffeine-withdrawal (I hadn’t slept much, and my stomach felt too delicate for coffee).

Alas, Saturday night, I was awakened to a shrill cry of distress from Gabe. “Why is this happening?!” he howled wretchedly while standing in front of the commode, Eric toweling him off and comforting him while I dealt with the horror that was his bed. (Note for young and expecting parents: mine was the role you want. It might seem the grosser of the two, but it also apparently has the result of causing the child to view the other parent as the default support person for any subsequent needs throughout the illness. Poor Eric got no sleep at all, as Gabe summoned him repeatedly for the rest of the night.) Eric’s help was a surprise stroke of luck, as he wasn’t even supposed to be home; his connecting flights to Germany, where he was meant to be heading Saturday afternoon, had gotten jacked up, so he wound up coming home and departing Sunday afternoon instead.

This evening, Sam is clutching his belly. Ostensibly, according to him, this is because he ate too much tonight at Empty Bowls, where he had two bowls of soup and his body weight in bread. (Every time I turned around from dealing with a manic little Gabe, he had another roll in hand…) I’m shaking my head, because…it’s not the soup. Not the bread. I’m simply not that lucky, and neither is he. He’s at least said that he’ll take my advice and sleep with a bowl again tonight, as I made him do last night, as well, and he’ll make sure the path is clear between him and the ladder down from his bunk. Not much more can be done, I guess.

In the meantime, I keep my fingers crossed, and I wait for the email from Germany telling me of how quickly an English-speaking American can find a bathroom in an emergency. At least, I joked to Eric before he left, I’m pretty sure that one hand clamped over one’s mouth and the other waving wildly is a universally-understood signal.

(This is sort of a lingering thing, too. I’ve had waves of sour stomach over and over for the past several days, including this evening; Gabe keeps periodically moaning that he feels like he wants to throw up, but he’s been fine a few minutes later. We’re both eating yogurt, but the damage left by this bug appears to be tough to repair.)

Anyway, at least being sick has been a distraction from the fact that, good GRAVY, do I miss my husband. He’s only been away for one sleep, and I can’t believe I have to get through five more.

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