I know it’s not Saturday, though. If it were Saturday of this week, I’d either be out running 26 miles or exhausted from having done so already. That’ll be a treat; I’ll be all alone for the run, the rest of the running club not having the need to cover as much ground on trails as they can, and there are thunderstorms threatening. Oh, and the matter of my IT band. All told, this could be a real trial of a run. I think I’m already accepting the foregone conclusion that Sunday’s ten-mile recovery is going to involve a lot of walking.

(Side note: Oh, please tell me that’s not Gabe throwing another epic tantrum out there. I had to pull the boys in from playing with friends yesterday when I heard him start screaming in anger from all the way down the block. Mmm, okay, I don’t hear anything else, so if it was him, it was an isolated holler. We’ll just keep listening.)

Especially funny is that we have a wedding reception to attend later in the evening on Saturday. Here’s hoping for plenty of chairs, as well as relief that even if there is dancing, Eric definitely comes down on the side of spectator, not participant. Ordinarily, I try to beg at least one or two turns around the dance floor out of him, but he may get off lucky this time.

Oh, crap! Here’s something that just threw me: tonight is the church’s “School’s Out Bash” (our answer to VBS; the whole family attends a series of evening events scattered over the summer), which I almost completely forgot! See, it doesn’t feel like Friday!

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It was a bit muddy out there.

But the “run” the next morning, Sunday, wasn’t so pleasant. My IT band along my right knee had begun barking a bit at the end of the trail run, and on Sunday, it was miserable from almost the beginning. I tried using a stabilizer band, but it helped not one bit. I stopped and stretched frequently, walked a bunch, but it wound up being a horrible death march home in the end. It’s amazing, too, how one bad run, even a really bad one – in a cycle where you haven’t had a bad run like it in many, many weeks – can make you feel like an abject failure. I spent the rest of the day only a breath away from sudden surges of anxiety and panic, convinced that I was completely broken and in no way able to do this 50K in only a little more than a month. I stretched, I took some antinflammatories, and I stretched some more, but mostly…I freaked.

Monday was Memorial Day, and I wasn’t scheduled to run. Instead, I woke up early to beautiful, cooler weather, and I decided to hop on my bike and enjoy. I rode to several cemeteries, taking in the flags and decorations; at points, I saw people decorating the graves, at least a few of whom appeared to be personally mourning a loved one. The concept of “Happy Memorial Day,” as some folks use it, makes me uncomfortable; Memorial Day is full of mixed feelings for me, as I think of all those souls lost, freely given or not. My father is a veteran, as was my grandfather. The day isn’t about barbecues or the opening of swimming pools; it’s about service and the commemoration of those who’ve served in ways I can’t begin to fully comprehend. Seeing the rows upon rows of flags over burial mounds drives that home, and riding through the cemeteries allowed me to step outside of myself and gain perspective.

And then we went to a parade, where we got a bit drenched with rain. Would have felt wrong to leave, though.

So I was feeling a bit more balanced when I woke this morning, prepared to run, prepared to see where I stood with my IT band. And I was ready to do that, feeling optimistic, right until just before I headed out the door. I checked my email. I saw this. Along with many, many other parents, I’ve been praying for Henry since his overdose and attack – praying for a miracle, praying for strength and peace for his family. Reading of his passing felt like the bottom dropping out of my stomach. I ran out the door. My IT band was fine (oddly, the left one started whimpering a bit on the way home), but my mind wasn’t on it. My legs can run, but another mama’s baby never will again. Perspective.

Hug your babies today. Take time to appreciate what their bodies, and yours, can do. Don’t take anything for granted. This morning, I have life, and I have liberty, and I have healthy children, and…just so, so much, and I am in tears – tears for Katie and for Henry and for other mother of other lost babies, in graves with flags or in coffins so small it shouldn’t be possible.

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Today will be better. I have faith. Also, I have a date. Tomorrow marks thirteen years of marriage for Eric and me, and we’re going to relax and enjoy the evening together sans kids. Woo!

Upcoming week’s going to be rough. A total of about 52 running miles, about half of which will be centered on Saturday. (Still waiting to hear from Rachel to see whether we’ll do them with running club or on a trail.) At least the weather will break a little bit; somebody told me that this summer is supposed to be warmer than average, and I ATE THEIR HEAD. Seriously, if I enjoy one thing about this place, it’s that summers don’t get hot, or at least not for more than a couple of weeks. Don’t mess with me, Wisconsin.

Oh, but we booked our Waterpark Hotel for when I’m running DWD. Somebody should be cool and splashy while I’m getting beaten up by rocks, bugs, and mud that morning, right?

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Cue me at the jewelry counter this afternoon, taking the ring box out of my purse. “My husband gave me this ring yesterday, and it won’t quite fit on my…” I said, just as the ring easily slipped onto my ring finger. I stared at it. She stared at me.

“Well, it actually looks a little big for you now,” she said. “That’s Wisconsin. But your hands seem to really change a lot!” Gee, thanks for making me feel even more freakish, ma’am.

So we toyed around. My wedding rings turned out to be a size and a half different from each other, which I don’t recall being the case, but I have no clue anymore. They both needed to come down about three sizes, and that was with me being firm that I didn’t want them quite as small as she thought they should be; after all, if my fingers are going to blow up and shrink down like balloons, I’d rather not have my circulation cut off at random intervals. I decided that the opal ring is fine; it might spin a little around the base of my finger, but it’s not slipping back up over the knuckle, either.

(Surreal moment of the exchange: when talking about my fingers, she referred to the base of my finger as “even tinier” than the top. “Tiny” was never a word I’ve ever heard used in reference to my fingers, ever. I recall actually remarking to my mother once that the fake hands used to model rings in the windows of jewelry stores had the longest, most slender fingers ever, and how I wished mine were like that. Now, according to websites for a few stores I just checked, I’m about half a size away from the bottom of what they typically stock. Unless, you know, it’s yesterday morning. Sheesh.)

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…Marathon in a little over a week. The weather, at this point, looks to be sunny, but with a high of seventy. That’s a little warm for my comfort zone. Oh, well; it’ll be warmer in July, when I’m running further and harder…

…Sump pump running. Please keep running, little pump.

…I’ve only got two more MOPS meetings (one official, one a “graduation breakfast”) before I’m aged out. What am I going to do without my regular infusion of adult contact next year? I’ve tried the PTA thing, and it doesn’t seem to be a fit for me.

I think I’m just grumpy from being tired, and I’m tired because my ear infection keeps me from getting a good night’s sleep. I’ve had an ear that’s been bugging me for a while, but on Monday, it finally pushed me to the point where I went to the doctor because it hurt so much. Well, I got ear drops for it, but they have a primary side effect of “ear pain,” and, yup, I got that side effect. The infection seems to be improving, but whenever something stirs me awake in the night (last night it was thunder), I become aware of the pulsing, dull ache, and it’s hard to get back to sleep after that. I don’t want to have to keep taking ibuprofen to deal with it, so I’m trying to tough it out…but I’m feeling pretty exhausted now. Yuck. At least it’s not as bad as it was, and I can tell the end is in sight for both drops and infection. In the meantime, I’m pretty glad it’s a step-back week and I don’t have to run so much…but I wish the weather was doing a better job of helping me stay upright and conscious. Thunderclouds and rain showers just make me want to go back to bed, even when I’m feeling 100%.

Somebody tell me something silly, something that’ll restore my bounciness?

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Just mowed the back yard. Another sign of warm weather’s return, and certainly one I could do without. Yuck. I could so live in a place without a yard, happily and contentedly, for the rest of my life. I don’t like gardening, I don’t like maintaining green space, and I really don’t like getting sweaty and dirty for what I see as a not very good reason. Nature should be able to take care of itself, as far as I’m concerned. But then Eric reminds me of bugs and rodents and other things that would also love for us to just let nature tend to itself around our house, and, well, out comes the mower. (And my bad attitude.)

Hey, speaking of nature, just a little bit ago, Sam and his neighborhood friends started frantically ringing our doorbell; apparently, a “crazy squirrel” was chasing them! And there it was, sitting on the steps of our porch: a baby squirrel, obviously very confused and not at all inclined to scurry off, no matter what noises Eric made at it. (I sat safely on the other side of the porch window, having seen America’s Funniest Home Videos enough to know what could happen next. Wildlife is wild, y’all.) He picked up a chair as though he was going to…bullfight it? Man, do I wish my camera batteries hadn’t been dead. Anyway, the squirrel was even more confused, and it ducked its little head down a step, while still maintaining an obvious curiosity about what this man would do next. A moment later, two neighbors strode up, drinks in hand. One held out an elbow to the squirrel…and it climbed on. According to the guy, this squirrel, among a group of other baby squirrels, was orphaned, so they were gathering them up. He walked away with it perched on his arm. I was too slow on the uptake to ask where he was taking it.

Weird, weird world, come the middle months.

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But once I was out, it was a glorious day for a ride. Did have an interesting moment when I stopped for lunch. I went into a restaurant, and the table kept vibrating unnervingly under my forearms. I remarked to the waitress that I hadn’t thought the roads were that bumpy, that I should be dealing with the reverberations so long after I stopped riding, and she told me that that particular table vibrated, due to something on the other side of the wall.

Now it’s feeling a little chillier, due to wind picking up, so I came home and checked the weather site…and there’s a Tornado Watch until 8 this evening. Yay? Some storms are supposed to crop up around 7, turn into real gangbusters later on, and then (HOPEFULLY!) disappear in time for my friends’ marathon and my own long run tomorrow morning. Going to be a warm one for that sort of running, but that’s better than storms or tornadoes…which will also HOPEFULLY not re-arise tomorrow afternoon or evening and make Eric’s return in any way complicated. Up with that, I will not put!

Trying one of these for the first time, in Cherry Pomegranate. It’s mushier than the picture indicates, with less delineation between the fruit and the crust. I think I like it better this way. It reminds me a lot of Larabars, except that since I sometimes find the dates overpowering in those (except in the peanut butter varieties), this is a pleasant alternative! Go, Clif! (Wish your pace teams were doing Green Bay. )

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Now we’re nine years out from college…and this book has me feeling like I could throw up, just anticipating. Don’t wanna go through this! Save me!

To how many schools did you apply? Money was an issue for us, like it is for most folks, so my parents had me limit my choices to five schools. I had the blessed fortune to be born a “good tester,” so my PSAT, SAT, and ACT scores had me getting sheaves of college pamphlets in the mail every day, which eventually took over an entire corner of our living room. Overwhelmed! I first made a short list by geography (Mom wouldn’t let me go further than a few hours away from home), and then I called each school to verify which had A) bona fide music composition majors (as opposed to a few composition classes under an umbrella of “Music Theory/Comp”), and B) large marching bands. (Okay, we all had our own priorities; don’t judge.) In the end, I submitted apps to:

1) University of Maryland (in-state; most likely to fully fund me)
2) Penn State
3) Frostburg State
4) West Virginia University
5) James Madison University

Of the five, JMU was my favorite. Sadly, they were also the only one to give almost nothing in the way of scholarship money, so it was off the table for us. Penn State also didn’t come through with much aid. Frostburg and Maryland offered full tuition packages, but I heard rumors that their music composition major was on the chopping block (which turned out to be accurate), so I nixed them; Maryland’s counselors actively tried to steer me away from music composition and into computer programming at my interview (saying I could then get a Master’s in theory and not do a composition program until the doctoral level…), so I had misgivings there as well.

WVU offered a full ride and no warning bells. Let’s go, Mountaineers! And despite my concerns about the lack of a single, contained campus (oh, JMU was so pretty when we visited!), it was probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made – and not just because Eric was a student there already, just waiting to meet me.

In hindsight, I probably had it easy with the whole college selection and admission process. My program wasn’t extremely competitive to enter (that was left for grad school), and I knew that Ivy League was financially out of the question before I even entertained the thought. I can only hope and pray my boys have it as easy as I did, with solid test scores and reasonable criteria for their schools. I’d of course love to see them at our alma mater…but it’s up to them. (But I’ll be honest enough to admit that I do pray that they’ll at least go to college. I don’t think I’m unusual in that wish.) I think that’s part of what’s making me antsy as I read the book, though; staying hands-off is sometimes a challenge for me, and that’s a theme for the parents in the story. I can identify with them and their stress far too easily.

Nine years. Six, probably, until the real stress starts. Hold me!

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I’m roasting everything tonight. Honestly, I just looked at my vegetable drawers, realized that not only couldn’t I decide between them, but that some of them were approaching the “use or lose” time, and opted for mass chopping, oiling, salting, and traying. My oven is full. (But not with green beans. )

Haven’t figured out a kid-friendly vehicle for them, though. I have no problem at all with a bowl of veggies, maybe topped with crumbled goat cheese (okay, now I might have a problem if I don’t get said bowl), but it’s a little carb-empty, and the boys will complain (though Gabe picked out the cauliflower and broccoli!). Maybe some bread or noodles.

I feel grouchy and restless. It’s the impending rain; it’s supposed to start soon and continue through Monday night. Now, that’s a mood killer.

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Apropos of nothing, my dad gave us some rewards points he had accumulated, and in the epitome of “you are such a grown-up, and a very boring one at that,” I got silverware. Well, my spoons kept disappearing, and I replaced them with cheap ones, and they make me frown. These are heavy and shiny. They arrived today and I lurve them. Shaddup.

It’s the little things, you know, that keep you grounded when you’re going out-of-your-mind insane.

One more day until the kids’ Spring Break! Taking a lil’ trip westward, to which I alluded in my last post. Just a few days over the break, though; nothing major. One of those arm-sprouting things, though; gotta wash clothes, pack, get a hotel, pray loudly and fervently that the potential for any rain disappears and gives us pleasant weather the whole time we’re there…But getting away from the house is good right now, as it’ll keep my mind occupied and off the other things I’m trying to juggle, some of which could require more than a single extra appendage to handle. (I hope. Well, not literally; I don’t specifically wish to turn mutant. It’s just that I hope for fruition, even if it feels like superpowers could be necessary. Maybe I’ll just look into my very own Doc Ock suit; would that work better?)

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At least it’s a running step-back week, so I won’t be running for huge amounts of time either day.

I think we’re going to have to split up for parts, with Eric attending the Classic while I take the boys to the movie night. The alternative means running around wildly and crossing fingers that nothing crops up. Of course, we don’t have to attend anything except the choir rehearsals and the performances; nothing else has received our official commitment yet. I think I’ll avoid telling the boys about most of the events; that way, if we have to skip something in the interest of sanity, they won’t be too disappointed.

*I am really not looking forward to shepherding Sam through these. He’s not good about accepting help graciously, but he also gets horribly intimidated by what he perceives as large amounts of work. Either I leave him to his own devices and listen to him complain at the top of his lungs while avoiding putting actual pencil to paper, or else I sit with him and have to repeatedly ask him to quit abusing me and my good graces. What usually happens is an alternation of the two, with me getting up and leaving each time he gets toxic because I’m not doing the work for him, then returning when he panics, apologizes, and freaks out over the whole thing. (I don’t immediately return, mind you; I’m not trying to perpetuate the cycle.) It’s miserable all around.

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Dessert Derby on Sunday. Looking forward to that immensely, even though I’ve gone back into meal and nutrition planning in an effort to get myself in the best possible shape for the upcoming races. One day of All The Desserts won’t kill me, or even cause me to DNF.

…All right. Three bags of clothes first, and then the dishes. Ready, set…

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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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Unrelated, but making me smile: Sam left his copy of The Lightning Thief at school, “where I have more free time to read it!” And I think I believe him. (Little brothers do tend to interrupt quiet reading time around here.)

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I haven’t the foggiest idea what I’m making for dinner tonight, and we don’t even have much in the way of raw ingredients to begin making it, but the boys are playing happily and peacefully upstairs and I don’t want to ruin it. On the other hand, Eric’s at the gym, and sometimes he comes home from there with some pretty wonky blood sugars (oh, come on; “hinky” isn’t a word, but “wonky” is?), and it might be nice to be able to present food to him. What would be really nice would be to have an idea for a dinner that both boys would enjoy. Sam has been begging for white bean soup for a while, and I’d like some, too, but Gabe would probably eat the bowl and spoon before so much as tasting the soup. (He’s still on a jag of mostly cheese, bananas, and ham, with occasional requests for chicken nuggets and pizza. Only the fact that I know Sam did this, too, keeps me sane.)

Oh, here they are. Playtime has ended; nightly demands for food (“Can we make cookies? Right now?”) have commenced. I guess it’s grocery store time. (And not (just) for cookie-related items.)

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Last night, Eric had to work late, so I had to take the kids to church by myself. I growled at them on the way there, and then I sat through choir practice with a sour feeling and, I’m sure, a sour look on my face. Heart-shaped Valentine’s Day cookies had been brought in, so I had a sugar hit that I didn’t need, and then I was sharp with the kids all the way home again. Eric was home by then, and he must have had a premonition, because, God bless him, he was folding laundry when I walked in the door. He assessed the situation, helped wrangle the kids into bed, and then told me firmly that I have Saturday “off”: I’ll go for my run, come home and clean up, and then hit the door and not return until at least dinner. He told me to go to a bookstore, if I wanted, get a book, and then read most of it over coffee (a relaxing mug, not the copious amounts with which I’ve been dosing myself and hardly even tasting). “Relax” was his order.

I don’t deserve this man.

I confessed to him that on an ordinary free day, I’d probably see about asking a friend to meet me, but the only thing I really want right now is an extended period in which I don’t have to open my mouth to talk to anybody. I need peace. I need to be with just me, to refill myself. Then, perhaps, I’ll be able to get back to normal.

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Today I ran. I didn’t fall down once.

Tonight I have a clothing-swap party to attend, and tomorrow looks to be insanely busy, with running club in the morning, followed by Sam’s Pinewood Derby for Scouts, and then a spaghetti dinner and movie night for Gabe’s preschool. Inhale, exhale. There are no static poses in yoga, and none in life, either.

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Better “new”: Eric and I tried a televised, on-demand yoga workout this weekend. I’ve attempted yoga in the past, with little success, and I figured it was one of those things that A) really require a live teacher over an on-screen one, and B) are better left to people without fused-straight lower backs. Still, we did our best, and I found that I’m much better at yoga now that I’ve lost weight and can better support myself on my arms than I could before. I was surprised when Eric informed me that I was, indeed, forming a triangle when I did Downward-Facing Dog; in the past, I was more of a distorted rectangle. We’re going for it again tonight, hopefully. This could be fun, and it might help with some parts of my legs that are less flexible than others, as per the physical therapist who helped me through my ITBS a long while back.

Yesterday, we took the kids to a benefit for Dan DeMatthew yesterday, and Sam spent the whole time staring in awe at the crowd of people packed into the hall. “He must be a really nice man!” he kept saying. “All these people really like him!” Then, because he’s Sam and has his own priorities in assessing a man’s character, “Do you think he likes nature?”

Need to go flip laundry now.

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Results: I had several large mugs of coffee this morning, with no food to cushion the blow to my system, as I flung together random ingredients and made this:

Red pepper and goat cheese frittata. I think it looks good, but I also think my computer chair is softly bouncing as I type this. Or maybe it’s the computer screen. Bounce, bounce…

Gabe is dressed up for MOPS, for some reason. He wore a necktie last night for our church portraits (side note: it takes a special kind of optimism on a photographer’s part to push forward in trying to sell packages to couples who burst out laughing, harder and harder, with each take shown to them. “I look completely drugged!” “Sam looks like he’s about to barf!” “So…we can do twelve wallets, and a lovely eight-by-ten for you?”), and now he’s taken with the idea. Never mind that one doesn’t usually sport an ivory necktie with a long-sleeved tee-shirt; he thinks he looks “fancy.” Well, I suppose he does, at that.

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Sam had no school today, but Gabe did, which posed an interesting situation. Sam is old enough that I could have been comfortable leaving him in the house (with the internet access disabled, of course) without me while I ran a short while, so he and I agreed to that plan initially. Then, though, I had a bad experience yesterday evening, when a planned two-plus-hour run turned into a less than ninety-minute one, with the last few miles being more of a stumble-lurch. My body felt exhausted, and my left foot was feeling a little achy. I felt okay this morning, but I decided that the run should be in the gym, on a treadmill; that way, the moment I felt any foot discomfort, I could immediately alter the workout into a cross-training session. Sam brought along a book, and we hit the gym after dropping off Gabe at preschool.

Thankfully, my foot was just fine, though I did keep myself to a shorter run than I’ve been doing on Mondays as of late. Better safe than sorry! After that, we met Eric for lunch, got Sam a haircut (church portraits on Wednesday), and then, after getting Gabe again, hit Hobby Lobby for some paint and extras for the upcoming Scouts Pinewood Derby.

(That was “take 2,” after the first attempt got photobombed (videobombed?) by Gabe, as is becoming predictable around here.)

I can hardly believe January is almost over; in Hobby Lobby, I saw the Valentine’s Day stuff was already discounted, and I had a bit of panic, as I haven’t even begun to think about the boys’ Valentine’s stuff this year. Gabe is just fine with that; he’s already begun grumbling about how “Valentine’s is about love, and I’m NOT getting a girlfriend for Valentine’s Day! Yuck!”

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At 7, when he goes down to shower, go to wake up kids – a little earlier than usual, but the older kid has to do some extra homework that he didn’t get done before Scouts the night before. Try to kiss the preschooler awake, and get an (accidental, he claims) elbow to the eye. Retreat; hear the garbage truck coming, and hurry to get the garbage to the curb before attempting to finish your coffee in peace.

Before you can get the coffee down, there’s a crisis: the older kid, despite being told not to, wore his glasses to bed last night, and now they’re “broken.” Examine them and find they’re simply missing a screw on the side. You don’t have a glasses repair kit handy, so you fix it with beading wire and a Swiss Army knife. Insist that he eat breakfast.

Comb the baby’s hair, despite the wriggling. Brush the baby’s teeth, ditto.

Argue over the homework issue (he claims it’s not due today, though the homework planner doesn’t say that, and he’s tried to get out of homework in the past using that route). Don’t yell, and be very proud of yourself for not yelling (so what if your voice started to go up a little there at the end?). Get him situated with his desk and paper. Say goodbye to the husband; feed the baby breakfast and pack two lunches (no apple for the big kid, who just takes three bites and throws the rest away, so he gets the fiber-enriched applesauce instead) while providing helpful haiku-writing tips and spelling assistance.

Go upstairs, and multitask your way through stripping and changing the bed sheets, throwing on running clothes, and coaching the baby through writing the word “SWORD” (it’s the letter S week at preschool) on a piece of paper. (“How do I make a W?” Write it in the air for him several times, then help him fix the “M” he made instead.) The big kid finishes his homework, and he’s on his way out the door when you spy his reading book on the floor; chase him down and cram it into his backpack.

Gather more laundry; brush your own teeth and hair. Discover your half-mug of coffee, now cold. Coach the baby into how to write a 5 (“like an S on which somebody dropped a rock”). Breathe: you have five minutes before you have to leave the house in which to do so.

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So, come out, come out, wherever you are. I’ll even give you a question to answer in a comment, to make it easier! Just something that’s been brewing in my head since I posted a group picture from my high school graduation, and a friend commented how we “thought we were so cool.” I honestly don’t remember feeling cool that day – or many days at all, back as a teenager. Now, looking at that picture, I think I probably was “cooler” than I felt, big hair and all. So, for your own consideration: when in your life was your own self-esteem highest?

If you don’t feel like answering that, say hi anyway. Hello!

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And then I came home, showered, dressed, and subsequently felt like a human popsicle when I had to go back out to the DMV. Should have run to there instead.

I seem to recall at least several occasions when I was told to dress preschooler Sam in snow clothes before dropping him off at school, since they’d be going outside to play. I bundle Gabe up the same way: snow pants, boots, etc. Today, they brought in a giant bin on wheels, full of snow for the kids to enjoy in climate-controlled comfort. I’m not sure how to feel about that. (For the record, Gabe has no desire to play in the snow beyond a rough academic sense: “I could make a snowman,” he says, before finding his markers and paper, settling down for the afternoon. He prefers to run and play in the gymnasium. )

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(I won, I won, I won, I won…!)

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Bad: dental appointment. “Just” a cleaning, which is no consolation for a dental-phobe.

Good: homemade bean soup.

Bad: heartburn.

Good: boys in bed early, resting quietly.

Bad: the fact that they’re in bed early because of rampant misbehavior.

Really bad (and the reason I’m doing this entry in bullet-type form instead of prose): a tummy that’s getting more upset by the moment, making me wonder whether I ought to go get a bowl to keep by the bed. Hopefully it’s just stress and the heartburn. I’m going to try to sleep it off now.

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So, now that I’m back at my own desk, I can take a moment to think about the past year and the coming one. A recap!
January: The recession comes to roost, and we weather worries about Eric’s job stability. Luckily, he remains employed, though many of our nearest and dearest do not.
February: Like every other February in these parts, it was all about the snow and ice. I ran a lot, trying to keep the SAD away. Also, Sam got his first crush at school.
March: Eric’s dad had quadruple bypass heart surgery, but came through okay. I hit my peak training for my first marathon.
April: Apparently, my mind was on my marathon taper, as that’s just about all I wrote about.
May: I ran a marathon! We went to Chicago for our 12th wedding anniversary! I had the start of my dental badness, but overall, a good month!
June: The start of summer. Did the Lighthouse Run in a heat wave that kicked everybody’s butt, but I came in 2nd in my age group anyway. Sam turned eight, and we learned that low-key parties are the best.
July: Hit a weird emotional low, but my parents’ visit up here resurrected me. More dental badness.
August: Eric’s dad came to visit! Went on a mostly successful family vacation to Green Bay! A good month, all around.
September: School started for both kids, and Gabe loved his new school. Training peaked for my running. Even more dental badness.
October: Ran another marathon, which included a trip back east to enjoy my family. My baby turned five, which made me feel antique.
November: Had a sort-of impromptu trip back to Ohio for Thanksgiving, and I ran a 5K with Alysia, which was phenomenally great.
December: Oh, the holidays! And they felt crammed into a short time this year, with the last week feeling the longest, encompassing the travel and family love.

Nobody died this year, which was a huge thing! A few downs, plenty of ups; it wasn’t what I’d call a “stable” year, but it wasn’t catastrophic, either. I’d love to see 2010 be a slow rise upward, and I’d sacrifice a couple of the elated spikes to avoid the stomach-dropping lows. Not all of them, though. Life needs excitement, even at the price of some scariness. The big theme of the year seems to have been seeing and taking more opportunities to be with our loved ones, which was wonderful.

This morning, I hit upon a good theme for myself over the next year. In honor of the late awesome Urban Couch, 2010 will be the year of “Do you really believe that?” Asking myself that whenever I catch myself falling into assumptions or ruts will help shake me out of dangerous comfort zones and redefine my limits. We want to grab hold of our budget with both hands, for example, and I’ve not got a good history with that. But do I really believe that I just can’t handle money? Do I really believe that it’s beyond me, honestly? No. No more than I believe that 50 kilometers is beyond me, as I’ll prove this summer.

Here we go! Happy New Year!

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It was snowing pretty hard an hour or so ago, but now, as we’re about to hit the road again, it’s tapered a bit. Good thing; we’ve got hours to go before home. Man, I could have used another half-hour of sleep; the boys woke me up early with the old classic “He’s touching me!” routine. Man, it’s funnier when Cosby’s doing it than when it’s being performed live by your own offspring.

Hey, did you know? Some guy told us in the hotel lobby, though I haven’t verified it with my own eyes: apparently, on the old capitol building, the builders originally misspelled the name of the city, in huge sandstone carving: FRANKFÜRT instead of (the Americanized) FRANKFORT. In true Southern practicality, instead of tearing it down to correct it, they shrugged and decided that would be the back of the building. If I can, I really want a photo of that before we leave.

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Anyway, grabbing dinner with Eric’s brother before officially driving out, so I’ll catch up more later!

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Good: Got my run in, if a little slow, due to ice and darkness.

Good: Sam woke up feeling a little better than he did yesterday, when he came home with a cold.

Bad: We were watching some old movies on the computer, and Sam spotted an old plastic truck that we once had. He asked where it was, and I told him I didn’t know. In a fit of nostalgia and independence, Sam decided then to take it upon himself to go in search of the truck…in the basement. Where I was keeping the Christmas gifts, which were yet to be wrapped. I didn’t realize what was happening until he brought a handful of the things upstairs to show to Gabe; he didn’t even know that they were Christmas presents. I shrieked, and he was horrified. Then we spent the next several hours with him alternately telling me to take them back to the store and then calling himself names. Now he’s just working hard to forget everything he saw.

Good: The boys and I had lunch at a place we don’t visit often, and they had a great cream of mushroom soup. So delicious!

Bad: We went in search of snow gear for both kids, and the behavior was horrendous. We were able to get pants for them both, but we had to head for home before I could track down boots for Sam; apparently, his size is nonexistent, since I couldn’t find them anywhere.

Good:

Bad: It’s all deteriorated from there, and I’m just counting the minutes until bedtime.

So it was probably a wash, all in all, balanced even in the dramatic peak (gingerbread construction, done in complete cooperation and harmony and leading to a respectable-looking house) and nadir (the present fiasco). I’m not left with strongly positive or negative feelings, so much as utter exhaustion. Tomorrow begins Eric’s holiday, and I may take the opportunity to escape!

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We’re in the 50-75% zone. And there’s snow on the ground right now, with temps in the coming days that don’t look high enough to melt it. Mind, there’s not much snow, but it’s there. It was enough that I broke out the YakTrax for my run this morning, and that I was glad to have them when one of the running club members slipped and rolled down a little hill right behind me. He’s fine, happily, but I’m just as glad it wasn’t me who felt the group’s good-natured ribbing after that!

We went to church for the rest of the morning, preparing for tomorrow’s cantata. Eric and I have a duet in the cantata; he refers to it more as a solo for me, with him accompanying me for the chorus, but that’s neither here nor there. I don’t like using microphones, and these are the sort that basically require you to put your nose directly on the metal in order to work their best. “Pretend it’s an ice cream cone,” the sound folks told me. I muttered something to Eric about having seen Trent Reznor do something similar, but I’m not sure how acceptable that’d be for a church music program.

Anyway! Moving on!

Related to absolutely nothing except that I love soup when things get cold and snowy, I have to highly recommend the Pacific Natural Foods boxed soups. I know! Soup in a box! It’s positively not the sort of thing you’d admit to enjoying, most cases, but these, or at least the ones I’ve tried, are really really good. I had the Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato first, and now I’ve also had the Cashew Carrot Ginger; both are delicious! I had a bowl of it tonight with a wrap sandwich I made (spicy black bean dip, sun-dried tomatoes, pepperjack cheese, sunflower sprouts, roasted red peppers, and spinach), and I feel completely satisfied, both in belly and mouth. And it’s pretty light in calories, for a cream soup, and nutritious, too! Go forth and enjoy.

Bedtime for Bonzos, I think; they’ve begun to chase each other around the house with scary pictures they’ve drawn. As far as play activities go, I’d call that fairly creative, but it’s time to bring the madness to an end.

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We had a really good speaker at MOPS this morning, discussing holiday traditions – how the original Christmas was about as simple as it could get, and how we’ve turned it into something too complicated, too chaotic, and way too money-based (apparently about $450 billion dollars in America alone, last year). It was thought-provoking, to say the least. We probably do far less in the way of certain traditions than many folks, due to geographical constraints; it’s easy to avoid running from one house to another on Christmas Eve and Day when your families are almost more than a full day’s drive away. We still spend too much, though. Some years have been better for us, when we’ve gone into it with a coherent plan to which we manage to keep fairly closely. This year hasn’t been that year. And we’re doing the travel thing, too, leaving on Christmas day – not what I would have chosen, but the best way to maximize our available time before Eric and the boys have to return to work and school.

We have only a few traditions, when it comes to it. We put up and decorate the tree fairly close to the day after Thanksgiving, and I like to do it as a family. We go to the Christmas party that Eric’s company holds for employees’ children. I have a wooden Advent “calendar” tree, on which we hang an ornament each day (Sam is very good about remembering to do this, even when I forget). Christmas morning is organized: we hand ’round the gifts in an orderly fashion, and then we take turns opening one gift, letting everybody fawn over it before moving on. Each of us gets a Christmassy sweater as one of our gifts, and (one of my family’s traditions when I was growing up that I’ve decided to keep) each stocking’s assortment of items includes a magazine or comic book. These are simple things, and while some new traditions may also stick (making recipes from Eric’s mom’s stockpile of holiday treats, for example), there’s nothing too fancy or distracting on the horizon.

And then there’s me, who last year went on a neighborhood run late in the morning, enjoying the sights and sounds of the holiday, and who very much plans to do that this year, next year, and every year to come. It’ll be my own tradition – my time to reflect, breathe, and feel the joy that the day is supposed to have. Yes, family; yes, Christ. But yes, too, to blood pumping fast in my veins, letting me feel breathlessly alive and ready for more. That’s my holiday. God bless us, every run.

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Further off, I’m waiting to finish the Christmas shopping (a little more when Gabe’s in school tomorrow, I hope), waiting for the actual holiday, waiting for our trip. I’m waiting for another race, waiting for another training cycle. Waiting for spring – oh, yes, definitely that. I could wish I was a more patient person, but, yes, I am the person who eats cookies right off the tray, right out of the oven, with them falling apart all over the place and getting my fingers covered in melty goo.

And too much impatience…leads to silliness.

It’s been a long day.

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…A clear-cut plan of exactly what we and everybody else will doing for the holidays. Pretty sure we’re heading for West Virginia at some point, but where and when? And my folks are talking about driving down to see us, details predicated on those other details. And where will my brother be?

…A New Year’s race in West Virginia. (I don’t think Santa’s got one of those for me in his bag. )

…The satisfaction of having my shopping done, minus the actual work of having done it. (Please, Santa? )

…Two dozen cookies for Gabe’s preschool party, and an appetizer for a holiday party I’m attending myself. I’m thinking I probably shouldn’t try to get away with buying something unless things get fairly desperate.

…A way for Eric and me to attend two different events at the same time on Wednesday night (not that our individual conflicts with choir practice are even for the same event, either).

…More coffee. Always more coffee.

…An unseasonal heat wave, so that I don’t have to spend chunks of Christmas break deciding between running in the dark or on a treadmill. I’m not strongly enamored of the jogging stroller, with a bike rider in tow, but at least it would be another option, and one I can’t do in snow and ice.

…Your favorite interesting cocktail recipe. Comment bonanza!

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I remember going for days without sleep back in college. Oh, the music one could write without the sanity gained from regular REM cycles! Admittedly, the course work for other classes got a bit sketchier under those circumstances, but it did tend to lend a certain ability to cut through the chaff and say exactly what one meant. Without sleep, while I was taking a self-guided research course one summer, I wrote a positively scathing paper on a particular modern composer who I found (and still find) to be a pretentious lunatic. Turned out that the professor leading the self-guided course had just returned – in time to accept and grade my paper – from a meditation seminar with said composer. Awkward…

Jokes get way funnier when you haven’t slept in a while. Stories get much more entertaining, at least once you get past the initial stage of tired grumpiness, in which you bite people’s heads off if they seem to be straying from a single point. Go beyond that, and the brain becomes far more open to following any tale in any direction. Art is more stimulating – especially when it seems to be moving around inside the frame. And it’s an oil painting. Of still life. Oh, the places you can go!

Of course, there are drawbacks. I’m afraid that Eggs Benedict are on a lifetime ban from my menus, after I ate a plate of them when I came off working an all-night shift at a restaurant and then went to stand in line for financial aid at the student union. I think sleep is required for the digestion of hollandaise sauce, perhaps. I remember that Eric and a friend of ours were having a grand time that morning, having giggle fit after giggle fit over the episodes of “Captain Planet” and “The Head” they’d stayed up watching all night long. One of them would mutter, “‘Man with big head uses secret purple monkey technique!” and they would both be on the ground. I was already on the ground, groaning over the eggs. Perhaps sleep would have been a wise choice for all of us that day.

Earlier than that, back in high school, I remember staying up nearly all night studying advanced chemistry, which I had no business taking in the first place. I understood next to none of it, but I struggled on, and that meant very late hours of rereading the same textbook sections, over and over, as if I’d have a breakthrough moment on the forty-ninth trip through. Oh, I had moments, but only when the words would begin to rearrange themselves on the page and spell out new and exciting messages to me. And I wasn’t even a coffee drinker back then; who knows what I could have managed with chemical stimulants?

Now I am in my mid-thirties, and I could perhaps say that I know better, but the truth is more simple: despite all logic, I’ve become a morning person. Can’t blame the kids; they would prefer to stay up late and sleep even later. This one is all me, and it’s working for now. And so I head off to my comforter, my pillow, and my dreams. Good night!

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I also replenished my chia stash at the store, which had big jugs of it instead of the little baggies my local natural food store keeps on hand. Making a tiny pot of Irish oats for myself right now, all stirred up with a banana and the chia. Might add some pumpkin butter, walnuts, and a touch of the peanut butter granola I got for crunch. Mmmm!

Gabe was AMAZINGLY well behaved at the grocery yesterday, despite all signs going in that he wasn’t in the mood to be. Seriously, I grabbed a cup of coffee from the counter as I entered, and he was an absolute chimpanzee while I was trying to do that, but then we hit the customer service desk for the “kids’ surprise” before shopping, and he got a mango-flavored fruit leather, which…well, I bet they laced the thing with opiates or something. Not that I’m complaining. “Cooperative” doesn’t begin to touch his behavior for the rest of the time! He walked happily next to me, quietly pointed out interesting things on the shelves, and didn’t even flip his lid when I decided not to get the $20 wheel of goat cheese he thought would be delicious in his lunches.

Sam has “Pajama Day” at school today, but I don’t know how this will work, since all of his pajamas are thin flannel things, not up to withstanding single-digit temps. I doubt they’ll let kids head to the bathrooms to change upon arrival, either. Hmph.

Time to go wake Eric.

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I’m sort of proud, really; we managed to finish a book report and have both kids ready with their respective memorizations, right on time. No eleventh-hour “I can’t find my shoe!” freakouts, even!

But then we were made late to church by the roads, which required extra caution. We didn’t wind up getting anything close to the Snowpocalypse the weather folk predicted, but we got icy slush and rain (which really made today’s seven-miler entertaining!), and now temperatures are dropping sharply and freezing every bit of that moisture. Slip-sliding away…

I’ve hated winter driving ever since I flipped and totaled my little hatchback in college, heading home from Eric’s house over Christmas break. Black ice caught me by surprise that day, and it had me terrified for ages. I don’t get cold chills when I have to drive in snow anymore, but I wouldn’t call myself relaxed, either – and it doesn’t help when two little boys are yammering about the Ten Commandments from behind me. “At least my mind will have been on my Maker if I have to go meet him now,” I decided as I tried to navigate the sharp turn that would either take me to the church or send me sailing down the hill into Lake Michigan. (As I’m typing this now, I obviously am neither underwater or in the arms of God, but…well, it’s going to be a long winter.)

Wednesdays are busy, and this one is finally coming to a close. I’m in bed with the netbook writing this, trying to stay awake so I can catch the finale of Top Chef with Eric, and then I’ll draw a happy double-bar on the day. Good night!

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All I know is that I’m supposed to run seven miles tomorrow, and I had my fill of treadmilling for the week already. Gabe didn’t have school today, it being Tuesday, and I couldn’t very well push a jogging stroller through the snow, even with only an inch or so. I suppose I could have gone in the wee hours of the morning, before Eric left for work, and I could do that tomorrow if school gets canceled for both kids, but I really hate running in the snow and ice with only a flashlight to light my way. It has to happen on occasion, but that doesn’t mean I don’t dread it.

Might be the last year I can discuss the kids’ Christmas presents on this page (sooner or later, Sam’ll catch onto me!), but I’m considering snowshoes this year. Even Eric seemed intrigued by the idea, so if I can find good enough deals, maybe we can all get some and have some family fun time. I’m not really a fan of extended time in freezing weather, but as we live in the frozen north, we might as well make the best of it, right? We should probably even take the kids sledding; we got them a sled, but they’ve never used to it go down a hill steeper than what gets formed from shoveling our driveway into the yard. Admittedly, that’s pretty darn steep in these parts, compared to what I grew up knowing, but still…

I think I’m just grumpy due to not knowing exactly what’s happening tonight (or even right this moment; it’s dark out there!) or how to prepare for it. If it’s going to snow, I want to see it coming; if it’s not, that’s more than fine, but I don’t want to psych myself up unnecessarily. That bizarre little character in my brain who rejoices in chaos and calamity always gets so disappointed when life continues as usual.

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Seriously, though, if I got the kids the Super Mario chess set, some kick-butt Nerf guns, and a Nintendoed-up playroom, I’d be Mother of the Century. And I won’t go into what I’d get for Eric, because…well, I might. Or might not. He’s a sneaky and talented gift-guesser.

Actually, folks keep bugging me about what they really ought to get me for Christmas, as it seems that I’ve finally reached that stage in most of my hobbies where people simply have no idea what I might need. Eric is scratching his head, and if the man who lives with me doesn’t know, it doesn’t bode well for my parents. Honestly? Even I had to stop and think about it, because there aren’t many obvious things that live in the area between the large “Neat, but I really don’t want one” zone and the smaller “Necessary, and I can’t see waiting for some arbitrary day to obtain it” one. I don’t have a lot of use for knick-knacks; we’re up to our ears in blankets; and while I’m always reading, picking out books for somebody is like picking out their underwear. You need to have a very, very intimate knowledge of the person to get it right.

In the end, I just suggest arm warmers, compression socks (ooh, Zensah), and whatnot. So creative, I am. Maybe a subscription to TrailRunner magazine, if I’m feeling punchy.

What’s on your list?

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Why am I doing this again?

Gabe had a checkup today. The doctor pronounced him well. Go, Gabe. Hard to become a successful evil overlord without your health (Davros notwithstanding).

It’s Tuesday, which means Eric’s out late with his Scrabble gang. That leaves the kids’ Bible Blast studying for me tonight, which I’ve taken to doing snuggled up in bed with them on either side of me. It would work better if Gabe was a snuggler when less than 75% sleepy, at which point he’d be no good for studying, anyway. Actually, I’m not sure there exists a point at which he’s “good” for studying. I am so not looking forward to his school years if things stay like they are…

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More up at Flickr.

The kids are now back at school, and we’ll try to get back into a groove before Christmas holidays hit and derail everything again. We put up the tree tonight, which went much faster than in years past, now that Gabe is old enough to be goal-oriented in the task. On the other hand, it got much more frustrating with four hands trying to plunge into the little box of used-to-be-hooks (which are now more of a free-form wire sculpture). Eric’s at the store buying more hooks now, for the handful of ornaments that didn’t make it to the tree before we ran out of salvageable hangers. We probably don’t technically need to have those ornaments up, but the chance for quiet was too tempting to skip…

Sam argues that we needed to wait on the tree, as apparently it won’t be “Christmas season” until tomorrow, when we flip the calendar to December. Gabe is simply going to be incensed when it comes time to take it all down.

I fade. Bedtime.

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Doesn’t help that I’m still being a “good girl,” mostly, and sticking to my recovery plan, which is preventing me from ramping up my miles too quickly. I feel down, and running lots and lots of miles helps, but that’s something I “can’t” do right now – not and steer clear of injury. Tonight, a cross-training night, I went to the gym and hiked up a mountain on the treadmill for an hour, which was all right, but sort of like a friendly handshake when what you need is a lengthy Swedish massage. Five miles of running allotted to me tomorrow. Like Oliver, I’m all, “Please, sir, might I have some more?” only slightly more pathetic-looking.

Sam had a church play this morning. It went fairly well, though I do wish he looked a little less like he’d rather be undergoing dental surgery when he’s up on the stage. (At least he didn’t fall clean off the front of the stage, as one little girl did; the look on her face before she burst into horrified tears almost made me cry.) Sam just grimaces and does the choreography in a halfhearted, slightly delayed, manner, conveying extreme discomfort and reluctance. But he voluntarily auditioned for and was given a group solo part, which he performed without reluctance, so…I dunno. In the fall, Gabe will be in that class, too, and will therefore also be in the plays; when we told him that today, he reaction was vehemently negative. Not sure what to do; we have to attend that service, as choir members, and there’s no other Sunday School class for their age group. I don’t know whether kids can opt out or not. Of course, with Gabe, it’s likely he’ll change his mind a zillion times about being on stage before it’s even an issue.

Head hurts a little. I’m thinking early bedtime tonight, if it can be arranged.

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There’s nothing like a “Design your own…” project to make me preemptively worry about contact from the school’s counselor. (Gabe is especially impressed by how Sam has apparently given his monster design an attached chainsaw “that can break you in half!”) Then again, it’s a monster-making project, right after Halloween. I’m sure Sam’s won’t be the only one with a touch of the morbid.

There’s nothing like a surprise mention of running in a math assignment to foster an impromptu “extracurricular” discussion. (“So if the third marathoner finishes at 10:47, like it says, then he’s probably qualified for Boston! Um, Sam, you still with me? Sam?”)

There’s nothing like hunger to make anything taste better. Broccoli, NOM, NOM, NOM.

There’s nothing like an eight-year-old reading over your shoulder (“Nom, nom, nom! HA-HA-HA!”) to completely derail your train of thought.

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Gabe’s birthday party last night went very well. We had it at a pottery-painting place, and each kid got to paint a little figurine. Then there was cake, which was a very pleasant surprise. I mean, here’s how the talk went with the bakery lady:

“I want zombies crawling out of the cake!” [ME: "Honey, I don't think they can do that."] “Okay, ghosts and tombstones. And a yellow cake, with white frosting, and blue! And yellow! And orange and green, and no chocolate, and Halloween on it, but not too scary!”

Give that woman a raise. (Other pictures at Flickr; click that photo to get there.) And it was just the right size cake, with no leftovers! (This was a fairly important point to me, in my current state of “Let go of the taper weight-gain.” ) Actually most of the kids ate only about half their piece; it was a very rich frosting, and what they did eat was more than enough to turn the end of the party into a wild sort of affair!

I’m going to finish drinking this coffee and try to warm myself up a bunch before we trudge out into the wind tonight. Hopefully, it won’t be too scary out there for Gabe – but, then, sometimes it’s worth it. The other night, we were tickling him and roughhousing, and he squealed, “Stop! I’m a-feared!”

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Chatted with a friend today at a MOPS playdate, and I may just strong-arm her into doing either the Army Ten-Miler or the half-marathon at the Air Force Marathon. (You won’t mind, will you, Karri? ) I do intend to do both of them at some point (the full distance at the Air Force), and I’d love some training company!

My marathon photos are up! Boy, you can tell which photos were snapped late in the race; my form went all to pieces as I got more and more tired. Those ones where I look all strong, with my arms raised, aren’t lying; I did feel pretty good at that point. The guy in the blue shirt must not have, and he joked as we passed the first one that this would probably be the last photo ever taken of him. We passed the second photographer about twenty seconds later, and I said, “No, this one will be the last!” He found that funny.

Other funny things I saw along the course:

• The guy on the bridge around mile 20 wearing a Grim Reaper costume, ringing a bell and holding a sign that said, “The End is Near!”
• The group of spectators from West Virginia University, holding a Flying WV banner, at whom I whooped whenever I passed and who hollered back for me
• The girl with the sign that read, “JAMIE, I’M PREGNANT!” (Would have loved to see Jamie’s reaction!)
• The folks handing out cups of beer around mile 23

Anyway! Gabe’s non-family birthday party is tomorrow, and he’s looking forward to that. Trick-or-Treat is actually happening on Halloween this year, miracle of miracles, and that, too, is an eagerly-awaited happening. Life is moving on, and we’re all looking to the Next Big Thing. I’ve got other running events on the horizon – a Thanksgiving run, a Jingle Bell one – but I have yet to pull the trigger on the next major one…

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I’m up this early not for the usual reason – that is, to go running. It’s a rest day for that. No, this morning we have MOPS, and my small group is to bring food to feed everybody, and I have this weird compulsion not to bring the same stuff that everybody else always brings: sausage and egg casseroles with tons of cheese, Kringles, mixed fruit. Last year, once, I brought steel-cut oats in a crock pot, along with some items to top it with. This morning, I’m bringing the crock pot again, this time filled with warm fall fruits and walnuts. I hope it works out; I should know better than to try out an untested recipe or preparation on other folks, but I didn’t get up the energy to make it for the family earlier. Smells good, though. I can’t decide if I need to go add more liquid or not…

It’s funny how you can go from being so on your game to being completely flummoxed, and then back again within a single day, or even hours – or minutes! – isn’t it? Right now, these days, I feel like I’m doing an excellent job parenting Sam, but my skills with Gabe? Half the time, I feel like I want to crawl in a hole and hide when other people witness me trying to mother him. He’s nuts! Now, as usual, I hear from his teachers and caregivers that he’s just fine for them, but the moment I appear, he starts going berserk, throwing things, running away, cackling and hooting like a madman. I can’t get through to him! He turns off all receptors for me, just spinning crazily around me and being a wildman. Sam, on the other hand, is definitely having his moments, but I can handle them; he gets angsty, but it’s a very short-lived thing, and I can almost always say to myself, “This is only going to last five minutes, tops; keep your cool!” After the angst bubble bursts, his inner pendulum swings back into sweetness and honest remorse for anything he said in anger. With Gabe, there is no predictable pendulum, no way to pace myself. He goes to eleven, if you know what I mean.

The scary part is that in three years, when Gabe is (hopefully!) hitting the easier stage at which Sam is currently, Sam may be nearing puberty, which could well be even more terrifying. It never eases up, does it?

Hmph. Where did my coffee go? Why is this mug empty? Bah.

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Apparently, third grade is the year where we’re going to transition into Big Kid work, or at least what I consider to be such. Not only are we regularly writing in cursive (without being officially taught! I guess there was something to that whole D’Nealian thing, after all!) and doing what can only be described as pre-algebra, but he’s now been assigned a six-page research paper, complete with required illustrations and a table of contents. I don’t remember doing that until fifth grade; I guess we were just coddled back then.

It’s to be about a subject relating to our town. Initially, Sam wanted to talk about the old cars once made here, but I wasn’t sure how the research on that would go. (Can’t imagine much is written at his level, uncoddled or no.) I spied a reference on the project sheet to a suggested topic about a “community concern.” Well, I’ve got a friend whose middle names might as well be Community Concern, and one of her pet projects seemed like it might fit the bill to a T. I proposed it to him, and he liked it, so we’re attending the meeting tomorrow night, and he has a list of interview questions written out for the organizers. This ought to be funny; he’s still a slow writer, if an improving one, and I don’t know how well he’ll handle scribbling down the responses. Might have to record them somehow instead. I don’t want to suggest having him email them to her, since it would be very easy for him to slip into copying her answers word-for-word into his paper if they were already written for him.

Sheesh, he’s eight. I can handle seeing him ride off down the street on his bike, and I can handle the new “frequently stinky” phase that’s mandating evening showers (somebody lie to me and tell me puberty is a VERY VERY long time away and this means nothing), but for some reason, helping him with this part is driving home the idea that he’s only a handful of years away from high school. I’m OLD. So very old!

But at least I’m not now undeniably in the second half of my thirties, like some folks to whom I might happen to be married. Today is Eric’s birthday. Give him some love!

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• What’s the term for when you’re doing something, and then you see a gazillion people around you doing the same thing? It’s bizarre how when I’m biking I see bikers, and when I’m running I see runners.
• Why are there a billion babies around all of a sudden? Was there a boom or something? Everywhere I go, there are carriers and strollers all over the place, filled with infants. In fact, one is staring at me right now.
• Whenever I’m in a coffee shop lately, it’s all about balancing quality with quantity. Sure, I could get the fancy-pants pumpkin drinks with the trimmings…or I could get a plain mug, which they’ll refill for free. The latter usually wins.
• Monday night, which means a nice dinner for Eric and me, except that I haven’t decided what to cook. My mind is completely blank, with no signs of striking gold anytime soon. Augh!
• Yeah, I have things I’m supposed to be doing right now. Drawing blanks on those, too. I RULE.
• This staring baby is really adorable, in a tiny Frogman sort of way. Related to the first thing I said, I actually dreamed I gave birth last night. Isn’t that supposed to mean something about inspiration and new beginnings? My brain still isn’t buying that. Maybe I need another refill on the coffee…
• It’s incredibly windy and cold outside today; we had huge windstorms last night that took out power a couple times, and there’s still an advisory active. One of the coffee shop’s machines sounds like the tornado siren, so I keep jumping.
• Gabe’s birthday is in a few weeks, and I really should get to planning it. He has Ideas, and they’re not small or vague.

….and I think I just drained the last bits of coherency from the recesses of my mind, summarizing that. Blarrrrrrrgh….

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Lady next to me at the coffee shop is working my nerves. She has a book, but every few seconds, she stops to lift her head and stare at me. I’m simply not that interesting, and it makes me want to stop and yell, “WHAT?!” when she does it.

In other news, Gabe apparently informed the kids in his preschool class that Eric and I are vampires. One mom had to grab me this morning at drop-off and introduce me to her little girl, who was frightened. Oh, Gabe…mind you, this is the same kid who kept flashing his light in people’s eyes at the candlelight hike this weekend (oh, such fun! I have to get back there to run those grassy trails!) and only stopped when he’d reassured himself that they weren’t aliens. He confessed that near the end, and it busted up the Earthmen who happened to be passing us at the moment and who’d passed the test of planetary orientation, I suppose. There’s really never a boring moment.

Sam and I are diving into the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series; we tried it a while back, and it didn’t capture him, but this time it has. Well, it took convincing; his teacher wants him reading to us about 20 minutes a night, and last night he decided that all the books at his reading level on our shelves were crap. Tears and shrieking ensued before Eric finally stepped in and convinced him to give it a shot. Five minutes later, Sam was apologizing and full of remorse for his overreaction. Love that about him; like me, he tends to blow up quickly and cool down just as fast, and he’s usually able then to realistically grasp what happened and what he did right or wrong. I know adults who have trouble with that.

If it stays this cloudy and dark all day, I’m thinking soup for dinner. Chicken noodle for the kids? Squash for us? Needs thought.

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Today isn’t that day for me. For starters, it’s only Gabe’s second day of school, so we’re still finding our way into a routine accommodating that. Then there was the pitiful way he’d managed, last night, to convince Eric to get up and make him pancakes for breakfast this morning – unusual for a weekday, when he normally forages for his own food and resents our efforts to so much as suggest alternatives. So there was pancake making today, which was delicious but not only took over the kitchen, but also used up the last of my milk. No coffee for me.

But then some good surprises came, in the form of many new and unfamiliar kinds of squash at the farmers’ market (squash is quickly becoming my favorite vegetable)…and goat meat. Never cooked with it before, but, as I told the lady selling it, I am all about the new.

The unexpected is often very nice, so long as it’s something that fits into what we can handle and incorporate into our lives. Sometimes, though, there are those moments of stark shock, a time when we find ourselves stopped in our tracks, unable to so much as blink, let alone incorporate what we’re seeing or experiencing into our thoughts and reactions.

Eight years ago today, I didn’t expect routine to come easy. I had a three-month-old, and “the usual” wasn’t quite something I could take for granted yet. If I was expecting anything, it was to be a quiet morning with floor time and toys, followed by a short outing to see the new library, opened after renovations just that morning. Instead, tiny Sam surprised me by falling asleep on the floor all by himself, with no nursing or fussing or rocking…and that was because I was too busy being stopped in my tracks, rocked to my own core, to even notice until after it had happened. I was too busy watching planes crash and buildings fall.

The unexpected can be extreme. My goat meat discovery feels ridiculously minor, like a toddler “discovering” the grass in his front yard, having learned how the world could be changed by flipping on a television and finding that “The Today Show” would be somewhat different on a particular September morning. Some days are better boring, better without certain kinds of education.

My sons won’t know a world without Patriot Day. For them, it’ll be like other memorial holidays are to my generation: worthy of note, worthy of solemnity, but not filled with the stark ache that those of us who remember that day will feel, possibly until we pass from this world. Gabe’s class wore red today. He has no idea why. Sam heard me talking about it and knew what I was talking about, sort of, and they’ll likely discuss some of it in school as well, but he won’t “get it.” I don’t know whether to be relieved or worried about that.

May my boys’ lives have a lot more surprise squash than the other kind of surprise. That’s an obvious wish, but it’s the one on my heart today. Many of us may be wiser people for having had our hearts shaken by that day, but some wisdom is too heavy.

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And I needed that pairing, as tired and wiped as I feel. Yesterday, I did 21 miles in the morning, came home and showered, and then the family headed out to a local park where we hiked through the woods and got even more tired. This morning, my usual bike ride felt like I’d strapped weights to my quadriceps, and I wound up starting late anyway, due to a severely enhanced gravitational field surrounding my bed (who put that there?!), so I didn’t cover nearly the ground I wanted; this afternoon, when mowing the lawn, I felt like I was going to keel over dead. So, wine and chocolate. Probably more wine, though not more chocolate, since a little goes a long way with that particular bar (another reason why it’s a favorite). Not too much more wine, either, since even though I’m only scheduled for five miles in the morning, and, thanks to Labor Day and Eric being off work, I won’t have to get up before dawn to start them, we’re planning to hit the Ren Faire tomorrow, and I anticipate much walking there. Or not; who knows, with these kids? They need more stamina – all sprint and no endurance. They’ll never run down a wildebeest that way…

(Interruption to try to help Sam with his Phineas and Ferb video game, as though I have two clues to rub together about such things. “Blow into the microphone,” the screen helpfully tells me, but how? Which button? I made the little guy jump, wiggle, and other things, but he refuses to so much as purse his lips. I sent Sam off to Eric, who Knows About Such Things. Eric is bathing Gabe, theoretically, though I think that activity is in observation mode at the moment. I feel sort of like a slacker. I think I’ll wash a dish or two to feel better.)

Forty-eight days until the marathon now. Feels like a long time and a short one, both at once. Only one more “big” long run, on the 26th!

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From left to right: somebody cloned Gabe at Bay Beach Amusement Park, me and the kids at the zoo, one of the creepier train car exhibits at the Railroad Museum, playing in the hotel water park, and running on the course of the Green Bay Marathon. More pictures from the vacation are up here.

On the last full day in Green Bay, we decided to do the ArtStreet festival, before the rain rolled in. Unfortunately, it was drizzly and cold, and I (the Perpetually Freezing) was the only one who bothered with bringing any warm clothes on the trip. I loaned Sam my sweater, which dragged past his hands but kept him sheltered, and we picked up a handknit sweater for Gabe from one of the vendors; it’s precious, and he loves it, and he needed one, anyway. Then it was just Eric and I with the shivers, but truthfully, once the kids stop howling about being too cold, it gets much easier to deal with low temperatures. (It was in the fifties, anyway, not actually freezing.)

After that, we piddled around with some extra shopping (Eric got me a lovely glass pendant at the festival, and then we got some chocolate and a few books at some surrounding stores). We had a very relaxed last evening, and the next day, we spent a last hour in the water park before taking the “scenic route” home. All in all, the vacation was perhaps a little less low-key than it could have been, but much better than last year in terms of kid meltdowns. (Eric doesn’t recall last year being so bad, so it’s possible that by next summer, this vacation will have achieved golden aura status.)

A low point was and continues to be increasing allergies for Sam. Oh, the cough! He’s using his albuterol, but it is not helping. I’ll probably place a call to his allergist later this morning; I don’t relish sending him to school tomorrow morning sounding like he should be in a TB ward. For now, though, we’ll hunker down and get the house back in order, with the laundry and the food replenishment. Fall definitely seems to be here; I did my run in forty-degree temps this morning!

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Eric took me home, where I slept off the rest of the anesthetic, and he went to fill my prescription for Vicodin. So far, it’s worked really well for keeping away most of my pain, miracle of miracles. We were able to pack up and head to Green Bay a few hours later.

The hotel is awesome, and we got unexpectedly upgraded to a suite (yay for doors that close! Hurray for privacy!). There’s a whirlpool tub in the room, which happens to be down the hall from a tiny indoor waterpark. Now, it’s not like the massive entertainment complexes of the Dells, but it’s more than sufficient for our needs!

Tonight we went out to Old Chicago for dinner, which probably would have been more satisfying if I hadn’t had to restrict myself to soft pasta and soup. Maybe by tomorrow night, I’ll be up for something more textured.

The surgeon said I’d be fine to run again tomorrow morning, but I may switch it out for Thursday’s rest day, just to be on the safe side. Last thing I need is to give myself a dry socket. When I do go, though, I found a trail that I’m eager to explore.

So far, so good! Tomorrow: Bay Beach, perhaps?

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In my search for a replacement, I have several things that are important to me. I want it to be stainless steel. Yeah, there are probably safe aluminum bottles out there, but once bitten, twice shy, y’know? No more “what’s in the trademarked liner” game for me. The BPA-free plastics are likely to be safe, but I’ve discovered that I am just more prone to drinking water when it’s in a cold metal bottle instead of plastic. (Glass, for the record, is the worst, unless I’m using a straw; I just hate the feeling of my lips on glass. Shiver-inducing.) Stainless steel seems my best option. Also, there’s no point in getting a steel bottle for the metal, and then sticking a plastic or silicone straw or spout on it. At that point, I’d probably just go with a less expensive bottle made all of plastic.

Beyond that, the shallow part of my mind would like it to be pretty. Is that so much to ask? Klean Kanteen prides itself on having undecorated bottles, for some reason, but…I really liked my colorful little sunbursts! It made me smile every time I looked at the bottle next to me on my desk. When it comes down to it, this is of course a secondary concern, but I can’t believe that a pretty stainless steel water bottle is unavailable. So, I search. Maybe the Innate one? Lots of the bottles I see have mediocre reviews from people who’ve tried them, but the ones for this one seem okay. EDIT: never mind; the Innate has a plastic opening, too.

By the way? This is all an attempt at distracting myself from my dental surgery scheduled for tomorrow morning. I’m really rather terrified every time I remember about it, so the less I can do that, the better…

My refurb Garmin is hopefully on its way here. I’m managing okay so far, but it’s irritating. I don’t think it’ll arrive before we head to Green Bay either tomorrow night (if I’m feeling okay) or Wednesday morning. (By the way, these vacations that coincide with some sort of physical pain for me are eyebrow-quirking. Last year, I did the Dells on crutches, and this year, I’ll be on pain pills for my mouth. Oof, and that’s one more reason to stress over the water bottle thing; the Camelbak backup I’d otherwise use in the car has a bite-valve/straw, and something tells me I won’t want to use that after a tooth extraction…)

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I’ve been eyeing this hat at Copacetic for a month or two, and I finally bit the bullet and got it. It’s specifically designed for running! I’ve actually been pretty lucky so far this summer not to have gotten burned while running, primarily because most of my runs have been pre-dawn or in the first hour or so of daylight, but I’ll feel better having this hat in my arsenal for the occasions where that’s not the case. Besides, I don’t have to use it just for that purpose. I wore it out a couple of times so far, and, dude, in combination with my sunglasses, I feel positively shaded. Why did I and my pale skin and blond retinas wait so long?! I could use another couple, for when this one’s in the wash!

We went out and did Sam’s school shopping this afternoon. Predictably, there were a few squabbles, mostly over a pencil sharpener he really wanted but which wasn’t on his list. Kid, at least ten percent of your teacher’s complaints last year surrounded you fidgeting with things in your desk, and many of those incidents involved your pencil sharpener. If this teacher doesn’t specifically request that you have one, then we’re sidestepping that trap altogether! He still needs a few new items of clothing and some gym shoes, but we’ll do that when Gabe isn’t a complicating factor; he also needs a new lunchbox, having beaten the bejeezus out of his old metal one. Land’s End is running a sale on one that will hold his current water bottle nicely, and I have a coupon for free shipping, so we might go that route if I don’t find something better locally (the pickings are fairly sour, from what I’ve seen). I have no idea or recollection of what Gabe will need; there’s a school open house in a couple of weeks (the week before his school starts), so if I don’t hear anything before then, I’ll at least have a cushion after that to scramble for those items.

Ouch. My lips are burning from the pepper I put on my sandwich at lunch. Every time it dies away, I mindlessly touch my mouth, and the oils around my nails from chopping it up start the burn anew. If I were smart, I’d go wash my hands, especially before I rub my eyes or something, but… We have a bunch of peppers that need used up fairly quickly; what would be a good trick for that? (Putting them into salsa, for example, might not work because I probably wouldn’t work through it any faster than I will the whole peppers.) Cucumbers, too; Eric’s dad brought us a whole bunch of pickling cucumbers, and all the uses I’m finding call for English cucumbers that are somewhat sweeter. I don’t love pickles that much, and Eric hasn’t shown enthusiasm for making anything beyond the refrigerator pickles that take up valuable fridge real estate. And then there’s the corn, which both Ronnie and I purchased accidentally and which my boys (gasp!) don’t love, or at least not on the cob…

Sam is outside with my old digital camera, experimenting. He was feeling sad that his neighborhood friend hasn’t come out to play, so I sent him on his way with it. Wonder what he’ll return home to show me?

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And I have to tell you, the little taste of carefree that I got for the past couple of days in the hotel was tantalizingly addictive. I’ve already booked a sitter for Saturday evening so Eric and I can catch a movie and dinner; he came home for lunch and said that a friend of his, having heard that we’d never had a weekend away from the kids, offered to get to know the boys and then take them for us so we could do that. I’ve met her a handful of times, and my immediate reaction, sadly, was, “Well, she doesn’t seem like an overt psychopath, so…sure!” Mom of the Frigging Year. (Of course, we’re going to explore it further before we dump the kids on her doorstep with suitcases (tempting though that thought is). But seriously, what do folks do when all their relatives are in distant states? Does nobody in that situation ever get the need to spend a chunk of uninterrupted time with their partner?)

‘Nuff said on that. A few unrelated bullet points:

• Reading Rose Daughter, which I grabbed from the YA bookshelves on a whim. I like Robin McKinley, and the book jacket made reference to her book Beauty, and it is absolutely driving me crazy, trying to remember whether I’ve read it or not. Maybe?
• Our mini-vacation might be to Green Bay. Still planning.
• I was talking to Gabe this afternoon when he suddenly looked at me with an odd expression and began making weird little whirring noises. “Robot-controlled,” he murmured in explanation, and went back to silence and sound effects.
• Sam “entertained” himself for a solid quarter-hour by pestering me with questions such as, “What would happen if an airplane crashed into a boat? What if it was a giant jumbo jet? What if the jet hit a military aircraft carrier? What if it was a helicopter and a rowboat? What if a jet hit a canoe? What if…” until I requested that he just write the scenarios down so we could send them off to one of those TV shows where they delight in blowing stuff up performing experiments to find out the answers to things like that.

Whoops, have to run; Gabe’s playground program wants the parents to come to the “last day” party, starting right about…now!

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We checked out this morning, and now (after tomorrow, which will be the last day of the boys’ playground programs) we enter the final, staggering days of summer break. I have to do school shopping for both kids, and they need haircuts and pants that are both long enough and lack gaping holes in the knees. Thinking that, for Sam, at least, we’ll make an evening of it, where I take him out and get his things and possibly do a mom-son dinner together. He’s feeling reluctant about third grade, a little, and I want to try to rouse some enthusiasm if I can. Gabe, meanwhile, is looking forward to school but steadfastly refusing the haircut suggestions.

Somewhere in there before school starts, too, Eric is considering another brief vacation now. Just a couple of hours away in some direction, to no place of real consequence except an attraction or two and an inexpensive but comfortable hotel. I’ve got the copy of Wisconsin Off the Beaten Path Mom gave me, and I’ll peruse that for likely candidates. Oshkosh, maybe…?

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All the running around and tiring myself out, though, is having an interesting effect. I think I need today as that low-key day, since this morning my brain feels quite foggy and lost. I forgot the dreams I’d been having by the time I walked from bedroom to bathroom, except for the lingering sensation of having been scared. Then, when I got back from my run, I felt utterly baffled trying to remember where I’d run. I knew I’d gone up one street and turned onto another…but I had no memory of getting from that street back over to my side of the neighborhood. The software that my Garmin uses to track my mileage doesn’t give enough detail to tell me, either, except in vague generalities: I didn’t go far enough north to reach the main road. I can sort of guess where I was, but I don’t recall it.

I need some more coffee, stat.

The boys have been sleeping later, too, and I’m glad for that. If they were attempting to get up at their usual time, in conjunction with all the activity and staying up later than normal, we’d hit nuclear pretty soon, if we wouldn’t have done so already…

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Things I didn’t know before five minutes ago:
1) Eddie Izzard is a runner.
2) He’s currently running 30 miles a day through the UK for charity.
3) He’s Tweeting as he goes.

My children are boggling over old episodes of “Popeye the Sailor Man.” Sam says, “So…he always wins?” Gabe adds, “With spinach?” Yeah, that’s the basic concept.

Need more coffee, and then to clean. Father-in-law arriving tomorrow!

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Whole day feels weird, really. I “slept in” until 6:30, at which point, while I was in the process of opening my eyes, Sam came rushing in to announce that the loose tooth had been extracted. Then he began to argue that he should be allowed to skip the last day of summer school. Never did get a good reason as to why he wanted to do that; he kept claiming that there was going to be a raffle for baseball-related prizes, and he “hates raffles.” If you can explain that, you have a better handle on kid brains than I do. Personally, I think he just didn’t feel like getting dressed, but he was adamant that that wasn’t it.

I need to get my butt in gear straightening things up for Eric’s dad’s visit next week. Feelings of motivation are doing the complete opposite of abounding. A plan needs to be made, I think; I work well with plans.

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He’s in a huge villainy stage right now, especially since I made the offhand comment to him that his super-villian goggles reminded me of Dr. Horrible. Now he runs around singing about Bad Horse and how “the sun is shining ’cause you’re gonna die!” (Mind you, he’s only seen a censored-by-tickle-and-kiss-attacks version of the show), in addition to his usual efforts to construct freeze guns and killer robots out of blocks and Scotch tape. Some kids play Superman, but not my baby.

Sam has a dangly tooth that refuses to let go; he spends a lot of time with his fingers in his mouth, wiggling away at it. Last night, it looked like a stiff breeze would take it, and he asked me to help him get it out, but I had little more success than he did. I offered him a dried fig to bite, and he tried; he bit twice, the tooth went sideways, there was blood, and Sam freaked and threw in the towel. This morning, Eric offered to give it a try, but Sam panicked and decided to give it some more wiggling time instead. The tooth fairy is prepared and waiting!

Going out tonight with Sarah to a wine shop. Can’t tell you how much I need this, really.

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My brain feels too tired to string together words, for some reason. Eric just got home, so I better see what the doctor said!

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So we went home a little frustrated, and the kids are recovering by goofing around with each other while Erieac nurses an upset stomach, and I escaped for a respite and a cup of coffee.

Sixteen miles and change this morning. I find it funny that when I was training for Milwaukee, that distance seemed like a Really Big Deal, and now it feels so much more casual. Honestly, the first five miles were the most challenging part, dealing with gnats and legs that were a little slow to wake. Next Saturday, I’ll do eighteen, and then it’s a step-back week before heading into the twenty-plus-mile long run weeks, each separated by a couple of easier weeks (the whole plan I’m using is here, if you’re curious; I rotated the weeks so my long runs are on Saturdays with the running club, though). How am I only on week 5, and those really long runs are already here, anyway?! I’m not complaining, though. My long runs are my favorites!

Whoa, looks like a storm might be rolling in. Lots of wind shaking the trees outside, and the sky is really dark suddenly. Yep, rain’s here.

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Then some too-wild roughhousing resulted in Sam accidentally opening a door onto Gabe’s bare foot, skinning the top slightly; it wasn’t even enough to draw a single drop of blood, but he howled and cried and called for a medic. Putting on shoes was out of the question, even though he did try, so we couldn’t go to the library this afternoon as planned. (This is how I know he wasn’t just doing it for attention; he desperately wanted to go, but every time he tried to gently insert his foot into his shoe, the wails recommenced. I reassured him that we could go tomorrow, and he felt better.)

So our afternoon turned into something different, but not altogether unpleasant.

Sometimes, you have to go for the crayons and colored pencils. A blank page is all you need to refocus the mind.

As for me…

I’ll take it, as far as afternoons go.

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Mr. Mousy? No mas. Dad is calling me an assassin.

So, more later, then!

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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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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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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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“We have a tornado warning,” Eric said, “and it looks like it’ll be coming by here in another half-hour or so.” (Mind, I’m really, really paraphrasing, and probably wrong; I was coming out of a dead sleep when he was speaking, so complete comprehension wasn’t feasible.) “Want me to stay awake and let you know if we have to run to the basement?”

I said, “That sounds fine,” which probably came out “Glarb, mephea,” and tried to go back to sleep, but I spent the next hour or so fading in and out of a half-asleep state where I was fully aware of the racket happening outside but not able to coherently process it. It was booming thunder, clattering rain, blaring sirens, and howling wind; I’m amazed that Gabe slept through the whole thing. Sam says he woke for some of it, but he didn’t call out or let us know he was awake; I don’t know if I believe that, since those sirens are usually enough to make his eyes go saucer-wide and start him demanding that we flee to the most remote corner of the basement immediately.

No tornadoes ever did approach us, and there wasn’t even any major damage reported in our county, thank God. It was only distantly thundering and sprinkling a little when I went out to run this morning, but it was quite warm (mid-sixties and feeling muggy) for the hour and in comparison to recent days. The forecasts are calling for isolated strong storms throughout the day – no tornadoes, thankfully – and it’s sort of darkly ominous out there right now. We drove to the farmers’ market instead of walking, so as not to get caught in a surprise downpour and so that we could drop Eric off at work to help him escape a similar threat.

But the weather will supposedly be done throwing tantrums by midnight, giving the moisture some chance to dry up before tomorrow’s race. I don’t mind running in the rain, and, honestly, a little sprinkle when the heat creeps up (it’ll be mid-seventies for the run, which isn’t comfortable) is welcome, but I would be seriously bummed if the thing got canceled for thunder and lightning.

Completely unrelated, when we were eating out for Sam’s birthday, Gabe studied the servers running around the dining room and suddenly asked, “Do waiters even like their jobs?” I told him that some did, and then when our server came to the table, he piped up, “Excuse me! Do you like your job?” She gave him a baffled but enthusiastic “yes,” and he seemed satisfied.

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Tomorrow morning, most importantly, I’ll be mom to an eight-year-old. It’s sort of a head trip, that. He himself seems to be having some growing pains, both mentally and, possibly, physically (he’s claiming intermittent aches in his legs, but we can’t pinpoint an exact cause; my brother had similar issues around this age, if memory serves); he’s been very emotional, alternately exuberant and tearful, loving and lashing out at us and Gabe. Yesterday, on his second grade zoo trip to celebrate the end of school, he spent the first part whining about being hungry, the second part cheerful and giggly, and added a postscript of moody sadness about not wanting to leave the second grade and his teacher (oh, the tongue-biting on my part). It’s odd, because he’s ordinarily been a treat around his birthdays, but I guess that’s going to be different this year. (Anybody got a copy of one of those “Your Whatever-Year-Old” books handy to consult that spiral-shaped age diagram about it?)

We got him a few presents this year, keeping it pretty low-key. He’ll be most excited about a little Air Hogs indoor R/C helicopter for which he’s been positively dying since seeing a commercial for them; in fact, making that link, I found the site stored in my recent browser history, so I guess he pestered Eric into checking out the site. We got ice cream cupcakes for tomorrow, and it’ll hopefully be a satisfyingly relaxed celebration.

For my part, I’m making lentil soup and French bread at the moment, the ultimate in comfort food. I feel the need to be soothed, you know? There comes a time when constant stimulation and entertainment just turns weirdly torturous; just want to rent a good, no-thinking-required movie and kick back with a warm bowl and fuzzy socks. (Why, yes, I still live in Wisconsin, and even though we were in the upper seventies yesterday, today has been in the sixties with rain and wind. I’m wearing a sweater, and we’re halfway to July.)

Oh, apropos of nothing, all the test results from my doctor’s visit came back perfectly normal. I’m just fine, apparently – despite the fact that the system in question still seems to be asleep. (And, no, not pregnant.) Well, be that as it may, I’m finally taking the step of getting to a different doc and seeing what she has to say about it. My old doctor has a new practice and is seeing new patients! Yay! So I’ll go see her on Monday. I just like reassurance, I guess.

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We have an old dead car in our driveway that’s been there for pretty much forever, embarrassingly. We keep meaning to have it hauled away, but it’s still got stuff in it. In my own defense, most of it isn’t mine…ahem. But I haven’t made any more effort than anybody else around here to clean it out, and I’m the one with the most time on my hands, so that pretty much eliminates that excuse. I’m feeling motivated at the moment, though! Today’s naptime has been thusly booked. Now, where’s the key to that darn car? Do I even still have one? (This whole confession has been more than a little humbling, but I’ve written about more personal things than this.)

Supposed to try to hit that Greek Fest tonight (like I said before, our only opportunity this year to do so), but they’re calling for possible rain beginning around six o’clock. Ugh! I was really looking forward to the Greek coffee, too. Well, fingers crossed.

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• Tonight: meeting with our insurance agent to update our policy. Should be quick, but Eric anticipates her trying to up-sell us on several things. It’s her job, but I regret that it might make the appointment longer than strictly necessary.
• Tomorrow: nothing definite on the calendar, but there’s a neighborhood festival over the weekend starting then, and we may not have another chance to go. I’d ordinarily say, “So what?” but Sam actually brought home an invitation to the thing from a friend who attends the host church, and I’d feel a little bad if we didn’t go.
• Saturday: Running in the morning, and Sam’s birthday party in the afternoon.
• Sunday: I think we’re heading down into Illinois for some shopping and dinner (we have a couple of coupons we’d like to use).
• Monday: Sam’s last “day of school,” which is really a field trip to the Milwaukee Zoo, and I’m chaperoning and taking Gabe.
• Tuesday: Brief rest; Eric has his weekly Scrabble game. Sam’s enrichment program (an art class) starts in the morning, and both kids’ summer playground programs begin in the afternoon.
• Wednesday: Sam’s actual birthday; Eric’s taking the day off work, and we may be heading north and spending the day in Milwaukee.

Whew! Oh, and I have a race the Saturday after all that (a 10-miler), and then it’s Father’s Day, and then Bible School, and then, and then, and then… Actually, after the next couple of weeks, it’s not too bad a summer, so that’s okay. My brother looks to be coming up around the Fourth, and my parents the week after that, and supposedly Eric’s dad will come up sometime, too, but there’s been nothing concrete hammered out there. After this race, I only have one “must do” race before school starts in the fall, a local 5K at the cross-country course I love. All in all, a very casual sort of summer is in the works – you know, if you ignore the little fact that I’ll be starting marathon training again in a couple of weeks.

Something tells me I better clear out the chest freezer downstairs and stock it up with some casseroles and whatnot.

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Doctor appointment yesterday was less than informative. I don’t know; Eric has expressed negative opinions in the past about our doctor and how she seems to miss things (with the whole Magical (Medical) Mystery Tour with the disappearing free air, especially, but that’s not been an isolated case). Yesterday, too, she seemed inclined to just want to give me Provera off the bat and blame the whole thing on exercise. I suggested concerns that it could be something else, and she said that it just seemed a very obvious case. “Well, yes,” I said, “but I’d hate to miss something important just because it ‘seems’ obvious.” Not to mention that I truly don’t believe that running is the cause. I used a very gradual training program, and I didn’t lose significant weight from when I started training for the marathon, and I’ve been focusing quite a bit on making sure to adequately fuel myself with good nutrition and plenty of calories all the while. I was as careful as possible, in other words; no starvation, no overdoing it.

I suggested to the doctor that, based on other issues that I presented to her several months ago (which she also blamed on tiredness and stress), we might want to take a look at my hormone levels, so she agreed to run some blood tests. If they come back normal, we’ll do the Provera and she’ll see me in another two months…and make sure, she says, that I haven’t slipped further down the BMI scale. (I told her I’d be halfway through training for Marine Corps then, so I may have lost one or two pounds, but I anticipate being in very good shape.) You’d think I was living on lettuce leaves and colon cleanses, the way that conversation seemed to be heading, instead of, say, just having had a bowl of this an hour before:

Anyway, I’m off to take Gabe to his last day of Bible school. If you can believe it, after only two days there, spending a little time in our church’s gymnasium each day, he’s already learned to pedal a tricycle! I’ve been trying to get him to do that for a couple of years! I find it funny that this is exactly what happened with Sam: he refused to pedal for me, and then he started attending preschool at the church and learned to pedal in the very same gymnasium. Something in the air up there, or something about those trikes. Interestingly, he was very well-behaved, for Gabe, for the rest of the afternoon; either he wore himself down enough to be more relaxed, or else he was feeling cooperative enough as a rule yesterday to be able to tackle the task of learning to ride. Either way, I’m good!

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Meh. I’m just feeling out of sorts today. Had horrendous stomach cramps last night after dinner, and while they were gone by the time I woke this morning, I still had a blah kind of run. Was intended to be a tempo run – slower warm-up and cool-down, with twenty minutes of race pace in the middle – and it was that, but the slow felt very slow, and the fast felt sluggish to me, like running through wet concrete. Oh, well.

I have a doctor’s appointment this morning that I’ve been dreading and delaying, but it really shouldn’t be put off any longer, so duly I trudge office-ward. Without getting too much into details (and wasn’t I the one who referenced Colon Blow cereal yesterday?), let’s just say that systems that should be working like clockwork (presuming a really, really big clock with a dial spanning about four weeks) aren’t. I figured I’d give it a month past the marathon to fix itself, but it hasn’t. Hurrah. Let’s hope there’s a simple answer and, more importantly, a simple solution?

I made cookies yesterday that Gabe won’t touch. That’s flattering. I guess they’re too obviously wholesome for his tastes; even with the carob chips, there’s visible FRUIT in there, and that’s just unacceptable! Sam says he likes them, but he’s unreliable as a food critic…and he hasn’t gone back for a second one. Eric said, “Not bad.” Sigh! Anybody local want some cookies? I don’t feel up to consuming them all myself before they go stale. I promise, they’re decent; I even used real butter this time instead of subbing in flaxseed meal.

Tomorrow is the choir potluck, and we’re signed up to bring a “hot dish.” We still have no idea what it will be; we’re not really the casserole type to any extent. Also, we don’t want to kill off half the choristers via flaming esophagi, so that eliminates a segment of our repertoire, right off the bat…

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My stomach’s unhappy with me, and I’d love to get out there just to make myself feel a little better. The delicious bean soup I made a bit ago and am still eating is the culprit; I was enjoying a bowl this weekend and, on a whim, double-checked the nutrition, and…dude. Almost 25 grams of fiber per serving. That’s about my whole day’s worth, right there, and considering the salads and grains I’ve been eating as well, it’s a wonder I can uncurl my abdomen at all. And when making a couple of loaves of Amish Friendship Bread this weekend, I subbed out the oil for flaxseed meal, which is just the icing on the cake, so thank God I’ve been limiting the amount of that I’ve eaten (it’s very sweet).

Yeah, talk about navel-gazing.

Time to go pull Sam out of bed for school. Only two more weeks!

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…saw a man in antique military uniform setting up a small campsite…in the playground of a private school. Had no idea what that was about.

…went to a Farmers’ Market, Gabe in the stroller and doodling in his book all the way. We picked up beets (quite small still, but bigger than they have been!), spinach, asparagus, fresh eggs, and some local honey.

…stopped at a coffee shop for cone filters and a warm cup. We split a piece of angel food cake, too – “split” being used loosely, as Gabe devoured most of it. Saw a friend there with her kids, though she was on her way out.

…dropped in the health food store, where I grabbed some Maranatha Almond Butter, adzuki beans, and some carob chips.

…had a complete meltdown of epic proportions in the middle of the health food store. Well, one of us did. Guess who? The culprit had to be forcibly buckled into the stroller and quickly removed.

…ran into another friend on our way home, in the playground area of that school. (Turns out that the campsite was somehow related to “last day” activities, though I can’t imagine how.) Chatted with her for a bit through the fence, and we made loose arrangements for her to join us on future walks to the market.

…finished our walk home under cloudy skies that have since opened up and begun to drizzle. Oh, well; I had more fun on the walk than I would have had trying to get the grass cut before the rain!

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…Eric is on a walk to a restaurant with Gabe for some one-on-one special time with him. If his walk experience is anything like what I’ve had lately with the child, he is having the Longest Walk in History right about now.

…I’m finishing my lunch (cold leftover rotini and mixed vegetables with a sorta-kinda peanut sauce (peanut butter + soy sauce) I improvised) and dreading the dental appointment I have in about twenty minutes. Eek!

…Alysia is someplace. I don’t know, my phone calls to her aren’t going through, right when I need her to talk me down (see: dental appointment).

…there’s a UPS truck in front of my house…? Oh, meds for Eric. That’s not interesting. Let-down.

…I’ve finished with another MOPS year, and it’s quite possible that I finally crossed the line from “friendly and open” into “obviously desperate” there today.

…I should probably go brush my teeth. Can’t go for a cleaning without clean teeth, you know.

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So we went down to Kenosha and hung out a bit, eating lunch and enjoying coffee. Felt a little “off” in the belly region. Odd point: I’ve felt “off” like that frequently since the marathon, usually shortly after eating. Food doesn’t sit well (or for long; sorry, TMI!), no matter what it is I’ve eaten, from green salad to pasta. I assumed it would stop after a day or so, but no luck. Is this a common thing? I’d prefer not to go to a doctor about it unless absolutely necessary. I have been tracking my food, and I don’t seem to be low on anything…

MOVING ON!

Eric took the boys out shopping for Mother’s Day last night, and they all seem very cat-who-ate-the-canary about their success. Gabe came close to spilling the beans this afternoon, but he got shouted down before he could do it. They all have tried to get me to open the gifts early, though, but I’ve refused. We’ll see what happens tomorrow morning!

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Also stirring that compulsion is that I don’t feeeeel good [sniffle]. *Coughswineflucough* No, really, I’m just hoping it’s not the Post-Marathon Sick that strikes down a whopping large sector of people who run long. You tend to not get sick during training, but right afterward, it whaps you upside the head. Um, sort of like the clothes iron I accidentally pulled down onto my right temple yesterday while trying to organize a closet. Well, maybe that explains the headache, but it wouldn’t cover the slightly runny nose or the touch of a sore throat. Never mind, though; the cookies will heal. Yes, they will.

And I got to run today, so that’s good. IT band pulled a touch during the second mile, but I have faith that continued stretching will bring it back in line.

With that, I think I’ve successfully emptied all that was in my mind. Cookies, running, and sick [achoo]. I think I need a nap.

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A decision:
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Both are tested and comfortable, and at this point, I’ll probably be pairing either with a short-sleeved shirt and the lightweight wicking jacket I picked up at Goodwill for $4 (also tested and comfortable) that I won’t care about tossing to the side if I get too warm. I’m leaning toward the shorts, myself, but the skirt is cute.

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My new salon took my email address, and they just sent me a reminder that it’s time for a haircut. Cool. And I can book it online! Perfect for the geeky girl!

Eric is in Mexico. With the exception of the couple of days before he left, I’m staying pretty calm about it. After all, he’s just over the border from Texas (they’re actually staying in Texas and just crossing the border in the mornings), which is pretty darn far from Mexico City, where most of the flu is hitting. He’ll be fine, I think. Hot and fine; apparently, it was about 100 degrees when he landed. And here I thought that our 70 degrees at 6 AM was impressive. (Yes, I have sympathy for you guys in warmer climes, but I’m in Wisconsin, and warmth can be novel.)

Two more runs left before the race. I’m going to have to have my inner drill sergeant scream at me to slow down for them, but otherwise, I feel eerily relaxed. Planning a week of healthful eating, too; Eric went all bug-eyed when the groceries arrived on Saturday and he saw All The Produce, but I intend to eat clean, with lots of good carbs and lean proteins. I don’t want anything throwing me off now! More soups coming, too; I’m going to start roasting some peppers for a Roasted Pepper Soup as soon as I post this, and I’ll eat it from another cooked acorn squash bowl. Mmmm.

In unrelated news, I worked a shift in the infant nursery in church yesterday, which was lots of fun, and yet even as I snuggled the tiny little daughter of our youth pastor (so wee!), it was such a different feeling than I used to get pre-Sam and pre-Gabe. Back then, my uterus would have been screaming in demand every time she smiled one of her little sleep-grins. Now, it’s more like I want to just inhale the scent of her scalp for the hour…and then hand her back to her mommy and walk off with my diaper-bag-free arms. I think we’re really, honestly done, and that’s a great feeling. I like having things settled. Nursery shifts are a great test, and I feel like I “passed.”

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But the message board poster was particularly referring the one of the last statements in the article, and it was to that that I responded. The quote: “Long, endless jogs will get you nowhere, unless you’re a beginner. A more novel approach is required to get you to the next level.”

My response on the forum, in a nutshell, was that “the next level” is something ultimately dependent upon the individual, and for me, as well as for many other runners out there, the “long, endless jog” is a very valuable tool toward achieving endurance. You simply cannot become a distance runner without hitting the long slow distance (commonly referred to as the “LSD”) runs in your training. Of course, that’s not the only tool in my training kit, as it shouldn’t be; in order to be the best runner one can be, one needs to also consider things like speed work, hill work, and other types of runs. It fits together to create a well-rounded regimen.

But the author of that article wasn’t particularly interested in helping the reader become a great runner. If my focus is on a sculpted abdomen and biceps as big as my neck, then, sure, perhaps there are better uses of my time than a 20-mile jaunt. Before you begin, you need to break out the binoculars and take a look at where the finish line is and what it looks like.

That, of course, applies to far more than just running or fitness. That’s life!

As I said before, Eric and I are doing The Love Dare together in the mornings, and one of the facets of today’s exercise involved asking ourselves whether we knew our partner’s hopes and dreams. Interestingly, neither Eric nor I hesitated to say first that the other’s hopes included “getting out of this house.” Beyond that, we were guessing. He guessed that my hopes included becoming an ultramarathoner; I guessed that his included seeing our family settled and secure. (Boy, doesn’t he sound like the better person? ) After we had a little time to think on it, we were able to amend and clarify our own goals. I want my my boys to be able to look back from the last parts of their lives with satisfaction and peace. Eric wants to see them educated as well as we can help them be, preferably through college. I want to be healthy for decades to come, hopefully to the end. Eric wants to get off insulin.

Once you know the goal, it’s easier to piece together the training plan. Knowing that I want my boys to have peace, I do my best to raise them in the Lord. Knowing that he wants them educated, Eric works hard to make sure they see learning as fun and as a priority. I run and eat well to maintain my health; Eric is taking daily-increasing steps to take control of his own health (and I’m so proud of him!).

Lose sight of the finish line, and things get shaky. There’s no happy way to finish a race without knowing the course. A 5K road race could morph into a 50K cross-country event that way, and that’s no way to go. Right now, even though we both know we want out of this house, we don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like or when…and so we flounder without a plan. We’re not saving the money we should be, getting organized for eventually selling it at any point, or working on a timeline. It’s just a general feeling: “Gee, I don’t like it here.” I don’t even know if this is running a race or sitting in a pie-eating contest. Something has to change before forward momentum can be achieved.

Not sure where I’m going with this; I only know that as I was replying to the message on the forum, I heard a little voice in the back of my head, telling me that the running advice I was dispensing to her (“Don’t discount the long run,” etc.) might be advice I sort of ought to be taking myself. Isn’t it funny how clarity hits you like that?

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Doesn’t help when wrenches are thrown into the few plans I’m actually almost able to see through to fruition. Last night, Eric came through the door as I was taking dinner out of the oven, and he announced that he wanted to go out for Japanese. Sam leaped on that like a cat on a bacon-wrapped mouse (do cats like bacon? I do.), and I swiftly wound up packing up the dinner and heading out the door. Mind you, that was an entirely welcome little wrench. Eric took the high road and ordered hibachi so that Sam could have it (they don’t tend to allow parties to have only one member request to fire up the hibachi grill, especially when that one member is still regularly offered crayons at many places), but he spent the evening gazing enviously at my purty little plate of sashimi. “Mommy likes fish!” the chef crowed to Sam, who politely edged away from my ika. Yum.

This morning, I did about four and a half miles, and I somehow did sub-eight-minute paces for each of them. Milestone, dude.

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned that Eric is traveling to freaking Mexico next week. My poor kids; Mama’s going taper-crazy, and they won’t have Daddy around to buffer them through the worst of it. He’ll be back on Friday night, just in time for the race the next day. I don’t think I have to tell you what will happen to my head if his plane is delayed. Only worse timing I can picture would have had him MIA for the race itself.

I’d like to use up a bag of black beans tonight. Enchiladas? Burgers? Hmm. Not that the kids (at least Gabe) are likely to touch any of it, but I can try. I could also do a soup; I discovered that an acorn squash makes a divine little soup bowl and turns almost any soup or stew into heaven.

Sam finished Bible Blast for another year.

This year, he got two trophies: the participation one, and one for doing well on all the quizzes. Gabe is technically eligible to start doing Bible Blast next year, too, but we’ll wait until the end of summer to decide whether he’s up for the challenge of staying calm and focused that much. Mostly, kids start in kindergarten, but there are a handful of four-year-olds in there, as well. (The learning requirements are scaled by age, so he’d have easier questions and memorization than Sam, although they’d be using the same materials and covering the same basics.) It might make for a nice way to incorporate the whole family into the studying. We have time to decide, though.

It’s a lovely day (warmish weather; I’m wearing a skirt!), and Gabe and I will take a walk in a bit. Rain for the next four days, though, and as of now, they’re calling for showers on marathon day…

I think I used up my parentheses allotment in this entry. Better stop now.

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GABE: “Well, Sam, what are we going to do tomorrow?”
SAM: “I have to go to school.”
GABE: “Oh. Does Daddy have to go to work?”
SAM: “Yeah.”
GABE: “Oh. Well, Gabey, what would you like to do tomorrow?”

He’s such a little snark-monster. No idea where he gets it…

Sam was in a pretty darn good mood this morning, for a kid heading back to school after a break. That’s Sam for you, though. He cheerfully ate his Cheerios, stopping to ask what the fiber to sugar ratio was (am I discussing this stuff too much around him? Probably not a bad thing, though), and he got even cheerier when I was packing up his Jumprope for Heart form and told him he could do it in honor of Eric’s dad, since he just had the heart bypass surgery. The idea that he was helping actual people with this tickled Sam pink.

Gabe, meanwhile, seems to be taking his “abandonment” in stride. He began the morning by sneaking up on me and hollering, “BOO!” which made me scream and jump in complete sincerity, so that was a happy spot for him. Got ticked off when I insisted that the channel be changed away from the older-kid shows that Sam likes; “Zack and Cody” tend to inspire extra sarcasm in him, so I’ve had to institute a ban for him, which was quite the unpopular move. When it came down to it this morning, though, “Curious George” handily beat out “No TV at all for you, Young Man,” so the argument was diffused.

Now, where’s my cup of coffee? It’s a rainy, yucky day, and I’m looking for ways to keep my hands from turning purple again.

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Yesterday was a gorgeous day, and it was 47 degrees at 6 AM, so I wore a new pair of running shorts to test them out. They worked well.

We finally bought a dishwasher today. I think it was a Whirlpool? I can’t remember. White, and it’ll hold my dishes. Eric handled the details, once I ascertained that it looked decent, was Energy Star whatever, and fit the price range I had figured. I’m not hard to please. Now, if we’d been oven shopping, it would have been another matter. So long as my dishes are clean and my hands can not resemble prunes for large portions of the day, I’m good.

I’m super-jealous of everybody running Boston tomorrow. I’ll be there in spirit.

Yesterday having been warm – seventy-some degrees in the afternoon! – I put on shorts…and discovered that I wasn’t as small last summer as I thought I was. Whoops. Had to locate my belt again and make another shopping list. But it’s rainy and more seasonably cool today, and it’ll stay that way for a while, so it’s not a pressing issue. I had to take a shawl to church, which I’d been wishing I’d done for every service for a while. Church is always especially cold. I told Eric I ought to buy a Snuggie and store it under a pew.

Well into my taper now. Only short runs this week, with a “long” run of eight miles on Saturday. This is ridiculous, feels excessive, and my next training program won’t include a three-week-long taper, I can guarantee.

Where’s my cookbook?

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Made cupcakes with the boys this morning – reduced sugar cake, reduced sugar frosting. Reduced sugar taste. And they stuck massively to the liners. The boys don’t care, but I won’t be tempted to eat many.

On the other hand, I got a package from a swap partner this afternoon, all the way from the UK, and it contained this and this. Excuse me while I hide them from the kids…they can eat the cupcakes, you know.

I’m grilling out tonight. Hot dogs, baked potatoes, possibly some leeks or whatever else I find to throw on there. Very simple. Anybody care to join us?

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Of course, then we went out for lunch at a pizza buffet, and it was all downhill from there. The kids were well-behaved there, but then we pushed our luck and tried for sushi at dinner, and Gabe just didn’t have it in him. Oh, well.

No dishwasher, though! We were having so much fun that we just never got around to that. Maybe this weekend! And now that temperatures are really starting to perk up in these parts (excepting the sleet and snow we had a few mornings ago), I’d really like to think about finally doing some yard work – most notably, replacing the tree in the backyard that we had taken down a few years ago. I don’t want a huge tree, such as we had, but a smaller one, perhaps with pretty blossoms, would be lovely. I need to move the rhododendrons out of the front yard, too, and into the back somewhere. They’ve never thrived where they are, since there’s just not much sun there. I’ll replace them with something evergreen-ish and hardy, and I hope they survive transplanting; I’m not a gardener, by any means.

Well, this was a thrilling entry… They can’t all be wolves and whatnot.

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2. Last night, I was exhausted, so since it wasn’t his bedtime yet, Sam lay in the bed next to me, reading a Speed Racer book. The look he gave me when I had to tell him that “Prix” was pronounced “pree” was priceless.

3. I’m on the last hole in my belt – in the other direction from what would once have been typical for me.

4. Gabe informed me, in a fit of pique about something completely unrelated, that my hair was “bad! It needs more color!” Later, when he was calm, I asked him to clarify, and he said that I needed to put some pink in it.

5. Both kids have become slightly obsessed with watching Eric play old video games in emulation on the computer. They actually demand that he play for them frequently; he’s like an interactive demo mode. Luckily, he’s also a good enough player to let them see entire games, from beginning to end.

6. With spring waking things up, I get to scare the snot out of more and more bunnies on my morning runs.

7. Last night, I was juggling about eight different dinner-related tasks, and I called upon Sam to put the silverware on the table. “Why do I have to do everything?” he moaned…and then he caught sight of my face, which must have been completely naked, because he immediately started back-pedaling like whoa. “I mean, I’m doing…all the kid stuff…the other stuff…I’m helping!” Then he wisely stopped talking and did the task quickly as he could.

8. I am only three runs, including my last long run, away from the beginning of my taper for my first marathon. How did that happen?

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But Eric did get me a few things I needed and am looking forward to using. Heading into warmer weather, I just can’t make my men’s size large shorts go another running season, so we went by a Nike outlet and got this (in blue) and this (in black with pink stripes) and this (discontinued entirely). I realize that those skirts are marked as “tennis” and not as running skirts, but I don’t think that will be a problem; the main difference, as far as I can tell, is that these have longer compression-style shorts underneath instead of little panty things. These were the ones on the clearance rack, though. I’ll still need one or two more bottom pieces and some smaller tops.

Of course, this morning I was running in multiple layers in freezing temperatures, so my pretty new things will wait. I’m starting to do the pee-pee dance, trying to figure out what I’ll wear for the marathon. I wish Wisconsin were more predictable! The race is a month out, and it could be in the mid-50s, or it could be high 30s. Argh! I’m thinking I might need a set of these (click through the pictures to see the patterns!), just to cover my bases, though I’m reluctant to spend the money; would they be worth it? Anybody tried them?

Boy, I’m just a big ball of “testify, please?” this morning, aren’t I? Well, while I’m doing that, might as well go all the way: who has a dishwasher they love or detest? Lower echelon, please; I don’t need it to mow my lawn for me. Just something that does a decent job cleaning dishes, holds a reasonably large load, and doesn’t sound like a Boeing aircraft.

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Last night was chaotic. I had originally planned on briefly enjoying Sam’s Safari Night, then taking the family out to Jimmy John’s for subs for dinner. Well, the “tasting menu” for the night wound up being a largish buffet, and, well, NOM NOM NOM. As much as I like the Unwiches at JJ’s, I’m am so much more a fan of foreign cuisine, and there were stews! And a peanut soup! And noodles! And, and, and…well, I decided it was dinner, and I enjoyed. Gabe did, too – to the tune of about five bananas and a whole bunch of bread. Sam and Eric ate lightly, but every time he evaded our sight, Sam was drinking another cup of proffered juice (it was hot in the crowd), so he upset his stomach that way. By the time we were leaving, Gabe was bonkers, Sam was irritable, Eric was grouchy (he hates crowds), and I just wanted to send everybody to corners for towel-offs and a break. Gabe wound up with an early bedtime; Sam suddenly remembered a homework assignment he hadn’t even begun, so he roped Eric into helping with that. I snacked. Gah.

On SparkPeople, one of my teams has started a message thread about weight loss/maintenance for runners. I asked about the whole evening snack thing this morning, since it looks like it’s just the way of life that I’m going to get peckish a couple of hours after dinner, but I don’t want to just head for sugar like I seem to do. Another runner, though, advised me that it may be exactly what I need, considering that I then get up very early and run most mornings; I often do that before breakfast, and my body might have adjusted to craving the sugar I need to fuel those runs before I go to sleep.

Well, fine. But I think we can do better than a microwaved Pepperidge Farm cookie, in that case.

I sort of cobbled together various muffin techniques with some healthier ingredients, and came up with these Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip muffins. Le yum. For the record, I intend to freeze these, so I can have them as I see fit instead of needing to see them gone over the next couple of days.

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One thing in particular that’s been rubbing at me is a growing edginess about the increased population on the streets when I run in the mornings. It’s the warmer weather, of course, but it makes me wish that, like a lot of the runners I know, I had a reasonably large furry friend to accompany me in the morning. Yes, yes, I’m allergic. I’ve also never been a dog person, really. Still, it strikes me as somewhat more protection than, say, a whistle around my neck. Hmph. “Stay back, scary shadow – I’ve got a thing that can make a high noise!”

Maybe I’ll learn jujutsu.

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Hmmm. Somehow it felt like more before typing it out. Maybe it was the way Gabe kept running in a whirlwind around me, everywhere I moved, that made me feel breathless and exhausted.

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Last night’s concert was okay. The violin teacher amazes me at every turn. She had instructed all the children that if they reached a part of a song that they couldn’t remember, to simply stop playing until they remembered again, and it worked really well! I saw lots of kids freeze occasionally, bows in place, for half a song or more. Sam was far from the only kid with memory issues (though I noticed he’d try to fake his way through some pieces when he probably should have stopped playing). Gabe was nuts for most of the concert, but it was a packed crowd and he was only one of many younger siblings who was wiggly and on the noisy side.

And we finished up the post-production of Sam’s Africa project last night! You can watch it here, but it’s fairly long and tends to drag in parts, so don’t feel obligated. It got burned to DVD, and iDVD handled that nicely, creating a lovely menu up front with pictures and music. His teacher may cock an eyebrow about some of that sort of detail, but it was all really intuitive and didn’t require too much parental assistance. Now Sam and Eric are fired up about making more DVDs to send to grandparents. They had a lot of fun with that part!

This weekend will be odd. Eric’s got some sort of bowling tournament thing all day tomorrow, so I’ll have to find some way to occupy the boys and myself – maybe we’ll go someplace fun, like the Jelly Belly factory (they’ve got train rides) and Breakfast with the Bunny (might be too late to register…). Then on Sunday, we’ve got the church Dessert Derby! I look forward to that every year.

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I’m having real trouble being awake today, for some reason. I had to run by the store before MOPS (needed DVD-R disk for Sam’s school project), and I let myself buy a Diet Coke, which kept me animated through the MOPS meeting, but now I’m sinking back below sea level once more. I don’t think this coffee is going to cut it, either, as good and lovely as it is. Caffeine is just a bandage on an open wound. Need to get to bed early tonight…but that might prove tricky, if we can’t get Sam’s project done quickly.

I had a bad dream last night, which could help explain my tiredness. Some folks dream fretfully about serious issues, like illness, mortal danger, etc. Me, I have nightmares about loose birds in a moving car. In the dream, I pulled a blanket over my head and screamed and screamed, but the driver wouldn’t pull over, and the bird kept landing on my blanket and peck-peck-pecking at me. I shuddered for a long time when I woke up. In fact, I shuddered more just typing it.

And then MOPS was challenging. Let me ask you parents this: if you had to write down what your best parenting attribute was, could you do it? Would it be a simple thing? Or would you, as I did, find yourself holding a pen over a blank piece of paper, suddenly feeling like crying?

Sam has a violin concert tonight, on top of having to finish his project. (The project is recorded, by the way; we’re just in the “post-production” segment of the work.) He’s not ready. I suppose that in the grand scale of things, that’s not catastrophic or even a bad lesson to learn, though certainly not an easy one. Still, I cringe at the thought that he’s going to get up there and in no way be able to play the pieces as fast as the other kids, and it’ll be a mess. I don’t know how that makes him feel, but it makes me feel pretty rotten. I’m over-identifying, maybe, or else it’s Mama Guilt again. Whichever. Doesn’t matter. Both suck.

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So Wednesday nights have officially become “improvise nights” with regards to dinner. Last week, I ordered pizza, timed to arrive at the beginning of that hour. This week, it’s Lentil Chili in the crockpot. (I have no delusions that Sam and Gabe will enjoy or even try this, so there will also be salad and some leftovers available to them. Nothing terribly fancy, though, as I do want to encourage them to at least try the chili. Sam is doing his best to become a fan of beans, so he was already intrigued by the lentils, but the large amount of tomatoes and onion will likely scare him off. But darn it, I wanted to try this, and I get to do that once in a while!) As a side note, I find it funny that two of the five reviews mentioned adding meat or a meat replacement to the recipe – can’t have chili without it, I guess! I’m not adding any meat, but I plan to top it with a bit of cheese, so I guess that blows the “vegan-ness” out of the water.

I’m feeling odd today. This morning, I went on my run earlier than usual; last night’s forecast was wishy-washy about whether there’d be rain this morning, so when I woke early and it was dry out, I got out as fast as I could. (Now the rain has been pushed back to noon, of course.) It was very dark and early, therefore, when I was coming down a somewhat major in-town road and saw ahead of me in the streetlamps a man, weaving wildly across the sidewalk. He was so drunk, it was patently obvious from a quarter-mile away; it was a miracle he was upright. Had I been a man…larger, stronger, more intimidating…I’d have stopped. I had a cell phone. I could have seen if there was somebody to call for him, someone who could come get him. But I’m not a man, or even a large and intimidating woman. And so, instincts buzzing, I crossed the road and turned. He called out to me: “Hey-eeeeeeeey…” in what I think was supposed to be an enticing way; I kept going.

I don’t know. Later, over breakfast, it occurred to me that perhaps I should have called the non-emergency police number. It was after 5 o’clock when I saw him, and traffic was beginning to pick up; this guy could easily have wandered off the sidewalk and in front of a car. Eric pointed out that if the police had sent somebody, the drunk would probably have been arrested. That’s not what I would have wanted; I just wished somebody could have shepherded him to a safer location, preferably with a bed and a nearby bucket. “Saint Patrick’s Day brings out the amateur drinkers,” Eric mused. I sort of hope that’s the case, and not that this guy lives like that full-time.

What would you have done?

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As of 10:30 this morning…

(...)
Read the rest of New look (254 words)

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I feel foggy today, which is appropriate, since we have dense fog outside and I ran in it. Maybe I absorbed it through my skull. Thunderstorms are coming, so perhaps that will blast away the mist and return my mind. In the meantime, here’s a picture of Sam from our trip to the museum this weekend. That butterfly perched on his hat for a long time, well after he got freaked out and had me take the hat off his head.

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Warmer tomorrow, but with more rain. At least they called off the thunderstorms that were originally awaiting me around the time I wanted to do my mid-length run. And then! “Wind advisory” for Wednesday’s run! Am I a postal worker, with the “neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet” shtick going on? (If so, I want benefits.)

I’m mollifying myself by “dressing up” my coffee at the moment. Just frothing the milk before adding it, without changing amounts or anything else, turns a normal mug into a lovely, foamy treat. Happy am I. And my Amazon books came this weekend, so I have reading material! Eric doesn’t much care for it, but my preferred method is to have a book close at hand in every room of the house; you never know when you’ll have a free five minutes to read a few pages. Food Guide for Marathoners is here in the dining room, and I’ve got Dean Karnazes in the bathroom (and don’t you wish you did, too?). I feel prepared, I do.

Tonight we have an appointment with our insurance gal to update some policies. Last time we did this, I was in rather a different place, health-speaking; it’s long overdue. Of course, that puts a crimp into dinner plans, so…LEFTOVER BONANZA, AHOY!

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WHAM!

I brought my head up directly into the top of the doorway, hard as anything. Eric shouted; I screamed and saw bright stars as I fell. It took a long time for me to come to my senses as I lay in the seat, clutching my head with both hands and howling. When I finally recovered enough to take off my hat, I saw blood inside it. Awesome.

So we went to Olive Garden. Well, we stopped by the house first, so I could grab an ice pack… At the restaurant, Eric asked to look at my head, and when I bowed it forward, he shouted, “Whoa!” Then Sam was staring, and the waitress was looking, and I began to feel nauseated, like I was Massive Head Wound Harry, enjoying a plate of linguini. Eric tried to reassure me that it wasn’t that bad, that it was just a scrape that looked worse under my red hair, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Even now, after having been to the gym, washed my hair, and having Eric say it doesn’t look at all bad anymore, it’s hard to stop thinking about my scalp. Weird.

(Yes, I went to the gym. Never lost consciousness, didn’t have dizziness or any other signs of concussion, so I thought it was fine. I felt a bit tired, but…I ran almost 20 miles yesterday. It’s probably to be expected. )

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And, most currently on my mind:
* It’s not the most lovely accompaniment which I can imagine to a 19-mile run.

So guess what’s in store for Saturday? Yeah. Could you cross your fingers for me, please, that the weathermen will be wrong about at least the timing? I’d love to see that rain hold off until at least 8:30 or 9 o’clock.

Moving on! We had a brief respite of a few days during which Sam reverted to his old clothing style, but now he’s back to dress shirts and ties again. This morning, he sported a sweater vest over his tie. Then he groused because the only clean “nice” pants I had to offer him were his old brown trousers with the elastic waistband. God forbid we should have to go without a leather belt, you know. Next he’ll be wearing a blazer and carrying a briefcase.

Eric’s dad continues to recover well. It was a relief to get Eric home again last night, let me tell you. He did enjoy the non-surgically-related parts of the trip, especially getting to meet our nephew for the first time. (Said nephew will be two years old this summer. We are the worst aunt and uncle ever.) We need to plan a trip back east for the whole family soon; wish I had a better idea of when would be the best timing for that. I think Gabe and his younger cousin would get on smashingly.

While I’m flitting from subject to subject, tonight’s dinner will be a parmesan-encrusted perch, balsamic (sorry, Eric) roasted eggplant, and a tossed green salad. Don’t forget to tip your waiters!

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I’m getting up early tomorrow to go in for my blood draw to check thyroid, iron, calcium and D, what have you. I’m relieved Eric will be here so I can go without kids in tow; there’s nothing more fun than having needles stuck in you while having to devote your attention to making sure your inquisitive child isn’t sneaking into the cabinet with all the hypodermics, behind the tech’s back.

“Clench your fist…”
“Okay – GABE! OW! No, no! No, not you, I mean my son; didn’t mean to make you jump…should I be bleeding like that now?”

And Alysia is holding something over my head and won’t give up the goods. She asked me to promise to forgive her, but I told her that I need to first see what her idea of “love” is. If I open my door to FedEx and find a caged macaw or a giant parrot, all bets are off. (Of course, I’m kidding. I’ll forgive her anything. But it better not have wings and a beak, or that’ll get mighty tough!)

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So. Pray for Eric’s dad, pray for Gabe, and pray for my sanity, because with two boys mildly freaking over worry for Grandpa (Sam treated a stranger in the bookstore today to a whole big tale over “My grandpa is having heart surgery, and my dad already lost his mom!”) and missing their dad, and with one possibly getting sick, I may do a little freaking of my own.

Tried to make us all feel better today by using a coupon for a favorite buffet restaurant of theirs (woo, kids eat free!) and then, as I mentioned, taking us to the bookstore. The idea was for them each to select one book and for me to pick up the book I wanted to get yesterday but wasn’t willing to wait in a huge line to buy. The first part went okay (Sam got this and Gabe chose this), but my book wasn’t there. Neither were any of the other books I’d recently been considering. In fact, after about the fourth title to which the reference desk person said, “No, but we can order it!” I sighed and said, “Are there any books at all here?” She didn’t think it was funny. Come to that, neither did I.

It’s okay. I came home and found an unused Amazon gift card and ordered the Nancy Clark book and two others. Nyah. I can wait a few days, though it would have been nice to have them comforting me until Eric gets home on Wednesday.

Eric took with him his new running shoes, purchased yesterday after an intensive fitting session. My baby overpronates more than I do, possibly. I find it more amusing than it probably is to know that he’s now running in the same Saucony Progrid Hurricanes that I am, though in a newer model. (We’re even both in men’s shoes.) The salesgirl fretted that he was still slightly overpronating even in these, but she wants him to give them a try for a few weeks before putting him into an orthotic insole as well. I know I’ve read some debate over whether strict gait correction can carry with it its own problems, so maybe that’s a good idea. As for me, at the running store I picked up an Amphipod RunLite 4 after a lengthy conversation with a marathoner who worked there. I tried out his, found it to be just about perfect, and now I can’t wait for my next long run! Now I just have to decide what to put into it.

Today, though, I don’t even get to do my usual Sunday cross-training at the gym. Gosh darn childcare room that isn’t open on Sundays…

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Fridays are normally violin class days for Sam, but today he’s on a field trip to the Big City Museum for his grade’s unit on Africa. This also meant that I had to go out in search of paper lunch bags and prepackaged drinks for him instead of sending him with his lunchbox and thermos.

Eric ordinarily goes out with his friends for drinks after work on Fridays, but he’s not sure whether that’s happening or not tonight. He said he’d call or email when he knew, but I’ve heard nothing yet. Well, if he comes home, he’s getting pizza delivery for dinner; I’d have put effort into cooking if I was sure he’d be here, but since it’s possibly just me and the boys and I’d love to chill and relax for tomorrow morning’s long run…oh, did I load up that pizza with all sorts of lovely vegetables. Roasted red peppers! Spinach! I’m drooling in anticipation.

On the whole, I sort of feel mentally like I did when I took my first step out the door this morning: slippery, off-balance, scrambling for equilibrium.

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Back in West Virginia, when I was an undergrad, our composition professor was also the choir director at the Episcopal church where Eric and I would eventually be married. We weren’t attending church at the time – typical college students – so our professor eventually strong-armed us into participating in his choir on Sunday mornings. Neither of us had any Episcopalian background in our spiritual lives, so the liturgy and style of worship was entirely new and unfamiliar to us; nevertheless, it caught both our hearts, and St. Thomas à Becket Church will always hold a piece of me. We no longer attend an Episcopal church, but that one was lovely, in its leadership, membership, and spirit.

And its pancake supper.

(...)
Read the rest of Pancakes! (509 words)

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We now enter a second solid week of Sam dressing to the nines for school. Today it was a black dress shirt and tie. This girl must be exceptional (though now he’s suggesting that there may be a second girl catching his attention, the little player). Of course, the alternative is that he’s enjoying the attention he gets from adults in the school for looking like this, or that he’s relishing the role of “boy interested in girl.” He tried to insinuate that I was proud of him because he “finally found a girl to like!” but I shut that down in a hurry. Good grief, Mister Seven Years Old. On Friday, he went with his dress shirt open at the neck, with a hematite cross pendant around his neck; he looked like a member of a church praise band. I’d take a picture, but I don’t know how much I care to encourage this. On the other hand, he did choose to dress like a complete slob all weekend long…

Eric has taken to heading to the gym on a regular basis! He’s going in the evenings, which works nicely with my morning running preference. He’s actually doing a walk-run thing on the treadmill, and he’s musing about possibly eventually working up to being able to do 5Ks. It’s a struggle, now, not to want to talk about running ALL THE TIME with him, which would be a complete turn-off for him…but, like I said, it’s hard not to. He does need new shoes, fitted properly, so that lines up nicely with my desire to get up to one of the big running stores soon and check out fuel and hydration systems for the marathon. My Crush Fuel Belt isn’t going to do it, I think I’ve decided. Just too much of a pain to get the bottle in and out; once, this past run, when I tried, I managed to accidentally rip the whole belt off my waist. Suggestions for an alternative, and one that hopefully carries more than a single packet of something besides the bottles? (I hate gels, so need to carry Beans, Blox, etc.)

Been running a smidge earlier in the morning than I have to, so that I have time to sit and eat breakfast with Eric in the morning before he heads to work. (Meaning that he, too, is rising before he had been, so he’s not rushing and eating a few bites while standing over the kitchen counter.) It’s nice – so much more satisfying than an extra 15-30 minutes of sleep time would be.

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So my fridge is full of bean soup. I also have leftover pork tenderloin, leftover meatloaf, leftover fish, leftover pizza, leftover cornbread…guess what we’re doing for dinner tonight? Eric will be home late, due to a church meeting, so my plan is pretty much to throw the fridge door wide and yell, “Go get ‘em, boys!” A-plus mothering, that; they don’t teach that in any parenting book.

A few days ago, when the weather page was forecasting 1-3 inches of snow overnight, I glared outside until the clouds decided they were better off skipping us. This time, they’re calling for the same amount of accumulation Friday night, right before my 17-miler. I’m already practicing my steel-eyed gaze heavenward. Don’t you dare drop all that white stuff all over the place, do you hear me?

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Also, boo on the book I just finished. I don’t know, guess it wasn’t my cup of tea; it wasn’t poorly written, but I just felt completely unmoved by any of the characters. Instead of feeling pulled along by the tale, it read like, “Oh, hey! This author learned a bunch of Chinese history and designed a little story around that framework! Hurrah, history!” I like history, but in this case, I’d just about rather have picked up a history book than wasted the time wading through the narrative. Meh.

Sam is still dressing up for school. I tried to encourage a sweater this morning, but he came down dressed in a button-down shirt again.

In the car this morning, Gabe cheerfully remarked, “Those buses are peculiar, aren’t they? They’re blue and white.” (I can’t recall using that word in casual conversation in…well, ever, though I’m sure I have.)

If I eat enough iron-rich foods, will I stop feeling like I’m walking through a fogbank and every little thing is catching me by surprise?

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Apparently, Valentine’s Day wasn’t enough for Sam to try to impress the girl on whom he had a crush; this morning, he shouldered himself into another dress shirt, though I talked him out of a tie in favor of just a sweater vest. “I want to look good for B______!” Okay, then. I think he also really enjoyed having all the grownups tell him he looked handsome on Friday. At this rate, though, I’ll need to pick him up some more nice shirts; he only has three long-sleeved dress shirts that fit at present. He’s been living in screen-printed tee-shirts, long and short-sleeved, for a very long time. I was caught off-guard by this morning’s wardrobe issues; I hadn’t realized that this was going to be an ongoing thing. Live and learn. My little man is growing up, sniff-sniff…

I should totally do this. How fun would that be? Most of the courses are so far away, though; I’d have to plan. But it also looks like there are only two RRCA-certified coaches in my state, so there might be an untapped market.

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