one-woman adventures

motto

2012-01-26T16:08:00.002-05:00

This is my new motto: Suck it up, buttercup. It gets me through the last few pushups or the last mile of a run. It reminds me that I CAN do this, and it also makes me laugh. Laughing gives me just enough pick-me-up to make it through. Try it next time you are struggling and maybe you, too, will feel the mojo of this motto.

Speaking of running, I have had three excellent runs in a row in which nothing really hurt and I didn't whine much. *A small miracle has occurred* I really needed some good runs because of my slacker ways over the last month and my various minor but highly irritating injuries. I'm feeling good about running again.

gloomy

2012-01-23T13:48:00.003-05:00

A couple of weeks ago the sky was this brilliant blue color with puffy white clouds. This kind of sky makes living through another Midwestern winter seem possible. But alas, the sky has been gray for weeks now and I am having trouble staying cheerful and energetic. I want to sink into the oblivion of couch and blankets, books and fatty snack foods. I've been seeking out funny and/or delightful things to pick myself up. If you can point me to any funny or delightful things, please feel free to do so. The Republican debates do not count as a humorous contribution because they are only funny until you remember that one of these clowns could be President.

the cake

2011-12-06T14:48:00.002-05:00

Number two son baked and decorated this lovely birthday cake for me in his foods class in school. He texted me after school yesterday (my actual birthday) to let me know that he had forgotten to bring the cake home from school. I think this cake has actually been mostly done since Friday. This is Tuesday, and I hold out very little hope of it being remembered today. I hope I'm wrong. In the meantime, son provided me with a picture of the cake. Yesterday, for my very own little birthday celebration, I ran 4.5 miles in a fairly pouring, cold rain with my running buddy Tanya. Contrary to what you would think, I loved every minute of it. Rain doesn't bother me that much. I try to always run on my birthday. A friend told me that she always tries to eat chocolate cake on her birthday. I'm perfectly up for having cake, too, along with running. My cake is at the high school, though.

fifty years in the rearview

2011-12-05T10:05:00.007-05:00

I am fifty today. I celebrated with some friends and family Saturday night at a warm, fun local restuarant with good food and wine. I've done a lot of crazy, dangerous, and sometimes stupid things in my life. I have survived things that have killed people. So waking up this morning having made it through a half century of living feels like no small miracle. I'm happy and healthy and whole and loved. What more could a person ask for? My mom gave me a card with pictures of myself at about 2 and 3 years old. Very funny to see my small baby-fat self in my little blue dress and my bangs trimmed so short they were nearly to my hairline. My mother claims that most likely I would not sit still, forcing her to keep evening them up until they were half an inch long. I would buy this story or really any other explanation. I have always had a hard time sitting still and I hated it when she had to comb my hair. I have nipped my own son in the ear with sharp scissors trimming his hair at 2 years old. And then there was the time he gave himself a haircut. These things happen. But there I was 48 years later with my big smile and my funny bangs and my fat little cheeks, same gap in my two front teeth that I have to this day.

I want to squeeze Little Julie's chubby dimpled knees and tell her that although life will be a real bitch some years, everything will be ok when you are fifty. Really. You will find yourself healthy and whole and loved, and you will recognize that fact and you will be filled with gratitude. You will be happy. Your mother, despite the ups and downs in your relationship, will be your biggest supporter and friend. It will all work out once you both grow up. She will write you a letter on your fiftieth birthday that will make you cry tears of joy.

And sweetheart, you will have two sons who will alternately reduce you to a blubbering wreck and lift you to the highest heights of love. They will define your life. They will help you define yourself and everything that is important to you. You will have a life partner who loves you for yourself, and loves you deeply. At long last. I won't go into the gorey details--it's not all pretty-- but trust, just trust.

Life will be adventurous, heartbreaking, lovely, joyful, hard, beautiful, poignant, and always always interesting. Everything will come out ok at fifty. So keep smiling, Little Julie. And carry on.

mom's surprise

2011-12-02T16:04:00.005-05:00

My mom came into my office today and surprised me with two dozen baby roses and chocolate cupcakes! Way to go mom, great surprise! We then had a nice lunch and when I got back, about six people in my office told me how beautiful and young my mom looked. She is lovely and I think people most notice her very youthful energy. That, and she can accessorize like nobody's business. I could learn a thing or two, but in the mornings, I rarely think beyond "find clean clothes that don't itch, get coffee, get to work". Accesorizing is far beyond my a.m. mental capabilities. That is her in the photo with my aunt, oddly unaccessorized, but it was a very hot day.

inked

2011-12-02T10:44:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was a very unique day in my life because I got a tattoo. I've said "never" on that subject, but if there is one thing I've learned in life, it is to never say never. Number 1 son made the suggestion, three years ago when he got his first tattoo at age 18, that I recognize my 50th birthday with a tattoo. I have been considering, for three years, whether or not I wanted to do this, and if so, what. Reaching fifty feels like a big milestone for me. After much reflection over the past year, I realized that I love being fifty, love this time in my life. Not that it's all roses, but so many things are so good. I wanted to mark this milestone year. One thing I wanted to do to mark it was to challenge myself to complete another marathon this year, which I did. And I promised son that I would consider his tattoo idea.

Son is a persistent dude. Been that way his whole life. If he has what he considers an excellent idea, he does not waver in his attachment to the idea no matter how long it takes him to bring it to fruition. He has not let me forget, for three years, that I should be mulling this over. I finally decided that yes, I would do this with him. I would go and son would guide me through the experience and hold my hand. He was all for this and thought it would be a great bonding experience. So we booked the date, put down a deposit, and last night he held my hand as I had "go with all your heart" tattooed inside my left forearm. This is the second half of one of my lifelong mantras, "Wherever you go, go with all your heart." But I have small arms, and felt that the last few words expressed what I wanted to express rather more succinctly.

I did decide that if I was going to get inked, I was not going to worry about being able to hide it. At 50, I am very comfortable in my own skin and not everyone has to like me or agree with my decisions. I'm okay with that. I seek unconditional love in my life, not conditional approval. A friend of mine told me recently that he read a book about irrational thinking leading to unhappiness. The book said that thinking everyone must like you is an irrational thought. I couldn't agree more. I would post a photo of my new body adornment, but it is still sort of red and icky looking. Later, when the whole thing has calmed down, I shall. I'm not used to it being part of me yet, but I do think it is attractively done.

first snow

2011-11-30T13:59:00.003-05:00

...was yesterday. I'm finding this blogging-of-the-day ON the actual day to be a challenge because in the evening, after the day has happened, I am doing things other than being on the computer. So I'm going to give myself a pass and will be blogging on the previous day some of the time. Yesterday my running buddy and I went out for our regular Tuesday lunchtime run, even though it was pouring rain. What the hell, we said, let's just do it. We knew we'd get wet, but we did not count on the temperature taking an abrupt plunge and the rain turning to snow. First the rain turned to ice and pelted us in the face for a couple of miles, and then it turned to lovely, big, white snow flakes. It was very exhilarating and I have to say we had a very good time laughing and running. Normally 30-something is not a horrible temperature to run in, but because we were soaked, we got pretty cold. I had stepped into an ankle deep puddle from the days of rain we've had, and I could not feel my toes by the time we got back. But the important thing is that we soldiered on and we had a good time. I made up a new song while we were out in the worst of it: "Snowflakes that fall on our nose and eyelashes, cold winds that freeze our legs and our asses..." My running buddy cracked up, but she's pretty easy to score a laugh from. One of the many things I love about my running buddy. Photo: My brother at about 20 or 21. Refer to photo in previous blog post. We looked very much alike back then.

failure to blog

2011-11-29T11:15:00.005-05:00

I am struggling to keep up with the daily blogging this time of year, obviously. I don't know where my time goes, it just goes. Whole days of it. And yet, each and every day, blog-worthy things are happening. For instance, after our family Thanksgiving meal on T'day, son the younger was invited to a second feast at the home of super model Elaine Irwin (formerly Mellencamp). Son is friends with her son with local-boy-made-big John Mellencamp. The next day, he and his buddy went to John Mellencamp's house where son met Meg Ryan. Yes, that Meg Ryan. And hung out with her son with Dennis Quaid. It's just all more than I can take in, honestly. Son spent the entire weekend rubbing elbows with the rich and famous and was cranky when he came home. Probably a rude awakening. Sorry, son, this is where we live. Down here amongst the little people. Ha! I asked him if Meg Ryan fixed him a sandwhich. He scoffed and said, "They have people who do that." Photo: one-woman adventures at the youthful age of 22. I appear to have more enthusiasm in this photo than I can seem to muster up these days.

turkey trotting

2011-11-24T12:03:00.003-05:00

Friend Jim G had a turkey trot and treasure hunt this morning which was an excellent way to start the day. A party of us jogged from his house to Bryan Park, scavenged around for a few clues, and then went back to his house for coffee, bagels, eggs, and fruit. Quite fun little party and we met some new folks who were just flat out interesting and fun., people whom we were most happy to meet and who will be incorporated into future fun events! We also got to play with Neo, friend Jim's dog. Neo is about 90 pounds of pure muscle and looks like he could easily take your arm off if he so desired, but he is one sweet and gentle doggie. This photo is husband and good dog Neo. I have just whipped up a pumpkin pie and it is in the oven producing delicious Thanksgiving smells. We will be conveying this pie to my mom's house, where mom will having turkey and all the other delicious fixings prepared for us. Sweet!

talking myself down

2011-11-23T17:26:00.003-05:00

Today, I struggle with the fact that I have not run for one week and one day. Because of this whole "procedure" thing. I didn't feel well before it, and then I overdid things afterwards and now I don't feel so well again. I do that overdoing it thing sometimes. The instructions said that I could return to normal activities withing 24 hours, but I don't think they meant full on athletic endeavors. That was sort of stupid I suppose, and several friends let me know that I should stop doing things for awhile and allow myself to heal and that to do otherwise would be extremely stupid. So I didn't run again today and boy oh boy, I'm so USED to running that I am having a difficult time making myself not run.

Also today, I went to meet my son for lunch and, on the way, ran into fellow blogger and long time friend LH and a portion of her handsome family and got a nice hug! {{HUG}} Always a good thing in my book. I seek out hugging opportunities. I hug the kids who do Free Hug Day on campus, much to my son's chagrin. He does not hug strangers. And now I'm at home drinking a glass of wine and trying to get into a holiday mood. I can't always go from "work mode" to "holiday mode" in a minute. It's going to take a moment to sink in that I don't have to go to work for the next four days. I seriously need a break. I have no plans for dinner. I'm hoping husband suggests we go out although it's doubtful that he will. I think it would be the perfect ending to a day like today, whatever kind of day this has been.

tumescently clouded tuesday

2011-11-22T14:35:00.006-05:00

Tuesdays are running days, but I'm not training for a particular race, and so there was absolutely no good reason to push myself outside into this drizzling gray day, despite having most of the appropriate gear to do so. Instead, I stayed in with my running buddy and we co-opted an empty office to do the P90-X Core video. This video is pretty kick-ass hard, as are all of the P90-X videos, but we've been doing it for some time and I have to say we are showing marked improvement. We are doing push-ups like military trainees these days.

I also got a call from my doctor today. I had a few procedures done on an outpatient basis at the hospital on Friday. Procedures that are often required for women of a certain age. Let's face it folks, while we have made major advances in medicine, still, biologically, there are parts of us that make us best suited to having babies at 15 and dying by 50. (A friend of mine posed the suggestion that a woman's uterus should just drop out with the last kid. I'm a little unclear what would signal "last".) The doctor informed me that while what he removed was a myoma, aka tumor, it was completely benign. This is very good news. The funniest part of the whole thing (for me, there is pretty much always a 'funniest part', even during hard stuff) is this little gem of a story: The nurse was trying to get a needle into the vein of my hand to start an IV. I have, what my husband calls, tiny little monkey hands. My tiny monkey hands apparently have tiny veins and the vein rolled, and he stabbed, and it rolled, and he stabbed, until I got quite nauseated and he had to stop while I put my head down. Then he asked me, "Are you doing ok?" and from behind him came the small, green voice of my dear husband saying, "I think so." The nurse and I both looked over into the corner where husband had his head between his knees. Poor guy. He was sympathetically nauseated.

blog challenge, catching up

2011-11-22T14:14:00.003-05:00

I've been waiting to be challenged because I've been very bad about blogging. Life just seems to happen at breakneck speed. But bring on a challenge to keep me going! Yay! Something that happened to me today. Only I have to start with last Saturday and catch up.

Saturday morning, November 19th, 2011, started out much like most every other Saturday. Husband and I are habitual people when it comes to Saturday mornings. We go to a coffee shop--these days it is Stonecutter's Coffee--and have coffee and delicious baked goods. Stonecutters has excellent coffee and superb baked goods. Then we go to the farmer's market. We've gone to the farmer's market nearly every Saturday for years and years now. There are only a few weeks of the year when they don't have a market now, and those Saturdays we are practically bereft.

Sunday morning, 11-20-2011 (please notice the very nice symmetry to this date), husband and I lounged in bed over coffee and homemade apple crisp with vanilla yogurt, a favorite breakfast of ours. I make the crisp with all kinds of good stuff like oatmeal and wheat germ and walnuts. After lounging a decent amount of time, we went to church to see what was cooking with the UU's. We were standing in the community room, having coffee, and looking over the Giving Tree which has tags on it with kids' ages and something they want or need for Christmas. This is always both a joyous and a sad thing for me. I feel so much gratitude for all I have, and so hurt that some do not have enough of anything. We each picked a couple of kids and signed up on the sheet. Then husband started crying. "A lot of those kids just need shoes," he said, "just shoes." He was quite emotional and went back to the tree and picked up three more kids. Sometimes I think he's a curmudgeonly, penny-pinching old dude, and other times his beautiful soul comes shining through and I love him all the more.

November 21st, Monday, again. I worked. I worked and worked and worked. I wrote several hundred lines of workable code in order to answer questions posed by other people who need to know things. Things like, "What is the break down of undergraduate, degree-seeking, non-resident students by ethnicity and major?" I like doing this kind of stuff. It's sort of a long logic problem, and then I look up and the day has slipped by.

Why? Why?

2011-09-02T10:47:00.001-04:00

I forgot Y. I know, how does one simply forget the alphabet?? I will blame it on the fact that I work in the Registrar's office of a major university and classes started for the forty-two thousand kids who go here. It's been nuts, folks, and I'm lucky to have remembered to wear underwear this week, much less remembered to blog Y. Sorry Y. I'll make it up to you in future blog entry.

zealously zen

2011-08-31T10:45:00.003-04:00

So, I nearly made it this time as far as the blog challenge. Not quite under the wire, but at least I got to z this time. Good challenge fellow bloggers! I got busy yesterday at work and didn't get my z's in. It happens. I'm pretty low key about these things. In the end, it does not matter that I'm typing this 12 hours past August. I do work at trying to maintain zen-like composure as much as possible. Try to be a 'look at something's importance in the big scheme of things' kind of person. Of course this is not always doable for me, but there are definitely things that used to put me over the edge that barely phase me anymore. I do know people, however, who can turn ANY situation into a zen moment at the drop of a hat. They are zealously zen. One might say over-zealously zen. "I have been given a wonderful opportunity for growth!" they might exclaim upon loosing their job. It all happens for a purpose! Change is exciting! Everything holds a lesson! And maybe it does. I am usually able to come around to that view of events. But sheesh, people, sometimes one has to rail on a bit before whatever seemingly crappy thing that just happened turns itself inside out so that one can see the silver lining. You know what I mean? Sometimes it is more a matter of cutting down the time I spend totally losing it than being zen about something from minute one.

xanthophyll, xylophory

2011-08-30T16:06:00.005-04:00

Ok, I had to resort to googling "words that begin with x" for this one. Out of all the strange and scientific sounding x words, I liked these two best:

xanthophyll - substance causing yellow color of autumn leaves
xylophory - wood-carrying.

These two words remind me of autumn, my most favorite season of all. I love almost everything about autumn, except for the fact that our university town is overwhelmed all at once with 42 thousand students and their parents. But I am on the lookout for xanthophyll because I love the season of turning leaves. I love the morning coolness that starts happening this time of year. I look forward to whole days of cool air and blue skies. I look forward to being xylophoric, carrying the ricks of wood from where the xylopolist (person who sells wood) has dumped it, to our woodpile from where we will retrieve it when it gets cold and snowy and we make fires in the woodstove. As husband and I always say, "Wood warms twice." Once when you cut it or carry it and pile it up, and once when you burn it. Husband picks the xylopolist very carefully each year. He wants to make sure we get good, dry hardwood. I love putting on my boots and tromping out through the snow to get wood for the fire because I know, after the blast of freezing cold air, I can come in and sit by the intense warmth of the woodstove. It is a comforting, self-reliant feeling to be a little bit off the electric grid. We survived a power outage of four days last winter, hanging out in our down coats and sheepskin house slippers, keeping a fire going in the woodstove, and making jiffy pop over our camp stove to have with a movie on the portable dvd player when it got too dark to read. As a builder, husband has worked outside most of his life and dreads Fall as the harbinger of winter. But I love it and relish it for the amazingly beautiful season it us unto itself.

wind and wheels

2011-08-30T15:44:00.003-04:00

The husband has ridden motorcycles for close to 40 years. He's a good rider and makes me feel quite safe on the back, so going out on the bike can be a fun thing, despite the obvious dangers. We usually head down the scenic highways and byways of the rolling hills of Southern Indiana. I love the smells of corn fields and pine forests and wildflowers as we whip by on our two wheels. You know when you put your arm out the car window and it feels kind of good as you go zipping down the road? That's how my whole body feels on a motorcycle. We stop at places to eat and get coffee like Story Inn, which is a little bit gourmet, or the 56 Cafe, which is a little bit greasy spoon. There are some lunch places scattered here and there with river or lake vistas and waitresses who call you "Hon". I learned to ride through a motorcycle training course a few years back. I even got a bike and I rode it for about a year. But my kids were much younger then and frankly I just couldn't take the stress of it. When it comes to motorcycles, there is more to learn after you get your license than in the training process to get licensed. Some of these things people learn the hard way, and I just didn't want to push myself over that learning curve. If I'm in control of something with wheels and no seat belts, I'd rather stick to things like scooters, bicycles, and roller blades which don't go over about 30 miles per hour. God knows I've hurt myself plenty on bikes and roller blades. So I now ride on the back and because of husband's estimable expertise, I'm quite comfortable with that.

very vague

2011-08-29T13:39:00.006-04:00

I will just tell you right now that I am suddenly very vague on 1) why I started into this personal trainer certification thing and 2) what exactly I want to do with it. Seems like I was much more clear when I began. I wanted to vigorously pursue this goal. You might even say I had a vision. I have lost a little steam over the summer and am a few chapters behind according to the emails encouraging me to accomplish certain chapters by certain dates. I stopped reading the emails because they just made me feel bad. I blame it on the heat and humidity and the fact that my family, bless their hearts, never go a single solitary moment without having a television on. If I want to read in the quiet where I can concentrate, I have to go outside or to someplace like a coffee establishment which has it's own set of distractions. I will get re-energized on this project, I am sure. There is some niche for me in the personal training world, surely. And if not, I am at least smarter about my own body and my own training. And speaking of vague, I found this picture on my computer but am really vague about what is going on. It looks like husband is getting ready to eat cereal, and yet there is a beer bottle on the counter. And there are our farmer's market bags in the background. So is this Sunday morning, and we have not yet put away our Saturday farmer's market stuff, and we were drinking so much beer the night before that we have not yet cleaned any of that up, and this all took place in some time that was cold enough for husband to have jeans and a sweater on? I am quite vague about the why and when of this photo.

unendingly uphill

2011-08-29T10:28:00.007-04:00

I ran a 5 mile race at the local Creekbend Vineyard on Saturday. It was very hot and there was one stinking hill after another. The three biggest hills were labeled: The Hill of Discomfort, The Hill of Despair, and The Hill of Death. In between were lots of other hills that were not labeled with encouraging names so I didn't know whether to expect discomfort, despair, death, or something heretofore unimagined. On one hill we breathed a lot of dust. It could've aptly been labeled The Hill of Choking Dust. They could've drawn a little brown lung.

Shortly after the Hill of Despair, many of us were stung by an underground nest of yellow jackets which had been quite riled up by the runners who were ahead of us. I got stung on the ankle as did several other people. It hurt. After the Valley of Stings came the Hill of Death, and I would say that getting up that hill hurt even more than the sting, which was throbbing a bit. The signage even related how long the hill was and the degree of incline--160 feet of 23 degree slope. If you drew a 23 degree angle, you would think, eh, this is not straight up. If you have run a 23 degree slope, you would know that, given the way the human leg moves, and the fact that you are attempting to go forward at a fast clip, this does indeed work out to be straight up, despite the actual geometry.

Needless to say, this was one of the more challenging five miles I've ever run. It was for a good cause, and there was supposed to be free wine and food afterwards. Turns out there was only free water and oranges and we had to buy the wine and food. But there was a band. They said there would be and there was. I'd talked my niece into running the one mile kids' run. It was her first race and she did very well, coming in 7th out of 50 or so kids. Well done Maddie! It was really hot and the last half mile of the kids' run was a steep uphill, too. I ran the last half mile with her, encouraging her to keep going up the hill as she was starting to flag a bit. She took off running again and ended up doing really well. After she recovered for a couple of minutes she said, "Now that I'm not running, I think I feel like running some more!" Like I've always contended, running feels so good after you stop. :) It was fun to share my love of running with my niecekins.

After I washed my face and caught my breath I was fine. Despite the heat and hills, it was only five miles, which is a usual kind of distance for me. And after all was said and done, the race was in quite a beautiful place--vineyards and pine forests. Husband and son and I walked through the vineyards and ate a lot of burgeoningly ripe wine grapes which were delicious. We sat on a blanket and had homemade cookies and fresh bread and pesto, fruit and veggies from the farmer's market and wine, and listened to the band. The sun started setting, red and orange, and as we drove out, the vineyards and surrounding hillsides were just stunningly beautiful. We could've been in Italy. It was a good evening to be alive.

training tip

2011-08-27T11:23:00.005-04:00

Not a training tip for running. I go on about running ad nauseum, I'm afraid. No, this is a training tip for being a good spouse. Here's the tip: Even though stupid/lazy/bad cook/spendaholic/bad driving/whatEVER spouse jokes are all the rage on every stupid sitcom on television, they are not funny in real life. Some people, like me, don't even find them funny on television. (Husband finds this kind of humor very funny.) Because this thing called marriage is hard enough without the whole culture of "it's fun to put down your spouse or talk about the old ball-and-chain or how now that you are married, hoo boy, will your life be one long miserable drudge. Case in point: standing in line at the farmer's market today, husband was purchasing some elderberries. Since we had not ever had raw elderberries, I asked the man if they were sweet or tart. He replied, "They have no natural sweetness at all." My husband said, in retort, "Just like my wife." Both the fruit vendor and the guy standing next to us looked at husband with not happy looks on their faces. The guy next to us actually scowled at husband and said, "That's something I would have kept to myself." Oh ha ha ha, it was just a joke, right? They do it on tv all the time. I shouldn't be so sensitive. But we were not with friends, joking around. We were just buying fruit. And it was a lovely day, and I had had a very difficult week but was feeling upbeat. And I am a sweet person and display this sweetness to the hubby as much as any human can. In fact, I'd just said something very positive and nice about him to friends we'd talked to not five minutes before this. Take this as a tip: do not make cutting jokes about your spouse. (I can't think of a friend I have, male or female, who DOES make cutting jokes about their spouse.) A lot of people, especially the person being cut down at the knees in front of total strangers, don't find it funny at all. Ok, that was T. Just had to get this off my chest. Let's move on to happier letters of the alphabet. Photo: a Truckload of Teagues--my grandparent's, my dad, and his two brothers. I don't know what was up with my dad's injured face, but having raised two boys I can imagine.

seth stories

2011-08-25T16:05:00.008-04:00

My son Seth, who will be 18 next month, has provided more humorous tales than I can keep track of. The kid can be a total pain in the butt but he is one funny dude, always has been. He was extremely verbal at a young age, and has an impeccable sense of comic timing, both of which added to the comedy in our household. Blogging friend LH related this story about Seth to me. A whole tribe of boys, all about 10 years old, were at her house playing in the backyard. They were ostensibly playing baseball but then began braining each other with the baseball bat because that is what 10 year old boys think to do. LH, being a responsible parent, removed the baseball bat from the scene after several unheeded warnings to stop hitting each other with it. Fifteen minutes later, Seth came up to her and said they'd looked everywhere for the baseball bat and couldn't find it. LH reminded them that, yes, she had hidden the baseball bat because they were out of control with it. Seth, with his big brown eyes and totally innocent expression, looked at her and said, "The search continues!" This is not the response I would've preferred from him in dealing with another adult, but I have to admit I laughed. Another famous Seth story is the time we were on vacation, Seth was about 7, and we were talking over dinner one night about creating our own country. Husband declared himself King, making me Queen. Seth declared himself President. Older son, 10 at the time, has always been a pretty serious kid. Just way more serious than his brother. A worrier at times, you might say. Andy asked his little brother, "Well who can I be in our country?" Seth replied, "Andy, you can be a concerned citizen." Husband and I nearly choked laughing. To this day, we often call Andy the "concerned citizen." To this day, Andy doesn't see why this is funny. And these are just two of the many humorous times with the Seth-mon.

rewards of racing

2011-08-24T09:43:00.005-04:00

I like to run races--it gives me some goal to work towards, which helps keep me running--although I am a nervous wreck at the start of every race. It makes no sense to be nervous because I'm not going to be anywhere near the front of the pack, and I'm usually pretty sure I can finish unless I meet with some unfortunate accident. It's just the nervousness of standing in a big group of people who are all waiting for a gun to go off, I guess, and then we all have to set about the task at hand which is to run a bunch of miles, something that is never all that easy. But afterwards, there is camaraderie and bananas and runner talk and, for a half marathon or longer, a medal of some sort. A very few times I've won an age group prize--a small trophy, a gift certificate, a beer mug. Inconsequential stuff but still fun. The next race I'm running is through the vineyards of a local winery and there is wine and food afterwards. Wine is always a big selling point with me but, surprisingly, it is offered after very few races. And the one after that is a women's only half marathon for which the shirt is bright pink and the medal is decorated with flowers and butterflies because they don't have to make them some ugly guy-safe color. These are my inducements for running 13.1 miles on a hot day--a pretty medal and a non-ugly shirt. Yes, the rewards are many. (photo: Magnificent 7 Super 7K in March. Friend Melissa--white tshirt, black tights--is a super enthusiastic runner!)

quantity versus quality?

2011-08-23T15:16:00.007-04:00

To answer the question of quantity versus quality on a few of life's essentials:

Clothes: prefer quality but end up with quantity due to poor impulse control.

Ice cream: almost always go for quantity, especially when bummed out over poor impulse control.

Shoes and books: quality and quantity without a moment's guilt.

Pizza, bread, pie: quality, every time.

Throw pillows, kitchen towels, and tshirts: husband says an excess of quantity and this seems to bother him.

Days and friends: of course, a quantity of quality days and friends is the best.

practice practice

2011-08-22T16:01:00.005-04:00

I would like to be awesome in a few ways. I think being awesome comes naturally to some people, but I can't seem to focus my powers to be really awesome at any one thing. I am moderately successful at some things, but I wouldn't say awesome. For instance, I am not the wittiest person I know, but being witty is one of the things at which I would love to excel. I would just about kill to be as witty as, say, Dorothy Parker. Or even my friend John S who is one of the wittiest people I know in real life. I told friend John S. that I would love to be as witty as Dorothy Parker, and he shared this witticism with me:

“You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.” --Dorothy Parker, drawing the word “horticulture” during a game of “Give me a sentence”.

Ha! That is an awesome play on words. I do come up with a real zinger of a pun every now and then. I told my friend that I think of a lot of witty and scandalous and humorously scathing things, but always 15 minutes too late. He said that the French have an idiom for thinking of something too late and it is called "staircase wit", meaning after you are home from a party and going up to bed, you think of the perfect thing you should have said. I must practice at being more awesome in this regard by trying to think faster on my feet.

outdoorsy oliver fan

2011-08-22T10:00:00.006-04:00

I am a person who needs to be outdoors as much as possible. I sometimes wonder if this a mild form of claustrophobia. Working in an office, often an office without a window, for the past 28 years has nearly crushed my soul some days. When I leave the office, I want to be outside. I want to eat outside, walk outside, sit outside, read outside. If I have to be indoors, I want all of the windows and doors open. I sleep much better if I can hear night sounds or through an open window. I love to lie under a sky full of stars in the most open space around and be the smallest spec of being. This sometimes drives the husband to distraction. "Pleeeease let's sit outside!" I say on Saturday mornings at the coffee shop. He glares at the sun, glares at the hard chairs, glares at the inadequate table umbrellas. Sometimes he grudgingly agrees to my endless pleas to make use of the outdoor seating of every dining establishment. Not that he's not outdoorsy in some respects, too, but he is much less tolerant of less than perfect conditions just to get a little air. He doesn't need it like I do. Mary Oliver, I think, is like me in this regard. When I read her poems, they speak to the deepest part of me and I understand them at a cellular level. This one is one of my favorites.

Sleeping in the Forest
by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,

nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

breathing around me, the insects,

and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water,

grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

noodle-headed numskull

2011-08-19T11:37:00.008-04:00

Newsflash: After hitting Publish Post and then View Post, I realize that I did M twice. That is how my hectic life goes sometimes--I didn't remember that I did M yesterday. I do remember what I had for breakfast because I pretty much have a bowl of Shredded Wheat n' Bran (tm) every day of my life unless it's winter, and then I have oatmeal. But I felt like this explanation of my Noticeably Nitwitted gaff needed a photo and, lo and behold, I had a photo of Andy-the-touring-son with his first electric bass, at about 12 years old. So it was worth it afterall because I didn't realize that I had this photo saved on my computer and it's real keeper.

monumental music-making

2011-08-19T11:12:00.002-04:00

Son Andy has been touring with his rock band. (He texted me this photo the other day.) This tour is a joyous thing and a worrisome thing. Joyous, because every mom wants their kid to be happy, and playing music and actually getting a chance to play big cities makes Andy very happy. And hey, I've been 20 and this kind of adventure would have been at the tippy top of my list. Worrisome, because you don't stop worrying about them at 20, and if my mom is anything like typical, apparently you don't stop worrying about them at 50. I have been working hard to squelch my over-arching momness (momitude, mominality) and give him space to do this thing. I've texted him a couple of times just to ask how things were going. Ok, to be honest, once I asked him if he was eating. And one other time, when they were in DC and he'd texted that they'd slept on the floor of a bar in Philadelphia the night before, I asked him if he had a place to sleep that night. (The answer was "yes" but not where...I let this go.) The rest of the time I've been saying encouraging things like "Have fun!" and "What an adventure!" and "That's awesome!" I think I'm doing ok. They have played in Dayton, Columbus, someplace in New Jersey (?), New York City, Philadelphia, and DC. Tonight, they play in Bowling Green, Kentucky, so they are on the swing homeward again. This is good. My first plan of action, after hugging him, is to fix a very good home-cooked meal for him.

meep merp

2011-08-18T15:57:00.006-04:00

The world's cutest cat, seen here looking very sweet and coy, almost never makes real cat sounds. The only time she does make real cat sounds such as "meow" is when the neighbor cat comes to the window and she wants it to go away. And then she says it very loudly and with a growl. This situation can occur in the middle of the night and it is hair raising for all of us, including the cat. But the rest of the time she is either completely silent (97% of the time) or makes very odd squeaking noises like "keek" or robotic noises like "meep-merp". She says "meep-merp" after she gets her spoonful of tuna in the morning, and so we pretend she is saying "thank-you". It's a stretch, but it could be "thank-you". She also says it when I let her in the house from her neighborhood watch post on the front porch. "Meep-merp". And I often say, "You're welcome."

level-headed love

2011-08-18T14:41:00.008-04:00

The husband drives me crazy with his inability to absorb simple facts about modern technological wonders such as computers and cell phones. This photo of his own eye was taken by him using my cell phone to try to take a picture of me on my bike. Oops. On the other hand, I think I completely infuriate him with my absolute refusal to learn the simplest thing about any kind of motor or engine or any car part more critical than a windshield wiper. Lawnmowers, for instance. Don't try to teach me how to keep them running. The bottom line here is this: I'm working on this new technique for staying in a more loving place and not causing unnecessary stress. When I get angry or frustrated with the husband, before I say something to him about being angry or frustrated, I stop and take one minute to consider things on a broader level. Such as the technology versus machinery thing. If I have to mess with his computer a hundred times, it is still worth him being able to get the mower started once when I really need it and I can't get it started. Also, for instance, I started to scream the other night because for the hundredth time he had left all kinds of gunk in the kitchen sink and on the counter when it was his turn to clean up. For one second I was considering flipping out over this because it seems like a real no brainer to rinse the sink out and swipe the counters. Then I remembered that just that morning, he had gotten up, made me coffee, emptied the dishwasher, and washed a pan that was soaking from the night before. These were pretty nice things to do and I suddenly felt very grateful to him rather than annoyed with him, and so the least I could do was rinse the gunk out of the sink. And thus, a scene was spared. Life and love and happy home was uninterrupted by some petty little argument. I am working on making this a habit because it seems to be making me happier overall.

kissing off K

2011-08-18T10:57:00.003-04:00

I have been so totally stuck on blogging something that begins with K that I have decided to abandon K and simply move on. I can do that, right? Otherwise I fear that I will never get to the better letters. How about this picture of a Kiss (son and his gal). It's very sweet, yes? I like to kiss and husband gives me one each and every morning before he leaves for work. Frequently it's more of a peck. Sometimes it is an exaggerated fish-like kiss. But it is always special. So I guess that's something about K after all. Sometimes you just have to begin, you know?

jogging junkie

2011-08-16T15:48:00.003-04:00

Honest to goodness, I love running so much. I start to get a little burned out training for a particular race, but as soon as that race is over, and I rest a little, I am already planning on which race to run next. Sometimes I'm not sure why I love it all that much. It's never all that easy to get myself to start running. It's somewhat easier to keep going once I start but then after some odd miles, I am pretty much only thinking about when I can stop again. Running with a buddy helps. We talk and yuck it up and it makes the miles pass. I like seeing the scenery and animals and I love being outside in all seasons. I feel more "connected" to nature if I fully experience all of the seasons. After I run, though, I always feel so good! I feel strong and able and healthy and happy. I guess, in a nutshell, I love running the most after I'm done with a run. Husband used to be a runner but he does not love running anymore, which I can understand. Once you are away from it, it's hard to get back in the groove. Still, and despite the fact that he works hard on his job, husband needs a little aerobic exercise. I have suggested biking as a healthy and fun family activity for years but this suggestion met with total resistance. However, we rode our bikes a couple of times on the rail trail recently with my mom and stepdad who are also trying to get a little aerobic exercise in. At one point I stayed back with my mother who needed a bit of rest, and husband took off at a very fast clip with my stepdad who is pushing 70 and who has been training for a big hiking trip out West. Stepdad apparently kept pace with the much younger husband on his bike. This was enough to get husband's goose, I think. In fact, husband immediately afterwards decided that he definitely wants to do more of this biking thing. Yeah! He began fixing up his old bike. Fixing things like bikes and motorcycles is something he is quite good at and very fond of doing. He fixed this and that and pronounced that he was now "all about the biking". And indeed, again on Monday evening after work, he wanted to go on a bike ride. I am all for him being all about the biking. It is a nice cross-trainy type addition to my running, it's fun, and it's something we can do together. I call this a win-win because even more than I am a jogging junkie, I am a junkie of all moving activities in general.

iridescent indigo

2011-08-15T11:16:00.004-04:00

I saw three (three!) male Indigo Buntings while running on the rail trail early on Friday morning. I kept exclaiming, "Indigo Bunting!" and not being a bird watcher and so not all that observant of the birds along the trail, my running buddy would give me a surreptitious sideways glance like boy oh boy, I must be crazy about these Indigo Bunting things. And yes, I am. In my opinion it is just about one of the most beautiful birds in the world and they are right here in Indiana. I was riding bikes along the rail trail two days later with my husband, mother, and stepdad, and I was relaying the amazing fact that I'd seen three Indigo Buntings just the other day, when my mother surprised me with the information that she, too, did not know what an Indigo Bunting looked like! What? All of these people who are unaware of the beautiful, turquoise-blue, iridescent Indigo Bunting? I feel like I need to sing their praises. Their summer range includes the entire Eastern half of the United States. Keep an eye out for them!

happy herper

2011-08-15T10:43:00.004-04:00

Checking in on myself. Am I happy? No, not really. Why? I'm not sure. It just feels like an off day. Do I want to be happy? Yes. Then I'm supposed to change something. But what? I have to work today. I would change that if I could, but I really can't because of the whole roof over our heads and eating thing. Last night we had dinner and wine with good friends Mike and Nell who hail from a nearby state. It was so much fun to sit and eat and yuck it up with them on the back porch in the cool of the evening. Mike has a job retirement countdown going and then he can stop being a computer dweeb and start being a full time herpetologist (or herper, as he calls it), which is his true passion. He knows, to the day, when he can retire from his current job, and when it gets to one year, which is not that far off, we thought it would be awesome if he began making notches in a big stick at the office to show these days clicking by for all to see. I then remembered that I had the most perfect stick, a stick I found while hiking somewhere. It was beaver chewed on both ends and really was a perfect stick for notching, and so I gave this stick to my friend Mike. Maybe this is why I am a little blue today. I wish I could start counting the days until retirement. I really do. But I must still count in years. Many many years. Big Sigh. I guess what I have to change, then, would be my attitude.

grapes and gratitude

2011-08-12T18:09:00.006-04:00

Fret not, mothers of young children who read my last blog post and were filled with a desparate need to hug your children tightly to your chest and keep them young forever. Despite the heart-rending, tear-jerking moments, there are some good things about them growing up and, dare I say it, moving out. Not that I'm adjusted to life without my oldest son yet--I think a part of me will miss him every day that I don't see him. But. But, friends, there are moments when you will be Glad. You will be filled with Gratitude. And you might even be filled with Grapes in the form of a good cabernet and no one will be there to say, "Mom, how much wine are you drinking." I'm just saying. Youngest son is off an adventure to Cincinnati with a friend's family. Oldest son is off on his band's East Coast tour, coming to a city near you (I'm sure I'll be blogging more about that). I took the day off work and I can only assume that the gears of the University are grinding along happily without me. I got up early and ran 11.5 miles with my running buddy and wonderful all-around woman friend, Tanya. It was a gorgeous, cool morning and I felt absolutely no pressure during the run. No one was waiting on me. No one needed milk or cereal or money or a ride or anything. I came home and I TOOK A NAP people. Yes I did. Then I piddled around doing some laundry and some reading. Now it is Friday night and the husband is due home at any minute. I have baked a loaf of homemade dill-onion-cottage cheese bread and the aroma is filling the house with amazing smells. I have opened a bottle of wine, and prepared a plate of fresh farmer's market veggies and crackers and even farmer's market cheese. I have poured myself a glass of Grape Goodness and am imbibing as I type this. We are having one of our weird veggie dinners that one of the kids absolutely hates. But who cares! He's not hear to complain! Not a word of dessention is to be heard in this home regarding weird dinner! (Sauteed broccolli, shitake mushrooms, and onions, piled on toast, topped with cheese, and popped under the broiler until the cheese melts, if you must know. It's truly delish. Oh, and salt. It needs salt.) And so, after raising kids for 21 years (29 years for the husband), we find ourselves Gratifyingly, Gladly, Goldenly.....alone. Until Sunday. Woot.

first food

2011-08-10T08:27:00.006-04:00

There are a million ways to break a mother's heart. One way is to send a text message, three days after you have moved into your first place away from home, that says, "Reeeally miss that home cooking about now!" I picture my already thin, almost 21 year old son--in whom I have tried to inculcate some basic cooking skills and nutritional knowledge--coming home from his physically demanding summer landscaping job hot and exhausted and without a clue (despite everything) where to start in on preparing a good dinner for himself, and thus wasting away. Maybe missing his mother a little. Maybe. I asked him what was for dinner at his place and he told me quesadillas, which is the one thing he makes well but with alarming frequency, and he doesn't take the time to make a fresh salsa with lots of veggies to go on top like I do, even though he is a kid who always eats his veggies. I told him he could come for dinner any time he wanted. And that I miss his smile. He texted back, "I miss yours too." And thus begins our adventure in becoming a mother who learns how to give space for growth, and a man who learns how to live on his own. He's only fifteen minutes away. We'll both survive. But there is going to be some heartache for awhile, I'm telling you, especially when we sit down to eat and he's not there. My heart physically hurts a little since a big piece of it moved across town, and my eyes have been springing leaks in my more contemplative moments. (Photo: son at 5 or 6, helping me in the vegetable garden. He still has the same smile.)

endless enthusiasm

2011-08-09T10:33:00.006-04:00

A friend sent me this photo from our high school year book. Yes, that's me on the tennis team. That's our history teacher, coaching the tennis team. He was not really a coach of any kind, but it was the best we could do. We did not have uniforms either, and other than two of the girls who grew up in better financial circumstances, none of us had ever even had tennis lessons. Some were saved by a modicum of natural ability. I was not. Any skill I possessed at tennis was achieved by hitting a tennis ball against a garage door from the time I was about seven years old. That is the year I discovered professional tennis and became a great admirer of Arthur Ashe. You can read about him here. He was a pretty amazing person. I had nothing going for me, really, except a lot of enthusiasm. In the end, this did not win me any tennis matches, but I was undeterred because I always had fun, and I never cared all that much about winning. And so it is with most of the sports or exercise related activities I've done in my life. I have always been very enthusiastic about doing something physical--hiking, biking, martial arts, running, step aerobics, hula-hooping, kick boxing, you name it, I love to do it. Right now, at nearly 50 years old, I am studying to be a certified personal trainer. I don't know what, exactly, I'm going to do with this certification, and who will want to be trained by a middle aged computer programmer anyway? But I have one thing going for me and that is that I am enthusiastic about exercise and about helping people become or remain active. Maybe enthusiasm will carry the day in whatever thing one is enthusiastic about.

demanding days

2011-08-08T13:25:00.003-04:00

My Saturday: Woke at 6am. Met running buddy at 7am for a ten mile run. Came home, showered, and met husband to go to farmer's market. Carried home 20 pounds of veggies. Loaded two cars, a trailer, and a truck with all of Number 1 son's belongings and drove to his new abode. Unloaded the stuff. Ate some lunch. Went back out to Target to buy him a shower curtain and take a few forgotten items. Back home. Started cleaning all of the remaining unwanted crap from his room and remove the twenty or so posters and all the other stuff that was tacked, pinned, and taped to walls in preparation for Number 2 son moving into the now abandoned room. Number 2 son would be home the very next day, and so I thought what the hell, I should just paint the room right this very minute while it is devoid of all furniture because school will be starting and we will just never get this whole room moving thing done if I. Don't. Just. Do. It. Husband helped by prepping walls which had numerous holes, one of them large, and had also been spray painted with graffiti which had to be covered with Kilz. I drove out AGAIN (big sigh) for paint. The hardware store frustrated me in a major and unnecessary way. We spent the next few hours painting the whole room a light blueish gray with a contrast wall of darker steel blue gray. (Looks a tad bluer than this photo shows.) Then fixed dinner--I think, I don't even really remember. I was so physically exhausted, and a bit emotionally exhausted from son moving out, that by Saturday night I cried from exhaustion. I very rarely get to that level of exhaustion. And that was my Saturday. Sometimes I wonder if I demand too much of myself, but there are things to be done and I am working hard at not being my normal procrastinating self. Sunday was not a lot better. I need a vacation day soon.

chilling chimps

2011-08-08T12:12:00.006-04:00

Husband and I went to a movie at an actual movie theater this past Friday night. This is not something we do a lot of. The last cinematic excursion we had, besides some Ryder films, was last January when we took my mom and step dad to see The King's Speech for their birthdays. I don't know why we don't go more, except that husband is too cheap to pay ten bucks (sorry dear, but it's true) and that we just tend to do other things when we go out, and watch movies when we stay in. Anyway, I insisted that we go see Rise of the Planet of the Apes this weekend. I rarely insist that we see a movie when it first comes out, even if I am sure it's going to be a better movie than this one. But my brother and I saw all the Planet of the Apes movies as young kids, and, I don't know, I just got a wild hair to see this one after hearing a positive review of it on NPR. I was totally interested in how they would do the story line of how the apes got smart and took over the world, and I was not disappointed. It was a good story! And what's more, I had complete sympathy for the chimps throughout the entire movie. One can understand why they were mad enough not to just take over but to enslave humans. If I were a chimp in a medical testing facility I would be mad too. Two thumbs up on this movie, especially if you were a fan in childhood. (Not sure if stealing a photo is in the spirit of the challenge, but I have no appropriate pictures for this entry.)

bomber bee

2011-08-05T11:28:00.002-04:00

I got stung a couple of weeks ago by a BIG BEE. The poor bee did not even know what it hit, I don't think. It was flying very fast in a straight line and then, BLAM, right into my face. I have a lot of bee balm in the back yard and there are always bees all over it. I work in the garden around them and they have never bothered me at all. They just keep buzzing around, busy as bees. They might move to another flower if I brush by, but we mean each other no ill will and no stingers are ever used. This bee, however, appeared to be on a longer range mission, and my face was in the way. I pulled the stinger out of my face and, crying, ran into the house and began applying home remedies. For the next few days, my cheek looked like this. That is the day that I nearly abandoned all hope of surviving the heat, but later that day it cooled off the tiniest bit and poured rain, which revived me enough to go on.

athletic apparel

2011-08-05T11:04:00.005-04:00

I have not been blogging much again, so I will try to rise to August's alphabetic challenge, thanks to the prodding of friend LH, blogger extraordinaire. I'd like to discuss my ADDICTION to ATHLETIC APPAREL. Oddly enough, boss and coworker and I were just discussing this very thing. While we are all rather frugal people, we all fail at frugality when it comes to sports gear--bikes, skis, rollerblades, new running shoes, the latest gizmo, gadget, or techie fabric--we are all suckers for this stuff. I do not do as many sports as boss and co-worker, but still find my fair share of sports gear and apparel to spend money on. Running shoes last for about 300-400 miles for me, depending on the shoe. I run quite a bit and shoes cost quite a bit, so no doubt I could feed a family in a poor country on what I spend on running shoes. I try not to feel guilty about this. I have to try to keep my feet and knees and calves healthy so that I can continue to run, and the best way to do this is to not skimp on shoes. So I tell myself. The apparel is another matter. I could limp through on less apparel than I own, but I do so love the stuff. Sometimes the right clothes actually help with runs. I have, for example, running apparel for every possible temperature range from 10F to 90F. And then there are the calf sleeves--they support my calves. And the compression tights--very valuable for recovery after long runs. But, frankly, sometimes I just buy new stuff because I want something new and groovy. The running skort--not necessary and not even turning out to be that comfortable in the heat, but it's so cute, so shoot me. My running buddy and I are going to our favorite running store today. Ostensibly, she is going to try on new shoes. I added up the miles on the pair I have and I do not need new shoes. I don't need anything. I am putting myself under strict orders not to buy anything, but orders can be broken.

the hottest day

2011-07-22T09:59:00.002-04:00

Off-year cicadas chrrriii chrrriii in rounds,
a few hoarse crows maybe,
flies buzzing,
hot car tires gumming over melted asphalt pothole patches,
and that's it,
that's all you hear on an afternoon like this one.
Not a limp leaf brushes another,
not a dropped greasy sweet wrapper blows down the street,
nor a single lost love note
loosed from it's grip under a windshield wiper.
It's too hot for love.
Everything sticks to something else
but it's not love.
Everything waits
with hot held breath
for a breeze.

inspiration

2011-06-29T15:00:00.005-04:00

I need some inspiration to blog. There are many things that inspire me, especially brand new sights like mountains or clear rushing rivers, or new museums in different cities, or art or architecture that I haven't seen before. But it doesn't look like travel is in my immediate future, so I'm thinking I just need to look at old things in a different way. I was playing around today with a new iphone app called Photo Booth Classic+, which is fun, and was suddenly hit by inspirational idea. I will give myself a blog challenge. I will use PBC to take four different shots of things that might otherwise be a banal photo, but strung together, they seem more photo-worthy. I will challenge myself to look with new eyes, a closer look, a new angle. For this first PBC entry I was just playing a bit with pictures I already had of my kittums, at whose sweet face I never tire of looking.

dwelling in possibility

2011-04-27T11:20:00.005-04:00

Right now, I want to be nowhere else but in my own back yard, and how I wish you could all come and be here with me. There is a special magic to this early spring time of year in my gardens. Not everything is blooming yet, there is not the riot of color that you'd see in July, but everything is bursting with possibility. Right now it is all green and textures and smells--the chives are a day or two away from popping open their fragrant pale purple blossoms, the day lily leaves are pale pale green spears and the hostas are just starting to unfurl in greens and yellows. Curled fronds of ferns are spreading in the shady areas under the pines, and peonies are fat with buds that will open in a couple of weeks. All the wonderful smells of mint, lavender, and sage are leafing out, and I stuck a patchouli in the ground yesterday for another smell to savor. All the groundcovers are laying down different textures in yellows and pale greens and fuzzy whites. A few things like the pale pink irises are blooming in the softest colors. The big lilac bush is so very close to exploding into bloom and filling our whole house with lilac smells for the next few weeks. The redbuds are just fading and the dogwoods are bloomed out. It's all just magical to me. I wish you could all sit with me, light the candles I've hung all over the garden in canning jars, have a cup of coffee and a piece of rhubarb pie, and soak up the cool, damp, greenness of it all.

seems like a dream

2011-04-13T11:25:00.004-04:00

I just realized I had not blogged about my successful marathon attempt. Too much going on and the poor blog is neglected time and again. With each day that goes by--the marathon was 10 days ago now--it seems more and more unreal that I even did such a thing as run 26.2 miles. I remember each and every mile, but it still doesn't feel like me who was doing that. But do it I did, and in a better time than I expected: 4 hours and 6 minutes. When I made it to the halfway point in under two hours, I thought, "huh, well, that's good." When I was still on target to do a slightly under 4 hour marathon at 3/4 of the way through, I allowed myself to dream a little dream of running what, for my age group, would be a Boston qualifying time of 4 hours. But somewhere around mile 21 I really hit a wall, and that little dream slipped away. That's ok, though. I still did better than I thought I would. It was at about that point in the run when one guy running near me looked at my face and said, "If it didn't hurt, everyone would be doing it, right?" I started wondering why *I* was doing it. I asked myself that at several points during the training, too. But I always came up with an answer to that question, and so I just kept going. Four solid months of training (on top of all the other training I did last year for three half marathons and various other races) and there I was, at the finish line, accomplishing my big goal. I was happy. I am happy, even though it still doesn't feel quite real. Went for my first run since the marathon yesterday. Only 4 miles, but ouch. I'm still not totally recovered, although that might partly be due to the innordinate amount of heavy lifting/gardening I've been doing in the mean time. And even though it hurt a little, I was still happy to be running again. Why did I do it? Because now I carry one more little spec of joy and strength and will and sense of accomplishment deep down inside me.

that's not very much

2011-03-17T10:27:00.007-04:00

I ran the required 20 mile training run last weekend. It felt as if it would kill me towards the end. I don't know if this has given me more or less confidence for the actual marathon. If 20 hurt that bad, why do I even want to run 26.2? This feat may involve crying actual tears. And anyway the next day a friend tells me that her coworker is training for a marathon and his longest training run was 24 miles instead of 20 and now it's nagging at me a little that 20 is possibly inadequate even though according to the Relentless Training Plan twenty is enough. I am happy to think that I have survived the worst of the training and my body is mostly intact although there are many parts that hurt quite regularly.
The longest run for the next two weeks is ten miles which I can knock out with minimal suffering. And then the big day. I want to get it over with. I want to accomplish this goal I have worked towards for so long. But I am not looking forward to the actual doing of it.

climbing

2011-03-07T15:51:00.002-05:00

I watched my son and his lovely girlfriend do their thing in a rockclimbing competition this past weekend. I really love watching my kids do something they love, and I love to watch rockclimbing in general. I used to climb and watching them made me want to do it again. But it will have to wait. For one thing, it was extremely hard on my back, and for another, I don't have the time or energy right now to do it again. But I want to get back into it. I love it. And if you run into Miz L, the girlfriend, you can congratulate her for winning the intermediate division of the climbing comp!

months in, months gone

2011-03-07T15:35:00.002-05:00

The last time I blogged I was preparing for the Indianapolis Monumental Half Marathon (photo). That was months and months ago. I did better than expected, and so did my running buddy Tanya. We did so well and we were so pumped up by this feat, that we immediately decided to launch into a marathon attempt. We searched for a marathon that was sort of close and sort of flat and in the early Spring before the worst of the heat and humidity hits the Midwest. We settled on a marathon in Athens, Ohio, a smallish college town. Sounded perfect. Now we just had to train. We plugged our dates into another Relentless Training Plan (RTP) and we have been chugging through this plan for three months now. We have run outside every week this winter. Every bleepin' week. Wait, there might've been one week when the sidewalks were pure ice that we had to go indoors. I think we did a total of two indoor runs out of desperation, but all of the rest were in snow, slush, frigid winds, and freezing temperatures. Months into this thing, I am tired. Work has been incredibly stressful, I was diagnosed with an iron deficiency (which I've been working on religiously now for several months), and just all this running, running, running. I'm tired and I'm ready to be through this thing so that I can get back to some reasonable amount of enjoyable running. And so that I can get my life back in order since running saps most of my time and energy, thus the house is a wreck, the yard is a wreck, piles of paperwork wait, undone, tasks fall off the bottom of the to-do list, forgotten and undone. This weekend the RTP said I had to do a run of 19 miles. I made it 14.5 and I hit the wall. I'd done 17 the weekend before, and a couple of hard, hilly runs during the week, and I just hit.the.damn.wall. Depression has ensued because we are now four weeks from the actual marathon and I am second guessing myself about whether I can really do it. I just have to suck it up here and do this thing. I don't see how people run marathons one after the other. I am just flat out tired.

pre-race jitters

2010-11-03T15:55:00.003-04:00

I consider: what to wear, what to eat the night before, what to eat the morning of, which shoes, how many layers, gloves or no gloves, what time to wake up, how long to get ready, what time to leave, where to meet Tanya, don't forget to get gas in the car, how fast to start, what temperature at the start, what temperature at the end, energy gel or gatorade prime, gel makes me gag, gatorade prime I'd have to carry, what about regular gatorade, will that be upsetting, where to put number, tag on the right shoe or the left, how much should I run the day before, how many miles before I take a water stop....can I do this again?

haiku, in a sense

2010-10-21T13:13:00.001-04:00

mornings, I plunge from
bright coffee shop, warmed with joe,
hold the door there pal,

through stone gates planted
round with burgundy mums, where
foot-worn paths beyond

beckon--walk into
my deep woods, fragrant with leaf,
lichens, and downed logs,

all slippery brick and
scattered pools of lamp post light,
mosses leading north--

but I must turn South,
plunge into the light and life
of this old building

carrying in on
my shoes, my hair, skin, and heart,
this Autumn morning.

here is where I am with cars

2010-10-05T11:04:00.003-04:00

I was whining on an email group about son's latest old car needing repairs yet again. Oh how I sometimes long to be one of those parents who can make the outlandish gesture of a BRAND NEW CAR for my beloved son, even though, of course, there is no object lesson in receiving a brand new car for free, is there? (Frankly, I think we've all had it up to here with object lessons and could become fabulously wealthy at this point in our lives without losing perspective.) So I am whining about what husband says are probably transmission problems, and male friend on email list who knows a thing or two tells me it could be minor. And I have to ask him, are there minor things with transmissions? Dare I even hope? I have never had a clue about car crap. Engine stuff doesn't soak into my head because I have zero interest in it. I've tried to force some interest, for my own good, but alas, this has not helped cure me of my complete ignorance of all things motorized. I just want the damn thing to go, and if it makes a weird sound or stops going, I want someone to make the bad sound go away and make it go again. That's where I am with cars--major issue with avoidance. So anyway, when I hear "transmission trouble" I immediately imagine something large and critical and metallic and all covered with oil seizing up and falling off the bottom of the car and costing the same as one semester of son's University tuition to fix. (photo: gift from son on the bumper of my mostly trouble-free hyundai)

my fifteen minutes

2010-10-04T12:32:00.006-04:00

This photo records possibly the only moment in history when I will be the third overall woman in an actual race. (ok, I will pull that affirmation back from the universal listening ear and hope that someday, somewhere, I can repeat this feat. But at almost 49, time is running short, universe.) There were not all that many people running this 10K on a cool, rainy day in the middle of nowhere. (Notice an entry in the antique tractor show behind us which had a much bigger draw than the 10K). My running buddy Tanya placed second. For awhile, as I ran behind her, I considered whether or not it would be appropriate for me to fly past her at the last minute and steal second place from her. We are each other's supporters, not competitors, and this ploy would lose me the good friend award in any case. Moral dilemma resolved when I realized there was no way I could actually catch her! Good run Tanya! Anyway, they only gave trophies to the first woman and first man, so it's not like we actually won anything. Still, it was pretty exciting and I was very pleased by my personal time, which was two minutes faster than I was counting on running it. I wish I could say that my running mojo was restored by this very good day, but alas, I am still in the running doldrums. I'm taking a couple days of rest, hoping that I can stop dragging my butt around and get back out there and get excited about the last 30 days of training before the Monumental Half Marathon. (photo: the super awesome running buddy and crime fighting duo)

running and then some more damn running

2010-09-29T09:49:00.003-04:00

I've reached the point in the training plan where I really want to stop running. This happened last time I followed a relentless training plan (RTP) for getting from point A (aimless running) to point B (being able to complete a respectable half marathon). To quote Tricky Dick, "I am not a quitter," but this past week has been the worst. First was the freakish heat wave. Then I ran a little in my 5-finger running shoes one night, just for kicks, trying to see if they will help with certain foot issues. I'm supposed to ease into running in them very slowly, which I have been doing, but I went a tad bit too far, because I'm an overzealous person in general, and got some serious calf pain to show for it. On Saturday I ran the ridiculous number of miles which is outlined on the latest RTP. (Actually I bagged a couple of the miles due to calf cramps, showing some uncharacteristic underzealousness.) Sunday I ran a very hilly 4.3 mile trail race at McCormick's Creek. By hilly I don't mean "hills that are difficult to run", I mean "rock strewn cliffs which should be hiked up slowly in ankle-supporting footwear", but of course I ran them because I was participating in a run. Overall, it was the most fun I've had running in some time, but the result was more calf soreness. Tuesday, still stiffish in the calves from Sunday, it was back to the RTP for a two mile warm up followed by 4x640 speed sprints, which pretty much always hurt a little. When I left work Tuesday, I had to walk backwards down three flights of stairs to keep from crying. Today, the RTP says, mercifully, "Rest". (Photo: none. Because I cannot interest my family in attending a race to cheer me on. I am looking to hire out this important support position.)

we feel rather stupid

2010-09-22T11:57:00.004-04:00

So, I'm not sure what kind of change just came to certain tv stations rendering them unavailable to us until we get some kind of free gizmo from the cable company. I know about the whole digital thing that happened in...january? And we were told that since we were getting our channels through cable, we were good to go, even though one of our televisions is at least 30 years old (so old, in fact, that there is no adapter which will make it accept a DVD player). Ok, so now fast forward to this week, and unbeknownst to us some other technological change has taken place. We don't watch a lot of tv so it's possible that we missed some important announcement. Or maybe they told us in one of those endless blurbs we get in the mail from the cable company? Does anyone read those? I always assume they are just trying to sell us more channels and we barely watch the ones we have. All we know is that we got up to sleep walk through our standard morning routine--coffee, cereal, weather channel, go to work--and all hell broke loose when we realized we no longer got the weather channel. And then we realized the blight had taken over the cooking channel, the channel with Gunsmoke and The Rifleman, the channel with Cake Boss, and...the CHANNEL CHANNEL. Thankfully, we still had WTIU, WTIU2 (the Alan Alda station, as we call it), the history channel, and Discovery. All is not lost, and husband is picking up the mythical decoding device at the cable office today. I can almost guarantee you it is not, however, going to work with the 30 year old television. If it does, it will be the biggest surprise I've had this week. (Photo: is not upside down. That is the roof of a cave.)

slower, for crying out loud

2010-09-14T15:46:00.002-04:00

I ran a 5K in the pouring rain last Saturday. I felt like I was running all out, legs pumping and lungs wheezing and feeling like I might possibly throw up, but it turns out I actually ran it 20 or so seconds slower than I ran the same 5K last year. Ok, so accounting for the rain, maybe I ran it in about the same time. But last year I had not been running again for all that long. Since then, I've run hundreds of training miles and two half marathons, for crying out loud. I should be stronger and faster, but alas, I am not. I have to ask myself why this is and then I have to ask myself if I even care. The point, my friends--the whole point--is to stay healthy and relaxed and have fun running. But...but....last year I won my age group and I thought I could repeat this five seconds of glory. This year I was second in my age group, beat out by a local competitive runner I recognized who apparently has just moved into my age group this year (while here I am just about out the other end of it). Second place gets no five seconds of glory. Where is the fun in that? If I'm going to slog through the pouring rain on the verge of an asthma attack, I'm at least going to stick to races where you get a pretty medal even if you are 118th in your age group. :)

be kind

2010-09-09T10:35:00.002-04:00

Riding my bike to work is wonderful. I feel awake and clear headed and healthy and in love with the cool air, the wind in my hair, the trees, the deer, the feeling of flying. Riding my bike home from work is horrible. It nearly destroys my faith in humanity when I am nearly run down in everyone's rush to get somewhere. I think I'll start riding in and taking the bike-carrying bus back home.

and then what happened

2010-09-07T09:44:00.003-04:00

Obviously I did not complete the July blogger's challenge. July sort of got away from me, as did August. Seriously, I worked too much these months. Everything just hit the fan, work-wise. And I kept running three times a week in the heat, which was pretty exhausting. In between running and work was the fabulous visit from all my story group buddies! 20+ people hanging out in our kitchen, on our porch, and around our firepit for 4 days, laughing, eating, drinking, and talk-talk-talk-talking. It was awesome fun. Now the fall semester has begun at the University, and some of my biggest work projects have been completed and I'm finding more time to relax and hopefully keep up on the blog. And run of course, in prep for some short races and a half marathon in November. (Photo: the lovelies Molly and Pam chill in the shade of the back porch.)

T

2010-07-30T15:03:00.003-04:00

Time

Time is something I am always wishing for more of. Free time, of course, not work time. If I could work four days a week, and have three days off, that would be good. And I'm not talking four 10 hour days, just four regular 8 hour days. This would make me feel more sane for the remaining years I have to work--which is looking to be quite a number of years yet. But no one is offering this as a solution to my time issues or my mental health issues.

S

2010-07-29T14:41:00.003-04:00

Skittles

I love my kitty and I could barely wait to get to "S" to have an excuse to post yet another picture of the sweetest of felines. We really only use her name, though, for the files at the vet and rarely call her Skittles. We call her: Skittums, Kittums, Kit-tay, Skit-Skat, Cattums, or variations on this theme. Kittums is addicted to tuna and to these cat snacks called Greenies. She squeaks for both, but that is about the only sound she ever makes, other than the "yeowyeowyeow" sound right before throwing up and the screaming-for-dear-life sound when another cat comes up on the porch. Other than that, she pretty much makes no sound at all, just purrs all the time like she is the most contented cat on earth, which I think she might be.

R

2010-07-29T11:19:00.002-04:00

Radiant

I am forever on the trail of radiant good health. I do a lot of thinking about how to achieve this and working on achieving this and for the most part, my overall health is very very good. I eat well, mostly, and I exercise nearly every day. I take a few supplements that are claimed to be very important. I am rarely sick. My skin, supposedly the harbinger of bad health, is not too bad for someone rushing headlong into her 50th decade of life. And some days I think I approach feeling radiant. Still, there are issues. I should probably not eat as much sugar, although I do limit myself in that area to some degree. There are other things I should probably cut out. I eat a lot of veggies and fruits but I could eat more. Dairy? Not sure how I feel about that. I eat high protein Greek yogurt and am loathe to give that up. We eat almost all organic foods, and that, I'm sure, has played a role in our good health. But I can't say that I always radiate health and well-being to the world. I wonder, sometimes, if it's just a function of age. I know there are older people than me who simply look radiantly healthy. But I do have to balance all of that with slogging through life, eating the occasional bowl of ice cream, a reasonable amount of delicious baked goods, and of course red wine. I don't sleep well, and I think that drains my supply of "radiance" to the point that I feel rather haggard and drawn at times. And then there is just the wearing down of parts. Oh well, I'm doing the best I can here. Within reason.

Q

2010-07-29T11:09:00.005-04:00

Questions

I play this game with husband sometimes: make up random, open-ended questions about impossible/implausible situations or "what if" scenarios in order to illicit discussion. Such as:

If you could know the day of your death, would you want to know?
If you could only eat three things the rest of your life, what would they be?
What song would make a good soundtrack for your day today?
If you could spend one hour with anyone dead or alive, who would it be?
If you could have only one thing--incredible brains or incredible beauty--which would you pick?
What about "poor and enlightened" versus "wealthy and unenlightened"?

Etc. I think I make husband crazy with these kinds of questions sometimes, but he generally plays along.

P

2010-07-27T13:16:00.004-04:00

Pie

I learned to bake pies at my Grandma Taylor's side when I was just a tot. I remember standing on a chair to reach the counter where she was rolling out pie dough. I still enjoy making pies and I make them on my grandma's pie board. People tell me, sometimes, that they simply can't make pie dough. I tell them, mine gets "messed up" a lot of the time...too moist, too dry, some major tearing, whatever. But I still consider it a success if, in the end, I can get it into the pan and Frankensteined back together and looking halfway decent. You can overwork pie dough, and then it will be somewhat dense and tough. You have to have a lighter hand. But honestly, it's not that hard and even when things go wrong, it can usually be fixed. Fear not, I want to tell people. Homemade pie is one of the best things in life.

Pago Pago, Paris

Two amazing places I have been in my life. Stories abound about each, but I am too far behind on the blogging challenge to go into detail.

O

2010-07-26T13:58:00.007-04:00

Ohio River

Husband and I just took a weekend trip to celebrate his birthday, to a small town along the Ohio River which sits at the southern edge of the Shawnee National Forest. We saw some amazing sights and neither of us could believe that we had never been to this amazing place practically in our own backyard. Garden of the Gods, Rim Rocks, Cave in Rock...all truly beautiful places. After hiking in 100 degree temps, we melted back to our historic B&B for a swim in the pool (the pool was not historic but quite appreciated). In the evenings we had wine under the oldest magnolia tree in the state of Illinois (100 years old--see picture) while a river breeze cooled us off, and then headed to one of the two restaurants (both of which specialized in catfish) in the otherwise abandoned town to have dinner. Another swim, watch the sun set and the moon rise over the river, some barge watching, and then watch movies half the night--it was a fabulously relaxing weekend. Oh, and we saw a bobcat. Yes, in the wild. An actual bobcat. We were amazed at our incredible luck. One other salient fact: As soon as our saw the husband of our B&B host, I whispered to husband that he had to be an Elvis impersonator. Husband was disbelieving, but I persisted. When I saw a display of Elvis stuff elsewhere in the B&B, I accosted the host with my suspicions, which he then confirmed. He was, indeed, a retired Elvis impersonator. I was quite pleased with this knowledge and my stunning powers of deduction.

N

2010-07-26T12:23:00.013-04:00

Nelda

Even though I look mostly like my mom, there is a picture of my grandma Teague, Nelda, that I bear a very strong resemblance to. It might be that we have the same build--low to the ground and built more for endurance than speed. Grandma and Grandpa Teague were the "fun" grandparents. I loved my other grandparents to pieces, but they were older and didn't do things like camping, fishing, filling my brother and me full of junk food and candy, letting us run like wild Indians, drive go carts, and all manner of dangerous thrilling things. Any given Friday night we might pile into their big tank of a car, my grandma smelling like talcum powder, in cat-eye glasses and a nice dress, her lips painted red-red and her hair dyed jet black, and go to a bar called Spec & Jane's where they served really good southern fried chicken. My brother and I were like flies on the wall in an adult world where everyone smoked and drank beer and laughed and teased each other and told jokes. It was a blast. Or my brother and I might pile into the back bed of the pickup truck (My God, would you ever throw your kids in the back of an open pickup truck? It's as if kids were either considered tougher or more expendable back then!) and we'd "go to town", which meant the next town over, and go to a store called 3-D wherein my grandparents would buy econo-sized cartons of malted milk balls and orange circus peanuts. When we got back to their house, we could consume these candies in as much quantity as we wanted, topped off with some pop and a big pan of popcorn popped in bacon grease. Other nights, they'd have big Euchre parties, or sometimes ten or fifteen people, kids included, would get to play a card game called Shanghai Rummy. My grandma, once, heard of a drink called the Harvey Wallbanger. It was all the rage, and she was going to make them. Instead of orange juice, she used what was at hand--vodka and Tang--and served them in glasses collected from the Marathon Oil company (grandpa drove the Marathon gas delivery truck) with depictions of each of the Apollo lunar missions. Best thing was she let my brother and I try the Harvey Wallbangers. Because my grandma was a blast. In the early 70's she hung strands of colored beads in a doorway. Everyone thought they were the ultimate in tacky. I loved them. Grandma was just completely quirky like that. (Thus, maybe, my strong genetic predisposition to quirky behavior.) Mom always complained that we came home from their house all cranky and with stomache aches. Well, no kidding, we probably did, but boy did we have fun. My grandmother died much too young, at 56, of a brain tumor, and my grandpa followed a year and a half later, supposedly of a heart attack from smoking and all that bacon fat, but I think broken heart, more likely. There was simply no replacing my grandma. She was a force of nature. I remember all of this and much more like it was yesterday.

M

2010-07-26T10:05:00.005-04:00

Marauders, Murderers

In this cave, called Cave in Rock in Southern Illinois, we learned that marauding river pirates lured people in to rob them and kill them. In the years after that, in the 1800's, murderous gangs would do the same thing. I thought that was some interesting history, but husband and I were much more interested in the history of the Native Americans, the Shawnee, who had lived in that area. But most of the historical information we could find on site started with the white settlers. For instance, one book we found said, "Cave in Rock was discovered by French explorers" in 17-something. We are to assume that Native Americans did not notice a very large cave opening along the banks of a major river before that time? I think not. One sign post, deep in the heart of the Shawnee forest at a place called Rim Rocks, did mention that the "Shawnee lived here briefly" for something like a hundred years before the "white settlers came", which we took as a euphemism for "came and killed off the Shawnee". I found this all more than disturbing--another Euro-centric history of America-- and am dead set on finding out more of the Shawnee history either online or at the library.

L

2010-07-20T15:19:00.005-04:00

Love List

There are so many people, places, and things I love in this world. I don't often stop and make a list of them. The list would stretch from here to the moon. There are the obvious--my sons and my husband and my wonderful family being at the tippy top of the list. My cat, of course. I love that sweet kitty. Friends, food, wine, thunderstorms, books, running, dramatic movies, New Yorker comics, puns, poetry, trees (budding, blooming, goldening, bare), mountains, Lake Michigan, rocks (smooth, jagged, colorful, fossilized, stacked), the smell of fresh bread, dusk, unusual cloud formations especially tinged with pink, purple or orange, farmer's markets, new running socks, outsider art, islands, breezes, fires, geese flying over in a V, paper (colorful, sparkly, unusual, textured, to name a few of the many kinds of paper I love), unexpected adventures/mail/money/friend visits/good luck, my back porch, pillows, high vantage points, a clean kitchen counter, the right music at the right time. I'm just brainstorming here, but just this short list of beloved things in my life has lifted my spirits. Were I to continue on in this vein, I could possibly feel like the luckiest woman alive. Perhaps I'll go at it another five minutes or so in my mind, just thinking about all the things I love, things which maybe can't be put into words, exactly, or would take a paragraph to describe. Big love. Love to you, blog friends.

K

2010-07-18T17:34:00.002-04:00

Kohler

Kohler is the brand name of the new faucets we bought to go with our new sinks in the bathroom. We are finally working on our bathroom remodel and have most of one side done. This is why my K entry will be short. I have worked pretty much the whole weekend on the bathroom and I am tired. What I am hoping is that the progress does not stop at the small toilet area but that I can keep husband's energy up for completing the whole thing. Because right now the two halves of the bathroom are living in different centuries. The old looks that much worse next to the new. I have learned that there is only so much I can push in this situation and so I am practicing patience. I have started the painting and clearing out in the other half. I can continue on making some small progress. Pictures forthcoming at some point.

J

2010-07-15T13:22:00.007-04:00

Julie

I'm not the kind of person who has to have it always be about me. I would rather blend in than stand out in most situations. I'm all for it (party, celebration, whatever) being about someone else. But today, I am arrogantly claiming my own name as a perfectly good J word. Look at this chart. It is completely ridiculous how popular the name Julie became right at the time I was born (and not before or since). There were always two or three Julies in every class as I was growing up. I work, at this very present time, with three other Julies, all more or less my age.

The only explanation I could think of was the popularity of Julie Andrews, but both Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music came out after I was born, so that was not a satisfactory explanation. I finally remembered to ask my mom one time why they had thought to name me Julie Anna. She said I was named after (or rather, they simply liked the name of) Queen Julianna of the Netherlands, but that my grandmother simply threw a fit that they would string it all together like that into one name. So there you have it. Even though it is not all about me, feel free to treat me like the Queen for which I am named next time you see me. And here is my final thought on me, myself, and I: why do I look so worried in this picture when I was actually quite relaxed, having lunch with son at our wonderful local establishment The Runcible Spoon. I worry about that deep worry line in my forehead. Which could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you catch my meaning.

I

2010-07-14T08:53:00.008-04:00

Ipod, Insomnia

I have never actually owned my own ipod, sad but true. I have used the ipod my son discarded when he upgraded (he has a much better phone and more gadgetry than I do), but on a whim last night I decided I needed one of those tiny clip-on ipod shuffles for running. It's cute and turquoise and weighs about as much as a potato chip. I've been running on and off since college and never ran with music. Back in the day, that would've meant running with a Sony walkman in my hands with cassette tapes in it. That is the first semi-portable music making machine I remember, anyway, which came out sometime in my 20's. Before that, people just hummed quietly to themselves while running. Besides the hassle of carrying something that weighed three pounds and only played for about 45 minutes tops on it's D-cell batteries, I've always used running as my time to think deep thoughts, work through problems in my head, relive past conversations making myself sound better and smarter by having the perfect come-back on the tip of my tongue this time, that sort of thing. I also avoided music for the simple reason that I often ran on streets or crossed streets and was more interested in being able to hear vehicles bearing down on me from any direction. But, now, I run a lot at places like the rail trail where cars are not a concern, and unless I go with my running buddy, it is deathly boring to hear my own breath wheezing in and out of my tortured lungs and my poor bunion-burdened feet pounding pounding pounding out the miles. I need distraction. So I got this tiny nano-sized thingee that is light enough to clip on my not-sock if I had nowhere else to clip it (I'm just saying...I have not yet run in the nude but it IS unbearably hot this summer) and I loaded it up with a lot of good music and I am set to go with a little bit of current-century technology. Reliving all of those unanswered provocations and unresolved past conversations will just have to wait until the middle of the night when I'm suffering through another bout of my lifelong insomnia.

H

2010-07-13T09:00:00.002-04:00

Hyperventilating

I realize that in posting this picture, it is possible that I will lose the respect of my dear friends. This, honestly, is about the worst my vanity area has ever been. Maybe. The rest of my house is relatively neat. Sort of. My only lame excuse for this kind of mess is that I am hopelessly un-organized and very very busy. Every drawer in this bathroom looks sort of like this countertop, as does the linen closet. I literally jump out of bed in the morning, throw on some clothes, have coffee and cereal, pack some running gear, run a comb through my hair, maybe put on a little mascara, throw and slam some creams and potions around, grab any paper work or bills I need to deal with that day (which are all there, by the sink area), grab any library returns (also there by the sink), down some supplements, brush my teeth, pack the working son some lunch, and I'm out the door in under 30 minutes. Most of the action happens in this space, and it suffers the brunt of my morning insanity. I just sort of hyperventilate about the whole thing thinking maybe tonight is the night I will work on this area. And last night would've been that night except that husband wanted to go to big box home supply stores to look for new bathroom fixtures because we are both now on board with renovating this horrible space with it's ugly 1980's shiny brass light fixtures and it's gross beige cabinetry and fixtures. And if husband actually *wants* to get going on the project, after I've been giving him the hard sell for about six months, then I am totally on board that train.

The bathroom is a source of much angst for both of us. We are starting the remodeling project with his area (because that is the part of the bathroom that guests would use, while the part you see here can be closed off, thank goodness). I'm just hoping the train doesn't lose steam before getting to MY area! There is storage in our bathroom, it is just completely jammed with twenty years of detritus. That is where I have to start--pitching stuff. Body lotion with a teaspoon left (my "waste not, want not", penny-pinching ways are becoming a burden), shampoo samples that are being saved to take in carry on luggage on mythical vacations, fifteen half-used bottles of sunscreen, boxes of band-aids that are as old as my college-age son, on and on and endlessly on. I used a towel the other night that had a rip in it. The last two times I've used this towel, it ripped a little more, and yet I throw it back into the wash and place it back into the linen closet as if our lives depended on saving this one ripped towel despite the fact that we have more towels than we will wear out in our lifetimes. The towel, at least, went into the rag bin. I need to commit some time to this business of discarding so that I can renovate the space, get more organized, and stop feeling like I'm living on the edge of a landslide that is threatening to bury me alive.

G

2010-07-12T15:17:00.008-04:00

Garden

I mean, it has to be, right? I spend about a third of my life puttering around in my gardens, planting, moving, mulching, watering, weeding, pulling pulling pulling the stupid stupid ground ivy, which is a nasty, uninvited weed, and also the gooseneck loose strife which I regrettably planted. Sometimes I stand out there simply infuriated that something has eaten something to a nub, again. The rabbits are fond of my favorite annual flower, zinnias. And the deer are fond of my second favorite annual, hyacinth bean. But lucky me, nothing much eats basil. I have a lot of basil this year, which will all get eaten by us rather than the wildlife. More often, I stand out there or sit out on the back deck with a glass of wine and just look around, absorb the peace of the garden and enjoy the beautiful colors and textures as it all changes throughout the growing season. It makes me happy. I'm not sure what I did before I was more or less trapped at home with babies (not a complaint, just a fact) and started gardening a lot. I think I went on a lot of long bike rides.

F

2010-07-12T07:53:00.002-04:00

Farther, Faster

These are two words I cannot accomplish in my running this summer. It is too hot and too humid. I hate to blame things on the weather. The weather cannot be controlled, and so one must soldier on no matter what if life is to be fully lived. I did run all winter, and while I complained some (maybe I complained a lot), I didn't feel absolutely miserable about it the way I am feeling about summer running. I can't seem to do heat and humidity anymore. I could get up very early in the morning and run then. I could. People do. I do, on occasion. But while I'm a morning person, in general, what I mean by that is that I'm a person who likes to get up early in the morning and linger over coffee and a bowl of cereal and then start being productive sometime later, not a person who likes to get up on an empty stomach and start slogging, crusty-eyed, through a long run. Oh well. The only person pushing me on this is myself and I should cut myself some slack, although I rarely do.

E

2010-07-10T22:37:00.014-04:00

Evening

Tonight we had a wonderful family outing to a lavender farm north of us--my mom and stepdad, husband, son and son's girlfriend. Great singer-songwriter, beautiful grounds, scent of lavender in the air, picnic dinner on blankets, heirloom tomatoes and basil from the garden, a peach pie made with the peaches from our own peach tree. Evening was setting in as we lingered, drinking my stepdad's homemade wine--a nice dry, white Muscat. The shade of the pines deepened, the air cooled, and we sat on our blankets, laughing, catching up, enjoying our time together. As husband and I drove home, feeling happy and connected to the people who love us, a spectacular sunset was unfolding over the rolling hills. Windows down, fireflies, sky going pink, orange, purple. Midwestern midsummer's evening. This is why, I think, exactly why I am so deeply connected to this place. It's not a place everyone would want to live. It takes someone who can see beauty in a sunset over round-topped grain silos, in the particular spicy scent of a field of sweet corn, in the peace of a slow, wide river, in a tree heavy burdened with rosy-skinned peaches. It takes, maybe, deep connections to family and a childhood spent smelling these smells and catching fireflies in these sunsets. I crave different places myself sometimes. I crave mountains and thundering rivers with white water. I crave ancient rock faces and sea breezes. But evenings like this, a sense of place passes over me. A sense of peace passes over me. I am happy right here, right now, on this amazing Indiana summer evening.

D

2010-07-09T08:20:00.007-04:00

Desire

I think about desire quite a bit. I don't want to be a materialistic person, and I think for the most part I'm not, or try hard not to be, and yet I do desire a certain few things more than I wish I did. Shoes, for one. Boots in particular. Not fancy shoes or boots--most of the ones I desire veer towards the ugly/functional or athletic end of the spectrum. I have bad feet and the thrill of slipping into a comfy pair of new soft leather shoes, or a brand new pair of running shoes with their padding all plump and supportive, is addictive. I own more pairs of boots than anyone needs, and yet when I see another pair, like maybe those deadly cute embroidered Earth boots I saw, or the soft, red leather, Italian-looking ones this complete stranger had on in line at the grocery store, I covet them in the worst way. I guess my saving grace is that while I have desire I don't always act on it, because I'm also a save-a-holic with dreams of retiring before I'm 85. I've worn the same pair of Chaco sandals, for instance, almost every day between April and October for the last eight years. If you know me, you know these sandals. They don't wear out, so I can't justify replacing them in my more frugal moments even though I would just about give my right arm for a different color of Chacos at this point. It's a constant internal struggle with these diametrically opposed personality traits--desire versus frugality, treading lightly on the earth's and my own resources versus treading around in some fabulous new shoes.

C

2010-07-08T13:44:00.005-04:00

Cake

I watch very little tv, but a cake show can really suck me in. I especially like Cake Boss which I think is better than Ace of Cakes, because Cake Boss' cakes, IMHO, are more amazing. Ace of Cakes' cakes are often rather cartoonish. When I watch these shows, I am overwhelmed with the desire to make a really beautiful cake. An elaborate cake is a combination of art and function, and then you eat it so it's not just hanging around the house taking up room, which appeals to me. And yet I've never taken a cake decorating class. One reason I have not is that I have no desire to make stupid icing roses. I think roses are lame. I can get a cake with roses at Kroger's any day of the week. I want to make a spectacular cake, something akin to the CB's Marie Antoinette cake with edible golden cameos and French lace and architecture reproduced in icing. Or, say, the Bloomington skyline in cake, fondant, and modeling chocolate, complete with people and maybe twinkling Christmas lights and a working courthouse clock. They do not teach these things in any cake decorating class I've seen. Oh sure, you say, you have to start somewhere. But I don't really want to go through the laborious process of learning how. I just want to have my friends over and roll out this cake that is so fabulous it makes their eyes bug out.

B

2010-07-08T10:51:00.005-04:00

Banyan tree, Boy

Son got a Banyan tree in the center of his dreamcatcher tattoo. I'm somewhat anti-tattoo, but the art work is nice and he put a lot of thought into the symbols used in it. I've heard there are two types of people who get tattoos--those who want it to be loaded with meaning, and those who are just more into the art of it. I'm sure there are as many motivations for tattoos as there are tattoos, but these seem like two fairly important distinctions. If I ever got one, it would have to be very meaningful. I don't think I ever want a tattoo, but never say never. I am also in a writing group called Banyan Tree, which is sort of cool. The boy, while at a camp out with all of these people, told some stranger who wandered up that we were an "internet dating group". Stranger looked around at the assemblage--young, old, and every age in between--and thought we must be some kind of weirdos. This made us laugh and we have been laughing about it ever since. A well-meaning friend told one person in the group who was traveling to the campout, "How do you know these people are not ax murderers?" So we have dubbed ourselves the "Ax Murderer Internet Dating Group". A large contingent of these lusty killers will be landing at my house in August and I am very excited to see them again.

Buddhist

I can't say that I'm Buddhist. I can't say I'm 100% anything. But what I can say is that I believed in re-incarnation before I even knew the word. Before I knew that it was something that people believed in or that it was anything at all. It was less like "belief" and more like "knowing". I knew, at a very very young age, that I was once a Native American woman who lived in the woods in a bark-covered shelter. I know you are laughing. I mean, seriously, doesn't every kid in the US at one time or another think of themselves as an Injun'? I'm just saying, it was something I knew about myself before I knew much else, and this sure knowledge has stuck with me long after most of my other childhood illusions have been shattered. Do I trust this knowledge which came to me unbidden as a very young child? I say yes. And that is why, this very day, I am wearing my fringed moccasins. At work. Laugh if you must, I love my moccasins. They allow me to walk silently among my current people.

A

2010-07-08T10:00:00.006-04:00

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Apathy

I am, at long last, starting the blogging challenge on July 7th, putting me several letters behind. I am late to the challenge because I have not been keeping up on friends' blogs. All I've been doing, pretty much, is writing thousands of lines of code, some of which look like the above garble. I am feeling very apathetic about writing more of this crap this week. Apathy does not play well with me because I always think one SHOULD care one way or another about most things. Fortunately, good friend LH, over several glasses of wine and a great bowl of pesto prepared by friend M, snapped me out of my apathetic mood, and here I am, at A. I have no new pictures to share on this computer. I've been somewhat apathetic about taking pictures as well. Will try to do better.

running haiku

2010-06-29T21:49:00.003-04:00

cracked asphalt stewing
batches of mulberry wine
side-swiping drunk flies

i run, i run, ai
yi yi yi, i run run run
on these hot mulled wine sidewalks

spicy with brow salt
and full body sweat slick and
purple spattered legs

dreaming of breezes,
icy margaritas, and
salty salty glasses

one for the gipper

2010-04-05T11:22:00.006-04:00

We did it. Running buddy Tanya (far right) and I ran the half marathon, and our inspirational, cancer-surviving buddy Barb (middle) and her husband (the giant guy) walked the half marathon. It was the hilliest race I've ever run, and it was pouring rain from mile six on. This was the least scenic race I believe I've ever done, and I nearly got clipped by a city bus who really should not have been allowed to sneak up behind runners who were assuming tht things like traffic were being dealt with. It hurt bad because of the hills and the chilly soaking wetness of shoes and socks and clothes and skin. But it is Monday now, and the knee and quad pain is fading, and we are talking about doing another one. That's the thing with running--it gets in your blood and you forget what to do with yourself if you aren't running. And races are big fun. Except for the hurting part. We are going to run a more scenic one next time. One where they keep buses from running over you and important things like that.

it's just a number

2010-03-31T14:34:00.004-04:00

I haven't run a marathon or half marathon for 22 years.
I was 26 years old the last time I ran one.
My running days were interrupted by 4 gut-slicing surgeries and 1 knee surgery.
And 2 kids, but they are 16 and 19 now and don't care if I'm gone running.
I've trained purposefully for 3 months.
I've run 233 miles since January 11th, anywhere from 3 to 12 miles at a time.
I've swallowed approximately 1/2 of a 60 count bottle of aspirin in that time.
I've run in 16 degree weather (F not C) with a 10 degree windchill factor.
I've run on 2 inches of ice, in 4 inches of snow, and through 6 inches of shoe-soaking, shin-freezing slush.
I've run for 1.5 hours through a 45 degree downpour.
I have 2 more training runs before the race 3 days from now.
It starts at 8, a time I'm always awake but never running.
I will to have 2 cups of coffee that day, and a little food.
I'll have to take a nervous piss at least 4 times.
I will collect a number (unknown) and run 13.1 miles at an average of 8.5 minutes per mile.
I plan to finish this 1 goal I have set for myself.
I plan to make 48 years old just a number and not a limit.

had all I can stand..

2010-03-15T12:56:00.002-04:00

...and can't stands no more. I bought some peat pots, seed starting mix, and seeds, and started some seeds yesterday. I just had to. It was 39 and dark and cloudy all day with some cold rain. Not spring-like at all, and it just totally bummed me out. I just had to smell some dirt and think about things growing. I planted some sunflowers (which will just become deer snacks if I can't figure something out), cilantro, and zinnias. I also bought spinach, lettuce, swiss chard, pea, and green been seeds, some caladium bulbs, three forced hiacynths in little pots which should bloom by Easter, and some white and yellow onion starts. I should be able to get some of these in the garden soon. I'll try the fishing line trick on the deer, see if it works this year. They just can't bear to walk by a sunflower sprout or a fresh pea pod, and they adore a patch of jewel-stemmed swiss chard nearly as much as I do.

long cold winter

2010-03-03T15:34:00.005-05:00

I've done many things these past few cold months, and I have failed to blog any of them. One thing I have done is to make it through the first two months of a fairly rigorous three month training plan aimed at working me up to running a half marathon. If this sounds ambitious, I have overstated. The training plan is not aimed at getting a runner up to any great speed. It is to allow a runner to complete the 13.1 miles without requiring ambulance service. But, I am a teensy bit proud of myself for sticking to the training plan, week in and week out, through pretty much the worst part of winter. I have run in the frigid cold, through snow, ice, six inches of slush, and bitter wind with chapped lips, wet feet, cold limbs, and frozen fingers. I would like to say I'm now tough as nails, but mostly I am just tired. I don't think I'm going to keep up this kind of running schedule once the run is over in April. I do love to run, but I've learned that my body does not appreciate the long distance runs at this age. Or at least, it does not appreciate long runs and freezing cold. Maybe I'll feel differently when it's Spring at long last.

it is not that bad

2009-12-22T14:14:00.005-05:00

Seriously, I keep convincing myself that it is far too cold out to run and feel anything but misery. Thank goodness for a running buddy who also doesn't want to run in the cold but who knows as well as I do that we need to do this. Between the two of us, we pool enough gumption to get our winter gear on and get out for a run today--our 3 mile route to Bryan Park, around twice, and back to the office. Surprisingly, it was not that bad. It was not nearly as bad as I'd imagined it would be. I warmed up and actually enjoyed it. Maybe I will do it again before I forget that it's not that bad.
(Photo: S. Kittles, wondercat, who worries not one bit about her winter weight gain.)

the weather today

2009-12-10T10:51:00.002-05:00

In a word: cold. The actual temp was 16F when we got up this morning, with a windchill of zero. My plan was to stay in my jammies, crawl back into bed with the laptop and cuppa joe, and work from home. I got through the first three steps, only to discover that something was wrong with our cable internet connection and I couldn't connect to anything. So I hauled myself up and out into the cold in down coat, long johns, gloves and boots. When I got here I discovered I had a dollar off coupon from the campus coffee shop, so to compensate for not being home in my jammies, I decided to buy myself a treat. Got back into coat and gloves and boots and hauled myself up the hill behind my building to the Student Union.

Coming back out, standing at the top of the hill with a steaming latte in my hand, thinking things weren't going to be so bad afterall, I stopped for a minute to breathe in the view: ice cold and clear, a stiff wind in my face, the hill falling away below me to a tangle of brick paths and ancient sycamores, the hemlock lined creek at the bottom with its worn-smooth wooden bridges, Dunn Meadow on the other side of the creek covered in a light frosting of snow and very few footprints yet on this cold cold morning. There is a beauty to winter that will certainly elude me by February, but still comes as a sharp intake of breath and a sense of wonder and surprise in December. (photo: December hike at Griffey)

to the editor

2009-09-09T14:05:00.002-04:00

My letter to the editor--a news scoop for my readers. And do you know how hard it is to keep it to 200 words? Sheesh. I don't have 200 word thoughts!

I've heard time and again that some people in this country do not deserve health care. Immigrant workers are a prime target in the debate. Consider this: These are the people who pick and process our crops so that we can have plentiful, affordable food. Migrant workers, a high percentage of them illegal, do dangerous, labor intensive work that no one else wants to do. As one Wash. Post article states, "the pay is so low, the benefits nonexistent, the conditions so harsh, if you can, you do something else." The same article states, "If you took every illegal out of the United States right now, you would shut down the food industry." Agricultural workers have increased rates of many diseases due to pesticide exposure, and increased injuries from hazardous conditions. They live in poverty, and yet are indispensable to us. Some people say that we should send them home, we owe them nothing, not even basic health care. Perhaps, then, they wouldn't mind going into a grocery store to find empty bins where their fruits and veggies once were. We are an impoverished nation if we don't care even for those who bring the very food to our tables.

love and pie

2009-08-25T19:41:00.006-04:00

Husband and I went on one of our urban hunting and gathering missions, as we like to call them, last weekend. There is an apartment complex near us that was built about 15 years ago on old farm land. They left two of the farmer's apple trees for landscaping, and I don't think anyone who lives there has ever wandered over, picked up a dirty apple, wiped it on the leg of their trousers, and taken a big old bite out of a tart, old-timey apple. They all just rot on the ground, so much worm food. So we go over every year to confiscate a big bag full, and this seems to be an extraordinary year for apples. Sure, hey're small and buggy and bruised, but that in no way affects their eat-ability in our eyes. We collected about 15 pounds worth. It's like finding treasure. Urban pirate booty, ours for the taking.

I've just finished baking the second apple pie this week for my beloved family, husband and number one son, anyway. Number two son doesn't eat fruit in any form. I keep telling him some day he will grow up and try a piece of homemade apple pie and realize that he has missed years of homemade apple pies and he will weep at the thought of it. The first pie, I cut the slits in the top and a tiny heart in the middle. Made with love by yours truly. Tonight, I was tired. I rode my bike five miles to work. I worked all day. I ran at lunch. I pulled a calf muscle. I rode five miles home in the heat with a pulled calf muscle. I made dinner and I cleaned it up. Dead tired. So tonight, where the heart was last time, I cut a small dollar sign in the middle of the crust, just to remind my dear ones: you can't buy this kind of love ;)

(photo: the ever-beguiling Skittles)

screaming at the market

2009-08-25T19:37:00.003-04:00

Normal beautiful day at the farmer's market this morning--very cool for late August, with gray skies, but the abundant produce glowed and overflowed with color. All of those colors and flavors are so exciting to me, and when the vegetables are all lined up on our kitchen island, I love creating dinner. What a fortunate life we lead, with money and time and opportunity to buy such delicious food. We are among the blessed and I feel that as strongly here at the farmer's market as anywhere else on earth. We wandered through, and at the back of the market was a table for health care issues, anti-Obama, with a middle aged woman working the table. Husband and I had said many times, while watching the news, that if we were the person facing down an anti Obama health plan screamer, the first question we would want to ask them is, "Do YOU have health care? Do YOU benefit from medicare?" Just curious. It's a lot easier to hate something new when you are the Have and not the Have Not. I mentioned this to the husband, "We should ask her if she has health care." He say, "Ok, let's go ask her." Maybe a bad choice for my own health, in hindsight.

But we did. Husband asked. She said yes, she had health care. I said, "But what about those who don't have health care." She said, "I have health care because I work for it. If others want health care, they can work for it too." By this time an older dude and an older couple, also working the table, joined in. Husband asked the older couple, "But you have medicare, isn't that socialized medicine?" They said, "WE worked our whole lives and payed for it ourselves (a running theme with these folks)." Husband reminded them that WE are now paying in for THEIR care because the dollars they paid in are long used up. The system is nearly bankrupt. They didn't pay in anywhere near the amount that they are now getting out. I said, "What about those who can't work and get health care? Doesn't everyone deserve health care?" The first woman chimes in, "No, not everyone deserves health care. If you don't work, or you smoke hose cigarettes, or you eat bad food, then no, you don't deserve health care!" Ok, now these people are freaking me out. "What about children?" I ask, "Did you know that most of the uninsured are children?" Older dude cannot come up with an answer for this and so he screams at me at this point, "YOU ARE A COMMUNIST SOCIALIST LIBERAL DO NOTHING! IF YOU WANT HEALTH CARE THEN YOU SHOULD GET A JOB AND WORK FOR IT!" "Well huh," I tell him, "Matter of fact I DO have a job. I have had a job since I was 15 years old. And guess what? I STILL care about OTHER people. I care that OTHERS including many many CHILDREN do not have health care." He screams at me, "THEN WHY DON'T YOU USE YOUR OWN MONEY TO HELP THOSE PEOPLE YOU THINK DESERVE HELP." "Matter of fact, I do, by giving to charities as much as I can, as often as I can," I tell him. He then screams a me "THEN YOU ARE THE EXCEPTION AMONG LIBERALS WHO DON'T GIVE A PENNY TO CHARITIES!" Um, huh? Wow. This man is indeed crazy. I picture him with a the little Hitler mustache that they've been putting on Obama. Then yet another 65 year old dude starts screaming at me about what a socialist-communist-such-n-such I am. Husband steps in and repeats his question at some point, "Doesn't everyone deserve basic health care?" "NO," the dude screams at us. "Not everyone deserves health care!" Husband is still engaging older couple in debate, but at this point I said, "I'm walking on, I have nothing to say to that except that apparently I care more than that about my fellow humans." He screamed at me, "WALK ON SOCIALIST LIBERAL AND KEEP WALKING!"

I went over and sat down on a wall a little way away. A little boy, mentally and physically handicapped, plopped down next to me, smiled up at me and said, "HI! I'm Wyatt!" I said, "Hi Wyatt, I'm Julie." His mom asked if he was enjoying the fiddle music behind us, and yes, he was. I asked him if he'd heard the drum group on the other side and he nodded enthusiastically and started drumming on his knees. Wyatt started to wander off and his mom had to corral him, and did so with all the patience in the world although you could tell it was a more than full time job. I was still shaking. I was thinking about kids like Wyatt. Is he supposed to work for health care when he's an adult? Women like Wyatt's mom, is she supposed to work a full time job for heath care? Where does Wyatt go when she works? What about people who are heavily discriminated against in the work force? What about the handicapped? What about people with chronic illness or disease? Everyone, basically, who didn't win the genetic lottery that the
white guy who was screaming at me apparently won (in some respects)...what are they supposed to do for health care? I don't sleep at night thinking about suffering people, suffering children. I don't sleep at night thinking about the sanctimonious asses who screamed at me. I don't sleep over a lot of things. I'm feeling a lot of people's pain right now.

oxygen

2009-07-15T09:41:00.002-04:00

Oxygen is a new "perk" here in our office. I know, I know...what will they give us next in bennies--a coffee machine that works?? For the four years that I've worked in this building, it's been stuffy and hot back in our area. Like "trapped in a small box with no airholes" stuffy. We complained over the years, but everyone pretty much wrote it off to the fact that there are a lot of people and computers back here, and we are in what was the old University Library's "stacks" area, so the floors are closer together, the ceilings lower, to support the weight of the books. The rest of the building has very high ceilings--anywhere from 10 to 30 feet high.

But in the past year, the stuffiness got worse and worse. The amount of sickness in our area last winter was appalling, with everyone passing around everything two or three times. I just couldn't BREATHE. I thought it was because I'm outside a lot and we keep our house very open, and I am just used to more air flow. Turns out, we finally complained enough to get them to place monitors in our area. Good levels of C02 are between 300-400. Danger-to-human-life
level is 8000. We were reading 4500 by 15 minutes after everyone arrived at work, and staying there all day. We literally did not have enough oxygen in here to breathe freely.

They did some investigation and found that the main problem was not air flow from other areas, but that of the 25 air exchange fans on the roof of the building, 18 of them were not working! These were fixed over the weekend, and on Monday, we noted an absolutely amazing difference in the air quality. It feels so much better. I'm not catching myself doing this tired-like sighing thing all day like I was from feeling so groggy and suffocated. Our heat/air units were also not working, which explained the complete lack of air conditioning and the 90 degree temps back here all year round. They fixed that, too, and it's a pleasant 70-something in here now. Hopefully I won't have to wear tank tops to work this winter.

I told my boss that I was feeling happy happy about the air situation. He said, "That's scary." Apparently I'm a bit too perky on all this oxygen. :)

buns of steel, teeth like baleen

2009-07-01T11:33:00.004-04:00

I run through an Indiana summer heat wave. I run because I can again. Because it feels good again, after years of surgeries, babies, backpain. Years of doing all kinds of other things besides running, but still missing my first love. Twenty-five years ago, running was my life, and then *poof* I couldn't do it anymore. Like an addict, though, I never got the desire out of my system.

I can run again, but I have to force myself to keep going through the heat. Any running is progress, any stopping is backsliding. Half of running is mental--mental strength or mental illness, sometimes it's hard to tell. The weather site still reads ninety degrees and ninety-plus humidity at nine pm. Ninety, ninety, nine--some kind of cosmic joke on us. Why do people live in Indiana? (That's the lead in to the joke.) But we do live here, for various reasons, and ninety degrees at nine in the evening is what we get dealt sometimes. Very funny. With my family gawking at me like I'm a mental case, I go out and run anyway.

I am instantly soaked. It's a somewhat sadistic kind of pleasure that makes me feel tougher than I really am. "Punch my ass," I tell my husband, when I've been doing a lot of running. He's known me for a long time and tolerates my stupid desire to prove to him that my ass can be tightened into a rock hard lump. "I'm not going to punch your ass." "No, seriously, punch my ass." He finally does so I'll shut up, and he acts suitably impressed, and then I laugh because it is completely ridiculous that I need him to understand that I am TOUGH AS NAILS HERE.

By the string of small ponds, in a low spot where the breeze--if there were any breeze at all--is bunkered by blue spruce, I run through a thick cloud of tiny insects. They stick to my face and my bare sweaty arms. Breathing hard, I close my mouth just a little and imagine myself filtering the swarm through my teeth like a blue whale in my blue running shorts. "More protein" is the old joke that goes through my mind. I laugh to myself. It's hotter than Hades. The air is thick and damp and barely breathable. But I am running again, and that makes me happy.

how boys do mother's day

2009-05-10T09:57:00.007-04:00

One might wish for a daughter from time to time to share girl things with, but, honestly, it's hard to beat teen boys for truly heart-felt displays of affection--once you get used to their ways. You have to look a little harder for the diamonds is all. For mother's day or birthdays, I always tell them: don't spend money on me--just make me something or do something for me. Really. Let's keep it real boys. One has no money and one has gas and car insurance and some college expenses to pay for.

So No. 2 son (fifteen) washed a big sink full of pots and pans for me last night. I had to strongly suggest that that would be the perfect mother's day gift, and he protested, but he did do it, and it was nice to wake up to an empty sink this morning. He worked on a card, but that did not materialize. Crafting is not his thing.

When I rolled out to make coffee this morning, No. 1 son (eighteen) had left me a lovely rose in a glass of water, and a note that said, "Happy Mother's Day....another gift upstairs." The rose came, he said, from "the place you go when you decide to buy a rose at two in the morning." Then he insisted that I walk up the stairs with my eyes closed. At the top of the stairs was my gift: at two in the morning last night, which is when he came in from being out with friends, he had patched the big hole he had punched in the drywall during a fit of anger. And in his room, another big hole with another patch. (Eighteen has been a tough year for the kid who has never given me a moment's trouble up to this point ;) I gave him a big hug.

Back in the kitchen, I had an empty Cabernet bottle on the counter, and the rose's glass looked a bit short, so I said, "Hey, I'll put the rose in the wine bottle. That will look nice." No. 2 son came back with, "Or trashy. We'll just have to see." Good point. Teen boys pretty much call it like they see it. Another plus on mother's day or any day. If you prepare to walk out of the house in something stupid, they will tell you. If your last hair cut was less than attractive, they will not varnish the truth.

And that, my friends, is the way teen boys express love--dishes, roses, drywall patches, obvious truths, much humor, and always many hugs.

give me a sign

2009-04-28T12:24:00.004-04:00

Hyperbole aside, I will say that I very rarely sleep anymore, and almost never between 2am and 5:30am. Last night I listened to a whippoorwill for an hour or so. I should get up and do something, but I'm always convinced that any minute I will fall back asleep, and I don't want to miss my chance. I do hear things, though, that I might not hear if I was a normal person who slept at night. Last fall I had an owl friend. Hopefully whippoorwill will visit again.

But this is not much of a story, so I'll tell you how I got a deep discount on a nice dress. (I decided that, after 47.5 years, it was critical that I have a little-black-dress and with a couple of events coming up, and no respectable dress, it became a pressing issue, and thus, off to the mall at 7:30pm last night with a credit card and a goal.) I was suffering the usual anxiety and failure that I usually experience when clothes shopping and was in the last store in which I intended to look before slinking back home empty handed. I was standing there, looking at a wall rack holding a dress that not only came in my size, but looked like something that might work, and it wasn't all that expensive. Could it be? Just then, out of the clear blue florescence of overhead mall lighting, a big four foot by four foot sign fell off a high shelf over the dresses, the edge of it landing smack in the middle of my head. I bent over in pain and sort of moaned. The young salesperson ran over and started cooing around and saying she was very sorry, although I really think she felt no personal responsibility. I think she half expected me to start yelling that I would sue, or something. She ran to the sales desk and presented me with a twenty percent off coupon as the lump on my head swelled and throbbed. I was determined to still try on the black dress, and it was really all I could hope for, so I bought it and I got twenty percent off. I'm not made for this whole shopping thing, but despite the lump--which has gone down some today--I pretty much scored big.

Photo: Son, at the last minute, could not find his black dress shoes for prom, and so he had to wear his Converse, and so it often goes at our house.

into the mist-ic

2009-04-20T11:25:00.008-04:00

It was a cool, rainy day all day yesterday, but as the sun started to set, it was only misting out, and so I cajoled the family into taking a walk with me. Number One Son agreed to go but then got a better offer to go to a friend's house, so he apologetically scooted out. Before he left, though, he sidled up to me, and being the sensitive young

man he is, asked me if he had made me feel sad by not going on the walk. I told him that I'm happy that he has such good friends and I know that when I was 18, even though I loved my parents, I would always rather be with my friends. I said to him, "I don't think you'll understand this until you have kids, but it's sometimes sad for a parent to know that her kid would really rather be somewhere else, while at the same time it's normal and good. I know you are not a little boy anymore, but I still have the experience of that little boy in my memory, in my heart, in my very bones. So, yes, I do get a little sad sometimes." He reminded me that he is living at home next year for his first year of college. Yes, I know that. And it's not all a bed of roses living with a headstrong 18 year old. But still. There are some moments I miss experiencing with him, and this misty Spring evening walk felt like one of them. At eighteen and a half, he is such a man in some ways. But when I see his smile, a lock of hair that always curls a certain way, the tiny mole on his chin, his big expressive eyes, I see my little boy as he has always been.

But Husband and Number Two Son gave into my plea, son preferring to scoot along beside us on his bike. And it was amazing out. The grass is lush and green (everywhere, that is, except on our property where our pesticide-free yard is still a bit sparse--left to it's own devices, our yard is constantly trying to return to the mix of woodland grasses and weeds, wild olive, and redbud shoots it was before we were there). The crab apples are all bloom and perfume, while the Bradford pears are now in leaf, their recent finished blooms covering the sidewalks like a dusting of snow. The bass and grass carp were active in the small ponds up the road, and our buddy the muskrat was taking his evening swim. I see him almost every time I walk there, and I always envy him his quiet, solo swim in a placid pond at twilight. I briefly reconsider letting Husband buy the backhoe he's been going on about, and letting him dig a pond at the bottom of our property so that I can be a muskrat on summer evenings at twilight.

The walk back was even more magical as a foggy mist settled into the low spots on our road and the spring peepers went into full song. Cardinals and other song birds flashed and twittered in the shrubby undergrowth that overtakes all the unkept edges where our dead-end road fades into deeper woods. A red-wing blackbird sang from a marshy area. It was hard for me to believe my luck at being alive on this damp, deeply green-scented evening. What luck to live on my small acre and a half of shed, garden, woodpile, pine row, fallen tree, bird-filled thicket, cozy house, screened porch. Even through the ups and downs of life with other humans and work and worry, I find much peace here, and being outside at twilight presses that peace into my very being.

non-still life with cake

2009-03-13T11:41:00.007-04:00

With two bottomless teen boys and one hard working husband, there is no end to the eating in this house. The delicious and filling homemade dinners I prepare are nothing but a prelude to the all-night eating fests that happen afterwards. Number two son is usually interested in baking something, so while at the local health food store, I picked up an organic chocolate cake mix. I'm not of the opinion that "organic" adds much redeeming nutritional value to chocolate cake, but I do try to think of the source of my food. And having turned cocoa beans with my own bare feet, in the hot sun, with a cocoa plantation worker in the heart of Grenada, I like to at least think I'm keeping someone, somewhere in the world, from having to turn pesticide-laden cocoa beans with her feet. Or keeping some farm worker from having to breath the dust of a pesticide-laden wheat field. Sometimes it's about healthfullness, sometimes it's about the source. This is how I make most of my decisions in the grocery store, and believe me, it takes awhile to work my way through the store and come out feeling ok about things. Thank God for the local farmer's market, which makes this task so much easier. (Come on Spring! Come on farmers!) Sometimes, frankly, it's about the price, but, as much as I am able, I try to not let that override other things. Toxic foods, toxic farmland, and animal suffering have their own invisible price tags. It makes me sad that for many people it must be about the price, and there is no other choice. Anyway, jumping down of my soapbox to continue my tale...We made the cake and iced it and we were quite proud of ourselves because by the looks of it, it was a grand success. We haven't eaten the cake yet. We didn't finish until 9pm, and by that time they'd ravaged most every other edible thing in the pantry and were temporarily satiated. We will have this hopefully delicious cake tonight, the first night of Spring Break week.

(An addendum to this blog post, just in case I come off as too...something...and in the interest of honesty. I have blogged about my addiction to Diet Coke. It is bad healthwise and pretty much everyotherwise. I have recently read that CocaCola company is polluting water in drought ridden areas of India, and that the villagers are experiencing extreme water shortages. This is something I wrestle with, while I continue to drink my daily or every-other-day diet coke. I'm not happy with this situation, yet I have not found anything that I enjoy in the way that I enjoy my fizzy d.c. as I sit in my hot, dark, cave-like office. So far, this is a sacrifice I have not been willing or able to make.)

number two son in da house

2009-03-10T11:11:00.002-04:00

For anyone I have not run into and excitedly related this important fact, Number 2 son has been back home since last November. Lots of back story folks, but we are happy happy happy to have him back and life and family feel complete again. The kid makes me laugh pretty much every day and he's a world class athlete in the Hug. If you run into him anywhere, you should definitely put his mad hugging skillz to the test.

cinemat

2009-03-10T11:04:00.002-04:00

Number 1 son's band has had a semi-regular gig at the Cinemat for some months now. No money, but lots of experience he tells me. Every one of his sessions has been very late at night on a work night, and try as I might, I have not had the fortitude to stay up that late. Sad but true. I try to be a good mother before 9pm in the evening. After that, the quality of the mothering drops off quickly. On Friday, March 27th, however, I am determined to make it, no matter what the hour. The kid has also been writing some really great songs. I'm trying to get him to record them in a studio, for posterity and for his mother.

when a few weeks equal one year

2009-03-10T10:57:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago, in mid February, husband and I went on vacation to the British Virgin Islands. Very cool place. Unfortunately I got the worst cold (or I should say ONLY cold) I've had it the past five years while on vacation. Still, one must soldier on having a good time. And we did have a great time, I just didn't get as rested as I'd hoped, and then headed back to work feeling vaguely out of sorts. So vacation seems like it was about a year ago now. Anyway. We stayed on Tortolla and also visited The Baths on Virgin Gorda (site of this fab picture). The Baths were amazing, and Tortolla was warm and beautiful. One morning husband and I were the only two people on a mile stretch of white sand, palm trees, and turquoise water. It doesn't get much better than that even when one has a raging chest cold.

catching a thermal

2009-02-18T10:57:00.003-05:00

A hundred or so Turkey Vultures moved onto my street, behind my neighbor's house where there are some very old trees and a thicket of undergrowth. They roost in large community groups and often stick to a certain spot for some time--they've been there, now, since early Autumn. They feed on carrion, and I have to say the roads in our area have been exceptionally clean of small dead creatures this winter. They are gruesome looking when hunched over on their branches, these two-feet-or-taller birds with their wrinkly naked heads and creepy, crooked beaks. A fine homecoming to Blue Bird Lane dwellers on a gloomy winter evening. But in flight, they are a different matter all together. They have a five foot wingspan with a beautiful fringe of silvery flight feathers on the underside of their brown-black wings. Watching ten or twenty of them ride thermals over the tall pines, over the snowy landscape--gliding, still, unflapping--is the essence of calm beauty. They lack the normal vocal organs of a bird, and so they don't screech or call out. They simply float, silently, with their silver fringe fluttering in the breeze.

I was watching them one day, and a thought occurred to me. These creatures are so beautiful when they are doing what they do best--flying, floating, circling on an invisible current of air. They are so lovely and free looking, even more so than their frantically flapping, tiny friends who are blessed with comely breast feathers and melodic voices. And then my train of thought continues: When do I look that free? What am I doing when, if observed unawares, I am a shining, peaceful thing? When do I slip out of everything physically unbeautiful about myself? I know that when I'm elbow deep in pots and mulch and dirt and new plants, I am free. When I'm picking basil and chives in my garden, chopping fresh veggies from the market, and a warm summer evening is coming in the windows, I feel glowing. When I am walking in the woods through filtery sunlight, or making love to my husband, I am floating on my own personal warm current.

the time consuming business of personal care

2009-01-06T13:10:00.003-05:00

There are not enough hours in the day, sometimes, to make all of the appointments I need to make for myself and the boys to keep our bodies healthy, our teeth cleaned, our orthodontia in place, our roots touched up, our minds at ease, our eyes properly outfitted with eyewear. Much less actually squeeze these appointments into our already full days. I just spent half an hour on the phone (at work, of course, because when I'm not working, neither are they) making various appointments over the next month, and those were only the most critical things. There are other appointments needed that I have not made yet, such as the one wherein I tell my optometrist that I can no longer put off getting bifocals. Perhaps there are other reasons I am putting off making this appointment. Perhaps I'm in denial. Perhaps this denial is embarrassing after spending five years harassing the husband to get bifocals so I would not have to read entire menus to him in restaurants.
(photo: I want this pillow for no good reason other that it is lovely and I have a serious thing for orange right now. Maybe I will try to make one like it.)

I am so happy

2009-01-02T10:07:00.002-05:00

Not for any sappy parental reasons. Not because I'm in love. Not because Santa brought me just what I wanted. I am happy because every guy in this house has gotten the bleep out of here for most of the day. Oy. I love every hair on their pointy heads, but too much testosterone cooped up in a small house makes me CRAZY after awhile. And each of them, in their own special way, is needy needy needy. Today is the day that my step dad takes all the guys to this big huntin', fishin', shootin', killin' store (complete with what I have dubbed "the dead zoo" of stuffed wild animals) . Hour and half down there, hour and a half back, hour for lunch, couple hours to look around (at least), and maybe (I'm praying) they'll stop somewhere else on the way back. I have at least 6 or 7 hours of complete quiet and freedom. I'm starting off my personal celebration with a little home and garden channel and a green tea and camomile home facial. Call me cold-hearted, but I am deliriously happy that they are gone.

(photo: detail of "Nelda's Garden", a floor cloth painting I did in memory of my grandma.)

yes, so,

2008-12-30T11:45:00.003-05:00

as I was saying, nearly three months ago when I last blogged, um, well, what was I saying. Life keeps happening, all day and half the night. Number two son came home after three years. That has been the biggest news release I have not yet written about. I don't know if there are words enough to describe how I felt/feel/fell/falling/forever/freed about this. A piece of my heart has been recovered by the proper authorities and safely returned and I am grateful beyond words to have him back in my life.

More beauty, damn it. That's what I seek--more things that uplift me, inspire me, heal me. This website is a good place to turn: http://poem-of-the-week.blogspot.com/ This week features a poem by the woman who will recite at Obama's inauguration. I like it a lot. I've been trying to get outside more, too, since the horrid cold snap that sent me screaming indoors. The spring-like break in the weather is a life-saver for someone who needs to be outdoors like a dog needs a bone.

"I'll try to keep up the blog better, but no promises because I'm feeling a bit uninspired," she says in the echoing room.

inside me now

2008-10-14T09:48:00.002-04:00

Welcome in this day.
Usher it in with great gratitude.
Praise the new pink sun from a kayak,
on a chill morning on a foggy-warm lake.
Share a holy communion of coffee, yogurt, granola,
and blueberries picked in the heat and bugs of July.

"Welcome, all you there in the low mist,"
we whisper to the Great Blue herons,
we whisper to God and silver-green crappie breaking the surface for nymphs,
we whisper to each other so as not to break the silence
of the unrippled lake,
of the ghost-white skeletons of sycamores,
of the kayaks moving silently through the water,
of the oars slicing silently through the water.

"Welcome sun,"
now over the roll of hills on the Eastern edge,
now lighting up the tip tops of the sugar maples,
now the whole Western slope of fire-colored trees
and painting a double world--
me, kayak, heron, maple, crack of limestone--above and below.

"Remember this," I thought, as I snap pictures,
and a day later I look hard through the gray photo fog,
try to distinguish heron, water, husband, kayak.
Where am I in this picture?
Where is the ear of God in this picture?
Where is the silent, flapping heron?
Where is the perfect quiet, the warmth of coffee, the firey trees, the bliss?
Inside me now. We are all one.

renaissance woman or feminist reject

2008-10-11T16:32:00.003-04:00

Here's a thing I love to do: hang clothes on the clothesline. In fact, I just ran another hundred feet around my backyard, randomly stringing line from tree to tree, so I can now dry all of the laundry instead of just the easy stuff like sheets and towels. In Indiana, we often have wicked humidity that keeps anything from drying, and in fact actually moistens things that are already dry. But I am more determined than ever to have a smaller carbon footprint, and now we are in the Vatta season, the dry time, the days of clear, blue, hazeless skies. I am out in the yard on a beautiful Saturday, hanging out the week's laundry, a fly buzzing my head and the sun in my eyes, when I am struck by the fact that I am very, very happy. I am right where I want to be, doing what I want to be doing in this moment. It's a feeling that comes over me more often these days--when I'm puttering in my garden, baking bread, sauteing onions and garlic in an a decades old, well seasoned iron skillet, fluting the edges of a perfect pie dough. And I wonder at this core of domesticity in myself that makes me so, damned, happy.

Sometimes I think, possibly, I am a reject of the women's movement that dominated my early life. My mom is of a generation of women who were much more limited in their life choices. But I read widely at a young age, I knew things were changing out there in the big world, and I was having none of that teacher-nurse-homemaker bullshit. I studied math and computer science in college when 95% of the science types were male, and all of the teachers were. The women were administrative assistants, and a few brave souls looking for something beyond what we'd been led to believe we were suited for. But I think we also bought into an idea of what women should no longer be doing, the kinds of things that were considered demeaning to women who had better things to do with their lives. Many of my friends defiantly and quite proudly don't cook or sew. They don't sit on the porch snapping fresh beans into a bowl or "put up" produce in cans or in the freezer. It was as if we couldn't be modern women if we did those things or even claimed knowledge of them. My mom didn't even do all those things past the 70's. It was retrograde to the women's movement. I, instead, had a career, a 401K, a nice car, a pizza place on speed dial, a hundred distracting activities and travels to keep me away from home and out of the kitchen. I put kids on hold until I was more than a decade older than when my mom had them. I had a thoroughly modern woman's life, 180 degrees off course from my grandmother's, but somewhere along the way I forgot how to be happy. I forgot what even made me happy. I wondered why my grandmother had always seemed so happy, ironing her stupid pillowcases with light starch and canning her stupid peaches. Over the next ten years, I searched every nook and cranny of myself and my life for Happy, and I found it in the damndest places.

Although it is still an ever-changing and, in certain moments, a still-elusive thing, (and that was, afterall, the "gift" of the women's movement--a vastly more unlimited, and sometimes more confusing, vision of ourselves and our choices) I now know this truth about myself--that Happiness can dress itself up but it still has the face and hands of my grandmother. It smells of carmelized onions and of sun-dried laundry, of basil and bubbling yeast and the earthy tang of pulled weeds. It has dirt under it's nails and paint on it's clothes. It makes popcorn and listens to the radio. Happiness digs for garlic like it's looking for gold and picks wormy apples when it finds forgotten apples trees. It warms itself by the woodstove after hauling logs through the snow in big boots. It crochets, for chrissake. It takes up every corner of the house with it's half finished art projects, collected pine cones, coffee cups, and last weeks zinnias going dead in a jar. It dances to almost anything. It toasts an even number of matching socks with red wine in a scratched glass. It smiles broadly at the end of a simply-lived day.