Slack

I wish I had better numbers to report for this week but I just don't. Plain as that. Lots of biking but that's implied by now, right? That's my main mode of transportation so...yeah. Lots of biking.

My excuse for this week is that I had family in town visiting: my cousin, her little baby girl and my aunt. They are a lot of fun and I spent more time with an 11 month old than I think I ever have in my life. Seeing her almost makes me want to have babies of my own. Almost.

School continues to rock my socks. My writing professor is giving us lots of prompts and mine yesterday was a prescription bottle. This is what came out of my noggin:

Prescription bottles always remind me of my grandfather. I have 12 medications of my own that I take every day, however whenever I see an orange see-through bottle with a white cap, I don’t think of the 12 of them I have lined up on my nightstand at home; I think about my grandfather’s veiny hands struggling with the childproof cap. The pharmacist often offered to replace the childproof cap with an easy-open snap off cap, but my grandfather wouldn’t hear of it. My mother, his caretaker, would sigh and continue to be available to him at all times in case he couldn’t get a bottle open. “Why, I do believe they’ve given me a broken bottle,” he would say. He would tell my mother to call the pharmacy and complain, but she never did. Instead, she would read the auxiliary labels to him explaining what each one meant as she went along. “Take with food or milk.” “Do not drive or operate heavy machinery while taking this medication.”

My mother bought him a pill organizer one year for Christmas. It was a large rectangle box organized by day of the week and time of day. Each individual plastic day, containing four separate boxes (Morning, Noon, Evening, and Bedtime), could be popped out so that he would only have to carry one day’s worth of pills around with him. Each morning he selected the appropriate plastic day and placed it in his breast pocket, along with two gold pens and a comb.

Every Saturday night my grandfather would meticulously arrange his pills for the week. Each pill was dropped into its correct box in precisely the right order. One day he dropped his heart medication in before he dropped his thyroid medication in and had to start all over from the beginning. When he eventually became unable to perform his Saturday night ritual on his own, he instructed my mother, watching her with a scrutinizing glare in order to make sure every pill went from bottle to box in precisely the right order. After several weeks of practice my grandfather felt confident enough in my mother’s pill dispensing abilities to relinquish control over his pill box.

When my grandfather died I took the pill box for myself, not that anyone else in my family particularly wanted it. I saved it from the “Throw Away” pile and took it home to my nightstand where it sits empty. I have 12 prescription bottles lined up on my nightstand table and a pillbox in which to organize them, however I have yet to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps and create my own Saturday night ritual. The boxes have not been opened since his final Saturday night ritual and I’m afraid opening them now would allow tufts of him to escape, tufts of him I want to keep on my nightstand table.

How to Run a Marathon

As one of my writing assignments for my Creative Non-Fiction class, our homework assignment for the weekend was to write a "How-To". Having never written anything like this before, I decided to go with something I know next to nothing about. Seems logical right? The scary part for me is that I have to Get. Up. And. Read. This. Out Loud. To. The. Class. As Jerry Seinfeld aptly observes, the #1 fear people have is public speaking. The #2 is death. So that means at your own funeral, you'd rather be the one in the coffin than the one giving the eulogy. That about sums up my fear of public speaking. Anyway, here is what I wrote....

In order to run a marathon you must be crazy. You must be crazy, dedicated and passionate about running. You must also have a good pair of running shoes. It’s possible to run a marathon without shoes but I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s much easier to smile through the pain at the finish line if your feet have been cushioned for the last 26.2 miles.

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When friends, family and coworkers find out that you are training for a marathon, there will come the inevitable shock “Wow!” They will look at you with a smidge of admiration but mostly disbelief. Then after the shock sinks in, “why?” or “are you crazy or something?” To that you can say “yes”, for it takes a certain degree of insanity to want to run 26.2 miles. You must be a little bit nuts to get up at the hour you do in order to get the miles in before work. You have to be off your rocker to sit in a bathtub full of ice water to soothe your aching muscles after a really hard day on the track. You have to be a bit mad to put Vaseline on your eyebrows, band-aids on your nipples and slather yourself with a product called Body Glide. Yes, you must be a little bit crazy to run a marathon.

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However, along with the insanity, you must be dedicated to the training. You must be willing to run all the miles on your training schedule even on the days you’d rather sleep in or grab a drink with friends. You must run even when you can think of anything else on the planet you’d rather be doing instead. You must run even if you have a head cold, even if you have a blister the size of Texas on your pinkie toe, even if it’s 92 degrees outside. You run.

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You run in shoes picked out with the help of a professional. Don’t go to Dick’s or Footlocker; go to a specialty running store and have a professional watch your feet while you run. They will bring you shoes that are appropriate for your needs. Try all of them on until you have found the perfect fit. You will know you have found the perfect shoe because it won’t feel like a shoe at all, but rather an extension of your own foot. Splurge a little and get the best shoes for your feet, after all, you will be spending a lot of time with them. Become friends with the sales people. They know their stuff and can recommend other gear you might be interested in, but at its core, shoes are the only essential accessory you need in order to run.

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You’ll skip the happy hours with friends. You will eat spaghetti by the ton and drink so much water that your boss will think you have a UTI. You will happily put on your running shoes when everyone else is in bed because you are passionate. You know that running a marathon is so much more than the medal they will drape around your neck as you drag your weary body across the finish line. During training you’ll realize how strong you really are, not only physically, but also mentally. You will learn how to press through the moments when the word “quit” screams through your brain. You will learn when to push yourself to the limit and when to give yourself a break. You will learn something everyday about who you are.

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And when Marathon Day finally arrives you celebrate. The fact that you made it to the starting line healthy and prepared gives you confidence for what lay ahead on the road in front of you. Each mile you run that day is a celebration of every mile you put in during training. Write your name on your shirt and thank the volunteers and spectators cheering for you. Talk to other runners around you. Encourage each other when the going gets tough. Cry if you need to. Those last 6.2 miles will be the toughest 6.2 miles you have ever run in your life. You will wish you were dead; you will know you are dead. But most importantly, no matter what your time or how horrible you feel, keep putting one foot in front of the other. Lift your hands and smile when you cross the finish line. This is your moment. You have won the race. You realize you are too tough to kill.

Go long

I was reminiscing this morning. I was longing for the days when an easy 4 miler was just that. Today, not so easy. I did my first "long" run since April this morning and I have to tell you people...it was awesome. I stayed in my neighborhood instead of heading down to the bike path where I normally do my long runs and can feel the twinge from the concrete sidewalks. Maybe in a few weeks I'll venture back to my old haunt and brave the trails again. Part of my trepidation is because the last time I ran there it was with the Boy Toy and I'm not sure what kind of emotions will arise. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sorry that relationship ended but it taints my trail a little. However, now that I'm back to running after my sabbatical I'm ready to create new memories on the path.

Oh yeah, and I weighed myself this morning. That was ugly. I gained back those 20lbs I lost right after the marathon last year. *sigh* No better time than now to start chiseling all that away.

Facebook and stuff

I took yesterday off, if you don't count the biking. Which I do so I guess I didn't take the day off. Whatever, I didn't run and I'm ok with that. I think my body is going into shock what with all the healthy eating and all this...movement. It's grown accustomed to sitting in a chair for hours upon hours trying to figure out the relationship of

prediction : augury

The GREs are hard, people. But my butt is not so it's time to get moving. Today is yoga day which makes my socks roll up and down. I have a lot of kinks in this 29 year old body that need to be worked out and it just so happens that I got a 10-class yoga pass for my birthday. Yippee!

In other news, I've joined the rest of the planet and signed up on Facebook. Add me as a friend. Please. I'm desperate to look cool and I only have like 4 friends. No, I'm kidding. I don't just want to look cool. I want to be cool. And you can be cool too if you add me as a friend. I promise to write witty things on your wall and I'll send you flare. Go on, take a chance...

http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=721237475&ref=profile

Zapped

Today was the first day of fall classes. I ride my bike from home to campus and the ride there ain't bad. It's pretty much all down hill and I'm bright eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to get my learn on. The ride is about 25:00 but I'm not sure how many miles that is. Some day when I remember to charge the Garmin, I'll measure it.

But the ride home sucks. I'm tired and my brain is overflowing with college type stuff. I'm hungry and want to call one of my friends and beg them to come pick me up so I don't have to hull my ass home uphill on the bike. Another 25:00 and I'm home but I've got the bike in 1st gear so I pedal really fast but don't go anywhere. I'm sure I look like a freak on the bike but I'm fine not knowing.

I wasn't going to run on account of all the biking and learning I did today but after I got home and ate dinner I got into a self-loathing what-the-hell-am-I-doing-trying-to-go-to-grad-school funk. Normally I would polish off a carton of cherry cordial ice cream but I'm on this new kick, right? All healthy and stuff.

So I went for a run. 2 miles and I was sucking wind the entire time but I tell you what, it felt pretty good. Mark it down. Another 2 miles for the record books. Yippee! C-bus Marathon 2009, here I come.

The Comeback Kid

I'm horrified to realize that I haven't posted anything since the FIFTH of JULY. And here it is, the end of September. If anyone still stops by this dusty corner of the internet, I thank you 1000 times.

As I type this, I'm curled up in bed getting myself geared up for another quarter of classes. It's still dark outside and I'm wondering how it's possible the summer went by so quickly. But a good summer it was. After 4 months of intensive therapy and multiple drug combinations, I think I've found my happy medium. I haven't felt this good in years. Anxiety still wakes me in the night, still grabs me by the throat too often, however I see a light at the end of the tunnel. Someone once described depression as being like a tree covered in vines. The vines start at the base of the tree and continue up the trunk sometimes reaching so high and thick that the tree disappears and all anyone can see is the vines. I think I've managed to untangle my tree from some of those vines and I believe even some of my branches are showing. It feels glorious.

So glorious, in fact, that I've been running. Yes, that's right. Running. I'm taking it nice and slow, which is drastically different from how I usually try to get back in the game. I've been doing 2 minutes walking 2 minutes running and I feel like I could do that for hours.

I'm back.

Say hello to my Schweet Schwinn!

I took a much needed break last week from Bubble Shooter studying and ran some errands around town. I just so happened to drive by this tiny little antique store I'd never seen before. What caught my eye was this beauty lined up with some other duds in front of the store window.

I immediately swerved my car into a questionable parking spot to check it out. The store owner came out and suggested I take her for a spin around the block.

No sooner did my feet hit the pedals and I was in love.
The gear shift is a little tricky. I have to pull that lever down and hope I hit a gear because there's no markers for where the gears are. I've just kept it in 5th because I'm sorta afraid of it.

"I'll take it!!" I said as soon as I got back to the antique store. I loaded my new toy on my bike rack on my car and brought it home and got to work. I added new reflectors on the front and back wheels, a reflector on the back, a water bottle holder (this was tricky because there were no holes in the body of the bike where a water bottle holder would normally screw into so I found the one you see below in the kiddie section and just rigged it to fit), the luggage rack that fits over the back tire, and the ghetto fabulous crate that fits on top.

I still want to get a fun bell and a front reflector, oohhhh! and some streamers. How schweet would that be?


I've been riding this schweet schwinn everywhere and I LOVE it. I actually did some research on it and found out that it's a 1972 SUBURBAN and its worth about $5. It's probably had a paint job at one point and the breaks need a little tune up. Otherwise, it's in fantastic condition.

I obscenely overpaid and it bothers me a little that it shares the name with an SUV I hate and part of the city I avoid like the plague, but I still LOVE it. I laugh to myself when the SUV Suburbans pass me on the street and I think about how much gas I have not had to buy since I bought the bike.