Monthly Archives: October 2009

On Magic-centric Book Series

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Today I was classily scratching my back while standing in the office when one of my co-workers saw my back tattoo.  I guess dressed up in my work clothes I don’t look like the kind of person who is sprinkled with tattoos.  But I am.  And so when my co-worker saw them, she was surprised.  Very surprised.

She asked me if my tree was a family tree, and asked what the stars meant.  I explained that the design was based off of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and that each star stood for a member of the family.  She looked at me like I was crazy.  And a nerd.  Like I was a crazy nerd.

So I explained some more.  Dad used to read us the books when we were little, I said.  And he would always use stories from Lord of the Rings to help us in our own lives, drawing elaborate parallels to help us see that things would be okay.  He even had us all nicknamed after a character–whichever character most closely lined up with our personal life trajectories.

She finally understood the depth with which we loved these books.  Though she’d never been a big LotR fan, she admitted, she did see an interview with the lady that wrote the books a while back.

I asked, “Lady?”

She goes, “Yeah.”

I was like, “Um, Lord of the Rings. Not Harry Potter.”

Motivation Lost, Found

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I was feeling unmotivated this morning.  Not unhealthy, but just unmotivated.  Whole rolled oatmeal and a banana for breakfast, yes, but I didn’t go run.  It was cold.  I had Grey’s Anatomy on DVR.  I’m enjoying being (home) alone for the first time in weeks.  Can’t ruin that with running, right?

Then I pulled on my jeans to get ready to go have my hair cut and colored — an appointment Sarah1 scheduled for us.  I found my favorite pair of jeans, declared them too dirty to wear.  I found my back-up pair of jeans and pulled them on.  Then I tried to find my black belt to wear with these jeans.  These jeans that I bought 6 or 8 months ago because not a single other pair of my blue jeans would fit onto my consistently growing body.  My fat jeans.

I couldn’t find the black belt anywhere, and that’s when I realized that I can’t wear these jeans, my fat jeans, if I don’t have a belt.  I don’t just want the belt because I like belts.  I need this belt.

Opening my bottom dresser drawer, I dig to the very bottom.  I dig to the place where I’ve hidden the jeans that I can’t wear, the I’m-too-fat-for-these-jeans jeans.  I pull on a pair of pants I haven’t been able to fit into for 1.5 years, and they zip up.  I run to the bedroom and examine myself in the full length mirror.  No muffin top, no rolls of fat spilling out over the edges of the front, back and sides of these jeans.  The fat jeans need a belt and my skinny jeans fit again.

Holy crap.  This working out and eating right stuff is actually working.

I’ve found my motivation again.

Panic (Attack) at the Disco

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If, you know, by “disco” you mean “mile 3 out of 4.”  AND FINE, ALSO MILE 2 OF 4.  God, you guys are relentless.

Okay, so I’m learning.  There are good running days and there are bad running days.  So far, I haven’t been able to identify any connecting factor, any string that I can use to trace the reasons behind the bad days.  What I do know is that the bad days can easily lead to the massive, hyperventilating, have-to-sit-down-in-stranger’s-front-yards panic attacks that I have about once every 2 weeks while running.  If I could identify what’s making these days “bad days,” you better believe that I’d change it in a heartbeat.

Today at mile 2 I started to feel myself go into the cycle that quickly digresses into a panic attack.  I started walking for a second so I could catch my breath.  Zack, who is becoming quite adept at identifying the early signs of me Losing My Shit, immediately started in with “YOU ARE NOT A FAILURE*.  YOU ARE DOING AWESOME, THINK ABOUT HOW FAR YOU HAVE COME!” (*I do think I’ve narrowed down that breathlessness seems to be one of my triggers.  Breathlessness and failure.  Can you see why running maybe triggers these panic attacks?  I’m a failure cause I’m so out of shape to begin with.  So I run.  Which, in turns leads, to the breathlessness which leads to the failure and HELLO DOWNWARD SPIRAL, I HAVEN’T SPENT THIS MUCH TIME WITH YOU SINCE THERAPY.)  I caught my breath pretty quickly, focused on what Zack was saying, put the earbud back in my ear and started running again.  We’ll call that a 50% panic attack.  A 0.5 if you will.

Then, a mile later there was a hill.  A big, long, gnarly hill and I don’t usually run hills and wah, wah, wah, and I have no idea why some days I enjoy running and it’s (dare I say it?) kind of fun, and others OH MY GOD, TEH SUCK.  I made it to the top of the hill, but not before I felt the tingle of adrenaline shoot up and down my spine.  I started chanting to myself as I ran.  You are not a failure.  You are fine.  You can breathe.  You are breathing just fine and it’s okay.  You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay.  I tried desperately to talk myself out of it, but I couldn’t.  One sharp inhale at the top of the hill sent me in to full-blown hyperventilation, spotted vision, tears coming out of my eyes.  Zack was there again, as always, Johnny-on-the-Spot-Support-System, encouraging me to keep walking, just keep moving, it’s going to be okay, you’re doing great!  And I was all, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  HAVING A PANIC ATTACK. HAVE TO SIT DOWN, as I plopped down in a stranger’s front yard.  While fanning myself, trying to calm down and slow my breathing, I kept answering Zack as he talked to me.  “It’s okay, babe,” he said, “you’re doing fine.”  I gracefully replied, “FINE? FINE?! AM FREAKING OUT. FAILURE.”  And he said, no, no.  You’re fine.  And you’re doing a really good job.  And I said, A REALLY GOOD JOB OF SUCKING IT UP. And he was like, just keep breathing, you’re going to be fine.  And I started to say, “I have done this before! Why does it hurt so bad today!?” But I was cut off abruptly as Zack yelled, “JUST REALLY TIRED.”

And I was all, Qua?  Did Zack just get so tired of me being a whining lame-o that he’s cutting me off before I can even muster my breathless complaints at him?

I should have known better.  He of The Eternal Patience doesn’t get annoyed with his Panic Attack-y wife.  He of The Eternal Patience was simply answering a question I didn’t hear over the roar of my rapid inhalations.  A question that the lady who ownes the front stoop that I was Freaking Out upon had asked, apparently concerned about the local runner girl who seemed to (be injured/have fallen ill/ have DIED DEAD) in her front yard.  Did I need some water, she wanted to know?  Zack assured her that no, it’s okay.  We were pretty close to home, and we’d be fine.  I was just really, really tired.  The Lady lingered at her front door, even after we assured her that I was fine, looking at me with the sad pitiful look of a woman who believes she is possibly witnessing some sort of prehistoric spousal abuse*.

It wasn’t long after that particular brand of public humiliation that I mustered up enough recovery gumption to get myself up off her stoop and run again**.  Here’s hoping Thursday isn’t one of the Bad Days.

*If she only knew the truth.  However much it looks like my fantastically fit husband is torturing me by making me run around the neighborhood 3 nights a week, the truth is really the reverse.  How miserable is it that I drag him along with me, forcing him to say nice things to me every time I get a little short of breath?  I really gotta work on this panic attack thing.

**Once I had a panic attack while running and walked the whole rest of the route instead of running it.  I guess I was afraid that I would fail again if I tried to run again, so I just never tried to run again.  It took an emotional Act of Congress to get me to put on those shoes and get out the door when the time came for my next run.  I was terrified that I was going to try again and fail again and that, I don’t know, I’d be embarrassed to death?  Since then, I’ve made a really conscious effort to keep running after I regain composure from any incidents.  It’s helped restore some feeling of accomplishment to the runs during which my legs feel like lead and every step grows more and more difficult.  That’s why I ran again after snotting and crying all over that lady’s front yard.  That and because I felt the overwhelming urge to show her that I really wasn’t dying, just in case she’s the worrying type.

Rescue-Ritas

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Even while Monday was still early, one of the teachers walked into the office and said, “LADIES, RESCUE-RITAS ON FRIDAY. MARK YOUR CALENDARS.”  I was like hold it right there.  I’ve got two observations to make: #1.) Anyone planning a drinking outing on Friday before Monday has even pivoted on its half-way point is having a SERIOUSLY BAD Monday.  and #2.) Rescue-Ritas is the coolest portmanteau I’ve ever heard.  In the same way that Liza in East of Eden remained unhassled as she carried around a bottle of wine and a spoon and got sauced all the time with her “medicine,” no one could argue with someone’s need to be Rescued, even if it with salt and a lime.

Still White After All These Years

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Alternate Title: This Post Is About 1.5 Years Late According To Trend Curves

Last night, after having dinner with a friend of mine, I was driving home and listening to NPR.  (I was listening to NPR because my trusty iPod wasn’t working correctly.  It was frozen and I couldn’t get it to budge at all.  I tried all the reset procedures I knew and I couldn’t get it to do anything, so I decided to just let it run out of batteries and I’d mess with it the morning.  No big deal.)  I try to be one of those people who listen to NPR all the time, but I’m not very good at it.  Any time NPR is broadcasting the program “The World” or overtly dwelling on happenings I don’t understand (read: financial crisis, politics in foreign countries) I tend to move on.  I’m not super proud of the fact that I can only listen to about 45 seconds of Real News before I’ve hit my daily quota, but there it is.  It’s the truth.  Last night, however, this was not the case.  Last night they were broadcasting an interview (on Fresh Air?) with none other than Spike Jonze Himself, and they were talking about The Movie That Will End All Movies: Where The Wild Things Are.  I’ve been trying to swallow my excitement about this movie; it’s not like WTWTA was even one of the few books that I strongly associate with my childhood.  Any one who has been with me while any of the WTWTA commercials have played on TV, though, knows better than to think that I’m not totally pumped about it.  I totally leak tears every single time any one of the commercials play.  Yesterday I teared up just because I caught a few flashes of a commercial as I was zooming through a show on my DVR.  That’s right. Stills from Where The Wild Things Are make me cry. SHUT UP.

Zack called me as I was pulling onto the highway.  What are you doing, he wanted to know?

I replied saying: Well, I’m driving down the road in my fuel conscious vehicle, listening to NPR, elated because Spike Jonze is talking about Where The Wild Things Are, having just finished eating Sushi at a Mod Restaurant with my friend (who loves grammar and introduced me to Mad Men) who is about to get a Divorce.

COULD I GET ANY WHITER? NO I ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT.

Then, this morning I was plugging my iPod into my iMac to upload my latest Indie Music download when I realized that last night when I thought my iPod was frozen?  Yeah, what really happened is that my iPod was locked, and I tried for 30 minutes to get it to act right, all while never bothering to slide the button on the bottom into the “unlock” position.  So whatever White Person Credit I’d build up the night before with all my Sushi and Grammar and Always Carrying A Moleskin In My Purse got totally obliterated this morning when I realized that I clearly still don’t know how to work my own mp3 player.

Better Than “I Have A Headache.”

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Yesterday when I got home from work, I was determined to get back into my work-out routine.  Ever since running the race on Saturday, I’ve been a total bum.  The weather has been totally hit-or-miss (read: raining or miserably humid) and I’ve been lazy.  But Thursday! Thursday I was going to fix all of that!  I had a plan.  That plan was to put on my running garb and get out the door immediately after getting home from work.  I thought that if I could get out and do the exercise before I got sucked in by the unstoppable TV/Relaxation/Red Wine Vortex that keeps pulling me in and draining me of all my ambition every night, perhaps I’d have a chance at falling back into my healthy routine.

The rest of this post is after the jump.  (And I know you all know I only put jumps in my posts when I talk about one particular subject matter. Ahem.)

Continue reading →

The Vineyard Run

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As we were walking hand in hand towards the registration table, I was kind of freaking out a little bit.  I wondered out loud, while surrounded by swarms of people stretching out their quads and hams and doing warm up runs in the parking lot, if I was going to be the only person at the entire Vineyard Run who was running her first 5K.  No, no, Zack assured me.  There were a lot of people at this run that were doing their first 5K.  I was all, Are you sure?  Cause from the looks of this buzzing crowd, everyone is going to shoot off the starting line and sprint their way around the 3.1 miles.  I’m pretty damn sure of it.  Besides, I reasoned, there’s no other reason for that 80 year old man to be taking that warm-up lap around the Hobby Lobby’s property line.  But once again, Zack was correct.  Turns out that over half of the 900 some-odd people that showed up for Grapevine’s Vineyard Run were really just there for a good time.

Zack decided not to run the race with me.  Primarily he didn’t run with me because he didn’t feel like chunking down $25.00 to pay for something he could do for free.  I suggested that perhaps he just run with me anyway–to forego the tee-shirt and the free wine tasting at the end, and “bandit run” the 5K as my support system.  But the rule-follower in Zack won out; he decided to be the official “carrier of stuff” instead of running.  I suggested that he also be the official event photographer, too, but turns out we left the camera at home.  We were forced to use the camera phone to document my triumphant entry into The Runner’s Club.

Soon after arriving, Zack and I tracked down our friend Lindsay who also signed up for the race.  As we found our spot in the Start Line crowd, I was feeling totally buzzed on all the excitement.  I thought, “Oh my gosh! This is going to be a snap!  I am so pepped up on adrenaline I’m going to be able to break all kinds of personal records!! Exclamation Points all over the place!”  I expressed some of these sentiments to Lindsay.  She was all Exclamation Points too!

Then, the starting pistol!
Then, the palatable excitement of the crowd!
Then, the running.

And then, some more running.

Then it was minute 3, and I was all, MAN. THIS IS STILL JUST LIKE RUNNING.  THE THRILL IS GONE. ADRENALINE MY BUTT.

Not long after the start of the race, Lindsay had to fall into her own pace.  She’s in constant negotiations with a cyst (?) in her knee, and sometimes it requires her to stop running for bit to conference.  She warned me before we started that it might be the case that she would have to stop, and if that was the case I should go on without her.  Despite everything that I’ve learned from Band of Brothers, I did just that when she had to bail at about minute 5.  After that I was just on my own.  Running.  Wondering what I was supposed to do with my hands when I didn’t have Scout’s leash to occupy them.

I won’t bore you with the rest of the details. (We ran. We ran up hill. We ran down hill, etc.) But I will say (for those of you who really care about running) that I was proud of myself for finding a couple of people that were right about my pace and keeping them in my sights for the rest of the race.  I would have been able to finish with them (instead of 20 seconds behind them) but they dropped me on one of the hills.  The only other slightly interesting part of the actual running of the race is that I almost choked to death twice.  They had two aid stations (seems a twee bit on the side of overkill, considering it was just a 3 mile run but WHATEVER), and both of them were right at the top of the two hills.  While I realize that it might make sense to have the aid stations at the top of the hills (i.e. a light at the end of a tunnel?) but in reality, it’s just about impossible for me to drink a gulp of water whilst I am gasping for air after just having run up a massive! impossibly steep! (short with moderate incline) MOUNTAIN! (hill).  Is there some black magic that I’m unaware of that makes it possible to drink a dixie cup of water while running?  Is this something I can’t do because I’m an embarrassingly under-trained novice?  I even paused at one of the stations to see if that would help me to get a little water down the hatch, but I was unsuccessful because of the breathlessness.  Mostly, I just rinsed out my mouth, then spit it all out.  I also made myself look like an earth-friendly nerd at the first aid station by using the Trash Can.  I had no idea that if you’re a COOL 5K runner, you toss your dixie cup on the side of the road.  LEARNED.

Here’s me coming across the finish line, looking unmistakably happy miserable:

Here’s Lindsay and me, 15 minutes later, with a dixie cups of wine that we were successfully ingested.  At 9:00 AM:

See that smile on my face?  That’s not the smile of a woman who has just completed her first 5K run.  That’s the smile of a girl who has a dixie cup of wine before most people have poured their morning Cheerios.

My name in print:  #42 in the 25-30 age group and #432 in the overall standings.

P.S.: Future race reports to expect:

October 31st, 2009 – The 3rd Annual H.A.N.K. Run in Fort Worth, TX (4 Miles)
Thanksgiving, 2009 – The Turkey Trot (8 Miles) in Dallas, TX
And then, if I’m feeling especially crazy, December 13th, 2009 – White Rock Half Marathon in Dallas, TX

Health Update

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I’ve been trying to sit down and write a post all week, and I have been failing miserably.  I have no good excuses. I have one bad excuse.  We have cable TV now. I think that will explain a lot.

ANYWAY.  I felt that perhaps I should inform you all, lest you sit around and worry your pretty little heads unnecessarily, I do not have cancer. The doctor called to say that my skin weirdness that he removed last week came back as just your average, run-of-the-mill skin abnormality.  Not the kind that is malignant.  The kind that is benign.

Woo Hoo.  No cancer for me!  But it’s cool.  I wasn’t that worried anyway.  According to all the fantastic, high definition TV I’ve been watching this week, I have way better chances of getting killed by getting hit by a bus than I do from skin-cancer-turned-everything-else-cancer.  You know.  Cause everything on TV is true.

God, I love cable. And not having cancer.

P.S. from Zack: Squall line, or Squaw line?  Discuss.

Update: For further explanation of Zack’s P.S., see the comments section.