Blog

September 30

This morning I finally - finally - had a comfortable run. I had commented to my friend Jennifer (or Jen, or JTS) that it had been a long time since I had had a run that just felt comfortable - like I was just cruising along. She said that when I run with the group, I'm probably running a bit too hard, and that she has had a hard time getting into a comfortable pace despite being in the best shape of her life. That made me feel a bit better. But then she said that if I wasn't comfortable while running on my own it just meant I was still running to hard. I've always been lousy at pacing myself.

This morning was a perfect morning for running, so despite only four hours of sleep I was optimistic that I would finally have a good run. It was cool enough that I was chilly when I pulled off my shirt. The sky was absolutely clear, and the moon was two days off from being full. So we started off running in the moonlight, which was pretty amazing. As we finished the sun was just coming up behind us, so we didn't have to squint.

I was able to run at an easy pace the whole way. I don't know if the group ran slower as a whole, or if I was just feeling good. Whatever, the reason, I'll take it.

The only bad part of the run was that I felt old. One of Jen's friends brought a co-worker with him. She commented that she had just moved here after graduating from the University of Florida. I told her I was a Gator, too, and she asked when I graduated. I told her 1991, and she said she had graduated in 2003. It occurred to me that she hadn't even been in middle school when I graduated. I felt really really old. But I perked up again at the end of the run. Despite being an old mother of two, I still out-ran her in the end.

Next up, a seven-miler at 5:20 am. I was going to run on Saturday, but it didn't look like there was going to be anyone to run with. So running at 5:20 with friends seemed better than running on Saturday by myself. But I may be singing a different tune when the alarm goes off at 4:50.

September 27
Running Progress

I had a good bad run on Saturday. It was bad because I absolutely fell apart during the middle mile and walked for a while, kicking rocks on the sidewalk and muttering to myself about the stupidity of even running. I was running the same route that had kicked my butt the week before, and it was not going well. As with last week, I started out to fast and ran too hard in the hills. I was dragging way behind my running group when everyone stopped at for water. I came trudging up to see them all take off running again.

I staggered up the last big hill, the one I really, really hate, and when I got to the top I decided I was going to cut my run short. I walked for a few moments and thought about how much I would hate myself for giving up and running short. So I made a deal with myself; If I went the longer route, I would do Gallowmiles - 9 minutes of running, 1 minute of walking.

It worked. The rest of the group had taken a different route, so I didn't have anyone in front of me to try and catch up to. I was able to find a comfortable pace and settle in. My third one-minute walk was about a half mile from the finish of the run, and it was halfway up the last hill on the route. Just as I was deciding whether to walk, two cyclists blew past me and then promptly stopped halfway up the hill because one of them had a flat tire. I decided there was no way I could walk that close to the finish and in front of the two guys.

Much to my surprise, I cruised up the hill comfortably and finished the 7.5 mile run strong. I ended up pretty pleased with myself. So it's proof that even a bad run can sometimes be a good one.

This morning I felt Saturday's run though. Especially when Jennifer and Shannon picked up the pace about a mile from the finish. Then half a mile out they really turned it on. I was cursing them the whole way and telling Jennifer how much I didn't like her as she cheerfully egged me on. At the end, I was at about 90% of full effort. My legs were shaking when I finished, and I was feeling the effect of oxygen debt in my shoulders. When my shoulders start to throb, it's a sure sign that I've been working hard.

Now I hurt from Saturday and today.

September 26
A Lily Moment

I hadn't planned to write anything today. I'm supposed to be catching up on work while Brandon keeps an eye on the girls. They're playing in the backyard while he reads the paper. But something just happened that I need to remember, and I don't trust my memory these days.

The girls had both come inside for some things. Ella had been carrying cups of water from the bathroom out to the yard where she is "planting" things. There's a trail of puddles from the bathroom to the screen door.

After she went past, Lily came through, and I had to stop working to watch her. She was pushing a doll-sized stroller. In it was an old teddy bear - it was my bear when I was young, and before that it was my mother's. That means it's, ahem, 50-something years old. It is threadbare and has been re-stitched on many seams. And to top it off, it's missing an ear. In addition to pushing the stroller, Lily was carrying one of my old purses over her arm. She just looked so funny.

I opened the screen door to the porch for her, and she went out. I walked to our bedroom window to watch her. When she reached the step down to the yard, she picked the bear up and held him very carefully, patting him on the back. She made it down the first step with out a problem, but then she flopped down on her stomach and slithered down the last step, bear and purse still in her arms. But she stood up immediately, got a good grip on the bear, patted him a few times, hitched the purse up to shoulder and took off across the yard.

Ella never cared much for the bear, but it seems to have found a good mother in Lily. Maybe it will make it to its fourth generation.

September 24
Playing Hooky

I taught Ella a new expression last night - playing hooky. I let her skip school this morning. Getting her ready for school and out the door the past few days has been a real chore. She has had temper tantrums over eating breakfast, going potty, getting dressed, brushing her hair, etc. We pretty much leave the house each day with her screaming and me seething. Once she gets to school she's just fine.

After thinking about what could be causing the problems, I decided that it is probably the change to a five-day program at school. All last year she had two mornings a week where we didn't have to bolt out the door. Now we do it every morning. Maybe these tantrums are just her way of telling me that she needed a break for a day.

I talked to her teacher about it, and she agreed with my theory. So we're taking the day off. What the heck - she's not even four yet and it's not like the truant officer is going to show up on our doorstep. She's going to have many, many years of having to be at school every day. Taking a day off now and then while she's in preschool isn't going to hurt anything.

So I talked to Ella about it last night, and she said she would like to stay home. This morning she got up and went to the bathroom and got clothes on without my having to ask. She even brushed her own hair. We had a nice quiet, relaxed morning - livened up only by the car crash that happened pretty much right in front of our house.

We got to sit on the front porch and watch the police officers, ambulances, fire trucks and tow trucks come and go. I felt like the world's worst rubber-necker. But I figured that since I called 911 and took water to the two women who were involved, I was ok. Besides, I couldn't have dragged the girls inside for anything.

When it was all over, Ella looked at me and said, "What an epciting morning. I picked a good one to play hooky." I cracked up. Leave it to an almost-four-year-old to find the good in a car crash.

September 22
I should title this "Mornings with Lily." She and I are now having the best mornings together.

For much of her little life, I've worried that she's been shortchanged in the attention department. Ella is such a rock star of a child that she consumes most of my energy and focus. I spend much of my day trying to direct Ella away from dangerous or destructive activities. She doesn't mean to do harm to herself or anything else, she just has a little problem with impulse control. Plus she's part monkey. I'm apt to look up and see her hanging from the top of a door frame - I kid you not. Anyway, Lily gets lost in the commotion sometimes. Plus she seems content to sit and watch the action. I think she regards Ella as her very own performance art show; she just sits back and waits for the fun to begin.

When Ella started preschool last fall, I was excited about the prospect of having three mornings a week to spend one-on-one time with Lily. But she had other ideas about what she wanted to do during that time - namely sleep. She's been a champion sleeper from day one, and she just stopped taking a two-hour morning nap about three months ago. Her napping habit was great for my work schedule, but it didn't allow me much play time with her.

Now, it's a different story. She's up and ready to go. She toodles around the house behind me as I clean up. She even "helps" by putting things in the laundry basket or garbage can, and most of the time she puts the right items in the right receptacle. The only thing I can't do with her around is empty or load the dishwasher. She helps by opening and closing the door repeatedly.

Then we sit down for uninterrupted playtime. Lately, all she wants to do is have me read books to her. She pats the sofa and yells "sit!" until I actually sit down. We point at the pictures and discuss the animals and colors. When she loses interest in books we play with her animals or build with blocks. All of this without Ella swooping in and demanding a particular toy or book. It's a nice break for me, and for Lily, I think. Even though she says Ella's name many, many times during the morning, she seems to enjoy having me all to herself.

I finally feel like I'm building a real bond with Lily, not that I didn't have one before. I'm not sure I know how to explain. She was my baby before, but now she's my little buddy. I look forward to our three hours together, and I don't mind in the least that I'm not getting any work done. Which is good because every time I sit down at the computer, she shows up and starts tugging on my arm or trying to type for me.

September 21
I've updated my reading log. I'm up to 25 books for the year, which means I just have to read one more before the end of December to meet my goal of 26 books. I think I can manage. I've been re-reading books I haven't read since high school - Camille and Madame Bovary. Next I plan on re-reading Vanity Fair. I last read it the summer before my senior year of high school while we were on a two-week trip through California. I don't remember much of the plot at all.

I'm going to try again with reading a "real" book to Ella. Brandon and I had started reading Harry Potter to her. She loves the two movies we've allowed her to watch, and she was thrilled to learn that there was a book about Harry, Ron and Hermione (who are quite often her imaginary friends). Unfortunately, it didn't go well. She kept asking for the scenes in the movie. And we had to skim over a lot of the stuff that was just over her head as well as all the stuff about Harry's parents being killed. She gets very upset at the thought of someone not having a mom and dad.

She has become obsessed recently with the Disney cartoon version of "Alice in Wonderland," so I thought that might be a good book to try. It has lots of silly stories and rhymes, and, best of all, no one dies in it. If Alice doesn't work, maybe we'll try something a little easier, like Paddington.

September 19, 2004
I got my butt kicked on my run yesterday, and I'm still feeling the effects. We started at a different spot than usual, which meant I didn't get the two-mile warm up I need before heading in the hills. I handled the hills all right, but once we were on relatively flat ground, I fell apart.

We passed within a block of Liz's, and I considered running there and begging for a ride to my car. Then we ran near Shannon's mom's house, and she offered to detour there so I could get a ride or some water. I kept staggering along, though. I considered cutting the run short at Enfield where I could head directly back to my car. But the "shortcut" was very hilly. I was hurting enough that running flat longer was better than running hilly shorter.

The last two miles were the ones we usually warm up on. It was very hard mentally to keep going. I was shuffling more than running, or at least that's how it felt. Moya and Shannon were good sports about staying with me, even though I tried to get them to leave me to die.

Today I'm still hurting pretty badly. Yesterday's was the toughest run I've had in about a year. There are some good points though. First, I did actually finish running. Second, I made it up the hill on 35th street without walking. Third, I learned a new running route.

September 16, 2004
I did something different this morning for my run. I'd been feeling like I was in a bit of a rut with the same four-mile loop I've been doing for months and months and months. Fortunately, my friend Shannon asked if I was interested in warming up on the three-mile loop and then hitting the track at Austin High for some "straights and curves" - you run the straightaways and recover on the curves. I hate track workouts, so it's a good indication of how bored I am with running right now that her plan actually sounded good. Unfortunately, my right knee and IT band are bothering me, so I only ran four straights before giving in to the pain and running two laps slowly while Shannon finished.

But it did make me think about one of the best track workouts I've ever had. It was the winter I was training, really training, for the Motorola Marathon. I'd been running with a real training group and a coach. We were running our workouts on the old track down at St. Edward's University. I had been running for a year or so with several women - Liz, Shelly and Holli - and I regarded them as the "fast running chicks." They were my running inspiration, and their encouragement and support got me through a lot of tough runs - especially the ones that involved the %_()(%U& hill over MoPac on 35th Street.

Anyway, we were doing half-mile repeats on the track, and I realized that I was running with Holli and Liz, really running with them. I was able to hold their pace throughout the workout. It wasn't that I was struggling to keep up with them and straggling along behind. I was cruising along. It was the first time that had ever happened at workout, and it was the biggest boost I'd had with my running. I had always seen these fast women running by and had envied them; suddenly I felt like I was one of them.

Unfortunately, that's just about the last time I've felt that way. After running a great half marathon a month or so later, and finishing with Holli and Shelly and right behind Liz, I found out I was pregnant with my older daughter. I've just never had the time or the energy to get back in that kind of shape again. Maybe someday.

But in the meantime, maybe I can hold on to the memory of that one workout to get me through some track workouts in the future.

September 13, 2004
We're back from the beach! We all had an amazing time. I think the friends we went with considered us to be sticks in the mud because all we did was sit on the beach, but that's all I wanted to do. I didn't need to go anywhere or see anything to be happy. I just wanted to watch the waves and play in the water with the girls.

The best parts of the weekend included:

• Seeing Ella and Luke diving into the waves on our first night at the beach. They took to it immediately, even after getting salt water in their eyes and mouths. They ran in and out of the water laughing hysterically.
• Watching Lily dig in the sand to her heart's content, and hearing her yell, "Beach! Beach!" each morning when we loaded up our bags to head downstairs.
• Sitting on the balcony and watching Brandon and Ella build sandcastles together on the beach below.
• Listing to Lily's belly laugh each time I helped her "jump" over a wave.
• Watching Ella run around with her boogie board - she looked like a mini surfer chick - and watching her riding the waves. She got the hang of it immediately.
• Going to sleep each night and waking up each morning to the sound of the waves on the beach.
• Sitting on the balcony at night talking with Brandon and our friends and enjoying the nice salt air.

There were lots more great moments, but those are the memories I particularly want to hold on to. If it weren't for the almost seven-hour car trip (we had to take lots of potty breaks for Ella), I'd say we'd go back every other month. But I'm not sure that would be long enough to get over the drive. Maybe every three months.

It turned out that I loved Austin. I met wonderful people here, all of whom seemed to love Austin and to think it was a great place to live. I spent a week or so camped out at Brandon's parents' house (what must they have thought of me), and then decided that this was where I needed to live.

I didn't have a job, but I did have some money saved up to carry me through a few months if I was careful. And Brandon and his then-girlfriend had offered to let me share a house with them, so I at least had a place to live. The age group swim coach here kindly allowed me to volunteer as a coach, so I could at least keep my feet wet.

So the Friday of Labor Day weekend, Brandon and I rolled out of town, headed back to Gainesville to pack up my stuff. We drove through the night and arrived in Gainesville in the late afternoon. We crashed at my former roommate's place and headed back out the next morning with a car and trailer full of stuff. We stopped in New Orleans Sunday night and then headed for Austin on Monday. We arrived at dinner time to find a great meal waiting for us, courtesy of Jim Gray.

I had a tough time adjusting, but moving here was the best thing I've ever done. I floated through a few jobs before finding one I loved. I learned how to row and then taught rowing. I've joined a great running community and run two marathons. I've made great friends - some of whom are among those I met my first weekend here. And of course I married Brandon and had two wonderful girls with him.

Each time my parents visit they comment that Brandon and I have made a good life for ourselves here, and I'd have to agree. It doesn't seem possible that it's been ten years since I arrived, but when I look at everything I've done, I'm amazed that I managed to cram it all in to ten years.

Here's to another great ten years in Austin.

September 5, 2004
We're going to the beach! We leave on Wednesday and come back on Sunday. We're sharing a house on the beach on South Padre with our neighbors. I absolutely cannot wait.

Brandon and I hadn't planned on taking a vacation this year. We've done a lot of work and spent a lot of money on the house this year - new paint job, new deck, new landscaping - and figured that we'd spend our "vacation" time enjoying those things. But when our neighbors mentioned the trip and the possibility of sharing a place, we just couldn't refuse.

I grew up in a beach town on the Gulf Coast of Florida - Sarasota. When we first moved there, it was small and quiet, except during tourist season. When I went back four years ago, I almost didn't recognize the place it had gotten so big.

We lived about 15 minutes from the beach and went on a regular basis. There were many nights when we'd just load towels into the car and pick up food on the way and have a picnic dinner on the beach at sunset. At one point, the school bus route I was on went past the beach every day. It was a part of our lives.

It's been hard living so far from the beach. When I lived in Gainesville, Florida during college and graduate school, I'd make it over to the coast on a regular basis, especially once I started coaching. But since moving to Texas ten years ago, I've only been to the Texas coast three times - once to Corpus, once to Galveston, and once to Port Aransas. This will be my first trip to South Padre.

We spent five days at Port Aransas last summer. When we weren't at the beach, I spent most of my time on the balcony of the condo just watching the boats come and go out of the marina and through the ship channel. I was content to just sit and be still. Brandon told one friend that it was the happiest he'd seen me in a long, long time.

I am looking forward to doing the same during this trip, although it may be hard in a house with four children under the age of four.

But I am excited about having Lily experience her first "real" trip to the beach. She was too little last year, and spent most of the weekend at the condo with her grandparents. Ella remembers the beach, and she is looking forward to swimming and digging and flying her new kite.

It's going to be a great trip, one that I very much need.

August 31, 2004
I survived my first day as parent helper at Ella's school. She's moved into a co-op class, which means that every other Tuesday I'm the helper parent. I was a bit nervous about it going in, but things went all right.

Mostly the helper parent's job consists of counting noses, escorting kids to the bathroom, saying "wash your hands with soap," and taking care of snack.

Keeping a count of the kids was harder than it sounds. Every time the teacher left the room she'd tell me how many kids there were, and it was my job not to lose any of them in the five minutes she was away. I'd take a count and be off by one because a kid was hidden behind a bookshelf in the reading corner. So I'd have to start over again. Adding to my worries was the knowledge that one of the kids likes to wander off. They lost him on Friday for five minutes. Despite the presence of the lead teacher and the parent helper, he managed to escape somewhere between the bathroom and the classroom, a distance of four feet. They found him five minutes later in the elevator, riding up and down. By the end of the day, as long as I could see that one child, I figured I was ok.

I can't event count the number of times I accompanied kids to the bathroom today. I'd get back from escorting one, and another would be doing the pee-pee dance at the classroom door. For some reason, going out to the playground made them need to pee. I made four trips in the half hour we were out there, with two kids each trip. Fortunately, they're all pretty much self-sufficient in the bathroom. I didn't need to wipe any bottoms or help with clothes. I just had to remind them to wash their hands.

Of course I messed up the easiest part of the day - snack time. I had to go up to the kitchen and get the food the snack parent left. I made the mistake of not pouring the juice from the big pitcher to the little pitchers and of not taking the crackers out of the box and putting them into two bowls. Silly me. The teacher was very nice about it, but I could tell she thought I was a bit dense. I'll know better next time. At least having to do snack gave me the chance to escape from the room for a few minutes.

Spending the day with Ella's class gave me a new-found respect for what her teacher, and all the teachers there, do every day. I don't know how they stay sane. Her teacher is so calm and so patient with the kids. She's been teaching at the school for 14 years, and she still seems excited by the job and seems to genuinely enjoy working with the kids and their parents. It made me very glad that Ella has her as a teacher. Anyone who doesn't think teachers have a tough job ought to spend a day in a classroom helping. It would change their minds by the end of the day.

August 26, 2004
When I first moved to Austin, I worked with a woman who had a ten-year-old son named Travis. She used to tell us funny little stories about Travis on a regular basis. One of my favorites involved his saying to her, "You know mom, some days I win; some days the day wins. Today, the day won." I thought it was a very good insight from someone so young.

Yesterday, the day won - big time. The girls were both in rare form. They alternated between beating up on each other and clinging to my knees and crying. Lily kept stealing Ella's toys. Ella locked Lily in the closet of their bedroom and left her in there screaming. Lily pinched her finger in a door, and then I pinched her leg in the buckle of her booster seat. Ella's allergies made her sneeze and cough and wipe her nose goodness knows where all day.

We invited Walt and Lisa over to play, mostly so I could have adult company. But Ella kept bossing Walt around, so he asked to leave.

Brandon had a dinner meeting with a client, so it was just me and the girls. They both refused to eat their dinner. I tried to bribe Ella with the promise of ice cream, but then she started gagging up her dinner on purpose. So she had a screaming fit about not getting any dessert.

Unfortunately, once I put them to bed, my day didn't end. I'm in the middle of a horrific freelance project with Holt, Rinehart and Winston that is just driving me nuts. I'm sure that they'll offer me another batch of chapters to review when I finish my current group, but I'm going to say no. I dislike the work so much that I have a hard time forcing myself to sit down to work. I spent two hours wading through a social studies text last night, and it was painful. I probably missed a lot of errors because I was so tired and frazzled.

If ever I needed a pre-bed glass of wine, it was last night. Even though we actually have some in the house, I can't drink it because I'm on meds that don't interact well with alcohol.

It was just a really, really bad day.

August 24, 2004
I had a Deena Kastor moment on my run this morning. I forced myself out of bed for a shake-out run. I was still feeling the effects of a longer-than-usual run this weekend. I ran what I call the Tara Loop through the neighborhood. I named it for the friend who first introduced me to the route. It's and out-and-back route with a big loop at the turn-around. It's slightly up-hill the whole way out. The up-hill is a sneaky one. You'd never notice it if you were driving, but after about four minutes of running, you start to feel the effects.

I promised myself that I'd just do Galloway repeats (9 minutes of running, 1 minute of walking), but right at the 8-minute mark, I saw her. There was a runner about a quarter of a mile ahead of me. I couldn't possibly take a walking break when there was a runner to catch. So despite my intention of making it a slow run, I picked up the pace a bit. It took four minutes, but I caught her. And when I did I felt like I was Deena Kastor taking over third position in the Olympic marathon. I picked up my cadence, stood up a bit taller, and swung my arms a little more. I'd like to think I blew her doors off, or at least deflated her a bit, as I went by. It's not really fair to wish those things - she seemed like a nice enough lady, and she had a really pretty black lab with her.

All the same, my intention of doing Gallow repeats was ruined. I couldn't stop for a walking break after "flying" past her. But the time I was out of her sight, I was 14 minutes into my run, and you can't take a walking break at 14 minutes; it's too odd a number. Then I turned the corner and saw the next guy. He was two blocks ahead of me, running with his dog. I made him my next target to chase down. Unfortunately, he turned around and headed back in my direction before I could catch him. But I'd like to think I could have if he hadn't turned around.

With the help of the long, slight downhill, I cruised the rest of the way home. And then when I turned the corner on to our street, I imagined that I'd just run into the Olympic Stadium to the roar of a crowd - happy to have won a bronze.

August 23, 2004
I made it through my seven-miler, but just barely. Wendy and Tonya kept giving me little pep talks during the last two miles. If it hadn't been for them, and for the sound of Lee coming up behind me with Sophia in the babyjogger, I probably would have walked, or at least run a lot slower. Next week, I'm hoping to make it through the Scenic route - I'm mentally preparing myself for hills.

I'm allowing myself to tiptoe up to actually considering to maybe run another marathon this February. It's just such a huge time commitment - time that I don't really have right now. But if I take it easy and decide to run it just to run, maybe I can pull it off. If I can manage to stay healthy in December and January, I'll see if I can slide one long training run in to test the waters.

August 20, 2004
I started running 13 years ago when I lived in Gainesville, Florida and was coaching swimming. I decided that if I was going to spend umpteen hours a day on the pool deck, the last place I wanted to be when I worked out was in the pool. Plus I had just had much-needed knee surgery that allowed me to walk without pain for the first time in years.

Running also helped me survive some pretty grim times back then. Some days, running was the only thing that got me out of bed in the morning. Unfortunately, I settled into a mindset where I wouldn't allow myself to eat unless I ran that day. In the end, I wound up with a stress fracture in my leg that knocked me out of running for three months. I never want to have to run in a pool again in my life.

It took me a few years to really start running again after my leg healed, but eventually I completed two marathons. Neither of them was spectacular time-wise, but I finished each running. I had trained very well for a third marathon in 2000 - even running a 14-minute PR in a half marathon - when, one week before the race, I found out I was pregnant with Ella, my older daughter. My doctor gave me permission to run the marathon, but I opted not to, much to relief of my husband and family.

Another child later, I now consider myself on the comeback trail for my running. I've been running pretty steadily since last December with a great group of women. We meet three or four mornings a week, which is good for me. I'm more likely to get out of bed if I have to meet people. They've managed to help keep me running through the summer heat for the first time in years.

I've set my goal as the Decker Challenge in early December. It's a tough, mostly uphill course that has a reputation for hills, wind and bad weather - one year it sleeted. With the help of one running friend, I'm planning a 13-week training program that begins in September. This particular friend has a running blog, so I figured I'd work some running stuff into mine.

Tomorrow I'm scheduled to run seven miles - it will be the longest I've gone since before I got sick this spring. I'm opting to run it on the Town Lake trail rather than on the hill route everyone else will be taking. I figure I can handle hills or increased distance, but not both.

Stay tuned.

August 19, 2004
I've been child free since Tuesday afternoon. The girls spent Tuesday night at Brandon's parents' house and then last night as his grandmother's house.

I had been looking forward to their going for a week, but once they were gone, I missed them so much. Tuesday night, Brandon and I were watching the Olympics and I kept thinking I needed to get up and check on them because I didn't hear the usual commotion.

Last night, at about 2:00 am, I heard odd noises and got up to check on the noises. I found myself in the girls' room and stood there for a moment trying to figure out where they were. In my half-asleep stupor I had forgotten where they were.

I love being able to run errands without them. Everything takes so much less time when I do it alone - there's no negotiating in the grocery store, no issuing dire threats at the UPS store. But I miss their sweet hugs and kisses. And I miss having Ella tell me all about her day.

I guess absence really does make the heart grow fonder. I also fully realize that I may be singing a different tune when they get home this evening and I'm having to deal with them again. In the meantime, I'll enjoy reading without interruption.

August 17, 2004
Ella is moving from a three-day parents' day out program at her school to the co-op program. I'll be volunteering in her class as the parent helper every other Tuesday all year. I went to the orientation session last night and came away more than a little intimidated.

Unfortunately, it's not the helping in the class that has me scared. It's not like I have to come up with a lesson plan or be completely responsible for the kids. I just have to help the teacher and follow her lead, which should be easy enough. I've spent enough time through the years wrangling kids to not have helping in a class for four hours be a problem.

No, what has me scared is being responsible for snacks. I've had to bring them for Ella's parents' day out class, and after a rocky start I got the hang of it. I only had to bring enough for 10 kids and one teacher. As long as I brought cheese, crackers and fruit, I was fine.

Now, however, I have to bring snacks for 30 kids - the snack parent brings enough for half of the co-op students, not just his or her child's class. The rules about what food we can bring are so strict. They don't want cookies and kool-aid, which I am just fine with. But goldfish, a normal snack around here, aren't acceptable either. Any food that lists sugar as one of the first two ingredients is out, which I understand. But so is any food that has wheat flour - apparently that's not the same as whole wheat flour. They prefer organic fruits and vegetables - fine. But exactly how many grapes equals a serving size of half a cup? Do I need to pull them all off the stems and put them into a measuring cup and get an average and then count them out? We're allowed to bring yogurt or applesauce by the pint, but doing that would mean I'd have to look up how many ounces are in a pint and then do all sorts of math to figure out how many pints would equal 30 servings. No thanks.

Once I figure out what to bring, I still have to get it into the kitchen at the school and get it set out for that day's parent helper. I have to divide everything into bowls for the two classes, put stuff in the refrigerator as appropriate and leave notes for the helper. Yeesh. And I have to do all this before 8:15 and with Lily clinging to my knees. I'm about ready to pull Ella out of the co-op program just over the snacks. I seem to remember being fed cookies and juice in kindergarten for snacks, and I seem to have turned out all right, aside from my horrible sweet tooth.

The only good news in all of this is that Triscuits are allowed as a snack cracker. Apparently they're loaded with whole wheat and good fats. If only I had known that a year ago. I foresee myself buying LOTS of Triscuits at Sam's this year.

I'm proud to report that she bowled a strike this way. Embarrassingly, her final score was only five points lower than mine. But while the other parents and I were getting caught up in how many pins we could knock down and how high our score was, Ella had a very different perspective on the point of bowling.

When she bowled her strike, we all cheered and clapped for her and explained that it was really great that she knocked down all the pins in one try. Then I told her that it was the next person's turn. "But mama," she said, "why don't I get to roll the ball two times?" I explained that when you knock down all the pins on one try you don't get to roll a second time. From that point on, all Ella cared about was whether she got to roll the ball twice each turn. She'd heave the ball and turn to me and say, "I hope I get to roll it again!"

I took this as an opportunity to learn a good little lesson from her. I enjoyed my bowling much more after that. I stopped focussing on how many pins I knocked down, and instead had fun just chucking the ball down the lane, seeing how many times I could bounce it off the bumpers and the like. Interestingly enough, my score improved dramatically.

Sometimes it takes an almost-four-year-old to remind you to have fun.

I don't remember hating the heat as much when I lived in Florida and worked outside all summer. The pool where I coached was outside, and we hit 110 on the pool deck on a regular basis, and it was humid. But somehow it just never seemed as bad. Perhaps because we could count on afternoon thunderstorms to roll through and liven things up a bit.

I've often said that I suffer from reverse seasonal depressive disorder. Instead of getting depressed in the winter because it's too cold to go outside, I get depressed in the summer because it's too hot. I avoid running errands or going anywhere in the afternoons because the car is too hot. By the time it cools down, we're where we need to be.

The worst summer was the one when I was pregnant with Ella. It went over 100 for days at a time. The only way I survived was by going to Deep Eddy Pool, which is a spring-fed pool that stays at a constant 68 degrees year round. It's cold enough to take your breath away when you jump in, but on hot days, it's the best place in town. I'd swim until my body temperature had cooled down enough to make the hike to the car and survive until the AC in the car kicked enough for me not to boil.

This year, however, we've been spoiled. We've had an unusually mild summer, with lots of rain, which has kept temperatures down. And this past week a rare cool front blew through. It's been in the high 80s in the afternoons, a full 10 degrees cooler than normal. We've had the windows on the house open, and the kids have been playing outside in the afternoons. And it's been so wonderful to run in the cool morning air.

If this keeps up, I might just survive the summer after all.

August 11, 2004

I must remember that Ella is little miss literal. Each afternoon we have house-wide "quiet time" while Lily naps. I confine Ella to the guest room to play quietly, and I work or read or doze. Ella is usually very good about playing by herself in the room for about an hour. She has tea parties and picnics with her animals, or she looks at books, or draws on her magnadoodle. Basically, she does everything but sleep.

Today she fought going in for quiet time. Finally she asked if she could take in a pen and paper. I should have known better, but I was desperate for some time to myself to collect my thoughts, so I said yes. When I gave her the paper, I told her she was not allowed to draw on the walls or the furniture or the bed or the books - that she was just to draw on the paper. Turns out I should have added her body to the list. Brandon set her loose about an hour later and came in to our room laughing. Ella had covered herself with ink - she had doodled on her arms, legs, hands and bottoms of her feet. Brandon and I kept straight faces in front of her and told her that it was not acceptable to draw on herself. But we laughed in private.

We went to a friend's house to play this afternoon, and Ella was still covered with graffiti. I should have called ahead to warn her not to laugh, because as soon as she opened the door she cracked up, as did another friend who was there. So our lesson about not drawing kind of went out the window.

But I still wonder what her little thought process was. Did Ella draw on herself to spite me? Did she think, "I'll make her sorry for putting me in quiet time!" Or did she think, "Well, she didn't tell me NOT to draw on myself." I suppose I'll never know.

She did suffer consequences, though. At bath time I scrubbed off all the ink, and along with it all of her beloved temporary tattoos that she's been sporting for a week. We have dozens of the ones from the police department, but she had one from the vet's office that can't be replaced. After bath she asked if we could take the dog back to the vet just so she could get another cat tattoo.

August 10, 2004

Containing Myself
Ever since I quit my job to stay home with the girls, I've embarked on these random organizational sprees. I'll get a wild hair and rearrange an entire closet or create an arts and crafts cubby for Ella. It's an ongoing project because the fruits of my organizations never last very long. I'm too lazy to keep it up, and no one else in the house seems to notice that the closet or cupboard has an organization system. Still, it keeps me busy.

My latest goal is to get the girls' bedroom closet under control. Right now the floor is a jumble of shoes, toys, diapers boxes and packages of wipes. It doesn't help that every time Brandon cleans up their room, he just pitches everything in the closet and closes the door. The top shelf is a pile of clothes that no longer fit Ella. They were in neat piles, but ever since she learned how to climb door frames, she's been shimmying up and pulling things off the shelf. Ella then brings me the item of clothing and attempts to convince me that it still fits her. So I just pitch it back up there in a heap.

I went to the Container Store today to buy some bins for the floor of their closet. I'd say that it's a dangerous store, but instead it just overwhelms me. I don't ever spend much money on random things because I just don't know what to buy. Today I went in with a list and bought exactly what was on the list. . . almost. I picked up a little "Mr. Happy" cool pack for the girls and the clerk talked me into some big rubber bands to hold the garbage bags on our new garbage can.

And that was part of the problem. I couldn't just wander today and shop at leisure. Every time I turned around, some perky person in an apron was trying to hand me a catalog or convince me to try out their new computer-enhanced Elpha shelving blueprint system or get me to sign up for some mailing list or buy something extra. I don't know if it was just a slow day and they didn't have anything else to do or people to harass, or if it was because I had cute girls with me, or if they've changed to a new commission-based system, but the clerks pretty much ran me out of the store. I don't like shopping as it is, and to have someone follow me around while I do it just makes it worse.

So I didn't buy nearly as much organizational stuff as I could have. I really wanted the chance to look for new storage systems for my stamps and ink and paper. But no such luck. Right now I'm waiting for Lily to wake up so that I can go in and rearrange their closet. Maybe the new system will last for more than a week.

August 9, 2004

I try to find different ways to get me through my solo morning runs. I often look for houses that I'd like to own some day. I found my two Austin dream homes while running. One is on Shoal Creek between 2222 and Hancock - it's a huge limestone house with green trim. But I don't like the house as much as I covet the yard. It's at least a quadruple sized lot that backs up to Shoal Creek. And the best part is that it's on the marathon course route - I could sit in my front yard and cheer. The other house is over on Duval. It has a port cochere, or however you spell covered porch in French, and a second story sleeping porch. Again, it has a huge yard.

But now that I have kids, I realize that I'll have to give up on these two homes and find others. Both houses are on fairly busy roads, and there'd be no safe place for Ella and Lily to ride their bikes. That's a major consideration for me.

Anyway, this morning I didn't see any new dream homes, but I did see two things that made me wonder. The first was in a yard. There was a path of mowed grass that went from the tool shed to the sidewalk. But it wasn't a straight path - it looped around trees and across the yard. And that was it - just this loopy path across the grass. I wondered which end the mower started on to accomplish this. Did the person start on the sidewalk and take the long way around to the shed, or did he start at the shed and leave the mower somewhere else. I would have liked to have watched the mowing process.

The second curious thing was a fig tree that was filled with aluminum pie pans hung from the branches. I'm assuming that they're to keep the birds away from the figs as they ripen. But they did make for interesting decorations. And I wonder if they really do work as a deterrent. The same house has a plastic owl sitting atop their carport. In Florida people use the plastic owls to keep seagulls away, but since there are no seagulls in Austin, I'm assuming it's for grackles or pigeons. The first time I saw the owl I wasn't wearing my glasses. Without them, the owl looked really real. It wasn't until the next time I ran past that I realized he wasn't.

August 8, 2004

I'm going to experiment with a blog. It's only recently that I've figured out what one is, at least I think I know what one is. I've been inspired by my former boss, who keeps an online journal of whatever crosses her mind. She writes about animals that frequent her backyard, trips she's taken, people she's known, plants, etc.

My writing has stagnated completely of late, and it's very frustrating to me. I've always set 800 words as an absolute minimum for any essay I write, and as a result, I haven't written much lately. I just can't seem to get out 800 words. So I figure if I get rid of the length requirement and just write whatever, I'll start writing more. It will be interesting to see what happens.

I'll probably roll my book reviews from my reading quest into this section, rather than updating them in the essay section.

And for those who don't have children, or who don't think my children are as interesting as I do, I'll try not to make Ella and Lily my sole topics.