Blog

October 30
Yesterday I ran my first race since the half marathon last January. It was a 10K trail run, and I'm more beat up from it than I was from that half - more than twice the distance. I was in no way prepared for the course. I figured I could handle 6 miles on trails - how bad could it be? Turns out it was plenty bad. I started out way too fast - partly because I was trying to stay with Liz, who always bolts right out of the start, and partly because I was too wound up. I should have followed my usual race game plan - hang out near the back in the starting chute and then work my way forward in the first mile of the race.

Much of the first mile was single-track trail, and I ended up leading a whole line of young guys. The sound of their footsteps behind me was enough to make me run too fast. I was grateful for the first clear area, when they were able to run past me. I spent much of the first three miles wishing I had never entered the race and almost hoping that I would take a tumble so that I'd have a legitimate reason for dropping out of the stupid race. But then somewhere after mile three, I settled into a good rythym and pace, and the race got to be a lot more fun. I really enjoyed running on the different terrain and having to scramble up and down rocks. At times the views were spectacular. Although it was hard to sneak more than a glance at them. The terrain was so rocky that I had to watch each and every step. There was one particularly lovely stretch on a path through the woods - the trail was covered with pine needles and it was so quiet. I was all by myself in there, and I loved every minute of it. It was during that stretch that I started to consider running the race again next year and to think about how to train for it.

The other great part of the race was the kids who volunteered. They were all so enthusiastic and silly at the water stops and big turns. I've never heard so much cheering during a small race. They made the race a lot more entertaining.

But now, the day after the race, I am sore in places I forgot could get sore from running. My shins and ankles are especially painful. I nearly screamed when I got out of bed this morning. I'm supposed to run tomorrow morning, and I'm not sure how I'm going to feel.

I'm glad I did the race. But I know that if I do it next year, I need to do lots more training on trails - OK, I'll need to actually train on trails. And I'll know how to race smarter.

October 26
This morning's run was the best I've had in months and moths. I finished feeling so good about myself and my running. It was a much-needed boost to my running confidence. The weather was perfect - cool enough for long sleeves and glove - and the sky was absolutely clear. You could see so many stars; it was amazing. We headed out to run Windsor, which has defeated me many times this summer. The worst was the Saturday that I ended up sitting on the curb alternating between wheezing and hyperventilating. That was horrible. So I was a little leery of running it this morning, but I've now conquered my fears.

I ran with Megan, Cristina and Ann, and we set out at a good clip. Ann and Cristina led the way and set the pace. Megan, who had already run five miles (and who is 20 weeks pregnant), asked me at one point if we were moving. I gasped out, "Yes!" But I made it through the run, and I was able to keep up with the pace. I felt so good as we ran down Veteran's to the Rock. We finished with an out-and-back across the bridge, and I'm glad I decided to do it. The sun was just coming up and there was steam rising on the lake - it was a post-card worthy sight.

I went home feeling like I could conquer anything the day threw at me.

October 24
David Foster Wallace, who wrote the dreadful Infinite Jest (it's beyond me why that book received the praise it did), published a collection of essays titled Another Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. I like the phrase so much that I frequently use it to describe an activity or outing that seemed like a good idea at the time but turned into a real disaster. Like the rainy, cold Friday afternoon that Liz and I decided we should go shopping at the mall with all four kids - along with everyone else in Austin, who all had the same idea. Or any of the times that Lisa R. and I have taken the kids out to dinner in order to avoid eating alone at home with them. I could go on.

Anyway, this morning's adventure definitely falls in this category. Lily's teacher, Katherine, decided it would be fun to take the kids to Central Market to pick out little pumpkins to decorate for the class. I gamely signed on to chaperone and drive some of the kids. I can barely tolerate taking my own two children to Central Market, so I'm not sure why I thought it would be a good idea to go there with nine kids - ten if you count Owen. And I get panicky in crowds, so travelling with our own crowd of ten kids and five adults who were all trying to go in different directions at once was just setting me up for a first-class Heather freak-out.

We got everyone loaded in the cars and headed to the store. Lily and Stella were in the back seat alternating between laughing their heads off and asking who was riding in which car. So far so good. We manage to herd everyone into the produce department. Katherine lines the kids up with the pumpkins for a photo op. Still doing ok. Then, as the kids dismantle the pumpkin display and try to run off, we realize that there aren't any little pumpkins. So we head through the store to the floral department - past the bulk candy bins and the display of stuffed animals. No little pumpkins in the floral area. Liz spots some behind one of the work areas and asks the employee about them. She says they're for a display. Fortunately, a manager walked up and told the girl to give the pumpkins to the little kids. Phew. But then we have to head BACK through the store to the produce section, where we started in the first place. I'm starting to get very edgy. The kids climb on all the pumpkins and touch them all and try to roll them around before Katherine settles on one for the class. So we march BACK to the front of the store (where the floral department is), past the bulk candy bins and the stuffed animals. I'm pushing the cart with Owen and pumpkins in it, and all the kids want to hang on the cart. I'm gritting my teeth. Once we get to the checkout lines, we decide to take the kids outside while the assistant teacher pays for everything. Then it's back to the cars and back to school.

I made it back to school in record time, and I narrowly avoided having a freak out. It's only because I didn't want to melt down in front of Liz, Carol, Katherine and Kristen. But I was a jittery wreck for a while after. I had to go to Target to pick up some stuff, and I was still so rattled that I forgot half of the things I needed.

I think I'll opt not to volunteer the next time there's a field trip unless we're going someplace very contained where the kids can't escape or run into other people.

The killer is, I think all the kids were more excited about riding in cars with their friends than they were about shopping for pumpkins. Lily just gave me a shrug when I asked her if she liked going to the store. Then her face lit up, and she said, "Stella rode in our car!"

Fortunately, I can laugh about all of this now.

October 20
My daughter has me stumped. She's been asking lots of philosophical and theological questions these days, and I'm not sure how to answer her. Ella's teacher and school director haven't been of much assistance. Pat told me that Ella was now beyond her area of expertise.

Most of the questions revolve around God and why he creates things that are bad. Each question starts with, "God created everything, so why did he create . . ." I don't believe that God created everything. I can't even pin down my thoughts on God. Do I believe there's a divine being who gets involved in the petty details of our lives? No. I live the idea of a divine being watching over us, but that's about as far as I can go.

So what do I do with Ella? I'm not even sure where she's getting this whole "God created everything" concept in the first place. It's not anything that Brandon or I have said. And according to Pat at school, it's not something they've discussed in chapel on Wednesdays. Which leads me to believe that Ella picked this up at Sunday school with my mother-in-law. That's a whole other entry for another time.

Ella woke me up in the middle of the night with ant bites bothering her and asked why God had created fire ants to bite us. I didn't have an answer for that one. I don't see any purpose for fire ants, especially since my right hand still bears the scars from my last encounter with an ant pile.

The next night Ella woke me up crying about a nightmare she'd had involving Walt getting burned in a fire. She was worried that our house would catch on fire. I talked to her, as rationally as I could given the hour, about the smoke detectors and fire alarms we have in our house and where they are. I reassured her that IF there ever was a fire, the alarms would go off and wake up me and Brandon and we'd come get her and Lily. She went back to bed sniffling, only to return a short time later to ask me why God had created fire if it burned people. I can barely handle theology discussions in the light of day let alone at four in the morning. I pointed out to Ella that fire has good purposes - it gives us light and heat and helps us cook our food - and sent her back to bed.

The next day I talked to Pat and Meredith. Pat said that pointing out that fire has good and bad attributes was the right way to go. I asked about the whole God thing, and that's when Pat reassured me it wasn't coming from chapel and told me that Ella was beyond her. Meredith told me that, developmentally, kids Ella's age only have concepts of black and white, good and bad. There is no middle ground or gray area in their minds. Something's good, or it's bad, end of story. Like Pat, she also told me that pointing out the good AND bad in everything is a good way to go.

But I still don't have any answer on the God stuff. Tonight, Ella came to me again crying about the house catching on fire. This time she's worried that her toys, a pony and a barbie in particular, will burn up if there's a fire. I told her that the most important thing would be that she and Lily and Brandon and I would all be safe, that we could always buy new stuff. That didn't help. So I told her that we'd call the fire department and the firemen would come and put out the fire and that her toys might be safe. Still no good. So I promised that we'd get her pony and her barbie on our way out the door and sent her back to bed. On her next trip, I lost it. She wanted to know why God created fire. I finally looked at her and said that I didn't believe God created everything. But then I reminded her about the good and bad of fire. I told her that fire wasn't something she needed to worry about - that daddy and I would worry about fire and make sure to keep a safe house for all of us, free from fire.

She went back to bed, still crying.

The God stuff has come up in other non-fire-related instances. The other night she said that God created the wind. I said that actually wind came from the sun heating the air and creating wind currents. Her response - God created the sun, so he really did create the wind. I told her that wind came from trees sneezing, a la Calvin's dad, and she just laughed.

I suppose Brandon and I are going to have to get a handle on our religious beliefs and what we want Ella and Lily to learn. They're getting conflicting messages from us, from school, from in-laws. I'm not so worried about what they're taught at school - it is a Methodist school, after all. And a pretty liberal one at that. I'm more worried about other sources. If I were a faithful and devout person, I could just pray for a solution.

October 20
My baby girl is now five. It's hard to believe that it was five years ago that we brought her home from the hospital. It's gone by in a flash. Ella seems so big now - she's a whole hand! She is also taking being five very seriously - acting quite the big girl now.

Her personality continues to amaze and amuse me. She's funny without meaning to be, and she's still the rock star she's been since she was a baby. Ella loves to be the center of attention, but on her terms. As outgoing as she appears to be, she holds back in new situations and environments until she's checked everything and everyone out.

For some reason I was really sad about Ella's turning five. I guess because it makes her an almost-kindergartener and officially a kid instead of a toddler or pre-schooler. I called Liz on my way home from dropping Ella off at school and cried on the phone to her. Mostly I'm upset that my baby's not a baby anymore.

Fortunately for me, Ella still loves to hug and snuggle as much as she ever has. Most mornings she comes out and curls up on the sofa with me for a few minutes while she wakes up all the way. It's one of the best parts of my day. I keep telling Ella that I'll always hug and cuddle her, even when she's 15 and doesn't want me to anymore. She just rolls her eyes at me.

We had multiple birthday celebrations, as always. Each year I resolve to make her birthday as simple and as stress free as possible, but it winds up being just the opposite. On her birthday Lily and I took a cookie cake to school for a party there. I also took party favors for all the kids; Meredith wasn't thrilled with the noisemakers I brought. That night we went out to dinner with my parents and Steve for a joint Ella-Grandaddy celebration.

Friday night we had her big party - a barbecue in the backyard with family and friends. The party was such a hit that it lasted way too long. I was wiped out from all the preparations and goings on. The girls were wound up beyond belief. It took forever to get them to sleep.

Now my parents are back home, and we're getting the house back to normal. And I'm slowly adjusting to having such a big girl.

October 12
The weather has finally changed, and my running has improved as a result. I made it through the Windsor Loop on Saturday without dying. I resisted peer pressure and opted not to run the longer, hillier route. I wanted to finish my run feeling good for a change. I've had too many runs where I've finished by dragging myself in. This morning's run was another good one. I felt strong the whole way, and I even stayed with Jennifer for three of our four strides at the end. Of course, she's six months pregnant, which is the only reason I can run with her on the strides.

Other than the good runs on Saturday and today, I've had a frustrating week with running. I was supposed to run at 5:30 on Monday because I was set to be helping parent that morning, which means I have to run early. But I woke up at 3:30 with a blinding migraine. It also rained, which made me feel better about missing the run - no one was out there running. I got up at 7:00 to get the girls ready, but I had to go back to bed because I felt so awful. The migraine medicine finally kicked in, but I felt groggy and icky the rest of the day. I planned to run Tuesday morning on my own, but I woke up again at 3:30 with another blinding headache, but this time it was on the wrong side. About twice a year I get migraines on the left side, and for some reason they hurt worse than the normal ones. So I took more medicine and went back to bed. I felt much better later in the day.

I think the strange weather triggered the headaches - both times it had just started raining when I woke up in pain. But I also think I'm feeling the migraines more intensely now that I'm off all preventative medicine for the first time in more than a year. My doctor wanted me off Depakote because of the potential birth defects if I were to get pregnant, and the other two medicines she's tried have given me horrible side effects. With the first, I was tired all the time and had horrible non-migraine headaches. With the second, I got light-headed, to the point of almost blacking out on the playground at the girls' school. I have an appointment on Friday, and I may ask to be off all medications for a while. Even though I've had the migraines, overall I feel better without the drugs in my system. I'm not sleepy all the time. I hadn't realized how much they were affecting me until I stopped taking them. I like not being on them. My migraines are always better in the winter, so I'm willing to risk a few headaches here and there in exchange for not having bad side effects. We'll see what she says.

In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy running in the cooler air.

October 7
It feels like Halloween! That's what my roommate Chiayu and I used to say in college when the weather in Gainesville finally cooled off. We'd go celebrate by buying Halloween candy. Of course, I've been buying Halloween candy for weeks, even though the weather hasn't been very Halloweenish.

Yesterday a cold front blew in, and the temperatures dropped steadily throughout the day. I had the whole house opened up. It was so nice to have fresh air blowing through; everything smelled so good in the house. Even Mollie-dog, who is starting to show her age was perkier yesterday.

Today it was truly fall-like - 60 degrees and drizzle. I loved every minute of it. I ran at 6:15 this morning, before the rain started, and it felt so good. It's the best run I've had in longer than I can remember. I didn't even mind running into a cold headwind. I felt like running more when we finished - and I don't remember the last time I actually felt like running MORE. I've run more, but it's only been because I needed to get an extra mile in.

And for the first time in months, I'm actually looking forward to tomorrow's run. I've got this mental block against the five-mile Windsor Loop because I've fallen apart on it on my last two attempts. Liz says I should just skip doing Windsor and jump up to the seven-mile Scenic Loop. I'm a little leery of doing that, but if I feel good at the turn-off, I may just go ahead and see what happens when I do seven. I may be jinxing myself by writing this, but running seven in cool weather can't possibly be worse than the last two five-mile runs in hot, humid weather. My only hope of keeping up with Liz and Shannon on the route though, is the fact that they've both been sick over the past week. Liz is such a strong runner, especially on hills. And Shannon always outpaces me with her long legs. It may take their being sick for me to catch up.

We'll see how tomorrow goes. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy snuggling under the down comforter, all warm and cozy.

October 4
It's official: I've definitely gone around the bend with the whole stamping thing. I just finished making Ella's birthday invitations, and they're the most ornate, complex thing I've ever done outside of a stamping workshop.

Because I wanted the stamp to show in different colors, I had to use markers instead of an ink pad to color the stamp. Then I had to cut the stamped image into five pieces and put those pieces on the card, which already had a stamped background image. Then I stamped the word "Celebrate" on to a piece of white card stock and layered that on another color and put the whole thing on the card. Of course, doing all that meant cutting those pieces of card stock. And I did this for 10 invitations.

It took hours.

Especially since I tried to do it this morning with Lily at home. She kept wanting to sit in my lap and "help" me stamp. I finally gave her one of the stamps and my set of new fancy markers and turned her loose with her own pieces of paper and scissors. That bought me about 20 minutes. I'm finally finished, and all the cards are stuffed and addressed.

All of this effort for 10 cards is making me rethink my plans for my Christmas cards this year. I usually send out 80 or so, but I'm not sure I want to make that many of the three-layer cards I've designed. I guess maybe I'll have to do them a few at a time, just so I don't get overwhelmed. I know they'll be cute in the end, as long as they don't fall apart like my cards did the year before last. Many of my friends, who already give me a hard time about my stamping habit, delighted in teasing me about my do-it-yourself Christmas cards. They recieved a card and several strips of paper. I was mortified.

Brandon also wants me to make Christmas cards for his clients. Those won't be as elaborate. I have a hard time working my fingers to the bone to make cards for people I don't know. At least if I use my stamps for business Christmas cards, I can deduct the cost of the stamp set and paper and ink as a business expense. That's the one upside to it all.

If, after reading all this, anyone is interested in getting addicted, I mean started, let me know. I'll set you up with my dealer.

October 2
The past two Saturdays I've had runs that were so bad I've considered chucking my running shoes in Town Lake and never running again. Last week, the wheels came off at mile 4 of a 6-mile run, and I ended up walking about a mile before I switched to something of a running stagger.

Yesterday I overheated and got so out of breath that I got light-headed and had to sit down on the curb for five minutes with my head between my knees. My running partners said my face was pasty white when it happened. Once I assured them that I could at least walk, they ran on ahead, waiting for me at water stops and major intersections. They kept me going for the last mile of the run. They said that my cheeks were red again by the time I reached the end of the route.

I don't know whether my overheating is a result of my new migraine medicine or the record-breaking heat and humidity lately, or a combination of both, but it has to stop. These two runs have scared me. I was probably close to heat stroke each time, which isn't fun to have. I've had trouble with overheating on my week-day runs, but they have been short enough that I've reached the end before I got too hot. I've had to stand in the shower at the end of several to cool down, though.

Maybe it's time for me to throw in the towel, at least until it cools off a tad. I'm definitely calling my doctor tomorrow, though, to talk to her about this. There are some other not-so-fun side effects that I've been experiencing, too - like lightheadedness at random times and uncontrollable shaking. I think maybe this isn't the medicine for me. Maybe it's time for another one. At any rate, the cure is almost worse than the migraines right now. At least with a migraine, the imitrex works quickly, and I only feel rotten for a few hours. With the preventative medicine, I feel strange and shaky all day long. I'm not sure it's better.