InnerTeub

My dog does not love to run. Oh, he loves to chase, but not run. However, he’s being trained on Search and Rescue skills, and his biggest detractor right now is his stamina, which his two Ironman (retired) parent’s simply cannot have. So. We run.

Oh my goodness, he hates it. He’s a good runner, as dogs go, in that he stays right on my side and doesn’t stop to sniff or pull in one direction or another; he’ll go where I’m going, and trudges along, but man can he pull a bitch face. During any given run he looks back at me at frequently intervals, with a “So… we’re just going to keep running, then? Like, that’s all we’re doing here. Running. To get somewhere. And then we’re just going to turn around and run…home. And this is…this is by choice, right? We’re just going to run. And – I’m sorry, but let me be clear – at no point will there be a tennis ball thrown or a squirrel to be chased? Is that correct? I mean, for real, we’re just….running. For…fun. Ok. Huh. Sure. Really? JUST running?”

YES DOG. WE ARE JUST RUNNING. FOR FUN. God, kids these days, right?

No worries, though. I’ll show him. See, the way I figure it, everyone feels this way about running in the beginning. But running sucks you in and Stockholm syndromes you into thinking it’s fun and awesome and good for you and then before you know it he’ll be bugging me for a Garmin and tracking his workouts and logging his time and discussing  post run fueling techniques and oh God. He’s going to turn into his father.

Whoops.

Read Full Post »

I just finished a wonderful book – The Gurnsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.

(I admit that is not the most accessible sounding name, but this is a lovely little treat of a book, and you should go read it, right now)

This book is written entirely as letters back and forth from the main characters, and one of my favorite moments came in the first five pages: an author in London (Juliet) writes to her publisher a post-script: “PS I am reading the collected correspondence of Mrs. Montague. Do you know what that dismal woman wrote to Jane Carlyle? ‘My dear little Jane, everybody is born with a vocation, and yours is to write charming little notes.’ I hope Jane spat on her.” The publisher, in the next letter, responds in his own post script: “P.S. You write charming little notes”

Another favorite moment:

We read books talked about books, argued over books, and became dearer and dearer to one another… our evening together became bright, lovely times

****

Four years ago, my friend decided she wanted to start a book club, and off it went. At the time we were all unmarried, childless, Ironman training athletes…now we’ve got 5 (I think?) babies, one on the way, one stepdaughter, countless weddings, and life keeps going on. Book club is once a month, a date picked in advance, thrown on calendars, and generally well attended; it’s been a wonderful constant meet-up in a world where we all get too busy to remember to check in. Evenings do indeed become bright, lovely times.

****

I recognize that it’s a little unrealistic to try to fly back to D.C. once a month for book club, but I’m honestly wondering how unrealistic is it, really? (I mean, I know how unrealistic: very). Part of the joy of bookclub is the no hassle way of getting to see your friends; flying from Colorado is not exactly no-hassle. But I’ll miss my friends, and their charming little notes, and find myself wondering what it would be like to pop in and out and get my fix of their company.

Read Full Post »

There’s a quote I want to share from a book I read years ago, but I’m in the middle of moving hell and I can barely find my dog among the boxes let along a singular book, so I’ll just have to paraphrase.  It’s from “Black Hawk Down,” and in the epilogue, the author discusses what it must be like for the Army Rangers in the book, what prompted them to enlist, train, stay in the military. He says: “They have to trust their government will not risk their lives for too little”

That’s a helluva lot of trust, and yet I see it everyday; apparently I actually have this trust, because I trust that the government won’t risk Mike’s life for too little, or the lives of our friends who serve, or any of the number of people I know who have joined up, and continue to join, again and again.

I don’t think anyone joins the military without first considering if it is right for them personally, without thinking “what can the military do for me“; serving in the military is not an exclusively selfless activity. But it is service, and regardless of the benefits one may experience personally, and the job by it’s nature is done to benefit something other than yourself, and I guess you just have to trust that the cost of that service is worth it.

This past spring I got the chance to work with wounded veterans, and I found myself wondering if the horror of losing a limb is made better or worse if that loss is done in service to a cause. What a horrible question; I don’t think the gradients of “better” or “worse” really apply when you lose a leg, but the reality is I spent a week with a huge group of men and women, most under the age of 23, whose lives had been irrevocably altered as a result of their choosing to serve their country, and I have to wonder if they felt that the cost of service was worth it. I hope they do; I hope they don’t think their loss is in vain.

Mike going back into active duty  has changed our life a lot, but it was the right thing to do, for him, and for us. The work he does means something to him, and just as importantly, the community he works with means something to him. As far as picking a job goes, this is the right job for him. But it does come at a cost, (see also: 2008 deployment and results thereof) and I’m glad there is a day like today, where we can pause and say “Thank You.”

Read Full Post »

This past Friday, my dear friend Chris married his boyfriend, Phillip.

I don’t want to discuss their wedding in marriage in terms of politics, because… it’s their wedding. It’s not a statement. But given this time in history, it feels weird to ignore it. Given this, I hope you’ll forgive me if I share with you a portion of the Best Man’s toast, a statement that so beautifully tied together the common theme of hope and dreams that accompanies both marriage and political change:

So maybe if I can’t talk about Philip and Chris, I can talk about dreams.

Because dreams are extraordinary things.  They take us places that go beyond conscious imagination.  And we certainly are beyond what we could have ever consciously imagined.  For someone has said not only that he LIKES Chris, but that he loves him.  And that is extraordinary. [Ed. Note: snerk!]

And what we have gathered for together today, is really extraordinary, and up until recently, would have been beyond our dreams.

I’d like to read to you a passage.

Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations.

Barred access to the protections, benefits, and obligations of civil marriage, a person who enters into an intimate, exclusive union with another of the same sex is arbitrarily deprived of membership in one of our community’s most rewarding and cherished institutions. That exclusion is incompatible with the constitutional principles of respect for individual autonomy and equality under law.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court, Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, 2004.

Only 6 years ago in the United States, it was, for the most of us, beyond our dreams that two men would be able to make the commitment embodied in marriage and assume the obligations.   Yet here we are, living beyond our dreams.

There’s been so much talk lately of “It Gets Better.” And there should be; it does get better. It got better right before my eyes, this past Friday night.

I’m so happy for my friends. I hope they continue to live well, well beyond their dreams.

Read Full Post »

So I’ve been hesitating throwing this out to the Internet, because it seems like there are so many different ways things like this can go wrong, but um, my house? The one I love so much and never want to leave? Is under contract.

Assuming all goes according to plan* the new owners will close on November 19th. Like, you know, in 19 days.

(*don’t fuck with me here, Universe: I’m fragile right now. Let’s stick with the plan, mmmkay?)

So! “What are our plans?” I hear you asking. I’m so glad you did! I cannot wait to tell you about them!

Except for: we have no plans.

Correction: we have about five different plans, all with moving parts, and all somewhat slightly out of our control. But for right now, the most current plan is: I stay in DC through December 4th, at which point I head up to New York for my grandmother’s 90th birthday party. Immediately following that party, I tuck tail and run myself and the dog back to Minnesota, where we will live out the age-old dream of moving back in with one’s parents.

Well, that’s slightly unfair. My parents are quite awesome, we get along great, and I’ve actually been wishing for a few years now that I lived closer to them. To be honest, I’m slightly concerned that when I go to *leave* their house I’m going to be all “Mommy don’t make me  leeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaavvve”

But anyway: good fences make good neighbors and all that, and I find myself thrilled that I have parents who will both take me *and* kick me out again.

So! I’ll kick around Minnesota for a month or so (Moving to Minnesota in December: I’ve made smarter decisions, y’all), waiting for Mike to finish up some D.C. based USMC stuff, and from there we’ll move forward on one of a few plans, which could include going to California for USMC stuff or going to Colorado for other USMC stuff. Colorado is where we are looking to end up at the end of this go round, and I look very forward to getting there and settled at some point.

It is about this point where I give a million thanks to my current job, which can be done remotely, which allows for a lot of this shuffling around and plan-lessness. I still have to travel for work, but for the most part I am confining my whereabouts to cities with major airports, so it’s all doable.

Things I am worried about, regardless of likelihood of occurrence, in no particular order:

• Being lonely once I leave the city I’ve lived in for almost 12 years
• My job unexpectedly imploding, making current plan of “homelessness” much less convenient
• Going slightly crazy as a homebody who is without home
• Having everything I own in storage for an unknown number of months, and only realizing once it’s too late that I’ve packed THE ONE THING I cannot live without
• Disliking Colorado.
• Up-ending our entire lifestyle in large part to raise our kids the way we want … and discovering that we are unable to have children
• Minnesota winter killing my will to live

Hmm. That list is actually slightly worrisome, but I should stress that I have no real reason to think any of those things will come to pass (except for the one about packing whatever it is I need, because, I mean: come on. That is so going to happen), and the good things resulting from this move are very good indeed. So, on the balance, though I’m sad about leaving the known and comfortable, I’m excited about taking steps to get us both closer to the life we’ve planned for and talked about.

Read Full Post »

It’s been crickets around here because I have no concrete news to tell; lots of wheels in motion, lots of stuff going on, lots of ins and outs, a few what-have-yous, etc.

I’ve been traveling, a lot. Like, so much that I got to an airport and had no idea where I was going, and briefly wondered if I was at the right airport (Dulles? DCA? Dulles? DCA? Oh shit, BWI???!) and then a few days later woke up and literally had no idea where I was for a few off-putting seconds. Some travel for work, some for racing, some for brothers getting legally married in Vegas while wearing a Slash costume, so: the usual.

Speaking of racing: Yeah, I thought I wasn’t going to that anymore, too. But then my friends needed another runner for their relay team, and then my husband broke his foot and had to bail on them, and then I found myself in Kentucky, at 3am, running alongside a highway with a headlamp on. (As you do). Considering that I bailed on the Army 10 miler because I didn’t want to do the training and thus was, you know, untrained, you can guess how I fared after 20+ miles in 24 hours. (Well, actually: surprisingly I felt awesome, which I think is a combo of lower mileage intervals [all my legs were 6ish miles long, not a full 10) being generally stronger overall [Crossfit for the win!] and, um, bourbon)

More seriously, it was The Bourbon Chase, which is a 200 mile relay race through the Bourbon distilleries in Kentucky. We started at Jim Beam and wound our way through the state, and can I just tell you that Kentucky is beautiful? It is beautiful. I loved every town we went through, and as I sat in park at the finish party in Lexington, I thought: “I get why people live here. This is great.” If there was any way I could convince Mike to live in the South, I’d seriously consider Kentucky, and I’m not even kidding. (The fact that I slept for [generously] three hours the whole weekend and was delirious from running and dehydration should in no way cause you to be dismissive of my opinion of this.])

See? Really pretty.

I feel very lucky to get to do all this travel, but at the same time I’m super pissed that I’m missing Fall. I waited through the worst D.C. summer on record (100 degree days for 30+ days, y’all – I’m not exaggerating when I tell you it suuuuuucked) to leave right as it gets nice.  It doubly sucks because by the time I’m done running around the globe and settled in, it’ll be (spoiler!) December in Minnesota  which is decidedly Not Fall. I hate being cold, and the heat is bad for my heart, so you’d think I would try to maximize this most perfect season of awesome temps, but apparently that plan seemed too easy, so… next year, I guess?

Anyway, that’s what I’m up to. Or some of it, anyway. A friend of mine once told me that she thought I lived my life as if I got extra credit points for complexity, and man, that has never been more true than now. (If you have suggestions as to where I can redeem those points, please use the comments section accordingly.)

Read Full Post »

It started a few months ago, when I needed to take a package to the post office for mailing. It was awkwardly shaped – a rolled up canvas, about 5 feet long and round, weighing about 30 pounds. Normally I’d like Mike handle this, but he was out of town, it needed to get shipped, and I found myself staring at it in my living room, contemplating how I was going to get it down two flights of stairs, into a car, out of a car, down a city block, and into a post office.

I eventually managed tipping it on it’s side, cleaned it up to chest height, and hoisted it onto my shoulder. Sure, it was awkward, but I was able to get it out and gone and was able to check off that highly annoying “To Do” off the list.

I noticed it again, a month or so later, when I was taking the hard top off a Jeep Wrangler. The hard top comes off in two pieces, split down the middle, and Mike was on one side lifting it off, and I unsnapped my side, lifted it over head, stepped out of the jeep, and put it on the group. Mike was midstep to come help me, and then stopped, going “Oh. You um, I guess you’ve got it”

I keep having these moments, moments where I notice a strength that I have, strength I’ve been building at the gym and on the road and in all the hours when I think I’d rather be sleeping but instead I get up and go, get up and do. I have a general sense that I’d be the same person if I didn’t do these things, that I’d live the same life, experience the same world, but every now and again these little moments flare up in my mind and I think that I’m giving myself such a nice gift, that I’m able to navigate this world so much more easily than I’d be able to otherwise. It’s the exact same me, just a little bit more so.

Read Full Post »

I got ripped a new one at book club last week. I had missed the last book club meeting because Mike and I were in the first step of house hunting out west, and the reality of which – that we are actually and for real putting our house on the market, and looking at other houses, houses in different time zones, and missing book club to do it– warranted quite a talking to.

I get it. Leaving these girls is probably the hardest part about our impending move. And it’s even harder to explain to them that as much as we like our lives, and love them, we want a different lifestyle than the one that they have chosen. How do you say that to a friend? “I look at your life and think: no thanks”? It’s an asshole thing to say, basically, and not fair in the slightest, because while it might sound like that’s what we’re saying, it doesn’t encompass even half of what we are thinking.

The types of jobs we want aren’t here, and staying here would require us to HAVE those jobs, and well, it’s not worth it. Ever since Mike left Big Consulting and has been back at Big Marine Corps, he has been So Happy. You guys, the difference is measurable. It is so drastic, in fact, that it makes me not hesitate for even a second when we talk about leaving a house we love, our friends we hold dear, and a place I’ve lived for over a decade.

Somewhat relatedly, my good friend got very sick this weekend. She could not drive herself to the hospital, prompting her husband to call me at midnight, asking if I could get her to the ER while he waited for someone to come watch their kids. I got her to the ER and set up as quickly as possible, and settled in for the patient advocacy business of bugging doctors and nurses and anyone who would listen and get my friend whatever she needed.

In a very weird way, it was nice night. I mean: it was not nice to see my friend in writhing pain, miserable and stressed out when we both would have preferred to be sleeping, but once the pain meds got flowing and she was appropriately stoned, and there was nothing to do but wait for the medical powers that be to draw some conclusions, it was, well, enjoyable to sit and chat. I mean, I wouldn’t wish those circumstances on her again for ANYTHING, but I certainly didn’t mind being there, gossiping and spending time together, happy that she called me, happy that I could help in some small way, happy that we are such good friends.

In the course of us chatting, she mentioned “I get it, I get why you want to move. You need to be near family; this situation is SO HARD not having family nearby.” Which was odd, because I was thinking to myself: “How crazy I am, to move away from this type of family.”

Pros and cons, pluses and minuses. The hardest decisions are always the ones with good things on either side.

Read Full Post »

I’d love to write about what is going on, what we are thinking, what is actually going to happen, but in truth: I don’t really know. And I don’t know how to write about what I don’t know.

But I can write about what I want, so that seems as good a place to start as any:

• I want to work, and I want to be good at my job. I want to be fulfilled by it. I feel this way, most days, recently. I want this feeling to stay.
• I want the same thing for the Boss, but even more so. I want him to be happy, and I want him to spend his day in ways he finds valuable
• I want to have family near me, but I don’t know yet how to distinguish the line between families made up of friends and communities and those of origin. I want them both, and I want them both over for dinner

Those don’t seem like big asks. And I think we’re getting closer and closer to getting them.

Read Full Post »

I was surprised when I started training for the ten miler how hard it was. I mean: ten miles. It’s “just ten miles!” That’s a training run, for crying out loud.

Except, you know: I don’t think I am recovered from the Ironman, either mentally or physically. Post race heart doctoring decreed that I should not exercise in the heat or humidity like, at all, and, hello, have you met D.C. summer? I found myself mentally pushing through every run on the treadmill (side note: I remember when I used to hate Air Conditioning. Clearly, those days were long before my tenure as a D.C. resident), and feeling just horrible afterward. Shin splits, hamstring cramps, etc etc – I am literally hobbling around begging for a chiropractor or a masseuse or a nap. Perhaps all of them.

So I’m experiencing that wonderful humbling sensation inherent in run training. No matter how impressive it is that the body can adapt to long milage, it can just as easily, um, un-adapt.

Anyway, that was a long opener to the fact that I am no longer planning to run the Army ten miler. I hit a point of truth where I admitted I just didn’t WANNA go for a run right now.{ /whine } And you know… it’s been nice. I’ve been traveling the past three weeks, and it’s been wonderful not feel guilty about missing a training run, or, alternatively, to go running just because I want to, not because I need to.

I forgot that this is a necessary break after Ironman training – this need for unstructured “enjoy your life” ness. I woke up today to a beautiful 65 degree/no humidity day (Oh, Fall. I french kiss you and your awesomeness) and took 20 minutes to go for a quick, unscheduled run. Is 20 minutes something to be proud of? I mean, I guess not, but man, was it a nice morning run. And I guess that’s what I’m training for now – that feeling of running because it adds something to my day, as opposed to detracts.

I’m getting there. Slowly, of course, and in all sense of the word, but I’m getting there.

Read Full Post »