Big Shoes to Fill

 Well, actually I don't have the big shoes yet, but I do have big feet to fill them with!

After my last long run, I came to an uncomfortable realization - my shoes weren't comfortable.  They seemed comfortable - plenty cushioned, not too wide, and all that - but the longest toe on my right foot was definitely NOT happy.

I have that wonderful feature (or is it a FEET-ure?) called Morton's toe.  There's nothing wrong with that; all it means is that my big toes aren't my longest toes, but rather their immediate neighbors are.  Actually, everyone in the house has the same feet-ure, except the cats, of course, including That Man, and he's not even a blood relative!

Anyway, the end of my poor longest right toe was sore all day after that fateful long run.  It's slightly numb, even now.  It's entirely possible the nail will eventually turn black and fall off.

Sexy.  I know.

So I've concluded that once again, my feet have grown.

This is not fair.  I'm too OLD to outgrow my shoes!  And I already have big feet.  Not wide, but LONG.  I thought I had big feet when I wore size 8 1/2 in my twenties - larger than all my friends' shoes.  Then in my thirties, after delivering The Boy, I was forced to replace every pair of shoes I owned with size 10s. In my forties, for no apparent reason, after losing 30 pounds, I started needing size 11s.

Today I had the fun of trying to find size 11 1/2 running shoes.  Most stop at 11, after skipping over 10 1/2.  A few come in 12s, but that's just too long.  Too much slop leads to blisters.  Been there, done that, got several t-shirts thankyouverymuch.

However, I'm in luck!  The shoes I've been buying do indeed come in 11 1/2, but not the deeply discounted ones from last year, oh, no!  Only the newest version (which costs $60 more than the relatively cheapoid ones from last year) or last year's Special Order version (which costs "only" $50 more than my cheapies).

Ouch.

I bit the bullet and ordered new shoes.  It made my hair hurt to contemplate it.  Particularly because I had TWO PAIRS OF BRAND NEW RUNNING SHOES IN THE CLOSET, ON THE SHELF, IN THE BOX.

Thank goodness for Road Runner Sports.  They have a 90-day love 'em or return 'em guarantee.  I had bought both pairs less than 90 days ago, so they are packed and ready to ship back home to meet their maker!

I have a message for my feet, though:

Stop. 

Growing. 

NOW!

Connections and Coincidences... Hmmmm...

“Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.”
― Albert Einstein, The World as I See It

“Coincidences mean you're on the right path.”
― Simon Van Booy, Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories

“We know that attention acts as a lightning rod. Merely by concentrating on something one causes endless analogies to collect around it, even penetrate the boundaries of the subject itself: an experience that we call coincidence, serendipity...”
― Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a character in the TV show, NCIS, has 51 rules to live by.  Rule #39 is "There is no such thing as coincidence."  Sometimes I wonder.

This past couple of weeks, I've experienced some seemingly random coincidences.

About two weeks ago, I got together with some friends for lunch, and brought some gazpacho for everyone to sample.  I had earlier told them I had made some, and they were intrigued by the idea of a cold soup.  So the next time we gathered, I brought some along so they could try it.

I spent the following weekend at McCormick's Creek State Park in Spencer, Indiana.  Our church choir had a retreat there, and we went through all the music planned through the end of December.  I went a day early so I could hike the trails.  I got on my smart phone and looked up restaurants in the area for some ideas.  One place that popped up over and over was the FARMbloomington restaurant, a "farm-to-fork" place - local meats, local, seasonal produce, all freshly prepared by chef Daniel Orr.  Interesting, but I didn't want to drive the fifteen miles to Bloomington through the thunderstorm then raging outside.  So, I decided to take the lazy way out and eat right there at the Canyon Inn.

That Sunday, I went to the Indiana State Fair to visit a friend working the food demo stage.  When the next show began, I decided to see what was on offer.  The presenter was chef Daniel Orr.  He was demonstrating two soups.  One of them was gazpacho.

Early last week, I started listening to an audiobook, Prague Winter, by Madeleine Albright.  In it, she talks about Czech president Vaclav Havel and the "Velvet Revolution" of the late 1980s.  I'm also reading an e-book, The Compromise Trap, by Elizabeth Doty.  In it, she talks about Havel and the Velvet Revolution.

Earlier this summer, That Man observed that we don't see many opossums any more.  I agreed.  I hadn't even seen one at the side of the road, playing possum or otherwise.

Dad's birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and I gave him one of my typical obnoxious (to me, hilarious) birthday cards, which featured a photograph of a man holding a huge, old, ratty-looking possum by the scruff of the neck.  ("You're HOW old?  ImPOSSUMble!"  Thank you, Hallmark!)

(Do possums have a scruff?)

This week, we saw a possum cleaning up the spilled sunflower seeds under the bird feeders.

Gretchen Rubin, the author of The Happiness Project, posted a question on FaceBook related to the Mars exploration by the rover Curiosity - what would you name a new rover?  I thought a bit, and left a comment - "Hitchhiker."

A couple of days later, I received a quotation via text message on my phone - "Time is an illusion.  Lunchtime doubly so." - Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

This happens from time to time, but I don't remember ever having so many linkages piled into such a short timeframe.  Or is it not such an oddity, but I've just been open to seeing the connections?

What "coincidences" have you noticed lately?  Do you believe in coincidence?

I'm going to have to think about this!

It's True Confession Time!

I have a confession.

The Girl came home this past weekend to go racing with That Man.  She stayed Thursday night and Saturday night, and then headed back north to Lafayette. 

I was going to put clean sheets on her bed, but she’s only slept on them twice.  So, I threw back the covers Wednesday night, sprayed everything with Febreeze, and pulled all the sheets tight!  

Cheater! 

I felt guilty about that.  WHY???  What the heck did I do that was so terribly WRONG?

I've been cogitating on it, and it hit me that my mom would have changed the sheets right away, and, of course, I have to live up to her housekeeping standards.  Why THIS one?  What about all the others I flout all the time?  But it's a Mom rule.  Change the guest bed sheets every time.

It was just so WEIRD.  There was this flood of guilt...for all of 2 minutes, and then I felt FREE OF THE EXPECTATIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE! 

I’ll wash them this week since she’s slept on them two more times. 

Really I will. 

Right. 

This week.

(And Now She Knows - HA!)

My Summer Bucket List

Back in May, I read a blog by Jason Kotecky at  http://kimandjason.com/blog/  where he made a summer bucket list.  Here's what Jason came up with:



I decided I needed a summer bucket list, too, so the summer doesn't slip away without my doing anything DIFFERENT from the norm.  Mine wasn't nearly as artistic as Jason's, but it'll do:

1 park concert

1 live theater performance (inside a theater)

Shakespeare in the Park (Noblesville)

1 free outdoor classic movie

Fireworks – Noblesville?   Indy?  Cicero (over the lake)?

Indianapolis City Market farmers market day (Wednesdays)

Noblesville farmers market (Saturday)

Westfield farmers market

Carmel farmers market

Visit 3 state parks (choir retreat doesn’t count)

1 camping trip
1 overnight backpack trip

Use my camp dutch oven 1 time

Use the grill 1 time

Sit on the porch 1 time/week

Sit on the patio 1 time/week

Visit the State Museum

Go to the State Fair

Go to 1 garage sale

Go to the Strawtown flea market 1 time

Art on the Square (Noblesville)

Visit an antique shop

See all 46 of the Indianapolis murals painted for the Super Bowl

Go to a festival in a different town (Elwood glass festival, Tipton pork festival, etc.)

Hmmm...  Quite a long list - somewhat ambitious.  Let's see what I've done so far.


I went to my first outdoor classic movie last night - The Awful Truth starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunn.  What a hoot!  I'm looking forward to more.

I haven't been to the farmers market here yet, but I've been to the one at the Indianapolis City Market four times.  I've bought kale, tomatoes, bakery goods, and a crock pot curry lentil mix.  And of course, it's always a great place to eat lunch, even when it's not market day.  I've visited the Carmel farmers market, but not Westfield's or Fishers'.

I'm sitting on my porch right now, and I've become a fixture out here on the days it's been nice enough (that means when it's not a hundred and four degrees).  This weekend has been perfect porch and patio weather.  I've been out on the patio, too, but not as much as the porch.

I've seen several of the Super Bowl murals.  There are ten on the canal in downtown Indianapolis near my office, so I've seen those, plus a few more.  Here's the website:

http://www.artscouncilofindianapolis.org/murals/

There are maps and pictures and all kinds of information about the murals.  This is one of my favorites.



I had planned on going to a fireworks show, but Cicero's was cancelled because of the dry conditions, I didn't feel like driving all the way to downtown Indianapolis, and it was so hot, I couldn't stand the thought of sitting outside in the heat for the Noblesville show, so I went to bed instead.  I actually HEARD the Noblesville fireworks while I was lying there.  Kind of cozy- like lying in bed during a thunderstorm.


I haven't been able to use my grill or dutch oven because of the burn ban here.

Shakespeare in the park started last night.  I'm planning to go Thursday or Friday.


Art on the Square and the State Fair are in a couple of weeks, and there are lots of free movies and concerts in the parks still to come.  The farmers markets mostly run through October.  Plenty of time!


Then there's a camping trip and visiting some state parks.  Hmmmm...  If you read the previous blog post, you'll know how THAT worked out.


All in all, I think I've done well enough with my list.  Not spectacularly, but the goal isn't to do EVERYTHING on the list, but to CONSIDER everything on the list, and actually DO some of them.


What's on YOUR bucket list?

My 100+ Degree Camping Trip

We're having a heat wave, a tropical heat wave.  The temperature's rising; it isn't surprising... - Irving Berlin

I took a solo camping trip this weekend.   Part of the point of this trip was to get me out of the house and my car out of the garage so That Man could work on the race car in the garage.

In case you've been living in a cave or something, we here in the Midwest (and plenty of the rest of the country) are not only in the midst of a drought, but a heat wave, and NOT a tropical heat wave, either.  We're having desert weather.  (Put down your fork - I said desert, not dessert.)

Indiana summers are normally swelteringly humid and miserable, but June was hot and unbelievably dry.  This is our driest and hottest summer since 1988.

We've been flirting with 100 degrees for the past few weeks.  Heck, we've gotten past the flirting stage.  We hit 104 and 105 officially last week, and the outside thermometer in my car read 110 while I was driving one evening.  It was supposed to moderate a bit (you know you're in trouble when the forecast highs have DROPPED to the mid- to high nineties), but now we're right back up there with temperatures over 100.

The grass in our yard has mostly gone dormant and dead brown, except for what's in the shade of the maple trees in the front yard.  The back yard is toast.  We don't like to water the yard because that makes the roots shallow, but it's tempting.  (Be strong!)  Even if we wanted to, we're under watering restrictions.  People with even addresses can water on Mondays and Wednesdays, and people with odd addresses can water on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  It reminds me of the late 1970s when we could only buy gas on alternating days.  I had an odd license plate number, so I could fill up on odd dates, but not on evens.

But I digress...

I had planned this camping trip specifically to get out from under That Man's feet, and, well, to go camping.  I made reservations at a state park I've never visited before and started assembling the equipment.  I gathered up the coolers, water jug, sleeping bag, pillow, cot, made lists of clothes and food, and planned my driving route.  What's missing?

I couldn't find my tent.

It's been 4 years since I've been able to get away and camp.  You know, elderly parents and all that entails. So, I wasn't exactly sure where the tent was.  I asked The Man.  He said he'd moved "all the tents" out of the shed and garages and he thought "they" probably were in the attic.  Well, I knew where my backpacking tent is, and it's not in the attic, but of course, that's not the tent I wanted.  I wanted my dome tent.

I climbed into the attic, and there was a (yes ONE) tent bag.  Oh joy!  There it is!  Got it down and into the back yard, unzipped the bag, dumped out the tent and unrolled it.  Wrong tent.  It was a huge multi-room tent I'd bought several years ago for The Girl's Girl Scout troop.  So where the heck was the dome tent?  Had I  imagined buying it?  I thought I was going crazy.

Well, I HAD to have a tent, for Pete's sake, so I started shopping.  There were small tents (sorry, I have one, thanks) and huge tents (ditto).  Where were the mid-size tents?  Nuttin' nowhere.  RATS.

Meanwhile, I was going over my lists and looking for my camping stuff.  Most of it is in plastic storage boxes on shelves in the laundry/mud room.  So, I was scanning the shelves and mentally checking things off my lists, and lo and behold - there was a tent bag and a canopy box, staring me in the face, on the shelf over the treadmill, in plain sight every time I leave the house.

Good grief.

So I grabbed the tent bag and the canopy box and started packing!  Yee-haw!  I'm going CAMPING!

One problem.  The temperature.  The temperature had moderated during the week, but the forecast for this weekend was right back up there.  Oh, I've camped at 100 degrees before.  I packed a box fan and a heavy duty outdoor electrical cord so I could have an artificial breeze.  No problemo.

I  took my time driving south (SOUTH!  In this heat, why didn't I decide to head for Michigan?)  toward Harmonie State Park.  Once I got on the other side of Indianapolis, I left the interstate and took my time, driving state highways through the country and small towns.  The corn in the fields looked strange because the leaves are tightly rolled, avoiding the sun and conserving moisture.  Some trees are doing the same.

I arrived at the park, checked in, and found my space.  The thermometer in my car read 103.  Oh my.  The picnic table for my space was all the way out by the road, so I started by dragging it back under a tree.  My word.  Then I spread out the ground cloth and dumped the tent bag onto the picnic table and unzipped it.  I found another ground cloth, stakes, poles, instructions, rain fly...

No tent.

Oh.  My.  Gosh.

No tent.


NO TENT!!!


And the sweat  was dripping off me like I'd been hosed down.  Totally.  Gross.


To make a long story short, I surrendered.  I gave up.  I quit.  This camping trip just wasn't meant to be.  So I put everything back in the car and headed back home.  On the interstate.  When I got home, That Man had gone to work, so I texted him to say I had come back home.

He replied, "Did you have a nice drive?"

What a guy!

[NOTE:  The tent was in a box UNDER the tent bag.  I didn't check it.  Typical.]

Living the Wild Life

HA!

Made you look!!!

Well, maybe a more accurate title would be "Living with Wildlife."  Yes, it's nearly Midsummer's Eve, and the critters are trying to move in with us.  Again.

If you know me, you know that I LOVE nature and go crazy over the rabbits, toads, birds, garter snakes, and the occasional deer or coyote we see in our yard.

But I am a firm believer that the wildlife needs to stay OUTSIDE.  PLEASE.

It happens every year.  SOMETHING decides it's too hot outside, so, gee whiz, let's move into that nice air-conditioned house that sits so conveniently in our ecosystem.

One year, it was crickets.  They snuck inside (yes, I know snuck isn't really a word, but I like it, so just get over it) and we could hardly sleep for the chirping.  Plus, The Girl decided that she was afraid of them, especially after finding them in her shoes.  (Oh, come ON.  Show some backbone!)  The Boy was fairly stoic about it all.  Of course, he didn't find any creepy crawlies in his footwear, either.

We finally banished the crickets.  Next came the mice.

Now THERE'S fun!

We could hear them gnawing in the walls.  Yuck.  We found their calling cards on the pantry shelves.  DOUBLE yuck.  We fought the mouse wars off and on, finding their entrances and plugging them, but they would eventually find another way in.  Even after we got cats! 

Our cats weren't the greatest mousers, preferring to chase flies and spiders, until we adopted The Great Orange Hunter.  Tango has a talent, and that's catching mice.  He always leaves them where we can easily find them (I've left you a love token - am I not a mighty hunter?) - like in The Girl's shoes.  
What IS it about her shoes?

We had moths (don't keep sunflower birdseed from one year to the next - TRUST ME).  We had grasshoppers. We had Asian ladybugs.  We had termites.  We had ants.  We always have raccoons knocking down the bird feeders.  But usually these things happen one at a time.

Well.

This is the year of multiple plagues.  Every spring I wage war on the carpenter bees, who like to chew tunnels into our front porch.  They start in May, and they take over the airspace on the front porch, buzzing around and dive-bombing anything that moves.  You can sit there and hear them chomping away in the evening after they've retired to their hangars.  They sound like mice!  So I buy wasp and hornet spray and squirt it into their holes, and out they come, falling on their backs and flailing their legs.  If I'm a little later, out come their larvae - large, unattractive white squirmy things - UGH.

This year, I procrastinated on the bees.  We had other issues with Nature.  Chipmunks.

That Man was working on a project in the driveway, and left the garage door open most of the afternoon.  Later, he and The Boy reported seeing a flash of brown fur in the garage.  We found the telltale signs - little holes chewed near the bottom of the sunflower seed bag in the garage.  A couple of days later, I was sitting on the patio and heard something chewing on the house.  From the INSIDE.

(Is it just me, or do most of the critters want to eat either the house or the birdseed?)

That Man set a live trap in the garage for the chipmunk, which had apparently made its way into the crawlspace from the garage.  The trap did its work and the chipmunk is no longer in residence.  However, there is still a small furry army still beseiging us outside, so the trap went back out onto the porch, where the brazen little demons sit and chatter.

In the meantime, I was planning to attack the bees, but before I got to start, The Boy woke up this past Saturday to someone knocking.  Two someones.  On the porch railing.

Woodpeckers.  They were systematically tearing chunks of wood out of a section of the porch railing, following a bee tunnel.  My friend Brenda used to work for the Audubon Society, and she says if you have woodpeckers pecking on your house, then you have an insect problem.  Big surprise!!!

Well, the woodpeckers were, but the insects were not.  Those birds were after the carpenter bees.  The Boy scared them off, but they returned.  With reinforcements.

So, I was forced to stop procrastinating and work on the bees.  I've sprayed about half of their holes, and the inmates have been evicted.  My friend Resa says the next step is to jam wads of steel wool into the burrows with a pencil, seal them up with wood putty, and then paint.

Oh, goody.

I'm willing to do all that, but the woodpeckers are persistent.  I don't want them to pull out the steel wool and putty, so how to keep them away while everything sets up?

That Man set the chipmunk trap on the railing where the woodpeckers have been working their brand of magic.  Genius!

So we will see what we see when we see it, regarding the birds and the bees.

I was starting to feel like I was in Egypt before the Exodus.  At least we haven't had frogs, flies, boils, or hail, but we WILL have locusts (oh, all right, cicadas) in August.

Cross your fingers!

Race Car Trailers and Enthusiasm

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about. - Charles Kingsley

You want to see enthusiasm?  Just ask That Man about drag racing.  Oh my.  It's an obsession.

Two weeks ago, he and That Girl went racing.  It was a sunny, hot weekend.  They were hot and sweaty and exhausted by the time it was over.  Saturday wasn't too bad - he ran one round, put the car in the trailer, and headed for dinner and the motel.  Time to cool off, rest, and recuperate.  But Sunday, he kept winning rounds, and the turnaround time got shorter and shorter.  Not much time to rest, and no place to get really cool.  Oh, they had a fan set up, and they had shade from the awning, but compared to the guys who pull their trailers with motor homes...well! Both of them came back looking like boiled lobsters. But, long story short, he came in third in his class!

We'd had that trailer for 23 years, and it was a big step up from the old open trailer.  We'd go racing with no lights, no awning, nothing.  Talk about primitive!  And then we made the change to an enclosed trailer with an awning.  We thought we were in HEAVEN, even though it was still hot as You-Know-Where when the outside temperatures soared.

Well, a week ago, he came home with a new race car trailer, and he's spent the past week getting it ready.  So what could there possibly be to do?  It was made to his specifications.  Just winch the car in, stick the generator in its spot, and away you go!

Well, not quite.

The winch cable is too short.  The D-rings in the floor to tie down the car were installed backward.  There is no shelf in the base cabinet.  He broke off the antenna on the side of the trailer, trying to adjust it.  The list grows.  But here's a view of the interior: 

And a view of the exterior:

It's mighty nice - a huge improvement over the old trailer.  Shiny and new.  Lots of light. More space.  A bigger awning.  No wood to rot.  Non-skid floor.  AIR CONDITIONING.  He will be racing in "comfort and luxury," relatively speaking.

So, will all this decadence improve his results?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  That Man LOVES to race his car.  He has ENTHUSIASM!  Isn't THAT what counts?

I'm Not Very Good at...LOTS of Things!!!

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. - G. K. Chesterton

Oh, bless you, George!

There are so many things I LOVE to do, but I do them so BADLY.

I run.  Slowly.  Painfully slowly.  I mean, people WALK faster than I run.  And my right leg is knock-kneed (one source of the problems I've been experiencing with that leg - geesh!).  But you know, this morning I got out and chugged up the street, and I passed a small river birch with a mockingbird in it, singing his heart out.  Last week I interrupted an opossum going about his opossum business.  And there are bullfrogs in a retention pond nearer to our house, and when I hear them "harrumphing," I always laugh.  And I may not be fast, but I can go forever.  At least that's how it feels, some days.

I paint watercolors.  From a book.  Nothing original (YET).  But playing with the paint and trying out different techniques is FUN.  And one of my favorite pictures came about because of a mistake!  I was trying to get a misty rain effect using a technique described in a book.  It just would NOT work, and I kept taking a paper towel and wiping down the picture and trying again.  But one time after taking a disgusted swipe at the mess, I looked and said, "Hey!"  I had made misty rain!  Not as instructed, but who am I to look a gift misty rain effect in the mouth?  I left it, and I've gotten a lot of compliments on it!  

I sail.  Lazily.  I almost never use the jib.  It's in GREAT shape!  Oh, I hank it on to the forestay every spring and keep it in its sail cover on the deck, but I almost never let it come out and play.  Fall comes and I unhank it and throw it and the cover into the cabin until spring, when I hank it on again.

I ski.  Again, lazily.  I don't want to be bothered with the effort of skiing a black diamond slope.  I'll do greens and blues, and try to find the longest way down the mountain.  I want to get as much time on my skis as possible for my ride up to the top, and I want to be able to look at the scenery, not just at where I'm going to have to plant my pole or make my next christy.  My favorite is a about a four-mile glide at Winter Park in Colorado.  It takes me about 40 minutes to get from the summit to the base.  Now THAT'S skiing!

I play the piano.  Well enough.  No audience, please.  Oh, how I HATED recitals!  I play for myself.  Everyone can thank God for that.  At least I know enough not to inflict my playing on others, if I can avoid it.  I used to be better, but ever since getting bifocals...!  Oh my.  I have a terrible time reading the music with my head thrown back so I can look through the bottom of my glasses.  And I lose my place in the music.  And I can't find the keys.  Without my glasses, it's even worse!  I keep threatening to get a pair of CHEAP single vision glasses just for the piano.  But I enjoy the noises I make.  I can hear the RIGHT notes in my head, no matter what is coming out of the instrument!

The point is, who are you doing these things for?  Do you have to be the best?  Do you have to meet someone else's standard?  Are you in a competition?

Obviously, I'm NOT at a competitive level in any of the things I like to do, so I'd better just do them because I like to do them!  What are some things that you like to do that you avoid doing because you think you're not good enough?  I need to make a list of my own, and start DOING them.

Frank Shorter, You're My Hero!

My goal has always been to slow down as slowly as possible. - Frank Shorter

Isn't that a great way to look at it?  Frank, you're my hero!  They're gonna have to drag me off, kicking and screaming.

But sometimes, I let Them get hold of me after all.  You know, life's vagaries.  Aging body parts.  The wrong food.  Family crises.  Work crises.  Injuries.  Distractions.

My spring half marathon came and went - without me.  I stepped down to the 5K, but, by golly, I ran the whole thing.  So I had a victory.  I'm trying to ramp up my running again, but it seems I'm suffering with ITBS (illiotibial band syndrome) AND a piriformis issue, both on the right side.  That leg has been somewhat tight and apparently weak for months, and now it's showing its true colors.  I tried strengthening exercises, and they helped a little, but just not enough.

For the past few weeks I've had a terrible time with stairs, in both directions.  I finally sat down and really LISTENED to the old bod, and it said, STRETCH ME!  So I started doing Those Stretches, and they helped almost immediately.  I'll just have to be persistent.  I didn't run this morning, but I should be able to get out by Thursday.

So maybe They won't get me too soon, after all.  I'm running from Them as fast I can, and trying to slow down as slowly as possible.

Finally Human Again...I Think

After nearly four weeks of suffering from the effects of a sinus infection, I may actually be functional again.  I don't remember a sinus infection that exhaused me for so long after starting antibiotics, and I'm the Queen of Sinusitis!  I don't mind being SICK, but I do mind being nominally well, but exhausted and still blowing STUFF out of my head and coughing like mad.

The previous post gives the early chronology of this particular round of sinusitis  After the initial euphoria at feeling somewhat better, I seemed to slip backward some, and I was just so TIRED all the time.  Over the weekend, I was able to accomplish some things around the house, but I'd have to stop and rest, and by late afternoon, I was DONE.  Nothing else was going to happen except for coughing and nose blowing.  Monday I felt pretty good, and got some things accomplished in the evening, but on Tuesday, I hit the wall around 2:00 in the afternoon and went home.  I struggled to stay awake driving home, and had The Boy drive me to dinner because I was hungry but couldn't do anything about it.  I fell asleep in the car coming and going, and could hardly drag myself to bed.

Once I had my pajamas on and was IN bed, however, I couldn't go to sleep.  My brain was racing in circles and wouldn't let me relax.  Maybe I should have had The Boy drive me around for a while, like we used to do with The Girl to get her to sleep.  Hmmmmm...  I hadn't thought of that before.  I'll have to file that one away to try some other day.

But after all that, today I feel pretty good, and I feel ready to get back into physical activity.

My running has gone all to heck, so I expect I'll have to walk the Mini Marathon.  It is what it is.  I'll just have to adjust my expectations once again.  One of these years I WILL get all my training in.

But not THIS year.  Oh well.  You do the best you can with what you've got, and this year, I ain't got much!

I'm Sick and Tired of...

...being sick and tired!

Last week, all I wanted to do after coming home was curl up in a ball and veg out, so I did.  Friday, I sneezed several times.  Saturday, I woke up with a sore throat and thought, "Oh, boy.  Here we go."  Sunday, more of the same, with coughing fits.  Oh, how I love sinus infections!

NOT. 

Monday, I went to the doctor and she prescribed antibiotics.  YAY!  I filled the script, went home, coughed a lot, and crashed.  Tuesday, I remained crashed and coughing.  Yesterday, I worked, coughed a lot, went home, coughed some more, and crashed.

Today, I worked, came home, and crashed, but not as hard.  And not as much coughing, but its power and persistence still takes me by surprise.  I've been able to put away some of the clean laundry. 

SOME of it. 

Everything else on my list looks like too much effort.  UGH.

The good news is I'm getting better.  I'm also getting antsy.  I want to DO something, but I don't have the oomph to do much, and if I do too much, I know I'll just be sick longer.

And my training program looks less and less possible as time slips away and I lie here and do NOTHING.  But I know training is no good if I'm not well enough.  If I have to, I'll just WALK the half marathon.  I've done it before.  But I don't want to!

Patience, patience, patience. 

But it's so HARD.

Mental Strength?

"I constantly remind myself that resting takes confidence.  Anyone can train like a mad man, but to embrace rest and to allow all the hard training to come out takes mental strength." - Ryan Hall

Well, this week, I must be really mentally strong!  Monday morning I ran 2 miles, and I could have been running in a sea of mud - just slogging along.  I hadn't slept enough, so I was tired and "hungry" all day and ate too much.

Tuesday I cross-trained - Pilates and aerobics.  I did some laundry.  Nothing spectacular.

Wednesday, I should have run again, but I made the executive decision to switch to the other alarm and stayed in bed another hour and a half - HEAVEN!  I didn't go for a walk at lunchtime.  I had a headache.  Meh.  When I got home, I went straight upstairs to bed.  I didn't go to sleep right away, but I sat and read a magazine.  No laundry.  No housework of any kind.  I just vegged out for a couple of hours then went to sleep.  Such decadence!!!

Yesterday, I got up early and ran three miles.  Oh.  My.  Gosh.  It was easy.  It flowed.  I kept thinking, "I'm going too fast.  I have to slow down."  When I got home and checked my splits, I was right.  The second mile was a minute and five seconds faster than the first mile.  The third mile was thirty-two seconds faster than the second mile.

And yes, I was faster than my target training pace for the week.

Oops.

But for the first time in a month, running was effortless.  I'd been feeling as if I were running uphill in all directions, but yesterday, going uphill was easy, and there was the sweet tug of gravity on the downhill side.

This morning I cross-trained, didn't walk at noon, and vegged out again after getting home.  Oh, the mental strength I exhibited!

The plan for the morning is six to eight miles.

We'll see how that works out tomorrow.