Diary

I had two veins of thought today during our run: one was an asthma play-by-play and the other was about gratitude…
Over the past few weeks, I’ve come to realize that I can’t run as much as I want with my new schedule. I get home so late every day that I’m home just in time for dinner, then it’s family time, then the kids are in bed and I want to chill. I don’t have a lot of time to myself, or at least, time I feel okay about selfishly using to run. Anyhow, I’ve decided that my answer is to run further distances fewer times per week.
I’ve found that running in the fall definitely comes with it’s own set of challenges. Mostly, the air is soupy and thick with smoke, moisture and particulates, making it hard to breathe. I’ve gone on a few runs lately where I’ve forgotten to use my inhaler and paid the price! I get about a mile into my run and it becomes harder and harder to catch a complete breath. I can breathe on the surface, but I can’t get air deeper into my lungs. After a block or so like that, my lungs start to burn like crazy, my right shoulder and back starts to cramp up, followed by my rib cage seizing up and then I usually start to freak out. I snark nastily at Bradley, at this point, and then, as I calm down, I feel like a jerk and cry, usually from the relief of the asthma attack releasing it’s hold as much as anything. Sometimes when I have an asthma attack I almost feel like I’m having a heart attack- it’s kind of freaky.
The good news is that as long as I use my inhaler, I can run and run for ages without any problems. I’m realizing how important the inhaler is, how vital it is and how absolutely grateful I am to have such marvelous medicine that enables me to run through all the seasons.

Today we perfectly timed our run. The storm clouds were rolling in and we decided that we had better get going or it was going to be very wet! We managed to run 3.5 miles, and it wasn’t until the last 1/3 of a mile that the clouds unzipped and let loose all over us. It was a gorgeous run!
While on our run today, we ran past an elderly lady ‘s house. We’ve watched her house for years, curious first, as her holiday lights stayed up until May, then watching to make sure she was ok. Eventually her holiday lights came down, cars came and went, the lawn was tended… Then this summer her house seemed quiet, still, and this weekend her house was put on the market. We were saddened as we saw someone, most likely her daughter, standing outside her house, sorting this and that into boxes and moving them into a moving truck. I was saddened for their family’s journey into that phase, the one where your parents can’t live alone. I was also saddened as I considered the steps people follow as the elderly move further away from their independence. The triggers that set things into motion- a stroke, a seizure or something that makes children take notice and move their parents elsewhere.
Then I thought of an older neighbor of ours who, tragically, had a stroke and laid in her kitchen for a length of time (a few days) before she was found and taken to the hospital. I wondered what I would think of if I were in that position, to keep from panicking… I realized that I couldn’t readily remember things that are important; the stories about me, my greatest moments. When I want to distract myself, I go to fantasy, to what-ifs, to books I want to write and to my imagination, but what I truly love in life is my family. I realized I should have practiced moments from my life that I can call upon in moments where I need calm and focus. I started considering my bests:
*The moment Bradley walked into my apartment for the first time and I saw his lightning bolt of a smile, then engaged him in hearty talk about Noah and the covenant of the rainbow.
*On the day of our wedding we found ourselves, alone, at the venue, early in the morning. We held hands and walked around the park, stood quietly on the bridge and remarked that this intimate moment would be the most memorable and special one of the day. True.
*When each of my children were born, my husband sang a song and ferried her, then him, around the room, allowing me to plant the first kiss on each cheek of my babies.
The list goes on, but as I thought of my memories I realized how very rich I am to have such a lovely partner and wonderful life to share with him. Every best, beautiful memory is connected to my husband; my life was good before him and became amazing as soon as he walked into my apartment.
I stopped my husband, at this point in the run, and hugged him tight. I let him know how grateful I am for his companionship and we walked for a moment while I shared my thinking. We continued on and finished our run, arriving home very wet, quite happy and our gratitude for our life, health and happiness resolute.

Halloween season is here and I have worn this costume twice this weekend. And no Miss Piggy is ever complete without her beloved Kermit the Frog. So Dreamy… We got to dress up once, to my school for the carnival, last night, and tonight we got to wear our costumes again for a Halloween party at a friend’s house. Halloween parties have been thin throughout my lifetime, and suddenly we are attending and hosting them with alarming regularity! It’s been really nice. We’ve been seeking community and friends for a long time and I’m starting to feel a sense of belonging right here, in my own neighborhood. It feels so very good. Isn’t it funny how just knowing one another’s names, exchanging the rare pleasantly and having a meet up once or twice a year among neighbors can shift that sense of self that comes from belonging to something greater than just your immediate family? 🙂
***
I read an article recently that freaked me out about artificial sweeteners. Essentially, eating the fake sugars can lead to horrible diseases. Once again, it all comes down to consuming food in moderation, in this case, sugar.
I started my diet coke habit back when I started dieting years and years ago. My thinking was that a soda pop crutch was ok. I needed a treat, and at that time, I was in love with diet root beer. I could drink a root beer at night and feel like I was getting a real treat; thus was born my soda habit. I vacillated between a once a day drinker to a person who drank nothing but diet soda- If it didn’t come in a bottle or can, I didn’t drink it. I dialed that way back two years ago when I got horrified at my consumption and the environmental impact of driving my soda all over the country and went to the soda stream, then, last year, I went back to drinking soda just once a day. Three weeks ago I decided to wean myself off of diet sugars altogether, with the exception of one packet of truvia in my iced tea every day. The first few days were mildly challenging, but I was surprised at how quickly I got used to it and started drinking tea, water, and I have even had a few beers. I am surprised that, again, I was lead by my own unfounded fear of how I would react to giving up artificial sweeteners, especially soda pop, as opposed to how difficult it hasn’t been. For sweetness now, I’ve gotten really into grapes. They are amazing right now: crisp, sweet and juicy! I’ve been downing them like crazy, poor Bradley is amazed at how many he’s buying! We both agree, however, if grapes do the trick and keep me away from the artificial sweeteners, they are well worth the extra trip to the store.

I’m a Bobcat now. I’m a feral, crazy, vicious animal! All because I switched schools this year. I used to be a Husky, but now that I’m at my new school, I’m a wild thing! 🙂 Today the bobcats had their fun run. I was rather impressed with my superstar second graders: they exceeded their goal of $750 and raised almost 1000 dollars for our PTSA! We celebrated that with an extra free choice time yesterday and a fun run today.

Whenever there is an opportunity to work out while on the clock, I always jump at it. So this morning, I woke up, got dressed, and packed the clothes I would need for a solid run into my go bag and prepared myself to run for real at the fun run.
The first roadblock happened on the way down the hill away from my house, still in my car. I realize I forgot my inhaler in my bathroom. I put my brave face on until I got into my classroom, read the schedule and realized that I was going to be outside for nearly two hours. I either had to run for the entirety of the run, or I had to run for a portion of the time and then stand around outside in the cold air, and I had failed to pack my running jacket. I was going to be standing around in my humongous PTSA t-shirt, running pants and my dress jacket on the track, or shivering. Classy. But still, I thought, no problem. I can do this.
During my morning break I whined to Bradley via text. Ever my superhero, he sprang into action and brought me my inhaler and two jackets. Two old jackets. Two jackets that hang in my closet because I loved them when I was a beginning runner and I’m sentimental about them, but they are huge. Coupled with my huge sail of a Tshirt (there was a size mixup) and I felt heavily laden with clothing. Again, my superhero sprang into action, went to Target and bought me a brand-new running top! He wished me a happy early birthday and took off to deliver Gigi’s helmet before gym class. Our hero…
It certainly changed my outlook.
The run itself was very fun. Our awesome PE teacher set up a bunch of stations around the track. While mileage was encouraged, the idea was simply to stay active for the whole time. Kids could run obstacle courses, do ball kicks and a bunch of other stuff, and enter their data into a drawing for prizes. It was really neat. I ran almost the whole time. I forgot my inhaler in my classroom and had to run back to get it, but after that got taken care of, I ended up running about 4.5 miles, or 17 laps. I had one little girl who stuck it out with me for well over a mile. I was so impressed with her tenacity and willingness to take it slow, rather than burning out in a sprint. I kept turning in surprise that she was still there with me every time I turned around. What a sweetheart!
It was so much fun to run and play and sweat with all of my students. I had several kids who I didn’t know who ran with me for a bit and made conversation with me. I felt very included in my new, school community, today, and just plain good. Today started out a little bit hard but ended up just totally excellent. Thank you, Bobcats!

Did you look outside today? If you’re from the Seattle area, you know that we had an unseasonably warm day today. In fact, as we were headed down the street in our turtle necks, scarves and vests on this lovely 70 degree day, we started to kind of feel silly… But how else are you supposed to dress for an autumnal harvest festival among friends???
But I digress. I’m giving a holla because today I did something that has been looming menacingly in front of me ever since I became a runner: I ran to St. Edward Park and back. It wasn’t a terribly far distance- just under 5 miles- but the hills terrify me. St. Edward Park is located in a fairly hilly area and, before I started considering exercise a thing in my life, I just wondered how all those crazy people were climbing up and down those hills. I would watch people riding their bikes down to the park and I would silently warn them in my head of the job in front of them: if you go down, you have to come back up… So the distance is not so hard, in my mind, it was the altitude that had scared me all those years ago.
I needn’t have worried. It was a lovely run. I promised myself that I only had to run there- I could walk back. When I reached our agree upon stop point, I took my heart rate and found out I was at 178 BPM, so I took a little walking break to calm it down, but I managed to run, pretty much, all the way home, too. It was a really proud accomplishment for me. Next time I want to run down to the water’s edge too! It felt wonderful to beat that big, scary challenge, and even better to go a different route, to see different things, the colors of autumn… What a great run!

To top things off, when I checked in on my WiiFit today, I found out that at 202 I am NO LONGER OBESE!!!!. I’m simply ‘overweight’ now! I’ve been clinically obese for 20 years. I never expected to not be obese- the nastiest, grossest word ever: obese. I hate that word. It’s like ‘panties’ or ‘moist’- just one of those words that gives you the hoovery-cooveries. Anyways, it is incredibly freeing to be out of the obese category. I burst into tears, as I am wont to do, and spent a moment celebrating in shock.
“Hey, I’m Tamara. Guess what, I’m no longer obese.”
Weird.
In a good way. 🙂

I got home again today and got another surprise on the scale:

Uh-huh! That would be 201.8!
So close I can almost feel it! To top it off, I’m now less than ten pounds heavier than my husband! Why that matters, I don’t know, but it feels important. All that stuff about weighing less than the man, and I’ve never. It doesn’t matter. Really it doesn’t. But it does. Does that make any sense? I don’t think I’ve ever been in a relationship where I’ve been the smaller one and I’m kind of looking forward to seeing what that is like. It doesn’t matter, like I said, but I’m still looking forward to that moment when I pass him on the scale!

I decided to go for a run to keep up the momentum- plus it was beautiful out- and I rushed out as soon as I got home, but I forgot to use my inhaler before I went! I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal… Talk about a tough run! The thick, autumnal air with my lack of consistent exercise and no puffies (it’s what I call my inhaler) made for a horror of a time. Breathing was hard so my heart started beating like mad. My chest constricted down and I just started feeling intense. In my panic, I snarked at Bradley, making him kiss me on the cheek and take off running, leaving me in the dust. I finished the run, but when I got home I couldn’t get my body back under control- slower breathing and heartrate were slow in coming. It felt like it was my first time again. That said, I was happy to have done it, and I learned how important consistency is. I was also happy to get a kiss of forgiveness when I walked through the door. 🙂
We will try again tomorrow, with puffies, and hopefully the weather will be as lovely and sunny as today and I will be able to enjoy my run much more.

It’s been busy! Oh my goodness! I kept sitting down to write over the past few weeks and found that all I was writing were lists of tasks that I had to complete or a litany of complaints that I felt just served to inject negativity into the world. No one needs to read about my bad day, right? So I took a break from writing…
And went to Disneyland again!

Yup. We used our passes one last time for my daughter’s birthday when Bradley found a screaming deal online. It was a great trip after spending August and September in a vortex of insanity. Getting going in September is difficult any year, add moving schools and grades and adding new curriculum and my head was spinning out of control. I also managed to lose a few pounds through September, so my hormones went bonkers when I had to process them from the fat loss. With the onset of PMS, I was an imbalanced nightmare (fat stores lots of toxins and, when morbidly obese like I was at 340 pounds, it also stores lots of hormones which kept me from having cycles at all. Now I process all of the hormones as I get smaller and smaller with each PMS cycle and it ain’t pretty!)
Disneyland was a great break!

When we are Disneyland, of course there is a lot of walking. I banked between 15,000-22,000 steps per day and was on my feet for about 12 hours a day. It was in the mid to upper 80’s while we were there, so food didn’t sound so good. We generally eat a light breakfast then subsist on granola bars, fruit leather, water, cheese sticks and veggie chik nuggets until afternoon when we eat a later lunch, then usually get something back at the hotel for dinner. We move a lot, eat lots of fiber, solid protein and the result is…

I left 1.5 pounds in Disneyland! I have two weeks to meet my goal of 199.9 by my birthday on October 29th! Two weeks to lose a little over two pounds! If there has ever been a call for the weightloss warrior in me, this is it! I’ll walk tonight and start running again tomorrow. I’m determined to get there or, at least, as close as possible!

We ran a 5K today. Collectively. We, the Lj’s, got up super early, tied on our sneakers and headed out the door to run with a mob of my fellow school district supporters, kids and adults. This race is my favorite. It is so fun to run along, and because it’s a-there-and-back race, you see EVERYONE you know, either coming or going! It’s like a high school reunion, except you don’t stop and have long conversations because you’re running! I ran with current students, former students, current colleagues, former colleagues, Bradley, Guinevere and Jude. It was an amazingly social event. It was surprisingly emotional, too, as I saw my friends (colleagues, former students and families) from my old school. As I hugged them hello, I got very emotional and started crying. It was like breathing, again, to see them and feel their love. I loved running that race. 🙂
Performance-wise, it was not good. I think my finish time was a little over 40 minutes. It was difficult to look at that number, but I decided to be a mom-runner this time round and ran, first, with just Jude, and later with Jude and a current student. Welp, they got tired and there was a lot of walking during that 5K. It was good for me to have my student with Jude. I really worked on being patient and coaching the boys along rather than hustling them along like I usually do with Jude. Instead, they picked the intervals of when they would walk and run, my goal being to make this race fun with my son. I’m not sure I made it nearly as fun as the cheerleaders did, though. Jude really turned it on high gear when running past all the foxy ladies!
I love this picture of me crossing the finish line, running to Bradley. It was a nice moment that was captured by a friend… I only wish that lady wasn’t right there in front of me! And can you tell how giant Bradley and I are?! We look freakishly tall. I had no idea! LOL!

A non-scale victory happened recently. Bradley heard about the Brooks Running Outlet store clearance event that is near our house so we went to check it out. We ended up with a case of crowd anxiety and a t-shirt that Bradley bought without trying it on, assuming it would fit. He put it on and it looked super girly on him, super tight. I said, “It might fit me.” Because it did look like it might fit me… But I was dubious, so we put it on Gigi. It fit her like a nightgown. Again, I thought that it might fit me, so I snatched it off the child’s body and put it on my own. Guess who got a new shirt that was too small for her husband? That has never happened. I’ve always been bigger than him. Unbelievable.

All of this is nice stuff. It’s good to have a few victories. This week was a killer. Oh. My. Goodness.

I’m proud of this weekend. I’ve been afraid of running, as I mentioned. Running indoors too much coddled me and made me soft with my hill-free running in front of the television. On Saturday we decided to kick that bad thinking pattern to the curb and I picked a 3.2 mile route that is one giant loop. There would be no option of stopping when we came by the house. This was a real run, and wanna know what? I ran my first mile in 10:19. The others were slower, but I was pleased to see I could still pull a faster mile. Later that day we also took the kids and dog for a walk. All-in-all it was a super day!
The next day, we invited a few friends to the track for a run, and I got to run with my friend, Esther, who I am running the half marathon in June. She was full of fire on Sunday morning, so she was better than television and the 2.5 we did before my groin started to pull few by faster than I would have thought!
It was a great weekend for both exercise and celebrations- yep! That’s a few times now that I’ve seen myself under 204! The low end of my range is 203!!! Woot!

I included this because sometimes I forget how blue my eyes are! This was my ‘on my way home, baby!’ Text from Friday. 🙂

This morning I promised myself that I would, indeed, run outside today. There are two reasons: one is that I miss my husband and want him all to myself to thirty minutes without being interrupted. The second is because I’ve become an outdoor scaredy cat runner. I’m scared of the terrain all of the sudden. I get scared that I’ll get tired and not be able to make it home or something? It’s totally silly, whatever the reason, and I was determined to break the cycle of waiting until it’s dark to get my workout in and running on the treadmill in front of the TV.

The moment I pulled into the driveway was the same moment that the clouds decided to tear open and let their mighty contents fall on my neighborhood; it was a deluge. I felt defeated and pleased at the same time- Bradley wouldn’t want to go- it was raining! But I was wrong…

In fact, my whole family was waiting downstairs, sneakers on, laces tied and running gear ready! They were all ready for a run! Bradley started talking to me right away about how I used to relish running in the rain, how I used to prefer it to dry running because it cooled me down, and before I could utter a single complaint, my dearest cheerleader sparked some important memories of rain running…
So out I went with all of them, into the rain, to run a little over 1.5 miles. Gigi breezed through the whole run, Bradley and I were fine, but it was my little Jude, chugging along, that made me feel so proud. He has suddenly decided he’s an Lj runner, too, and has started running several miles per week, he joined cross country and is determined to run miles. It’s pretty cool to see.
And as much as I wanted my husband to myself, it was pretty special to be out running with my husband, son and daughter. I always wanted to be a part of a running couple. I never thought I’d be part of a running family. I’m so glad I promised myself I’d run a mile outside this afternoon!

My new all-time low is 203.4, as of Friday. I’m so excited to be three pounds away from 200 now!! Onederland is totally in my sights now and I’m determined to get there before I see my 41st birthday on October 29th. It’s funny how my birthday has become such a marker to me, though it only makes sense that the day I was born be the day that I measure my success. I should be getting better every year and making effort to maintain some level of health. I suppose it’s a very good thing to take stock once a year, make a goal and see if I can meet it.
To support this goal, I’m still doing a lot of low impact cardio. Like I wrote last week, I’ve been running and using the elliptical for at least thirty minutes a night, often closer to an hour, at a heartrate between 130-150. I’ve also been fastidious about hitting 10,000 steps per day, and so far I’m pleased with my progress! Since school’s beginning, I’ve gone from 210 to 203.
Last week I walked and ran about 12 miles and met my 10,000 steps goal daily. I love working out on my treadmill and find that it is so low impact that I can run and run and run, and before I know it, 45 minutes have gone by and it feels like 20. That is a very good feeling!