Between the hiking and running this week, we met our goals! Wahoo! That is a great feeling! I may have fudged a tiny bit on the very last mile by about 1/4 of a mile, but I’m going to call it a success. Next week we are planning to run a 3,3,5,7 week, upping our long run by one more. We can do this! Gigi already feels like moving on up to nine miles, but I don’t think we are quite there, yet. I did get a kind reminder that I need to start practicing on-run nutrition, though. That’s something to think about…
{The location of my street side accident showed no evidence of the prior day’s abuse! Plus scenes from a concert.}
After my exciting run the other day I made a doctors appointment to discuss my legitimate concerns about not being able to hold my pee. My doctor did all the tests she could and came up with no infections at all, which was a great relief, then she prescribed my first-ever ‘you have to potentially take this for the rest of your life’ medication. I cried a little because that means I am getting old. A common issue among people with major weightloss is that your fat ends up supporting your organs, and when you lose the fat your organs lose their support, feel the gravitational pull and go with the flow. When I am running or hiking, this means that all of my organs are literally bouncing on my unprepared bladder, stressing it to the point of incontinence. The good news is that I’m not a lost cause. First, I don’t pee on the regular like a lot of women. Apparently, many women, post-childbirth, leak when they walk, run, jump, sneeze, cough, laugh, roll over in the middle of the night, blink- whatever. We often have leakage but somehow I escaped that misery and I was sorry to learn that so many people have to deal with that! I also learned that I can start doing kegals like crazy and that might help things, too. So when you pull up next to me at a red light next time and I have a weird look on my face, know it’s now because I’m holding a kegal for the duration of the light. Lol!
I knew getting old was coming and assumed that I would gracefully accept my bill as it came due, but some of these things are not nearly as minor as I would have thought they’d be. Glasses suck, peeing all the time is life altering and even though my back hurts there’s nothing wrong with it except that it’s 42 years old! Get meh cane!
I don’t even know where this all came from. I’ve always been a maker, but the last few years of raising children and working has taken its toll and I’ve not been the maker I once was. I used to have a soap business, I used to make paper out of junk mail plus preschool paper scraps to sell, I made wreaths, floral swags, cards, canned fruits and vegetables, made jam, candles, quilts, beer, clothes, gift tags, books- if it involved making stuff on the cheap you could count me in! Gardening was a passion of mine but more than anything I was just never still and always had several projects going at a time. Parenting refocused me entirely and teaching absorbed the cruft of remaining creativity…
Until this summer. I sat here for a few weeks in that recovery daze that one has after spending 180 days with 25, 8-year-olds, but then I almost had a feeling of anger. I’ve redirected that into a passionate feeling, now, but initially I was mad that I was bored. Irritated that Hulu and Netflix had nothing new of interest for me. Agitated that a car accident halted so many of our summer plans. Annoyed that running and writing were all that I had in front of me for the next month. Jealous of my 20 year old self who was never bored because she could do whatever she wanted when she wanted. Then I looked around and realized I was bored because Gigi was busy reading or drawing, Jude was immersed in a world of imaginative Lego building or was reading Harry Potter, while Bradley was composing, writing and drawing. I was the only one not engaged with something so I went on Pinterest and found something to do. Only boring people get bored, as the saying goes, and I’m determined to not be boring! I came across some charming dioramas and decided that making them is my new thing and I’m enchanted. Obsessed. Collecting sticks, moss and lichen like a fiend and then retreating to my laboratory with my finds, during every spare second, to glue on some moss or sculpt a house or paint a toadstool or simply admire. They’re totally silly, but my four year old comes out when I look at them and she gets lost in that place, in that story. I literally stand in wonder and just look, switching favorites over and over and agreeing with myself that I love the wooded ones best, filled with moss and sticks. They make me happy to the ridiculous degree, so, for now, what’s wrong with that, I ask? At this point, they’re all unfinished but I’m continuing to roll forward and am making more. I have a theater in process right now and absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with them all. Time will tell! 🙂