couch to 5K progress, and a rant

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Summer

First let me say that even though I’m not running 5K on a regular basis yet, the reasons are more related to laziness than capability. I’m technically on Week 7 Day 2 of Couch to 5K, but I’ve got no problem running the three miles any time. I can’t promise you’d I’d be able to do it within an episode of The Office, but I’m getting there.

And I’m getting there without shoes by the way, which brings me to my small and petty rant:

You know how you feel when people judge homebirth, having never read a single study on infant mortality in countries that homebirth as a regular practice? Or how much it boils your brain when you mention that you’re using garlic oil to treat your kids’ ear aches and someone shakes their head and tells you that you could turn your kid deaf by not giving them antibiotics? Or that raised hackles sensation when you hear for the eleventy MILLIONTH time that your child will not be a functioning adult if you homeschool because OMG how will they ever be socilaized?

It’s like that when someone attacks me for running barefoot.

Runners have been running races for a lot longer than running shoes have been on the market. In fact, the “new technology” that comprises the modern running shoe was invented in the 70′s and if you’re a statistics fan (I’m not) you might want to check into the number of running related injuries per year before the advent of running shoes vs. after.

I don’t care about that, and I don’t care to convince you that my way is how the human body was engineered to function, just as it’s not my calling in life to convince a pregnant woman that her body was built to carry and birth a child and that her breasts were engineered by nature to feed that child. You do what you do, I’ll do what I do….

But fuckin a, I have to say I’m growing very, very weary of people aggressively reprimanding me for running barefoot. You can’t win. When I started running it was “oh running is too high impact you’ll kill your knees!” Recently runners everywhere were vindicated when the New York Times article came out last month blowing that theory out of the water. Now I’m running with no knee impact and I’m getting “you can’t run without heel support, you’ll tear up your legs!” from RUNNERS.

SHUT UP ALREADY. Go put your knee brace and your shoes and socks on and do your quad stretches, I’ve got a run to do. I won’t laugh at your knee replacement if you won’t laugh at my Jiffy Feet.

there are more of us than you think

Posted on September 20, 2009 by Summer

This past spring I had what you’d call an ‘episode’. You might remember it as the Age of Obsessive Gardening, when I did some things like this:

and this:

and supervised the construction of this:

pond

You can’t see how huge the plants are from the early spring gardening because when I wasn’t sick anymore, I no longer had the ~~urge~~ compulsion to spend 6 hours a day in the yard. The garden flourished, we ate herbs and vegetables from it sporadically, weeds grew, it got hot, and I never get out the camera. And so on. Trust me when I say it was spectacular, and wholly unsatisfying. I did it because I HAD to. I know no other way to explain it. I suppose it was a grudging nod to Cognitive Behavior Therapy, although at the time my narrow focus was on staying outside and not inside, on wearing my body completely out, and on steering clear of anyone that might get hurt from being in my orbit. I think sometimes that I literally shoot out nastiness from my pores.

The point is that after some months of stability, I feel myself slipping ever so slightly into a spiral, and I’ve acquired a new ~~obsession~~ focus. This time at least it’s fun for the kids.

I give you:

Electric Jeep Love

from Left to Right:
bartered Barbie Sun Jammer that has been sitting in our yard for two years-
red wrangler picked up for 15$ off craigslist
Peg Gaucho (also from CL) that needed a complete rebuild of the switches which utilized ball point pen springs (Mr Luft FTW on that idea!) and fine grain sandpaper. The battery in it was DOA, but we salvaged a battery from an air compressor and switched out the wiring harness so that it would still work with the original charger. The people who were getting rid of it didn’t want to buy the $70 Peg Perego battery. Tsk Tsk.

Oh, did you think I was done? AHAHAHA.

Gaucho #2 came with a free booster and about 6 various plastic trucks for Jack, plus a light saber for Avery. That fortuitous trip also netted us a large collection of yard sale Monster Jam trucks which are the cause of great joy and great sorrow in our house. We’ve had to confiscate the monster jam collection for 24 hours and will revisit the concept of sharing tomorrow. I also picked up a 75 cent stainless steel Darth Vader thermos for Jack, and when we got home we returned the Batman thermos I just bought him and pocketed $16, which paid for Saturday’s gas and yard sale scores.

That’s quite a collection, eh? I should be happy with that, right? That’s a full load of rebuild and paint projects, no? oh, come on. you know me….

Someone tried to John Deere up this Hummer and they did not use Fusion Paint. Obviously not familiar with www.modifiedpowerwheels.com and their multiple threads on proper paint adhesion.

To get this one, I rolled right up in someone’s yard and asked for it. I told you, I’m unstoppable. I think the wheels are salvageable and it’s possible I can use the motors on the red jeep to make it a 4WD!

I don’t have a picture of the cinderella pontiac solstice that’s on the porch right now waiting dissection. It’s dead, but since it was part of a recall that I just found out about, I was able to have the company ship out a retrofit kit that included a new battery. Score!

Over the weekend while I was out trolling for electric cars in trash piles (it happens!) I happened upon a pressure washer beside a guy’s trash can. I asked him about it & he gave it to me. Then when I ran into him at a yard sale Saturday (what? it’s a small town) he asked me if I’d tried it out yet; when I told him I didn’t have the right connection yet, he searched his garage for the thing, drove it over here and dropped it off with Michael. Everything in my yard was pressure washed today. I might start pressure washing my kids. I wish I could pressure wash my brain.

I’ve been so busy educating myself about how to mod a power wheels car that I have just had no time at all to do my couch to 5 K workouts! Tonight I practiced mindful walking away from the computer and ended up on the treadmill for a 2.5 mile barefoot run, and at the end of it I was like “oh wait! I’m not having an episode! I just need to work out more!”.

I wish it were that simple.

For now, my keeping it simple involves: modding power wheels cars, running barefoot, and making an appointment to see the prescription writer guy to discuss a new combination of radical brain altering chemicals that might give my family back their mother sometime soon.

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Let's Talk About My Husband for a Minute

Posted on September 8, 2009 by Summer

My husband is more powerful and spiritual than the world will ever know. He’s a sleeper agent for Good. He’s the ultimate zen master, a person who has no idea the ripple effect they create just by existing on this earth.

I have been with my husband for almost nine years, and have loved him every second of those nine years. When I sift through the moments that define our relationship, one in particular stands out in a way that makes it almost physically painful for me to consider the prospect that one day I might get old and forget it.

First let me say that I am a panicker. The worse is planes. What I experience is a complete hijack of my limbic system, a nameless faceless fucking panic. I get on the plane anyway. Then I get in the seat. Then I’m just there, panicking. It’s hard to describe the scope of what I feel, other than to say it encompasses everything about me and inside me, all consuming vacuum where nothing else exists. I don’t use mantras or other CBT tricks to handle it. There’s no place to be but on that fucking plane, and my mind goes white about the time the deathtrap/thing is barreling down the runway and then I’m just on.the.plane.

I don’t know why I said all that about planes.

Anyway, the day that Jack was born there was chaos everywhere.

I was, pissed, sleep deprived, and in labor. I’d spent hours on the phone and in discussion with Michael about how we could be somewhere beside where we were: faced with a repeat c section by a doctor with whom I had a serious fucking personal problem. Maybe I’d go home and have the baby unassisted. Was there a hospital within driving distance other than the one I was in that “allowed” VBAC? How long could I labor in the park near the hospital and if I went in pushing would they deliver the baby without surgery? And on and on and on.

We decided not to leave. I won’t list the reasons because they don’t matter. It just is what we decided. And then cruelly, we had to wait for several hours. Like my friend Tom Petty said, the waiting is the hardest part.

I had plenty of time to work myself into a tizzy, is what I’m saying. Predictably, the plane thing started happening and I could not face even the next second. If there had been restraints on the bed I would have flailed and bucked against them. My head whipped back and forth. My eyes were wild. My WHOLE BEING contended that there was no possible way I could continue on like this. Not like, I have to get up and move around. But more like THIS CANNOT CONTINUE. The feeling was unbearable, a literal breaking point. It felt as if my mind was going to splinter.

What struck me today thinking about this moment was that the last time I felt such primal and unbearable panic I was strapped to an operating table about to deliver Avery, and 30 seconds after I started to flail around and tell them basically “this cannot continue, something has to change RIGHT NOW” my heart stopped.

It must have been excruciating for Michael to watch. He had his own thing going on, given our last birth experience. And here I am literally jumping out of my skin and there is nothing he can do.

Except he did. When his hands touched my head it was as if the world went white. The image I get when I go back to that moment is of a person sucking the poison out of a snake bite. It was as if he pulled all the noise and panic and fear out of my head into a vacuum. There was no sound; just thumbs rubbing circles on my temple, smoothing my forehead out, two fingers on my third eye and sweeping outward. I’ve called it a Jedi mind meld in past entries and that’s funny but the joke belies the magnitude of that simple gesture.

I wish I could say I was peace and light all the way through the surgery, but this is real life and moments don’t last. I was numb and tired and scared. But it was like the plane-after that extraordinary touch from Michael, there was nowhere else to be but right there. I don’t know if I would have simply died from panic (can you die from panic?) but I look back on that moment and I feel very strongly these two things:

I owe my life to my husband.
The force is strong within him.

adventures in being where I am

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Summer

In the last three weeks, I’ve slept more than 4 hours only twice. Holy shit but sleep deprivation is the best birth control ever, even better than Vibram FiveFingers. OK wait. Having a teenager is the best birth control ever. But I digress.

Sleep deprivation isn’t sidelining me from life, necessarily but it makes everything I do really, really hard.I get these little reminders from my google calendar: laundry, 9:00. Morning routine, 8:30 (it has a list of tasks broken down by minute. make tea, 4 minutes. wash face, 3 minutes) quiet time, 1:30.

What happens to me is that I get the reminder, and I know I need to do laundry, but I just can’t figure out how to get in there and face the hamper that has to be hauled to the laundry room that has recently been half rearranged and is in shambles. Laundry turns into a Project after that, and I’m not equipped for a Project. Lucklily this is a first world problem and we as a household could go several weeks without doing laundry (and have!).

Here’s what’s different for me right now. This is where I am. This is what my life looks like. A few weeks ago, my life looked organized and I rocked the housekeeping and the child rearing. That was really cool and rewarding and empowering. This week is a struggle.

It’s possible that I’m cycling back toward mania, which in my case is less productive and more impossibly bitchy and paralyzed with bitchiness and lack of focus. It’ll be OK; I’ll see my guy, and we’ll talk about it, and figure things out.

In the meantime, we white knuckle through some shit. No one WANTS to have to white knuckle through some shit, but sometimes that’s how it is. Life is just life.

well, shit

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Summer

I stand by my Vibram Love, but I think it’s only fair to mention that I’m hurt again. The consensus on the running forum where I’m trying to get diagnosed (thanks, shitty health care system! I can’t see a sports doctor!) is that it’s an injury I sustained while running with shoes (which is absolutely the case, and why I bought the Vibrams) and has not healed. That, or my form is still off. The hardcore barefooters contend that even VFF’s can allow you to run with bad form.

So what I need is a barefoot friendly sports doc who charges peanuts for an exam, or a barefoot runner who will analyze my running stride.

In the meantime, I’m sidelined.

Here’s a photo of the inflammation, for reference. I don’t match with any of the common knee injury symptoms (location, mostly) that I see online. Does this look familiar to any of you?

knee inflammation

Analogies: I haz dem.

Posted on August 23, 2009 by Summer

An excerpt from tonight’s dinner conversation:

This is not a capitalist house. we are not dog eat dog in this house. It’s not every man for himself; we are a collective, we each put in and we each take out. Right now the resources you’re using do not balance out with the work you’re putting in, and that’s putting a strain on all of us. There will always be periods of imbalance, but there cannot be sustained drain in one direction.

As you may have guessed, TeenHer is toeing the line between “I’m a rebellious girl with ambition and drive” and “I’m king of the world! FUCK IT!” and we’re all of us in the family suffering for it. The littles mainly because I’m such a RAGING BITCH right now that I can’t even function from lack of sleep and just general dissatisfaction with how this is all working out, and every time they defy me or climb on the counter or like tonight, REFUSE TO GO TO BED I get a picture in my mind of me, grey haired and walking with a cane, opening the door at 3 a.m. to find them drunk on the porch making out with a high school teacher (that’s not what happened with TeenHer by the way) and then I just want to pull a “hey I’m going out for a pack of smokes” (or in my case, Doritos, donuts and a coke which is my new go-to stress meal and let me tell you there have been quite a lot of donuts in this house this last few weeks. I’m not proud.) and get the fuck out of Dodge.

So. Bear with me please while I work to restore balance and harmony to my person, because it’s sure as fuck isn’t happening in my house.

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Viva La Vibram

Posted on August 21, 2009 by Summer

Yesterday literally as I was lacing up my running shoes, my husband walked in holding the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen: the package with my new (hopefully correctly sized) Vibram FF’s. If I may say so myself, they are bad-ass. They’re the coolest blue, with just enough lime green accent to be sassy.

vibram fivefingers sprint

Oh wait, do you care how well they work?

Are you going to shake your head and tell me:

1) that you could never wear something so ugly or
2) that having something between your toes would drive you insane or
3) that I’m going to be sorry one day when I destroy my knees and ankles

Well. I’ll just let google help you with that last one. Google “running hurts knees” and “new york times magazine”.
Go ahead, I’ll wait right here.

Ok. Now, my lifelong hate for all things toe separating is well documented. Besides the fact that Vibrams are god-awful ugly, they were never even on my radar because just the sight of them made me want to shield my toes, maybe even tape my toes together with duct tape.

I don’t know what turned me. Maybe it was that perceived authority that the personal trainer at the gym lords over a person. I was at one of my three free sessions with the 12 year old trainer and she was wearing hers.

“omg your shoes!” I said.
“May I take a photo of those? I didn’t think I’d ever see anyone in real life wearing them. My friend Neil posts a link to them every time I complain about my hiking shoes”

She showed admirable restraint, did not throw me on the floor and whip my ass, and suggested that I try them on at the local outfitter.

“I can’t stand stuff between my toes”, I said. “Really. I panic when something is between my toes. I can’t even get a pedicure because of those little foam torture devices they use to keep polish from rubbing off”

She said “me too. these are different. go try some on”

And I did, and the rest is history, sort of.

Remind me to tell you about my experience with the local outdoor store whose owner, when I questioned the fit, suggested that I was “overthinking the fit” and that she’d never been trained by Vibram to instruct people to seat their heels in the shoe first, and that there is no difference between women’s and men’s styles. (for the record, mens vs womens are different in width, and sizing is different- for instance men’s 40 is 10 inches long while women’s 40 is 9.5 inches.) Suffice to say that my 15 year old daughter, who wears a women’s size 10.5 and is 6 inches taller than me, is the proud owner of a pair of men’s size 40 Vibram Sprints that were refused return. She loves them. Oh wait, should I tell you that I wear a women’s size 8, or 38 Eu?

Note: here’s a very comprehensive fit guide to each model Vibram FF shoe.

Whatever, I was telling you about the performance. I’m trying to find a fun sport that has very little equipment, something I can just step out the door and just DO. I thought it was hiking, but then I came home to Florida. You see where this is going? At 37, I decided to try my hand at running, even though I’ve got “trick knees” and “chronic knee pain” and Rheumatoid Arthritis. That last one isn’t in quotes because it’s true.

I bought new running shoes because my hand me down New Balance must have been too old without enough support. My knees were KILLING me after just a couple 60 second runs. I was vindicated. It’s true- I’m just too beat up to do all that high impact cardio. But I was determined. I read up on form and decided to train through the pain, to condition my body to do the new sport.

Somewhere along the way I stumbled on barefoot running. What? My knees? Hurt because my shoes have too much cushion? The world is round?

I got the Vibrams. I gave it a shot.

I’m not looking back.

I’m on week 5 of the couch to 5K program. 2 weeks ago I was instructed to take a break after a run left me incapacitated and sporting huge lumps of inflammation under my kneecaps that were so tender to the touch that I screamed when touching them. Yesterday I ran almost the whole 5K. I might have been about 1/4 mile short. I did it in my Vibram Sprints (right out of the box, by the way, first time wear. what? no break in period? the world is round?), did a quick gym circuit, came home and did some yoga in my Vibrams.

I keep looking down at my knees for the lumps. I keep jabbing the spot, trying to dig into the tenderness. It just isn’t there.

Believe the hype. Take off your shoes.

More From Sickerthanothers

Folio Spanks Ruis. Again.

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Summer

At least we have the Folio Weekly:

Other coverage from our local paper

Here are two of my favorite editorials on the subject. I’m not sure why we haven’t heard from Coleman Langshaw lately- whether he’s been censored, or whether his support for our cause has waned, or other stories fill his schedule. No matter what, I’m grateful and hopeful when I read editorials like these.

What a shame that we have taken a step backward for our students, a leap backwards for our entire community. It’s not just outrageous, it’s embarrassing.

But no, deliberate ignorance has no place for common sense, nor does it care that it is wrong, inappropriate and out of step with the world today.

Remember this guy? He’s the new principal of the middle school, which will hopefully within this school year be forced to allow a GSA to form and meet. When it happens, I’m sending him a cake that reads “in your face! -love, the constitution”.

Now onto the saddest part of the evening, when I ran into (heart flutter!) my 7th grade English teacher and love of my junior high life, now an administrator of some kind, at the school board meeting tonight. He called me by name (heart flutter!), made up an excuse to walk away, and sat in front of us at the meeting (voyer heart flutter!).

Then. After the meeting (which, incidentally, was not well attended by parents. there was no outrage), he walked up and said “well said!” to the one person who spoke out publicly (he handed out spiral bound BOOKS of reasons why “gay clubs” are dangerous for students!) against the GSA, a psychologist WHO WORKS FOR THE SCHOOL BOARD and who believes that allowing the GSA will give him “more business than he needs”.

“Well said”, Jim? (that’s right. I call him Jim. Even though his hair is pure white now I can’t bring myself to call him mister.) Really? You wrote out a reading list for me 3 years after I left your school! You mandated my reading Fahrenheit 451 and Clockwork Orange! You pulled a bully off me in the 8th grade when I got punched in the face for…wait for it….being DIFFERENT.

Ah, what political aspirations can do to a man.

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questions. i have them.

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Summer

A couple of days ago I received a message from someone I don’t know, in that fashion that some people use sometimes to communicate with people they feel connected to but not quite enough that they can directly communicate: A facebook status message.

I’m old; I prefer the gold standard email, or text message.

Anyway, the message was clear: someone was defending someone else from judgmental remarks I made here in this blog and on my facebook status. (because isn’t that how we present ourselves to the world? through our facebook status?)

She made me think; why do I consider my form of judgment more valid than what I see around me? Because I’m right? I think that’s part of it for sure.

The fact is that there will never come a day when I can sit down with the Nassau County Superintendent and discuss why he doesn’t believe in dinosaurs, and why he thinks my daughter should be allowed some of the rights of her fellow high schoolers, but not all of them. And I’ll never have coffee with Dennis Todd to discuss his contention that homosexuality is depraved and dangerous and GSA clubs lead to mental illness in teens. I don’t sit down with a white supremacist to discuss race relations. Why should I? We’ll never come together on any of this, and when the depth of someone’s reasoning for an oppressive belief system is “god said so”, we’re looking at a pretty short coffee date.

I feel a little like, hasn’t this ground been covered? Why should I respect your POV when it is so clearly wrong, and damages humanity as a whole?

I feel very conflicted. My ideas are well formed and established. I’m not ever going to change my mind about reproductive rights, or capitalism, or health care reform, or racism. At the same time I find myself in a position to decide where tolerance ends and respect begins- whether there is a difference between tolerance and acceptance, and whether I’m able to look past a set of values so completely different from my own and create a relationship with someone whose core beliefs I find fundamentally wrong.

I don’t know. It makes me wonder how my family tolerates being in the same room with us ever.

I would like to update that after the incident the other night, we spent an evening with TeenHer’s boyfriend, during which I discovered that I do still like the kid, that he’s very curious and inquisitive in a way that makes me happy and hopeful, and that the guy really does seem to care about my daughter. I’m interested to see where this takes them.

wishing and hoping

Posted on August 16, 2009 by Summer

I was lying beside my son tonight listening to him suckle on a bottle of milk(I know! It’s a wonder his teeth don’t just fall right out of his head ) and I was shocked to discover myself completely overcome with longing to breastfeed him. The urge, no the NEED to nurse him… A bone chilling soul crushing chest pounding physical ache to nurse my child overtook me, stole my breath and sent tears coursing down my cheeks.

Sometimes the sensations of life are just so powerful I wonder how we survive it all.

We’re co-sleeping with Jack now, finally after two years he’s been by his choice a solo sleeper. Still he’s not sure what to make of this other person in his bed. He doesn’t so much snuggle into me as wedge himself horizontally, feet on the wall, head buried in my stomach. When he sleep cycles, he’ll pick his head up off the bed and hurl it down onto the mattress again in rhythm the same way I did my feet as a child, and how I rock side to side now as I fall asleep. When Jack was younger he’d get on all fours and rock front to back, so hard that we had to disassemble his crib because he was banging a wound into his forehead. For months he slept in a portable crib that was secured in place by bungee cords, and surrounded on three sides with padding to keep his head from hitting the wall through the net sides of the bed.

Now, it’s just his head, turned sideways for sleep. Up. Whack/bounce whack/bounce whack/bounce.
There may come a time when this bothers me so much that I abandon the co-sleeping project but for now I just place my palm on his head, ruffle his hair and murmur to him as he slips back under.

Sicker Than Others

Just Another Potty Mouthed Mommy Blog

couch to 5K progress, and a rant

there are more of us than you think

More From Sickerthanothers

Let's Talk About My Husband for a Minute

adventures in being where I am

well, shit

Analogies: I haz dem.

More From Sickerthanothers

Viva La Vibram

More From Sickerthanothers

Folio Spanks Ruis. Again.

More From Sickerthanothers

questions. i have them.

wishing and hoping