sugarleg

Sunrise at the casita.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I was actually born on a Tuesday too. And this is my 39th birthday, kind of momentous chronologically, since it is the last year I will spend in my 30′s.

Like most people, I spend time reflecting and looking forward when my birthday comes. I like that my birthday is the first day of the last month of the year. Not only is the chronology tidy, but there is an added symbolism for me to personally transition into my new year during the last month and then fully embrace it when The New Year arrives in January. I like benchmarks, and milestones, and milemarkers, however, I get easily transfixed by them and then find myself giving them more meaning than just an acknowledgment of their mere existence. On a road trip for instance, I have to be very careful to look away from the milemarkers or exit numbers, because I will start to anticipate them and do crude calculations about the time and distance traveled and how much farther there is to go. It can be terrorizing. Especially in Colorado where those little buggers are relentless. Now apply the metaphor to the daily slog of life and you can relate to my incessant inner voices.

I felt a little blue tonight, maybe left over from yesterday and definitely feeling anxious about the impending holidays, so I rebelled and did not run. I should have, but found some excellent excuses about being cold and not wanting to change clothes, and how I needed to make my lunch for tomorrow and then I got transfixed by “Intervention” on A&E. Lesson learned: always run.

If there is one thing I know for sure in the waning hours of being 38, is that the sun will rise, calendars will be turned, miles will pass on by, and even as much as I’d like to press fast forward from December 2nd to January 2nd, it will be Tuesday, December 1, 2009, my 39th birthday. And I like my birthday. A real lot.

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I might be feeling the girl power post coming on… but I need a shower first.

Hit a speed bump today: I am not feeling so hot. It started yesterday in the early evening, in the middle of my ill-advised, ass-dragging, feeble attempt at a training run when there was no way I’d win the race against the darkness. I also went out last night for about three hours even as I was on the decline because I had had the plans for weeks and was seeing friends I have not seen in over a month. There are many reasons why I find excuses to stay home and this year the decision was mostly made for me, so I knew, even in the face of headachey sluggishness, I had to go. I have to admit, I am a total wimp when it comes to feeling ill. Mostly, I just want to lay there and not move, and do some whining, and be mortally offended at the germs who have made me feel less than perfect. So for me, it was HUGE that I motivated.

I picked up a friend and we met the rest of the gang at their bar. Immediately it was wonderful to be with my friends, catching up, hearing about new jobs and new cities, feeling proud of their accomplishments and being complimented on mine and encouraged about the race. I of course explained I was slightly under the weather, so a Hot Toddy was procured for me, which I nursed for the next two hours, but which did feel like just the right medicine. I also downed about three glasses of water to balance it all out.

This group is highly traveled and multi-lingual with the three core friends having met in Spain when they were in college on exchange. Much talk turned to everyone’s latest travels, the sharing of “When I was in New Zealand/Melbourne/Tokyo/Lima/Puerto Vallarta/New York/Miami/Buenos Aires…” let alone the talk of planning of trips for the first quarter of 2010. I love hearing about all the places and sights and food and hotels and adventures and general wackiness. I am not well-traveled, definitely not by their passport stamps, so I was not surprised when I started to hear that sad voice remind me that I have never been to most of the places they travel to regularly, and the miss-out syndrome felt worse than my sneaky head cold. I pitiful wave washed over me… if only I had not gone straight to work right out of college, if only ten years had not passed since the one and only time I was in England, if only I had not gotten married to the wrong one, if only I had bounced back sooner, if only… <sigh>

I got up from those conversations, took a sip of my Toddy, and wiggled in next to my girlfriend who was deeply engaged in some iPhone silliness, so I saw a chance to shake it off and get caught up and giggle with her. A small but extremely meaningful shift, and it totally worked. I was amazed at how she and I just fell into a completely focused conversation about us, and I realized that I was the only one who cared about my travel deficit. At that point, her husband walked in wearing a fake moustache and beard and it didn’t matter if we were sitting on the Great Wall of China or in club in Miami, we lost our minds laughing and then proceeded to pass the fake hair around for all to try on and pose for pictures.

My friends love me for me, not for my frequent flier miles. Our genuine fondness for each other, our shared love of good clean fun, our laughter, our hugs, this replaced my training run for the day. When I am hitting mile 10 next week, possibly in pain and tired as hell, I will think of these faces to put some gas in my tank.

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Rainbow from the front porch.

Been catching up to my posts, and now it is 4:30 and I have not run today. It is blustery as all hell, but I am going to get my ass up the hill… like right now. Save this spot. Enjoy the rainbow. I just snapped it. Good karma.

Update: I left the house at 4:45 and by the time I got the trail it was getting unsafe for me to be out there in the dark. I was pissed off at myself, got a little crampy, and started to feel sluggish all of the sudden. I decided to call it off. I managed to take some deep breaths in the shadow of Mt. Tam.

And here is how dark it was by the time I was almost back home, my headlamp providing the beam on the ped sign. Yeah, it was only 5:45 by then. Oops.

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My nephew out on a Thanksgiving Day walk with his parents.

Like most Thanksgiving gatherings, we set aside time at the dinner table for everyone to go around and say what they are grateful for. It is a beautiful tradition, and I revel in everyone’s acknowledgments of the blessings in their lives. They range from the simple but telling (“I am grateful for ‘Curb Your Enthusiam’!”) from one who needed to laugh in the face of daunting circumstances, to the analytical (“I survived the bear market”), but all are always heartfelt and therefore, very touching. Gratitude is the straightest point to the present moment, and that is where we should strive to be most of the time.

My sister-in-law’s really got me this year. She holds her emotions close, and to see her get a little choked up as she felt thankful for the healthy son they have in their lives for the past 14 months, by explaining her awe and joy at the balance of support and room to grow she has felt by all of us, made my heart bust open even more. I thought she hit the note perfectly with a complete understanding of sharing and giving, and most of all, love.

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*I drafted this on Wednesday night, but cooking, cleaning, and eating prevented me from getting it all done until now! Enjoy.

For many months this year, I was magically receiving the magazine “Yoga Journal.” I suspect my mom signed me up for a subscription, but I still forget to ask her if it was her doing. It has since stopped coming, but there were several articles over those months that stuck with me, foremost being one by yogi and writer Sally Kempton. I do not know much about her other than what I found online, she’s a spiritual guru, has studied all over the world, writes and travels etc., but her voice brought a clarity to many sticky topics for me, the most significant being the issue of commitment.

The article called, “Go Your Own Way” appeared in the June 2009 issue, but was never posted online. I even wrote to YJ asking when the link would be posted, but they said they did not have any idea, and just to check back, sometimes they posted, sometimes they did not. Ironic I thought, how flaky. (Probably has more to do with the deals they have with their writers and editors however, so I calmed down.) I scanned the article directly from the magazine and ended up with a cut and paste PDF version so annoying I blurted numerous disclaimers as I sent it off as an attachment to several friends. On my run tonight, 5.5 good, strong miles and some lunges too, I remembered the article and decided to try again to find it. Lo and behold, it now has a link to Ms. Kempton’s site, but it is an unedited, abridged and inferior version from what appeared in the magazine, it almost feels like a rough draft. (Again, I am assuming this has something to do with contractual constraints.) I still have my funky cut and paste version, so I re-read it, and was happy when it continued to validate my ideas about commitment but was never able to articulate. I felt proud that I have a very healthy relationship to the act of committing, which as explored by Ms. Kempton also means knowing when a commitment has got us stuck and that it is time to move onward.

Life could be organized by the commitments we make. From small things like training for a half marathon, all the way to successfully completing med school, each requires a pledge to meet the benchmarks along the way and make adjustments as challenges arrive to achieve the goal. It seems like most of the time, we manage our commitments with little angst, however, when life does inevitably kick us in the ass, it almost always has to do with a choice we have made to commit and then facing the process that it is time to change course. Ms. Kempton argues that commitments are, “a prerequisite to depth,” because sustained focus is necessary to “make progress possible” even when you are not feeling the greatest. Raising children, running a business, being married or in a long term relationship, growing spiritually all require commitment. But, there are times when commitment, “can become a safety zone that prevents you from making needed changes. When the life has gone out of a commitment, it can become a life eater, a black hole that sucks your joy, your love, your creativity… Stability (supportive, grounding, depth producing) turns to stagnation (swampy, deadening, sticky).”

Ms. Kempton goes on to explain that facing these blockages with a commitment are both normal and inevitable as everything is cyclical – birth, growth, death. When something starts to feel dead, we should ask questions of ourselves to try to find out if we are just resisting learning a new skill required to go forward on that commitment’s path, or if in fact we are no longer being spiritually fulfilled by that path. For me, knowing when to call it quits is almost more powerful than hunkering down because that is the bigger leap into the unknown. And that leap means we are connecting more deeply to our core values. When we do that, we can identify what Ms. Kempton calls our “meta-commitments” which are based on those core values. Honest and intense “self-inquiry” is the way to find out what they are. (She has a list of questions in the article, let me know if you want a copy.)

I definitely learned the heartbreaking hard way on when to call it quits. Having been with and then married to a person that at the time I did love, but deep down I knew from moment one was not my spiritual partner or intellectual equal, going through a divorce should have been sad and trying, but ultimately set me (and him) free. Based on my own issues, our co-dependency and his severe emotional abuse of me, I resisted and in my mind stay committed to the marriage by trying to get him to see that my values were in a way, better than his. He kept berating and undermining me to the point where I did not feel valuable at all. Unfortunately, I was left so weakened, I had taken leave of the very values I was defending. My case is somewhat more dramatic, because this person was so damaged and abusive, but wow do I get it now and feel more equipped than ever to handle these deeper questions about what I want in my life and where I can take it. Ending the marriage that had become mired in the stagnant swamp allowed me to do that.

Creating this challenge for myself, the running and writing, has been most satisfying, and has empowered me to clarify what I want to commit myself to. I am working it out on the trails and on the page, and look forward to putting it to work in 2010.

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With Thanksgiving two days away, I took a day off training and hunkered down in the kitchen to do some major prep work. Cooking, like running or hiking, takes me completely away by making me totally focused. I notice that my trains of thought are chugging along at the same time I am figuring out the timing on one dish while chopping onions for another. I also wish one of the dogs could suddenly take notes for me as those moments of clarity pop up and my hands are engaged with a knife or some kind of food goo rendering me unable to jot them down. When will they learn that trick? I mean, they can already hug on command. Writing cannot be far behind.

I love to cook. I wish I did it more and with increasing skill and repertoire and for more people. My family is filled with excellent cooks, even an uncle who is a chef. The real cook of love is my grandmother, who although she doesn’t cook anymore, filled our bellies and hearts with the most delicious, beautiful, bountiful meals and did it out of kitchen smaller than the size of most walk-in closets. I have never since seen a cook as effortless as her. It is as if she created every morsel by magic because I never, not once ever saw as much as a bead of sweat when she cooked. Every meal also had multiple dishes, drinks and lunch or dinner meant dessert too. This is one of the first times I have tried to describe it and am struggling. Which was the exact opposite of what I observed in her tiny kitchen.

Sadly, I have not been back East to see her in almost three years and had to cancel a trip last November at the very last second due to a lack of funds. (Oh here comes the sting of tears.) I chose to go to my school reunion in late June as the one trip I took as a vacation this year and the only other trip I took out of state was back in February. Both trips were nailbiters expense wise, and I didn’t relax most of the time I was away as a result. Add this to the fact that pretty much several days a week, I feel awful that I have not been able to get there to see her. I know she won’t necessarily even know it is me, and that will be, to grossly understate it, hard, but I need to see her. I need a hug from my Nanny.

I am happy that when I cook I think about her a lot. I feel like she’s right here with me. And I hope I am putting as much love into my food as she did into hers. That is always the secret ingredient.

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On Saturday night I wore heels to the annual Pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving party (aka PreTT) which became the topic of some conversation. My friends wanted to know, why heels to a fairly mellow house party? Especially to PreTT where we’d be so soused on Whisky Sours, four inch heels become a physical hazard. (They are hard enough to navigate down my 52 steps and on the hills of Sausalito while sober, so there was some cause for concern.) But the real reason, as I suspected, always has to do with my height. Why would a woman of 5’9″ make herself to be over 6′ tall? Doesn’t she know that is, get ready for it… INTIMIDATING???

This is one of those assessments others have told me about me to my face for my entire life. Um, I’d say that is the thing that is actually intimidating. When a word like this gets thrown around to the point it starts to sound like gibberish, I like to rely on good old denotative meanings. Dictionary.com tells me that this verb means to make timid, or to fill with fear. Really? I fill you with fear? I may give off some kind of intensity that people are trying to process, but certainly I am not filling others with actual fear. Cruella DeVil is intimidating, not moi!

I actually think I suffer from the opposite issue which is being too nice, or too accommodating which has caused me much head and heartache in the past. And I can be squirmingly insecure on the inside, but I got my earnest back a few years ago, so that helps turn the volume down on those pesky voices. I was of course thinking about this on my run tonight trying to make some connection about this misperception of me, but I cut it short and the clarity did not arrive yet. Longer run tomorrow perhaps.

Surely my beautiful shoes are not to blame.

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I have a friend who has developed a paralyzing fear of flying.  She lives here and her family is back East, so there are several plane trips a year she has to contend with, not to mention having to do this with a small child.  I don’t remember her phobia being this bad years ago, and she has traveled often all over the world.  So when she told me about her trip home this past summer, describing the doctor approved Xanax-type pills she swallowed before the plane took off, but that she took THREE of them and still never once relaxed the entire six hours, I knew she was really letting her control issues control her.  She tried to explain, “If I don’t stay completely alert and concerned and question every moment that plane is in flight and put all my energy into focusing on the pilots flying that plane, then it will crash and we will all die.”  Upon hearing that one statement from my dear friend, my heart just ached at her stress, and worse, knew that she was likely applying this same process to every part of her life, the only result being an utter lack of control.  And oh boy have I been there too.

Worry and its cousin Anxiety sprouted from the same family tree as that other dictator, Control.  The roots are an entanglement of Fear.  Control tells you this great story about Power and how you too can have some of that drug if only you remain in cahoots with Control.  Control insinuates that you are always right, but the secret is, only if it makes someone else wrong.  Control leaves that part out but shines a light on how wrong everyone else is, even the laws of science and physics and aerodynamics are wrong, just ask my friend who keeps the planes in the sky by using the wiles of Worry and Anxiety.  When that plane touches down, Control says, “I told you so!  Now you have Power.”  But then, the taxi line is 40 minutes long and the weather sucks, and her phone battery died because she didn’t charge it because she was too distracted providing Worry energy to keep the plane aloft.  Power is nowhere to be found in that shivering cab line.  No bother, Control is right there at her side, but not to provide Comfort or Clarity (Control hates those bitches).  Nope, Control introduces her to Blame, and Blame is hot and sexy and intoxicating and seductive, and she takes the hit and off she goes on a bender with Power once again.  How big will the hangover be this time?

I think I have finally realized how little control we have over every single solitary thing… except one.  It is the thing Control doesn’t want you to control, namely ourselves and our behaviors and our actions.  I loved hearing Marianne Williamson describe responsibility this way:  two words, “response” and “ability.”  Our response-ability is the true Power because it completely removes Blame, yet invites Clarity.  The questions become, how am I going to respond to this situation?  What do I need to do to respond appropriately?  I get tripped up still because I can swing too far to the opposite side of throwing blame to instead accepting all of it. There is a happy medium and life willingly provides daily, sometimes hourly challenges to assist us in building those muscles.   Starting by simply paying attention, we will become ripped in response-ability.

That brings me to muscles.  Muscles to run up and down hills.  Muscles that revolt in soreness.  And muscles that grow stronger with a little care and rest.  I think initially we can all relate to our physical being more readily than our emotions and certainly our spirits.  (That takes a helluvan-extra long time and practice and requires vulnerability and risk, and trusting the right teacher, but when we do, we feel invincible!  Yum.)  My actual muscles have taken a beating this time out, and I am in fact worried (!) that I will not meet the four hour race course maximum just 13 days from now.  However, I know that the actual Power is inside my legs, my arms, my abs, my whole body and that is all I am expected to control for this race.  Just me.  No one else.  No airplanes.  No weather.  I am going to leave the flying to the pilots.

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Friday, November 20th marked the halfway point of the writing/running challenge, but there was no Halftime Spectacular, nary a metal encrusted naked boob in sight. It was not however a normal Friday, and therefore I did not get the post written that I had intended. I will edit and re-work for the near future. (Wow, real writers do that!)

It is Saturday morning, actually Day 14, and that post will go up later, but as I am looking over the edge to the second half, doing chores, preparing for my training today and fretting over what to wear tonight when I don’t have anything that inspires me because it is all so old, I am glancing over my shoulder at yesterday. The first half of Friday, I kept getting sacked, over and over again. But then, I made a conscious decision to ask for a little more effort from my front line, and they showed up in a big way. They blocked and tackled and defended me and made some room for me to run.

I am still sore, but I am ready for the 2nd Half.

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