sugarleg

Feet not touching the ground!

I can’t remember where I heard it first, but apparently it takes 21 days to form a habit. This nugget of pop-psych-science is most often used in conjunction with encouraging the formation of positive habits mind you, not so much of the go-out-and-have-a-21-day-bender variety. One click of the Google and you will find countless links on how to use these three weeks to eat better, exercise more, sleep soundly, save money… the list of good-doing habits is endless. I tend to believe in this theory, even if I do fall off the wagon now and again, I know that if I can gut it out through 21 days I will likely come out calmer, healthier, and happier on the other side. In the case of the Running and Writing Challenge I imposed upon myself, I needed the additional nine days to really get it: I love to run and I am learning to love opening myself up creatively by writing.

This past Saturday, December 5th to be exact, was the day of my half marathon, the North Face Endurance Challenge. It marked the end of the 30 days of training and preparation, but more importantly the beginning of a new habit. I am sheepish to admit it still, but I feel like I might have finally made writing that habit. I looked back at the first post and I wrote, “And if I hear one more time that I should be/need to/why aren’t you writing and offer some b.s. excuse, well then, I might not have learned anything in 2009.” Well listen up 2009, you stubborn bitch, I learned!

Ironically, this has been the hardest post to write and it feels clunky. I hate saying goodbye, yet I relish change, so I am going to refer you to this highly abridged and completely awkward list below as I figure out how to take the training wheels off of my new habit.

Some stuff I learned:

…that carbo loading works for me.

…that I can make people laugh hard.

…that I am confident, not intimidating.

…that bodies respond to exercise with both joy and pain, and that both are equally important. I found my joy in telling stories, and how to make a change to make the pain go away. Even if it means rest.

…that I can climb my way over a hill and a metaphor.

…that focused commitment gets results, except when we are not honoring our values. I am committed to always paying attention to my values.

…that cheeseburgers are THE BEST recovery food.

…that I cry almost once a day. And that the tears or choke-up is almost always followed by a huge smile.

…and that I can make people tear-up too and feel emotional, but in the good way. See above.

…that hiking hills and running down them makes me feel like a kid and reminds me of my flying dreams.

…that caffeine is seductive and charming, and now, needs to go away.

…that I need to get my foot re-checked. Ow.

…that people, MY people, all of YOU are beautiful, special, insightful, brave, supportive, complex, witty, warm, silly, funny, inspiring and most of all, filled with love. Thank you for letting me share bits of your lives through my writing and how I have been able to learn from you and your choices and circumstances and challenges. Thank you for every kind word, every “thumbs up” on a photo or a post, every hug both real and cyber, especially every thought you just sent out to me the old fashioned way, through your heart. No kind thought is unnoticed.

I think it no coincidence that the last song I heard on the radio before I made my way to the start line (and yes, I burst into tears, duh) was “All You Need Is Love” by The Beatles. Sing it out loud tonight and know I am singing loud and proud with you. And then maybe sing it for the next 21 days, just to see what happens.

Love, Love, Love.
Love, Love, Love.
Love, Love, Love.

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.

It’s easy.

Nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.

It’s easy.

All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.

All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.

Nothing you can know that isn’t known.
Nothing you can see that isn’t shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.

It’s easy.

All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.

All you need is love (All together, now!)
All you need is love. (Everybody!)
All you need is love, love.

Love is all you need (love is all you need)
(love is all you need) (love is all you need)
(love is all you need) Yesterday (love is all you need)
(love is all you need) (love is all you need)

Yee-hai!

Oh yeah!

love is all you need, love is all you need,love is all you need, love is all you need, oh yeah oh hell yea! love is all you need love is all you need love is all you need.

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Pile of goodies for the morning. Inhaler, Aleve (!), Cliff gel shots, bib and timing chip, iPod, map, water belt, foam roller, and of course, the scotch is holding down the fort for later.

My prep for the race tomorrow has been decidedly domestic, just like I like it on a Friday night. I did the carbo load (I scarfed probably about 1/3 of a pound of pasta with kuri squash, spinach, garlic, red chile flakes, olive oil, parm and a squeeze of lemon at the end, try it, it is delicious) and drank a ton of water with some electrolytes tablets too. I got all the laundry going, fed and loved on the dogs and then started cleaning, since I won’t have time tomorrow and Sunday is reserved for total rest. I only need to do the bathroom and the kitchen floor, and call me crazy, but I am going to deal with it tomorrow. I am pooped, which I am hoping translates to sleep. Or at least some.

I received several really great cheerleader emails and txts and phone calls and I am pysched! The weather will be cold, but I will not feel it. Kind of like how I hope I don’t feel my knee.

Thank you family and friends, you are the tailwind. Updates tomorrow.

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I picked up my race bib and packet of goodies from The North Face store today. Lucky number 1128! (Or something.) I just like that it starts with an 11.

Here are some of my thoughts and concerns as the race is now less than 48 hours away:

• I am very tired. I have not been sleeping enough/well.

• My left knee… should I even mention that it hurts when I walk but that I can get into a stride when I am running that I don’t feel it? Except when I stop?

• The weather is and will be beautiful.

• Beautiful weather is giving me allergies. Allergies give me asthma. I never should have cancelled the appointment with the allergy doc last month and then not rescheduled.

• I am excited.

• I am nervous.

• I have nothing to wear on Saturday night. NO, really. Today, I bought my perfume that ran out in October instead of a new dress (that needed to be on sale and perfect) because I need to smell like me. I miss my smell. Now I smell goooooood.

• I have a cheering section at the finish line!

• How far should I run tonight?

• Ewww, I have to get some Gu packs. A necessary evil.

• Yay, that means I get to go to the Sports Basement on the way home.

• iPod or no iPod for this kind of race?

• I totally got my new lamp timer to work! It’s light when I come home now.

• Hydrate.

• Smile.

This is going to be fun.

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To get to my front door, you must climb 52 steps up from the street. 52 steps is approximately three and a half flights of stairs in your average building stairwell. When I found the place, I thought, this could suck, but the kitchen is new and they take dogs. Steps it would have to be.

My friends Heather and Robbie in Santa Cruz have even more steps to their front door. I think they are in the high 70 range and the staircase twists and turns through the redwoods, but also has a peculiar quality to it that makes you feel as if you are climbing an escalator in reverse. That sucker is long. Oh, and it must be mentioned that they have three kids, all of whom have learned to navigate those treads like mini Billy goats since the time they were learning to walk.

When you live at the top of such an ascent you become very adept at carrying every item you procured along the way of your day, all at the same time. It is critical to become your own highly organized porter, counterbalancing your goods from computer bags to mail to babies and children, dogs on leashes and yes, always, leaving a free hand for your keys. It is very important to be able to unlock and open the door while still clinging to all the packages/small humans/canines and then have one drop point only (This is why women were the “gatherers.” We carry a lot of shit.) Plus, no one ever likes retrieve a forgotten parcel in the car at the bottom of the stairs. After time, the climbing does not even phase you, and in fact, you become quite proud when you have completed a considerably strenuous trip without dropping a thing. I know this because Heather and I have boasted, oh I mean commiserated, about stair carrying/climbing achievements.

This past spring, after a few very dark winter months for me, I heard from my dear old friend Ceci. She called to say hi and tell me that she was going to be in California in a few weeks as she was on a Warmer Winter Climate Tour, having started in the fall in California, then made her way to Florida and stopped in between over the miles and months. Ceci and I have the awesome ability to always pick up right where we left off, and immediately get to the present and feel happy and comfortable and get right to the important stuff, which is to laugh. She is one of my laughing friends. We share a silliness, and now, a long history, so we are never at a loss to giggle it up. We are also realists, and curious intellectually and spiritually, and are both pretty intense. We like our opinions, but love a good conversation with interesting people. So to hear that I was going to get some Ceci time, I was overjoyed and knew her visit was going to give me some much needed old friend love and laughs and move me out of the rut. We started making plans for her to stay with me for a couple nights, a good old fashioned slumber party.

Then I remembered the steps. Goddammittohell, the steps. Part of the reason Ceci was on her Warmer Winter Climate Tour is because she has MS. And the cold in her little Colorado town, not to mention the nine months of snow, ice, mud and again COLD, aggravates her body in a way that can be totally avoided by merely getting out of there. That and, she was trying out her new wheelchair. The paralysis that showed up in her legs over the years finally made it too hard to get around without one, so she had one made and decided to take it on the road to learn how to use it and teach herself how to look at it as a way to stay involved in her very full life as opposed to an impediment to it. However, my 52 steps were going to put up a huge fight against the groovy new chair, so a bit deflated, I described the situation and told her to think about it. We could maybe just meet for lunch (sucky, not long enough), or stay at a hotel (too expensive for me, sucky) or what. What could we do?

When she called me back a few days later she had a solution. “Dude, can you piggy back me?” Um, am I not the Queen Sherpa of Edison Avenue? Hell yes, I could piggy back her, and I’d deal with all the luggage, the chair etc. She proudly told me she was in incredible shape and quite slim, so not to worry about the weight. So it was settled, she would come and stay for two nights, and I would piggy back her up and down, and we’d get our much needed laugh and visit time.

Here’s the thing about piggy backing your dear friend up your 52 steps: that bitch makes you laugh. And laughter is the kryptonite of muscle strength. She had all the logistics down, where and how to set up the chair, what to place in which spot, which bag to bring and then finally, exactly how to get her securely piggyed-on to me. Anything I’d say is an understatement to how impressed I was at her organizational prowess except this: she knew exactly how to take care of herself even though I was about to be a big part of that. That was the very thing that put me at ease and gave me complete confidence that I could safely carry her up and down the stairs. Once I stopped laughing of course.

We had a wonderful weekend together, cooked some great food, told old and new stories, watched movies, called old friends and just laughed. When I transported her back down the steps for the last time and she hit the road, I turned to go back up to the casita. I looked up that long, long flight and thought that it was Ceci who climbed these steps, not me. It may have been my legs doing the physical labor, but it was her gracious trust in me that allowed her to climb them. I know that a cure is coming for her and for many of my friends also afflicted. And I know it because she carried my heart that day.

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There’s a very famous scene at the end of “It’s A Wonderful Life” where George Bailey busts into his house elated, excited, almost frantic, and certainly overjoyed. He’s a disheveled mess, lip bleeding, wet from the snow, out of breath, but a with grin and an energy that make him feel no pain or cold. He’s looking for his wife Mary to finally tell her how much he loves her, loves their family and that he is spiritually revitalized. She has news of her own to share, that being, that in his and their family’s time of greatest need, all of their friends are on their way to shower him with love and gratitude and little bits of money to make up the amount needed that was stolen from them by Mr. Potter. When George and Mary lay eyes on each other to share their collective great news, their passion explodes off the screen, nearly knocking the kids dangling off him to the ground and makes us both grateful for our loved ones and realize we deserve only that kind of a soulmate in our lives. I can barely write this without tearing up…

The other thing about “It’s A Wonderful Life” is really how somber of a film it is. The first time I saw it was my senior year of high school, in my English class over a week’s time right before the Christmas Break. (As a former high school English teacher, I can tell you how enticing it is to go the movie route right before a vacation, and that it is a-okay in many circumstances to do this.) I remember being perplexed at the choice of film for an English class, but as I got sucked in, I started cursing my parents for never having introduced this movie to me sooner. However, this made perfect sense considering how unsentimental my father is particularly, and how he is an Expert on All Things, Especially Things Deemed Drivel Without Ever Seeing, so I was denied until age 18. Funny enough, its dark tone and emotional complexity is exactly why he would love it. And that is exactly why I love it too.

I am one of the millions who wrestle with the emotional intensity of the holiday season, and often end up getting choked out. I think I have come to realize that because I am so sensitive a person, I cannot bear the lack of reconciliation between the well-intentioned, exorbitant expectations for human goodness and the inevitable failure to meet them. They are only unmet because they are unattainable to begin with. Personally, I have had too many of these failures happen right smack in the middle of the season. My poor heart can’t take it.

My friends, Ol Mossback George Bailey and his lovely wife Mary, they do help me though. Last night, when I got home from my birthday dinner with family and my best friend, I was feeling that familiar tightening in my chest, like the Grinch’s heart, only in reverse. I had a huge lump in my throat as I looked around and was alone. Just alone. So I thought about George Bailey and how he feels so distraught and alone he considers suicide as a way to ease his pain, until he sees the impact his life has had on so many others. I decided to be Mary and call in the cavalry, so I opened my computer and looked at all my birthday greetings, thought about all the voicemails and phone calls, and IM chats and home-cooked meals and even a few hugs, and I realized that even though I wish all of you could have been walking through my door in person, I am truly blessed by the people I have in my life and I guess I had something to do with that. I think things can and will get better, even during the holiday season. They certainly do for George Bailey. Mary just has to stand by with his lasso.

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