Chelsea wins, we gotta eat now.

This past Saturday was the UEFA Champions League Final, which for all the uninitiated is the Super Bowl of European club soccer.  The game was between an English Premiere League team, the Chelsea Football Club of London and the German Bundesliga team, Bayern Munich. Friends and regular readers know about my soccer love, so it should come as no surprise that I found myself in a packed sports bar at 10:45AM, Guinness in hand, making friends with an imposing gentleman named Matt who was wearing a Mastodon* tee shirt.

Matt and I did some bonding over the brilliant drama of soccer,  and within 10 minutes I found out he was 39 years old;  married (wife not a soccer fan, was out doing beauty treatments, which I endorsed having just done the same the week before); he played in college, somewhere in Ohio (?);  and he knew the entire staff at the bar. I’m very good at making friends. We claimed a respectable standing-room-only spot while I waited for my real-life friend to txt his arrival, putting Matt on notice he’d likely have to go out and retrieve him from the blight of the line. Matt was gracious and said not to worry, and yes, went out and got my friend when the txt came. We love Matt.

The three of us watched the game to much delight, reveled in the good natured and multi-culti crowd, drank several pints and Matt even quaffed a few shots of Cazadores all the while. We were also being well taken care of by a very hard working and patient waitress. She and I, being some of the few gals among the sausage fest, exchanged knowing glances every time she walked past us. We got each other.

After half time the crowd rejiggered and we ended up with two fellows in front of us that, while not totally invading our spot, were filling that luxurious extra 14 inches of breathing room we had before. They were not tall, so we could see right over them without issue. However, they could not get into the rhythm with our waitress and kept backing into me whenever she needed to pass, instead of letting her go behind them as was the more natural flow of the space. At some point, she was passing and looked at me as he backed into me with that knowing eye, and I gently put my hand on his mid back to stop him from stepping on me and to let her pass. The next time she came through she looked at me before her stride arrived, then at him, then back at me so I put my hand gently onto his mid back and said to him, “Head’s up, waitress coming through.” She nodded a thank you to me and passed on by with a giant tray of drinks.

The next thing I hear is the height challenged chap (wearing those foreshortening, baggy, saggy knicker-pants) say to me very tersely, “Don’t touch me!” punctuated with a shoulder jerk forward away from me and a bonus sneer.

Motherhood was on my mind a lot more this year.  Not only is my job centered on raising awareness about the plight kids and families face in our country, but I am no longer a spring chicken with lots of time for courtship and pregnancy and baby-having.  For the past year, I have really tried to let it sink in that I will probably not be a mom.  Part of the problem is that for the whole other 40 years of my life, I had just assumed I would be, so reconciling this in the last 12 months all of the sudden got real tender this weekend.

My life is full and beautiful and blessed.  I am grateful every day for my good health and family and friends and colleagues and dogs and hummingbirds and the beach and ice cream and electricity and sunsets and laughter and Ugg boots and clean sheets and glitter and soccer and bacon and airplanes and maps and step-kids and wine and music and bikinis and mountains and tissues which I need right now…

Happy Mother’s Day to all a y’all and please, please be kind to each other, ladies. It really does take a village.

My mom and me, at three months.

I am only behind for Saturday and Sunday and I will catch my self right back up, because as we know, it only takes 21 days to form a new habit and I have 25 left in marvelous May.  And see?  I have some proof that I started.  When brain cells perk back up, I will actually explain this project.  Must now sleep.  Make that, sleep now.

Got some help from Shiny Toy Guns.  I love every single solitary note/lyric/beat/ass-shake of this song.  It makes me want to, you know… run.

Two of my three signature colors!

The longer days are a delight and a curse; there is more time to get things done, and yet more things to do.  This includes funtimes and silliness, not just work, and knee rehab, and jury duty, and intentionally working on being a generally good human.  But I’ll take the longer days’ challenge to have more time to do more meaningful things, even if it is making  labels for the file folders in my office.  Also, because label makers rule.

Knee rehab seems to being going well: did two gentle two-mile runs this week without pain.  My asthmatic lungs are a different story, but I will add some jump roping to get those suckers reminded of how that oxygen/gas exchange is supposed to work when the heart rate rises.  Early sunrise jump roping is actually quite enjoyable.

Got some new non-running shoes from the elves at Zappos.  How happy are Zappos boxes?! Almost as happy as these new kicks.

The camera work still stands up today as being sharp and innovative and exciting.  I cannot look out one window and into another without thinking of “Rear Window.”  As I have been playing with my iPhone camera more and more, and using Instagram to help me tweak the images, also known as editing (makes me sounds like I know what I am doing, but really, uh, no) and my participation the past month in the online photo class called Two Takes with the Shutter Sisters, well, I have been having a lot of “Rear Window” moments.  (See two of those at the end of the post.)

As is the cosmic glitter of new and re-discovery getting stuck to your brain, “Rear Window” of course sparkled up yesterday in my news feeds in the form of this genius time lapse of the courtyard scenes in under three minutes.  It is absolutely gorgeous and creative and inspiring and totally f’ing cool.  Please check it out and if you have not seen the real film, Netflix that bad boy.  I bet it’s in a lot of queues about now.

From NYTimes "Kathy Martin (9) competing in the 3,000 meters in January at the Armory in Manhattan."

I am a sports fan.  Sure there are games too complicated even for me to devote the time to understanding (cricket? huh?), but for the most part, I love the very simple metaphor of the heroic journey every athlete and team member takes every time they put on their uniform, cross it to the center, stick the landing, return the volley, get barreled, sack the QB, cross the finish first, throw a strike, slam the dunk, dive no splash, deliver the knockout, dig that spike, dig down deeper when defeated and practice, practice, practice, practice and most of all believe.  Sport at its most basic forces a situation where the rules are set, the clocks are ticking, skill counts and winning is at stake.  These are of course symbolic wins and losses; it is not meant to be a life or death situation, but instead mimic the intensity of one by competition with others and the self.  (I cannot get lost in the topic of business or celebrity of sports today.  Go read a story about the entire NBA if you want that.)

The most compelling sports stories are those in which the athlete or team has overcome the incredible odds against them to achieve a personal best or an outright win.  The current story I am inspired by is Kathy Martin, a 60 year old masters runner, competing in track and field events and holding world records for her age bracket that are completely astonishing.  For a convalescing runner like me, there could not be a more delightful true athlete story than Kathy Martin’s.

Read it.  Then tell me sports don’t have heart.

(PS, if you don’t have a subscription to the NYTimes and you have used up your free articles on this the 3rd day of the month, email me.  I might still have a discount coupon code for you.  Get the Times people.  It’s good for your brain.)

I have only really alluded to the knee injury that has had me laid up for the past three months in a few quips, a sort of passive aggressive comment here or there to somehow report that’s why I haven’t been writing and posting as much. Like most passive aggression, it’s at its worst cowardly and its best very annoying. I’ve been both afraid to acknowledge how much it’s negatively affected my psyche and totally irritated with myself that I can’t make it better with two weeks of rest.

I am happy to write these words: I have started to heal my knee. This weekend, I had my first treatment with my new acupuncturist, who worked me over in a 90 minute first session, so much so I was pretty well knocked out all day Sunday. And I have the awesome cupping welts to prove it.

This injury has sucked so many distasteful things, but mostly, not running has made me realize how much I love it and need it and want it back in my life. Injury and ill health happens to every single one of us, but it’s not until you realize the value of your good health, whatever that range is for you, that you make sure you do everything in your power to maintain it. So if that means I am going to have to suffer some more discomfort and expense on the way back to my running shoes, I’m all in. I want it back and I’m coming to get it.

That and bikini season. Never said I wasn’t vain.

Yes, I’m one in 175 million and I don’t care what all the odds say that I have a better chance of dying from flesh eating bacteria than winning this lottery, the five minute daydreams here and there about what I would do with all that money bring me such sparkles of joy, play I say, play!!

Besides the practical, responsible financial planning and legal protections I’d obviously do first, oh man, get me to Barneys ASAP.

You can see that I still insist on wearing my florescent yellow running (stolen from the cycling department) vest.  Safety is sexy.  But what you should really be looking at is my excellent composition <ahem>.  How cool does this look with the tilt-shift blur???  I love it.

And this one is just neato.   Even though it is so California Spanish Mission, it really makes me miss New Mexico.  And the civics geek in me loves that it is the town, I mean, city hall.