If I could come back as an animal I would certainly be crow. They are intelligent, community oriented, beautiful and they can fly. I am certain no one who knows me is surprised at this. Coyotes, dragonflies and Kermode bear are runners up, in that order.
Starting where I am, progress and using pain as tool for peace.
If you are reading my blogs because of the triathlete training tag, I ask you to endure the first more literary leg of this blog as my transition to my new obsession will come faster and more smoothly than I predict my first actual race transition will be, but then again I might just surprise us all.
I am a typical middle aged bookworm with bulky glasses, more imaginary friends than lifetime peer relationships and a large, low rear center of gravity. I am typically voracious in my book appetites if atypically eclectic in my reading style. Just finished Melissa Anelli’s nonfiction "Harry, A History" at breakfast, and half way through "Hexed" by Kevin Hearne from lunch. I am listening to Jim Butcher’s Dresden files on audio while in the car and am up to book 6. I am rereading (again) "Ghandi an Autobiography" in the bathroom, have Jon Kabat-Zinn on the night stand and C.S. Lewis "The Great Divorce" in my briefcase.
Certain writers are my mainstays, but I will try any printed page for depth and flavor. I have an ice cream like hankering for the spiritual and I am a huge fan of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Pema Chodron, and C.S. Lewis. I can’t get enough of their writings. One of their books is always in play, not only because the written works themselves are immensely readable but also because the author’s human struggle is the muddy garden in which these flowers of enlightenment bloom. Ghandi and Lewis have been with me since childhood and can be blamed for my attempt to guide my life by the principles of Satipatthana and Ahimsa. Pema joined my team when I was struggling to build some new neural pathways post surgery and infection and was given her book "When Things Fall Apart"; she introduced annata, annica and duhka to me as the tools they are in language I understood.
I am not quite a book junkie who will just buy a book for the score, but I do have certain lighter favorite authors like Charles de Lint, Wil Wheaton, James Owen, Jasper Fforde, Karen Armstrong, Ayya Khema and Linda Pastan whose works are now purchased whenever they appear and are devoured on the strength of past positive experience. Then there are the authors like Christopher Moore, Debbie Macomber, Stephen King, David McCullough whose flashes of brilliance in the midst of McMainstream writing will get me to peruse the back cover of their latest and often buy it.
I am making it sound like I choose what I read, but as I look more closely at my overstuffed shelves, I see that all a book really needs to do, is sit attractively on the front table of Changing Hands (my, yes MY, no I don’t own it but it is where I spend all my book money) and bat its attractively colored cover at me, flirt with an intriguing chapter list, or maybe take me out on that first page date, and I am theirs; mind, time and wallet. So many books, so little time, so many stories to live (from the comfort of my armchair with a nice glass of tea in easy reach.) I am the typical book nerd full of sweet and salty treats and disdainful of all that sweaty spandex sports world.
Which is why I am baffled as much by the book I am carrying around constantly as I am at this person stretching across from me in my bedroom mirror. Perhaps it is a a bit of a midlife crisis that starting June 1, 2011 I officially came out as a triathlete wanna be. The book I carry now (all the time!) is by Jayne Williams.
The cover is a very realistic sports in progress photo with too much yellow; it looks more like a healthy diet bar than a tasty tome. Inside the book the author’s writing style would have won my mockery in the days as a professional critic. The funny thing is, I think that would have been Okay with her, maybe more than okay, she would have embraced my mockery and just kept running, swimming, biking and sharing her experience.
If my am very sure she would have been okay, it is because she is teaching me to be okay as well. Her book, "Slow, Fat Triathlete" has become as important to my going forward as Ghandi has been to my getting here. The funny thing is, she says all the things I am used to hearing from my spiritual sensei’s but the meaning is now manifest in the tight stretch of my neck to improve the chance of breathing air instead of water, the fold of my abdomen impeding a new core building yoga pose, the awkward weight and friction of my thighs as I break into a trotting sort of run. I struggle with the very real dailiness of starting where I am in something I don’t have to do, compassion for the non-athlete I am is as much a challenge as the movements. Pain is proof I am pushing to improvement. The challenge today was to be mindful enough of my needs to take the day off training (Yup, Jayne recommends downtime too!) Patience, practice, compassion….easier said than done when the only success is showing up again to the process.
As to the annihilation of ego portion of my life program, that is a whole story in itself. The biggest ego lesson of slow, fat triath training is not the very HUGE one of continuing to show up for something I don’t shine at, the biggest lesson for me has to do with learning the "self" in selflessness.
I want to complete a triathlon, it has been on my bucket list for a few years. But… I don’t need to complete this goal to support myself better. It won’t make the world a better place. It won’t feed anyone, heal anyone, save anyone; make anyone’s life better except maybe me. This is probably the first most selfish thing I have ever done. If I am no more and no less than anyone else, and I would make this kind of effort, utilize these resources, spend this time to help another, is this then my lesson in letting go of ego, I can and should do the same for me?
More daily logs coming tomorrow…for now, me and my deep thoughts are gonna go clean the bathroom and then make a healthy supper and maybe go for a swim, and if the pool bullies are there, I have a plan.
Just keep swimming…
Thank goodness for Dora’s advice. May just have to pop in Nemo tomorrow while at work. The boys I take care of like the movie and that does seem to be my motto these days, "Just keep swimming."
I kept telling myself that tonight, because I sooooo felt like quitting. I was there by myself, and tired and swallowing water trying to get the breathing down and a couple of buff and beered up guys were laughing at me from their chairs by the pool and I just wanted to grab my kick-board and goggles and go to my car and cry.
I want to post something meaningful to somehow convey the highs and lows of the past four days, but just toooooo exhausted today in every way so no meaningful artsy writing, just a sketch of this weeks events .
Besides the twenty-something testosterone bullies at pool side, the pool itself was full of noisy children, with big blow up toys and no concept of space sharing or swim lanes so it was frustrating and inconvenient to do my laps (probably got a couple in just going around the kids). I did however complete my assignment, barely.
I have been on the verge of tears off and on all week. The universe has surrounded me with lots of love and evidence that I am loved even as I plod along through my issues of too little money, too little time, and old, out of shape body. The emotional grief may be effecting my physical performance but I am certain that the physical exertion is mitigating this current emotional high tide, so that is one positive. There are a lot of others, most of them external.
On Tuesday night I had a lovely dinner with son, Rick, his wife Dawn and her dad; walked 4.5 miles with Rick and Dawn and then swam with Dawn, her mom and Rick. Barely finished my swim assignment that night. The Man threatened to lock me inside for the night. (I missed the last call, apparently cause I was in the water swimming laps). Rick also loaded Ubuntu on my laptop, and Rick and Dawn gave me an awesome Droid phone. I am a lucky mom and mom-in-law.
Then Wednesday at my house friendship was highlighted. I threw a Fusion Belly Dance themed party, including Stone Soup style food, a book discussion and an amazingly wonderful game of Truth and Dare. (I drank two glasses of wine that night and my weak liver hasn’t yet forgiven me, I won’t repeat that again for awhile)
Then Thursday morning was the training session. I was hung over from two glasses of wine (yes, I AM a weenie) AND a new participant joined the triath training session who can swim well. So not only was I sucking more than usual at swimming cause every time the panic started to rise with my face in the water, so did my stomach contents, but now I was doing it along side a stranger who really could swim.
Today was work. I love my job and the family that I work for as much as usual but even there it seemed I was batting like I belonged on the Diamondbacks not the Yankees.
Sometimes I am brilliant and inspired. Sometimes, I just breathe. This week my biggest accomplishments seem to be not quitting and not throwing up in the pool, and I guess all in all, that is something.
So now I will go sleep so I can just keep swimming again tomorrow. I am grateful to still be able to at least do that.
Namaste World
And another day of training complete..
Tonight my training consisted of just the bare minimum really. Walked the 4 miles with Rick and Dawn, faster pace than my comfort zone (Rick has Loooooooong legs) and then did two full laps on the kick-board and 2 freestyle laps followed by 5 push-offs, 2 more laps trying hard to be the breaststroke followed by 5 more push-offs and then 2 more laps that were half and half backstroke and breast stroke.
Still need to get pictures, although I think I will have body composition stats this week, and the weight is dropping, although that is not the point, other than the fact that it will be a whole lot easier to take say 190 pounds of person on a 200 yd swim, 8 mile bike and 1/2 mile run by October 30 than say 230 pound of person.
I am SOFT-IT (Slow Old Fat Triathlete in training!) and it feels good! And now to sleep cause tomorrow I got stuffs to do!
Just keep swimming…
Just a little note this morning while I sip my coffee. As I appended the last entry to say, after a rather exciting, for many reasons, swim practice I spent an hour crafting a rather beautifully written blog about rolling with the changes and challenges life offers me. Just as I had finished a bit of copy-editing, there was a "blip" in Live Journal and I found myself back on my CHROME page. That didn’t worry me because LiveJournal has automatic draft capability. Except when I re-opened LiveJournal, it was gone. All of it disappeared into that place cyber stuff blips apparate.
I looked squarely into the face of the laughing universe and said "Yes, I did mean it!" and went to bed, only momentarily flumoxed.
I work again today, although that is not usual, so will be going to swim again tonite and will blog again tomorrow. Continuing to eat,over all, my usual organic vegetarian, wheat-light clean diet of vegetables, rice, etc and find the more I expend my angst in exercise, the less food I crave. Although fatigue still requested some empty calories last night and I indulged it with one of the single serving Ben and Jerry American Dream single servings in the fridge and 1 cup of sesame/flax pita puffs.
Off to be a nurse again. Oh, have I mentioned again recently how grateful I am to be living all my childhood dreams finally? I love my job. And I promise tomorrow to attempt to recreate the two stories, one from recent experience and one from fourth grade but I can’t promise what philosophical direction they will turn now.
Namaste.
Postscript I did train tonight.
2 laps with the kickboard
5 pushoffs to half pool and swim back
3 full laps (one lap is 2 lengths and the pool is 25 meters long so 150 meters)
5 pushoffs (see above)
3laps
5 pushoffs
3 laps………….I am now not crabby at all but fully a jellyfish. Goodnight.
PPS: Close to four decades have passed, but June 13th is still one of the harder days in my year. It is the anniversary of my mother’s death. It was early morning. The clock radio had gone off and "Wildfire" was playing. My mom had been in the hospital for months. The day before I had cut out of school early and rode around in Wendy Bicknell’s car with her and Leslie Harmon smoking Virginia Slim menthols before getting dropped at the New London Hospital to visit my mom. My mother had spoken her last words to me weeks before and now I would just sit quiet and hold her bony hand, only that Thursday she moaned when I touched her and the nurse who came in said she couldn’t have anymore pain medicine, so after that I didn’t even touch her, I just sat, so she wouldn’t be alone.
My father had quit coming. The cancer had taken all of my Mom but these last few shreds of tissue and bone. Her husband had left her in all but name, just before the cancer took the last of her memory. I was actually glad he stopped coming. See, my father had begun dating other women again months before my mom was even hospitalized. The last time before she died that my father visited her at the hospital he brought along the woman he meant to marry once he was free and forced me to come along as a chaperone so "no one", meaning my mothers nurses, would think badly of him.
Anyway, it was a Friday morning. Friday June 13th and Wildfire was playing on the radio and the phone rang, and I knew. I just knew. My father came into our room a few minutes later and said "Your mother is dead, Marlene is dead." And then he started to cry.
My mother was as thorough a mix of good and bad as any human can be. From her I learned how to knit, how to sew, how to cook, how to clean and how to hide. Her last words to me were, "I’m so sorry. Someday my dear, you will understand, some people are just harder to love than others." In that, as well as so many other things I am like her. "Yes,mother, I do understand, I too have had harder time loving myself than just about anyone else."
Expectations, or how Joy keeps putting on her Angy Eyes
Sometimes life is a joyful burst of running on a spring path, sometimes life is more like being the fat girl in sweats running on a treadmill between glowing lithe blondes at a popular gym. Sometimes life is all about lessons and perseverance and just remembering to keep moving.
So this morning I get up early even though my body says sleep, skip the quiet meditation because time is of the essence, eat my oatmeal, dress for the pool, care for the dogs and head out the door. It is a 20 minute drive to my DIL and the pool. DIL is sleeping in and I will be doing this mornings practice on my own. I quietly slip in her house, acquire the pool key and head to the pool. I am feeling quite good about myself at this point, I have visualized the whole face/water thing while falling asleep and again while waking up, so I know its my break through session.
Only the pool is locked up. Apparently on Saturday and Sunday, it doesn’t open until eight. I don’t know if this is a new rule, or one I have just missed somehow. I am very frustrated. I asked and was given the change in time so I could train, but this means I work an hour later as well so coming back tonight is out of the question. My job as a nurse and the family I serve comes first. So here is where the little voice in my head kicks in, the one that echoes so many other voices.
"You’re just pushing yourself too hard. You really can’t do this. Go back home, get ready for work and just let go of this stupid fantasy of ever being a triathlete. You are too old, too fat, too poor and too busy."
Actually no one person ever says all of that themselves, but my evil mind voice manages the edit easily.
Speaking of mind voices, the one thing that makes all of this morning bearable, including moments of warm smiles and out loud guffaws, is listening to "Just a Geek" by Wil Wheaton. Yup, that once SNG teen idol turned writer/comedienne who is, again, acting. i read his and Jon Scalzi’s blogs in my Joanne Jefferson days, but left them behind with many other Geektivities when I exited that bad Mary Higgins Clarke written marriage. I re-found them thanks to my friend Sara. Listening to this book of that time, feels like Wil describes he felt upon rewearing the Star Trek uniform. That is one of the things Wil is good at, describing his anything but ordinary life in a way that makes it relatable, probably because he sees himself as the ordinary man. He also names his mind voices. Maybe I should name mine?
Anyway I am off to work. Plan to come back to this later tonight as I have two more topics – one to do with nutrition and other peoples expectations and the other to do with a recently resurfaced memory of my one attempt at real athletics as a child.
Crap. Just finished a beautiful and well written update to this blog about letting go expectations and overcoming frustration and a "blip" in the site lost it. LOL. So this is it. I went to train tonight and it was awesome, in spite of a pool full of loud teenagers.
http://flic.kr/s/aHsjv7e6rP
The Karmic End to my Straight Talk Phone account
Absolutely, defininely, and enormously THE WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER!!!!!!!!
I am really done, as of tonight, with this company. Five months and they still haven’t fixed their zip code glitch so I cannot purchase air time without going to a Walmart. And then the sales people just pass you around asking the exact same questions again and again and again!
It was the price that got me, and the price that held me, even has i hated myself for purchasing outside my ethical boundaries. So bonus, no more sacrificing my ethics to save money. I still have a landline for now and will figure the rest out later.
Right now I need to go to sleep because I am going to go practice my swimming at 6 AM tomorrow for the Triathlon this blog is supposed to be about…….
One final note,
No matter how cheap Straight Talk is, DO NOT be sucked in! In the old "you get what you pay for adage" it is in every bad way the cheapest service out there.
On a positive note, I will no longer have any reason at all to ever step into a WalMart again, THAT is an awesome bonus!
As of midnight tonite I will not have an active cell phone. If I did not need one for work, I wouldn’t care about its loss. Can’t solve it by complaining. Must sleep now anyway.
So good-night. Promise some real training blogs again shortly!
Week 2 of the SOF triath training…
So Now I am a 229.1 lb, 50 , non-athletically gifted woman in her second week of training as a SOFT (Slow, Old, Fat) triathlete who did A LOT of swimming today. (I really believe at this point that with his direction I will in October swim 400 yds, bike 11 miles and run 5K)
Today was face in water and learning to breath; or that was the next step the ever inspiring and patient Phil (I really believe at this point that with his direction I can complete in October swimming 400 yds, biking 11 miles and running 5K) was trying to teach. Dawn, my DIL, seemed to get it fairly quickly. She also DID NOT (as far as I know) throw up after training today. I, on the other hand, wanted to either cry or throw up after training. Not mind you because of physical exertion but due to my own unreasonable fear response. I seem to have more fears, rather than less, as I age.
I was pretty fearless when I was young. My courage flirted regularly with stupidity. Now I am prone to something akin to panic attacks when I attempt certain tasks. Two of those tasks include riding a bycicle, and swimming with my face under water.Let me clarify that, I can swim with my face in water holding my breath, it is only when I begin to blow out all my precious breath that some switch clicks off in my head like a loud, annoying car alarm and I just HAVE to life my head out of the water. Bicycles are great places to sit until I have to lift my feet off the ground and try and pedal and balance. So yea, bikes and swimming, my foolish phobias.
Which is clearly why a Triathlon is perfect for me, because swimming and biking really look fun when other people do them, and the best fear is the one we have faced and friended.
Local friends reactions to my new goal vary from in-credulousness to comments about my sanity or pushing myself too hard, and that is just the comments they have spoken to my face. My sons, my DIL, and a couple of my inner circle women friends are supportive, if not convinced I will follow through, which is OK. I have moments where I also wonder if I am crazy, pushing myself too hard, or going to derail onto some other tangent. This is why I started the blog to reduce the back doors out of accomplishing something on my bucket list for a long time.
I made progress. At first I could not breathe out at all. By the I did manage kick-off and stroke five times while breathing out, take air, stoke again three times but just as I began to breathe out that time I gave in to my fear. OK. I am gonna call it a blog even though its sketchy. My sprouted mung beans with rice with steamed yams and cabbage.
Brevity is the soul of wit
So on this night I will be short.
DIL’s schedule meant a late start for training so no walk or the pool would be closed.
Swam my laps, then jogged in water four more laps, 10 push-offs made exceedingly lame by a water in the nose problem tonite. I see a nose clip in my future.
Home now, dead tired.
Tomorrow is a new day.
Writer’s Block: The long and short of it
Time is only a perception, so it is on this perception, not page count, I will answer this prompt.
The longest book I ever read was Ulysses by James Joyce. It was a "new" edition and was a required review inclusion for my column, so its heft was emphasized by time constraint. I remember that I started my review with the statement "There are two kinds of people in the literary world, those who will tell you they have read James Joyce "Ulysses" in its entirety with relish, and those who prefer truth to pretension." I appreciated its art, its shock value and Joyce’s talent but truly felt much of the praise given to the tome reeked of "the Emperor’s New Clothes" syndrome, right down to the intricate and intimate level Joyce’s inner neurosis were nakedly dangled in our faces. Someday I may read it again,just to see if my opinion has changed.
The shortest is tough, but recent books that were devoured so quickly I only wished for more deliciousness and therefore had to re-read and savor again and again are James Owen’s "Here There Be Dragons", Claudia Emerson’s "late wife", and most recently a collection called "Bordertown", in particular the final story by Charles de Lint.