The Comfort Zone

My loathing of you knows no bounds. Please cease and desist assaulting the world with your trashy children immediately.

So, I spent the week after the Phoenix half, my recovery time, thinking about running. And more specifically, thinking about the limitations we put on ourselves when we make our limitations part of our identity. It is the safest thing in the world to do. “I am just not a person who runs.” ” I am just not a person who will get up in the morning to exercise.” “I am just not a person who exercises.”

All things I have said about myself in the past. Most recently about the running. “I don’t run.”

But pushing these sorts of limits has been a big part of my life for the past few years, so I started thinking about the whole running thing. And I thought I should maybe try it again, just to make sure I still don’t like it and still don’t want to do it ever. And I thought about what would be the best thing for me to do, what sort of running I would want to do and how much of it. And I came back with two minutes of running to five minutes of walking. I thought I would just try that and see how it went.

And it went well. I run very slowly. But I just went today and increased my ratio to three minutes of running to five minutes of walking. Did four miles.

So, one more fear faced, one more piece of a limiting identity blown away.

I think I’m going to do the Rock and Roll Half Marathon here in Denver in October. And I think I’ll run. We’ll see how it goes.

And the title of this post is what I got engraved on my new Ipod Shuffle, after realizing that I am a person who runs. It’s from a lovely little poem by Robert Frost. The whole quote goes like this:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

New Law Requires Women To Name Baby, Paint Nursery Before Getting Abortion

So, I did the half marathon this weekend. And it was fun and it was good. Not sure I will do another one. We went to the Expo the day before to pick up our numbers and such and there was this poster set up there that said “What Are You Running For?” and it was this place where people could write on there what they are doing the race for. And there were all sorts of responses, listing family members, one said “for your mother” which was kind of cool. But it got me thinking about what the hell I was doing this for. And I started thinking about March of 2004 when I decided I was going to put on a pair of shoes, and walk out the door. I decided I was going to actively stop listening to the clamoring voices telling me what exercise I should do, the proper heart rate to work for, the proper nutrition needed, the critical need for cross-training (your muscles get used to doing one thing and then it’s not as effective OMG!!). I was going to put on my shoes and walk out the door.

But the problem was that I was quite convinced that left to my own devices completely, I would decide that half a mile was enough thankyouverymuch and I would get about that distance down the road and turn around and come home. And, according to my own judgement, this would not be enough of a walk for me. So, I devised a bit of trickery. I planned out a route that would make it so that once I got about a half mile into the walk, it would make no sense to turn around and go home, the sensible thing to do at that point would be to do the whole route, and the only way to get home from a certain point would be to just walk the whole thing, which was two miles.

And this worked out quite well.

So, to go from a person who had to trick herself into walking two miles to a person who trained for weeks, got on a plane and paid money all for the priviledge of voluntarily walking thirteen freakin’ miles is quite a big deal (and I must confess, around mile 11 it started to seem like the most absurd thing I have ever done, but I got over that). And that is why I did it. I did it for that girl I was, who had the courage to stop listening to everyone except herself. Who had so little confidence in her ability to exercise in a meaningful way that she had to trick herself into doing it.

And I did it with the fervent hope that the girl I am today will always remember that the big “life changer” did not start with surgery in March of 2009. It started with putting on a pair of shoes in March of 2004.

It’s my favorite part of the new year. Like this article from MSNBC on how to get back on track after “blowing your diet”.

Try limiting yourself to one dessert this week and one meal where you’ll enjoy a favorite food in a reasonable portion.

HA! Yeah, because the rest of the time you better be eating low fat shit on a shingle! And not very much of it! How DARE you think you can eat food you like in reasonable portions more than once a week!

So, I just joined Netflix. I have decided that given how much enjoyment I get from movies, it is appalling how few I actually watch.

So, I’m building my queue, rating movies, which is what you are supposed to do, I guess, and I now have the following “categories” of suggestions:

“Inspiring Documentaries”
“Dramas Starring Kevin Kline” (WTF?)
“Feel Good TV Shows”
“Political movies based on real life”

And, my favorite, “Critically-acclaimed Fight The System Movies”

I get the same feeling from the Netflix recommendations that I always get when forced to go through old papers or something like that…. it gives you insight into yourself that you didn’t ask for and perhaps aren’t particularly wanting to hear at this very moment.

We had a good Christmas morning. Here are some pics for family who isn’t here.

We made cookies Christmas Eve.

Christmas Morning: The only day of the year you can count on David to smile for some pictures.

The kids opened gifts, and all was well with the world.

Simon got presents too.

My sister Missy was very excited about these ultra-cool Giraffe decorative over-sized utensils that I got her.

And we got a new Wii. And the new Beatles Rock Band game for our X-Box.

Chris was in full Christmas cheer.

And, we had a white Christmas here in Castle Rock.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Next year I will be sending out a total of four Christmas cards. That is the total number of Christmas cards I have received and I have decided that the bitterness I feel about that is not a good thing.

Even though I don’t generally participate in the annual tradition of making our children cry believing they are about to be eaten by the big bearded stranger, (with the exception of the past two years, which has been at the request of the boy, who is old enough not to cry, but not quite old enough to let go of the belief, he is at the “well, just maybe” phase in the whole Santa thing, and I must say this is the last year I am doing it, regardless of his requests, I have made up my mind, it is just too creepy), I simply cannot help but laugh my ass off looking at sites like this one.

All the pics are pretty good, and the tribute video is AWESOME, but this one was the one that kept me laughing all morning.

DW: Okay, mom…all done cleaning my room.

Me: Okay, did Daddy check it?

Daddy: No, not yet, I’m about too.

Me (to DW): Well, thank you for working so hard.

DW: Eh….it wasn’t too much work, you just pretend to play in reverse.

Colorado requires front license plates as well as back license plates. In order to get front license plates on both cars that we brought over from Arizona, we are going have to pay a mechanic approximately $30 dollars per car. But that isn’t even the most annoying part. The annoying part is that the stupid cars came with hardware and other parts for installing a front plate, which we, in our extreme short-sightedness what with not realizing we would someday move to a state that would require such things, promptly threw said parts and hardware away. So NOW, we have to pay the dealer a whopping $50 per car to get the parts, so that the mechanic can install the plates.

Freakin’ stupid Colorado!

Via Feministing I found another fantastic article from Barbara Ehrenreich about what my sister calls the Pink Gestapo and the urgent need for a movement with a counter-voice.

It’s a great article, which you should definitely read, but the part that really interested me was this:

You don’t have to be suffering from “chemobrain” (chemotherapy-induced cognitive decline) to discern evil, iatrogenic, profit-driven forces at work here. In a recent column on the new guidelines, patient-advocate Naomi Freundlich raises the possibility that “entrenched interests — in screening, surgery, chemotherapy and other treatments associated with diagnosing more and more cancers — are impeding scientific evidence.” I am particularly suspicious of the oncologists, who saw their incomes soar starting in the late 80s when they began administering and selling chemotherapy drugs themselves in their ghastly, pink-themed, “chemotherapy suites.” Mammograms recruit women into chemotherapy, and of course, the pink-ribbon cult recruits women into mammography.

That part particularly struck me, because I have been known at times to put up quite a rebellion to “well woman exams” or other “woman” care. I can’t help it….I’m just suspicious of it. I’ve worked with many doctors in my career and what most people don’t understand, or care to think about, is what savvy businessmen they are….. I think we all like to think of doctors as great people who just want to help and an occasional cuddle, like JD on “Scrubs”, but that has almost never been my experience. Doctors know what their bottom line is, and they are in this to make money…and not just “make a living” they want the big payout, and they are smart people (obviously). They know how to get there.

Bottom line, there are plenty of people out there with a huge motivation to continue to make money on your illness, or on “preventing” it. And medical care focused on women has historically been filled with men making money telling women what to do to stay “healthy” (and one should never forget that many of the “witches” burned in the 16th century were actually healers and mid-wives, frequently accused of witchcraft by men in the area who wanted to get rid of the competition). Forget this aspect of your healthcare at your own peril.