Last ditch attempt

Everything in my life seems to be perpetually falling apart.  I'm not sure if it has always been that way or if it is just since we moved to St. Louis.  Probably the latter.  I recently read through some of my first blog, from the year we spent living in Nicaragua when I was doing my dissertation research, and I realized that I actually used to be a happy person.  What happened?  Hyperemesis.  Finishing my dissertation but then walking away from the thing I'd spent 8 years working towards.  Our Urbana house explosion.  St. Louis.  

But mainly St. Louis.  It is easier to blame this on a place.

For about the first four months we lived here, things were okay.  It was exciting to have a job, and my coworkers were nice.  I no longer spent every minute of the day completely terrified that something would happen to Rob and I would have no way to support my child.  But then we had that house thing happen in Urbana, and everything got really awful for a while.  St. Louis no longer seemed promising.  Nothing seemed promising.  

I began, either consciously or subconsciously, to look for an Exit Strategy.

The form that my grief took was to write a book.  Just do it.  The thing that everybody in my life has spent my entire life telling me to Just Do.

I don't know what I was hoping to accomplish.  I didn't necessarily think of money as being the goal, but it would have been nice if we could have both quit our jobs and picked up and moved to Eugene, OR.  Why Eugene?  Because it is a place (I am told) that is so liberal, Rob and I would be considered "just right of center."  It seems pretty good compared to Missouri.

The book didn't pan out.  Maybe I can write and I just don't have what it takes to succeed the publishing industry.  Or maybe I can't even write.  It's really hard to say.

I'm exhausted.  I just can't put any more energy into it.

A couple of weeks ago, the NGO I was loosely involved with when I did my research in Nicaragua contacted me and asked if I would teach a primatological field course during the winter session this year.  At first I said there was no way.  

But then I took a good look around me and saw how much I don't belong in St. Louis.  I emailed them back and said I'd move heaven and earth to do it.

It would have involved planning and designing the course during the nights and weekends, then maxing out on all my vacation days for the entire year to take off enough time to go down there and teach it.  Rob was going to come with me and bring Will, of course.  I started getting excited for Will to learn Spanish.  To be wild and free and swim in Lake Nicaragua and watch monkeys with me in the forest.

It was only going to be 3 weeks, but maybe that would be enough.  Just enough of an exit to give me the energy to keep on doing this for a little bit more.  Maybe I could get a trumpet for Eduardo and bring it to him.  He wants to go to a university in Rivas and study music.  He wants to start his own mariachi band.

But then the whole thing fell through.  These things happen.  I got the news while I was at work, and I had to close my office door for a while.

It wouldn't be quite so bad if I thought I was going to be able to go to Fuego y Agua with Rob in February.  Oh yes, he's running it again.  But when I tossed out the idea to my coworkers, there was some grimacing.  It would have been much easier to have me gone, even for 3 weeks, over semester break.  Taking a whole week off in February, during the semester, is problematic for everyone.  They put up with it last year for me.  It was kind of a one-shot thing.

And so.

Eduardo isn't getting the money I send him every month.  I'd worked out this deal.  It seemed okay, but that fell through too.  He emailed me and told me the money didn't matter to him.  He'll always think of us as his North American family.  Of me as his Mama Meli.

And meanwhile, I'm still stuck in St. Louis.  Not sure what I'm doing here.

I decided I needed to pull myself together.  To put in one last ditch attempt to stop feeling toxic in my own skin.  

And now is the point at which I actually begin writing about what I intended to when I began this post.

Juice.

Yes.  You read that right.  Juice.

For a really long time, I'd been thinking about getting a juicer and doing a juice fast.  I mean, I'm a vegan, so it's kind of the next step-- right?  I finally took the plunge and did it.  Well, at least I bought the juicer.  It's a nice one.  A Breville Compact that I got refurbished for only $69.  And I bought the fruits and vegetables, a ton of them.  They didn't even all fit in the fridge.

I was so excited.  I just wanted to feel clean and clear-headed.  But what I found out is that I don't actually like juice.  

In particular, I don't like green juice, which is the juice you're supposed to rely on while fasting.  It all goes back to kale.  The first food that made me sick when I had hyperemesis.  I still can't eat it.  One of my main motives for buying the juicer was that I thought I'd be able to consume kale if it were in juice form.  The texture is what bothers me, not the taste so much, or so I thought.

It turns out, it is the taste that bothers me.  And juiced kale tastes about as good as, well, you'd imagine.

Of course you mix it with other things (like celery, cucumbers, apples, etc), but that just makes the other things taste bad.

About 22 hours into the juice fast, I was on the floor writhing in nausea, and I thought, okay, this is not working.  Most people who juice fast probably don't have such strong aversions to kale, and they probably aren't running 5 miles a day in preparation for some as of yet undecided ultra marathon.

So I gave it up.  My last ditch attempt to get my shit together.  I'm not sure where to go from here.

On the plus side, I've gotten Will to drink fun things like carrot-mango-orange juice.  I'd been hoping to sneak some leafy greens in him this way, but the kid knows better than to try anything that contains kale.

I've got no more Exit Strategies up my sleeve.  So, I run.  At some point on this blog I think I said that I run because I need the feeling of pushing myself into a deep, dark, scary place and then finding my way out.  But maybe that's not really why I do it, at least not all the time.  Maybe I run like this because I can't really run away.

Thanks for reading.

2 years

"Give it two years."  That was what a friend said to me when we moved to St. Louis.  "You can't really expect to feel at home any place until you've been there for two years."

Our two year anniversary of living in St. Louis came and went (quite unceremoniously) near the end of August, and I didn't feel a flash of brilliance, a sudden sense of belonging after two years of being an outsider in a city with which I can't quite reconcile myself.

The way I feel about St. Louis is kind of like how I imagine it would be to have a weird uncle you don't really like.  Maybe this person annoys or bothers you, but he's family, so anybody who's not related to you and dares make a derogatory remark about him is going to have hell to pay.

I complain about St. Louis all the time, but I'll be damned if anybody else talks down about it.  The crime rate, the dilapidated appearance of the downtown buildings as you whiz by on I-64, the crime rate, and did I mention the crime rate?

Well, there was only one shooting on my running route last week, and nobody was injured, so that's something I guess.

Aside from all the crime, people here are uncommonly nice.  Freakishly nice.  Even in places where you don't expect people to be nice, such as the benefits department at work, the post office, and the driver's bureau.  When we first moved here, I had the feeling that it was just the people I worked with who were nice, but then I found that this niceness extended to the entire university, and even beyond that, to what appears to be the entire community.  I've never encountered that anywhere else in the world, but I've always imagined it's how Wisconsin would be.

I'm suspicious of this niceness, though, because I suspect that beneath it all, the person at the grocery store or library or auto repair shop who is exchanging seemingly genuine "Hellos" and "How are yous" might legitimately be the kind of nut job who would vote for this nut job.

And beyond that, the niceness completely breaks down once anybody gets behind the wheel of a car in this city.  I follow the local news on Twitter and every day, I swear, there are at least 8 fatalities on the interstate just because road rage, privilege, and the "mine is bigger" mentality takes over when people are attempting to merge or change lanes.

Don't get me wrong, all the road idiocy is hardly confined to the city's over-used interstate system.  At the corner of Delmar and Skinker, I have seen, on no less than two occasions, someone make a RIGHT turn from the LEFT turn lane, on a RED light, while talking on a cell phone.  

I have never, ever felt so unsafe walking anywhere since living in St. Louis, and I'm not talking about the fear of getting shot or robbed.  I am honest-go-god scared to be a pedestrian in this city.  Green lights and walk signals are meaningless.  Cars barrel right through them.  In fact, I came the closest I've ever come to getting hit by a car just last weekend at mile 3 of my 14-mile run, when an SUV didn't think it necessary to stop or even slow as I crossed the intersection (on a green light!).  When I am driving and I do yield to pedestrians, the driver behind me generally honks and makes wild gesticulations.  I assume profanity is involved as well.  At least it is on my part.

Yet St. Louis is a haven compared to the areas beyond--that is, rural Missouri.  The people are probably really nice there too, but I don't feel welcome as a vegan, feminist, environmentalist person who supports LGBT rights.  While we were driving to a state park recently to take a family camping trip, I felt nauseated at the sheer amount of political signage proclaiming that our current president is a Muslim (he's not) and urging passers by to reject the idea of health care for all.  Last fall, a couple of grad students even reported to me that they passed through an actual clan gathering (and by clan I mean clan with a k) while on their way to the Ozarks.

Shudder.

Of course, it isn't all bad, and I'm even getting a little mad at myself for being so negative in this post.  St. Louis seems to be a place of great opportunity, of great potential.  There are genuinely many times that I'm excited to live in a big city (yes, I consider St. Louis to be big), because there are a lot of things to do here (even if they are way too over-crowded and there is never any parking available).  Forest Park has got a lot of free museums (the Science Center, the Missouri History Museum, the Art Museum) where I can take Will, and honestly, I often think about how he would never have had so many of these amazing experiences if we'd stayed in Urbana.  While I miss Strawberry Fields and the Co-Op, here I've got Whole Foods and a produce delivery guy who is also a stand-up comedian.  St. Louis is also a thrift store shopper's paradise, ranging from "upscale" places like the Scholar Shop, to the Goodwill Outlet, where you can buy items (clothing, shoes, used candles, broken lampshades, picture frames, and boxes of expired cake mix) for 79 cents a pound.

Plus, St. Louis seems to be on the Indigo Girls' tour circuit, so it's got that going for it.

I don't know what the future holds.  Sometimes I dream about moving to Eugene, Oregon, or going back to Nicaragua and living up on the volcano with the hippies who are into permaculture.  But I also feel like I've barely scratched the surface of what St. Louis has to offer.  I really don't get out much, what with the full time job, the toddler who still takes a 4 hour nap in the afternoon, and the ultra marathon training schedule.  I know I would miss this place if we ever left.  I guess all I can do is give it more time.

Thanks for reading.

Howl

Well, I ran my first ultra this past weekend (August 11th).

After my last marathon, I felt pretty jaded about running and the world in general, and I decided that the way to make it better was to run an ultra.

On a whim that may have been fueled by a couple of beers, I signed up for Howl at the Moon-- an 8-hour ultra at the Kennekuk Cove County Park, conveniently located near where Rob's parents live.  We'd have a place to stay the night before the race, childcare on race day, and the event itself would be like a family reunion with all our friends from Second Wind Running Club.

Training went pretty well for me, despite the record heat and drought in July this year (I think St. Louis has had 20 days over 100 degrees so far in 2012).  I did at least 4 long runs (21-22 miles) in 105 degree heat, and aside from a few blisters, I felt pretty good. 

We left St. Louis on Friday and made a brief stop in Urbana, at Will's birthplace (so to speak)-- Davenport Hall.  It was where I spent 10 billion hours of my graduate career.  Most of the people I knew in the department have gone (including SL, who recently took a job elsewhere), but I did get to catch up with some of the office staff and become overwhelmed by the weirdness of merely visiting a place where I'd lived so much of my life.

 

We headed on to Kennekuk to pick up our race packets, and upon arrival we ran into at least 50 people we knew  (slight exaggeration), including Cousin Don.  

The protocol appeared to be that everybody had a canopy tent pitched along the start/finish area (where we would be looping around every 3.29 miles).  There, you were to store the various items you would need for the day, such as a cooler of drinks and snacks, extra shoes/socks, chairs for lounging in (or collapsing in).  I was glad Rob knew this is what you were supposed to do (and had brought a canopy tent), other wise I would have been out of luck.

With our race numbers in hand and our tent pitched, we headed to Rob's parents, where Will opened a few more birthday presents:

"Oh boy, a dinosaur!"

 

And scared his grandfather:

 

We ate some pasta and tried to go to bed.  Unsuccessfully.  Will had skipped his usual nap for the day (refusing to sleep in the car) and was beside himself with exhaustion.  By the fifth time I had gotten up to soothe him, he begged, "Sleep with me, Mommy," so I brought him back to the bed where Rob and I were trying to sleep.  He proceeded to unfurl himself so that he took up the space of 3 adult humans, and neither Rob nor I had any room left.  He thrashed about for the rest of the night and snored and kicked me in the face.  I saw the clock go from midnight to 2am to 3am.  In fact, at 4:59am, I turned off my alarm and just got up because I was already awake.

Not a great way to spend the night before an 8-hour ultra.

It was freezing in the morning.  After several months of scorching drought, an unseasonable cool settled over the region.  Temperatures were in the 50s--almost 50 degrees cooler than what I was used to training in.  I shivered so hard my teeth shook as I waited in our canopy tent.

I was nervous about running my first ultra, especially on so little sleep, but the atmosphere around the whole thing was completely different than any marathon I've ever run.  Everybody seemed pretty laid back, and for me at least, this event was more about catching up with old friends than sticking to a certain pace per mile.  I had no idea what was ahead of me because I had never run for 8 hours before ("That's an entire workday," Rob's brother astutely pointed out when we told him what we were doing), so all I could do was go along for the ride.

I was just standing there chatting with a friend ES when all of a sudden I realized, oh we're starting, and off we went.  

The miles slid by.  It was fantastic to have ES running with me.  He is a very accomplished ultra runner and he probably could have been going a lot faster than I was, but we stuck together--talking about everything from writing to photography to beer-making to Western States.  He became like my own personal ultra marathon doula.  I am eternally grateful.  I couldn't even feel my feet hitting the ground.

The course was a 3.29 mile loop on grass and gravel, with an aid station about halfway through.  Every time you circled around and got back to the start/finish area, you had to make sure that your "scorer" saw you and marked down that you'd gone another lap.  Each age/sex division (ex: open males, masters males, open females, masters females, etc.) had their own scorer.  I'm not sure how many people each scorer was responsible for, but every time I went through, my scorer looked at my bib number and called out something encouraging like, "Melissa!  Heading out on lap number 4!"

I tried to do the best I could with eating and drinking.  I managed to eat a whole package of Clif Shot blocks in the first 4 laps or so (200 calories), and then I grabbed handfuls of pretzels from our snack stash in the tent every time I ran past.  I carried my own water bottle and topped it off at the start/finish area each time we went through.  Probably by about the second lap, I started taking one S!Cap every time we reached The Big Hill, which 1) wasn't really that big -and- 2) was actually pretty easy, because you just stop and walk up it to conserve your energy.

By around mile 16, ES was having some knee pain and needed to walk for a while.  I was faced with a Major Dilemma.  I wasn't at this race to be a hero or to break a new world record, I was just here to have fun.  So…should I keep going on my own, or stay with ES and walk?  In the end I decided that I felt way too good--freakishly good-- and I wanted to keep running.  I was afraid that I might fall over and collapse a few miles later, but I just wanted to see how long I could keep it up.

I did, however, pause long enough to take a picture of myself and attempt to Tweet it (which failed, because my phone had no signal) and to do some math to figure out how many laps I would need to run in order to make my goal of 35 miles.  (Why it hadn't occurred to me to figure this out before the race, I don't know).  It worked out to something like 10.6 laps.  I decided to try to shoot for 11 laps and make it an even 36.19.

Un-Tweetable:  Melissa at Mile 16.3

I felt stronger and stronger as the miles piled up.  My laps were pretty even around 33-35 minutes, which was a decent pace to keep.  8 laps in was marathon distance, and from then on out every step I took was uncharted territory.  I fully expected to fall apart, but I didn't.  I ran a great lap and everybody at the start/finish area called out "Buffalo!" (the battle cry of the Second Wind trail runners) when I got back to start my 9th lap.  I was officially an Ultra Runner now.  I felt like a million bucks.

Except that I hadn't eaten in a while--not really since the Clif Blocks and pretzels early on in the race.  I figured that by this point I had run over 29 miles, so I might as well bust into the stash of junk food we'd brought.  BBQ Fritos are vegan and sounded amazingly good right about then.  I dug into our rubbermaid tub and found, much to my disappointment, that I had mistakenly bought and packed Original Fritos instead of the BBQ ones.  I had a moment of extreme disappointment, because BBQ Fritos are much saltier and sounded a lot better to me.  I tried to make the best of it-- I shoved some boring, original flavor Fritos into my pockets and worked on eating them until made it back to the start/finish area again.

Surprisingly, I didn't slow down, at least not too much.  And I felt peculiarly great.  I kept sucking on Fritos (wishing they were BBQ) and I even ate some slices of cold, boiled potatoes dipped in salt.  The volunteers were fantastic, offering huge amounts of support and encouragement as I ran through aid stations and refilled my water bottle.  They even started handing out ice at the top of the hill, and that was like heaven.

At some point I realized that I had 35 miles in the bag.  I could walk it and make it.  I could lie down on the side of the trail and take a nap and still make it.  I was completely and utterly bewildered by this.  I had thought it would be so much more of a struggle.  I began to have illusions of grandeur and wonder if I could make 40.  I spent several laps doing the math and realizing that it was within my reach.

A brief bout of feeling bad hit right about mile 35, when I was at the aid station at the bottom of the hill.  They'd been handing out soda there all day long, and all of a sudden a couple sips of Coke sounded good to me.  After all, it had brought me back to life after a 2-week stint of Vortex in Nicaragua.  I raced into the aid station feeling much anticipation and when I got there, they were all out of soda!  Such the luck.  Like the BBQ Fritos.  I popped an S!Cap and told myself to keep the crazies at bay.

When I got back to the start/finish after my 11th lap, I had surpassed my goal and it was only 6 hours and 30 minutes into the race.  I stopped to talk to my scorer and asked, "What do I have to do to get to 40 miles?"  I had lost all ability to compute.  She told me to run one more lap of 3.29 miles, and that would put me at 39.48.  Then all I'd have to do is a one-mile out and back, and I'd be there.  Perfect.  I still felt good, and I had an hour and half left to do it.

So I took off for my last big loop.  Right about the time I hit the aid station, Rob passed me for the second time since the race began.  "You're an animal!" he called out.  He looked strong, and I calculated that he was on pace for 50.  Now who's the animal?

I knew I had this wrapped up.  There was no need for speed at this point, I could afford to take it easy.  My quads hurt and my feet hurt from crunching down on gravel in 4mm drop shoes with no rock plate, so I walked a lot that last loop after Rob passed me.

I reached the start/finish area at around 7 hours 15 minutes and had put in 12 laps, totaling 39.48 miles.  I told the scorer that I didn't want to try to run another 3.29, I just wanted to do an out-and-back so I got up to 40.  She said that the out-and-backs didn't start until 7 and half hours, so I just had to wait 15 minutes until that began.

I drank some weak orange gatorade and bided my time.

At 7h30m, the announcer called all of us waiting to do out-and-backs and we lined up to go.  It was a free-for-all on very bumpy, rough terrain, and I had wanted to walk the whole way, but I was afraid I would get trampled because everybody seemed to want to go fast.  I tried to jog as best I could.  I really did not like this section of the race and just wanted the whole thing to be over.

At last it was, and I went to report my one-mile out and back to my scorer, while other people kept running to add another mile or two before the 8 hour time limit.

"Great job!" my scorer said.  "You made 37.19 miles."

"Wait a minute!  I was supposed to have 40!"

"No, honey, you never ran that 12th lap."

"Yes, I did!  I ran right over here and you told me I'd gone 39 miles and all I had to do was a 1 mile out and back to get 40!"

The one thing on the instruction sheet for Howl at the Moon was that you must never argue with your scorer, the scorer is always right.

But goddammit!  I was so confused by this point.  Either she had been wrong about how many laps I'd run and she'd misled me, or she had forgotten to write down my last lap.

I stood there feeling a horrendous cloud of doom wash over me.  Here I was, having thought I was so damn tough for running 40 miles at my very first ultra, and this lady was telling me I had only gone 37.19.  There was nothing I could do about it now-- with only about 15 minutes left in the race, I wasn't going to be able to put in another 3 miles.  I was shit out of luck.

Maybe the scorer just wanted to get rid of me, or maybe she wanted to avoid a nasty outburst of tears, so she reconsidered and said.  "Well, okay.  I'll mark you at 40."  She kind of whispered it, and I got the feeling that she still thought she was right but she didn't want me disappointed or make a scene.

I walked away from the scoring table, feeling shitty, and made it back to tent, where I collapsed in a chair and sat there motionless.  Feeling shitty.

I looked at my watch and reaffirmed that I had recorded splits for 12 full laps prior to doing my 1-mile out and back.  Next year I'm taking a freaking GPS.

I just ran 40.48 miles, dammit. 

 

Rob showed up a while later, looking like death warmed over.  He'd made just over 50 miles, which is 20 miles farther than he's ever run in his life.

Within a few minutes, he turned white and his lips got blue and he started shaking.  ES and I ran over to find some EMTs, who came over and put some ice packs on him (not what I had been expecting) and took his temperature and blood pressure.  I guess he got so overheated that he became cold.  He felt a bit nauseous, and they gave him some oxygen.  You want to see something scary?  Your significant other lying in the grass with an oxygen mask on his face.

He made a full recovery and the EMTs went away right about the time that my Post Race Nausea knocked me down and everybody left to go to the awards ceremony.  It reminded me of the time that I lay dying in Nicaragua, all alone, and when I heard a German doctor outside my door, I drug myself out of the room and asked her to give me an injection of some mystery liquid that a pregnant Chilean girl had told me would help me stop vomiting.  Ah, the memories.  

When Rob came back from the award ceremony, he said that I won a Major Award (though I think just about everybody who did this race won a Major Award), and he got me to drink a few sips of V8.  It revived me enough that I was able to make it to the car and get back to Rob's parents' house.

I was really happy to see Will again; we'd been gone for so long that I was afraid he would think I'd abandoned him.  He seemed no worse for the wear and was happily playing with his grandpa.

I felt weird and sick but in a different way than after running a marathon.  Not as intense, maybe.  And more tired than anything else.  Maybe that was because we'd gotten so little sleep the night before.  Rob hobbled to a grocery store and bought some veggie burgers, and I was finally able to eat one of those with no bun but lots of ketchup.  Then I fell into an exhausted sleep and woke up the next morning, realizing it had been a really long time since I'd peed.

Thanks for reading such a long race report.  I definitely want to run another ultra again soon.  Tomorrow, if possible.  Recovery has gone surprisingly well, and I was able to run again on Wednesday morning (after Saturday's 40 miles!) without even feeling so much as a little stiff.

Also, many thanks to Rob's parents for hosting us and watching Will, to the Second Wind volunteers who cheered and shouted Buffalo and made my day, to ES for being an extraordinary pacer and friend, to Cousin Don for, well, being Cousin Don and giving me the sage words of wisdom: Nothing to fear, it's just runnin.'

Buffalo!

10K

Rob's parents visited over Memorial Day weekend, which freed me up to run the University City 10K while they watched Will.

It's been a really long time since I've run a 10K, even though that is one of my favorite racing distances.  The most recent one I did was probably back in 2004.  I was training for some marathon (Madison? Green Bay?), and I was scheduled to do a 20 mile training run on the day of the Christie Clinic 10K in Champaign-Urbana.  My plan was to run over to the race start from my house (approximately 6 miles), then run the 10K, and then run back home.  When I arrived at the race I happened to catch up with a guy I knew from the running club, and we ran the whole thing together.  He was wearing 11 year old racing flats that he'd run thousands of miles in, and I thought that was awesome (note, this was before barefoot running and minimalism were "in").  We talked and joked for about 4 miles, and then for the last two we shut up gave it all we had.  I ended up with my 10K PR that day.  I can't remember my finishing time and can't find it anywhere online now, but I'd guess it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 47 minutes.  I ate some Great Harvest Bread Co. bread and then ran back home-- pleased with the knowledge that my 10K PR had come as the "middle leg" of a 20 mile run.

I was an animal back then.

God, I miss those days.

At any rate, as I recently toed the line of the University City Memorial Day 10K,  a "fast" time was not my goal-- I just wanted to have some fun.

There were so many people doing the 5K and 10K that day that it was hard to line up at the starting line.  I ended up behind several women who had on mascara and were wearing long pants (it was at least 85 degrees out).

Sidenote: Something I have never understood about St. Louis is that I always see people wearing in winter running gear in the summer.  Even when it is close to a hundred degrees, there will be a couple of people out at Forest Park wearing tights and long sleeves.  I just don't get it.

Anyway, once the "gun" went off, I ran. It felt so good.  It had been such a long time since I ran fast.  I was streaming past people (in their long pants) and it felt completely effortless.

And then my shoe came untied!

I've been running for 18 years, and I don't think my shoe has ever, ever, ever come untied before!

I bailed off to the side and tied it as quickly as possible, then I hurled myself back into the pack to try to make up lost time.  I had no idea what my pace was going to be.  I was afraid that it just felt like I was going really fast, but once I got to the first mile, it would turn out that I was running 10 minute pace or something.  So I was very, pleasantly, extremely pleased to hit mile 1 at 7:53.  I don't' know if I've run a sub-8 mile since giving birth 3 years ago.  And this was with a 10 second pause to tie my shoe.  And I still felt great.  I took this as a good sign.

I told myself to keep this pace for the next several miles, and so I did.

There were hills, lots of them, but they didn't phase me.

My plan was to vamp it up once I hit mile 4.  I made a feeble attempt to do this, but quickly realized I couldn't.  It was almost 90 degrees and I'd been running hard for over a half an hour.  I suddenly felt terrible-- jelly legs and nausea--but mentally, I found this hilarious.  I only had two miles left!  This was so unlike running a marathon, when on several occasions I've ended up running something like 18 miles while feeling just as terrible.

I gutted it out and finished in 49:00.  Even.

Not setting any world records here, but I was beyond ecstatic that I was able to run a reasonable 10K without even training for it, and the most important thing was that I felt so great!

The next important thing was that I had fairly even splits:

• Mile 1 - 7:53 (had to stop and tie shoe)
• Mile 2 - 7:43
• Mile 3 - 7:49
• Mile 4 - 7:51
• Mile 5 - 7:52 (Oh hey! Feeling really bad, but kept with it).
• Mile 6 - 8:00 (Ohhhh hey!  Feeling really, really bad, but still clinging to 8 min pace by the skin of my teeth!)
• Mile 0.2 - 1:48 (There's the finish line of my first 10K in 7 years and I did it in under 50 minutes!)

Hoping I get a chance to run another 10K sometime before, say, William goes to college.

Thanks for reading.

2^5

Well, I am 2^5 old today, or more plainly spoken:  32.  Wait, is that right?  I was born in 1979.  You do the math.

For the last several years, my birthdays have become increasingly chaotic.  It has not always been of my choosing.  Last year, most likely in tears, I recall thinking that if I lived to see 32, all I wanted was for NOTHING happen on my birthday.

Let's see if I can recount some of the craziness of the past several years:

25th birthday, 2004:  On a camping trip in Appalachia with Rob.  We may be smiling in the pictures, but we had just had our 2nd fight ever.

26th birthday, 2005: In Managua waiting to fly home and vowing never to return to Nicaragua again.

27th birthday, 2006: Having returned to Nicaragua, I was in a hospital in Moyogalpa that had no toilet paper.  Someone down the hall was either giving birth or having her leg amputated without anesthesia.  I was extremely ill, but Rob was the one who was being treated.

28th birthday, 2007: Moved into our house in Urbana, having just left Eduardo in Nicaragua.  I was supposed to be all happy to be back in the US, I guess, but instead it kind of felt like I'd been forced to reach into my chest cavity, extract my heart, and throw it to the sharks in Lake Nicaragua.

29th birthday 2008: On a boat in Lake Nicaragua, looking for Eduardo.

30th birthday, 2009:  Had given birth to my one and only child  2 days prior.  Will wouldn't stop crying, ever, not even for a second.  An asshole pediatrician at the hospital told me I was starving Will to death by trying to breastfeed him and that I would have to give him formula because everybody on the planet would die if he lost any more weight.  I have never met anyone more insulting, ignorant, and arrogant than that worthless sack of shit.  He actually referred to the nurses on staff as "the girls" and he told me that giving Will formula wouldhelp my milk come in.  Luckily I was smart enough not to listen to him, but even so, my 30th birthday was the worst day of my entire life.

31st birthday, 2010: Moved to St. Louis with approximately 3 weeks notice.  Started a new job and put my son in daycare for the first time ever (prior to this we'd never been apart for more than a few hours).  We didn't have a place to live yet so we stayed in a hotel for 2 weeks.  Also, my grandmother was dying and passed away just before my first day of my new job.  My family held off the funeral till the weekend (because I could not take any time off of work at that point), so that I could come home and give the eulogy.

Well, I guess my 32nd birthday is about to draw to a close and thankfully there has been no tragic event.  I got to go on a long run this morning, and afterwards, Rob and I biked over to a park with Will to meet some friends.  Will enjoyed the playground, and I had a chance to chat with some of my favorite yoga moms (one who now lives in St. Louis, and another who had come down to visit).  Although I have been feeling ridiculously awful for the past several days (out of control exhaustion), I got a second wind after a 20 minute power nap this afternoon.  Then this evening, we hung out with some neighbors until Will threw a fit and we had to take him home.  He wouldn't eat dinner (as per usual), but I soothed myself by having a piece of leftover birthday cake from his party yesterday.  I got lots of phone calls, emails, cards, texts, tweets, and Facebook messages from everybody wishing me a happy birthday.  It was really nice!

Tomorrow I resume my career-- going back to work full time after about 6 weeks off this summer.  A little stressed out by that.  A lot stressed out by that.  I still have to write the howler paper for Mt's edited volume, and I don't know when I am going to find the time to do that.  Hoping all goes well.

10 years in review

As some of you may know, Rob and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary on July 14th.  I guess that's something, I don't know.  We've never made a big deal about stuff like that.

It just so happened that Rob's friends were planning to get married in Seattle the same weekend as our anniversary, and it just so happened that Rob and I had gone to the Pacific Northwest for our honeymoon 10 years ago.  It also just so happened that we finally sold our Urbana house, and although we have suffered huge losses, there is at least a light at the end of the tunnel now.  I was hesitant to make the trip on account of the expense it would involve, but Rob did not share my concerns and he went ahead and bought plane tickets.  More than that, Rob's friends asked him to play guitar in their wedding ceremony, and he agreed.  We left the day after we closed on our Urbana house (July 12th).

We flew to Seattle and the next morning (July 13th) left for Port Angeles, WA, which was our gateway to Olympic National Park.  We attempted to hike Hurricane Ridge, as we did 10 years ago, but it was a lot more difficult with a 2-year old whose favorite activity is kicking, screaming, and throwing himself on the ground, and who generally refuses to ride in the Ergo carrier anymore.  Oh, and also, there was snow.

The next day (July 14th) we went to the Hoh Rainforest, which has got to be one of the coolest places on earth.  According to the website, Hoh gets approximately 3,556 mm of rain per year-- just for comparison, the forest where I did my dissertation research gets approximately 1,500 mm.  It's just cool.  Will did about as well as could be expected, which is to say, we had about 5 whole minutes of hiking in the rainforest before he began having a temper tantrum.

 

 

Ferns are awesome

After a truncated hike in the rainforest, Will got to rest in the car as we drove to First Beach.  It was freezing cold (and raining), so we only stayed for a few minutes, but enough apparently, for the requisite photo of Melissa running into the ocean.

 

 

There was perhaps some more nap time for Will in the car as we headed back towards the hotel and stopped off at Lake Crescent, which ended up being one of my favorite places (both this time and 10 years ago).

 

 

 

We did a short hike to Marymere Falls, and Will enjoyed this.  He actually hiked most of the way (about 1.5 miles round trip, I think?) on his own.

 

We ended up finding the same exact tree that I stopped off to hug back in 2001, and Rob recreated the photo.  Will joined me this time.

Hugging the tree in 2001

 

Hugging the tree in 2011.

The irony of this is, though, that as I looked up through the towering foliage to see it's top, I realized that it was a dead tree.  I don't know if it was 10 years ago or not.  Kind of makes the whole thing feel more bitter than sweet, I guess.

When Will got tired, he rode on Rob's shoulders or I carried him:

And he enjoyed seeing the waterfall at the end of the hike.  His face lit up and he said "WOW!" and then "WHOA!"

The next day (July 15th) we went to the Elwah River Valley, which was amazing.  Maybe when Will is like 12 years old, we can go back and spend the whole week there, hiking around and camping.

 

We did a short hike at Elwah, which was more rugged than any other hike we had attempted with Will.  That is to say, we had to cross a stream on a log.

It would have been less nerve-wracking for me if Will had conceded to ride in his Ergo or be carried, but he insisted on crossing the stream while riding on Rob's shoulders.  This remained his chosen mode of transportation for the duration of the trip.

That afternoon, we took a ferry back to Seattle.  Will slept the whole time and I didn't even throw up.  We went to the wedding rehearsal; Rob rehearsed (recall that he was playing guitar in the wedding) and Will and I ran around in the freezing cold Puget Sound.  That night, Rob's mom flew into Seattle, and Rob went to go pick her up at the airport.

The next morning (Saturday, July 16th) it was raining, so we opted to go to the Seattle Aquarium--an indoor activity.  I couldn't help but morosely recall when Rob and I went there on our honeymoon 10 years ago, and I formally vowed never to have children as I saw a woman trying to get her bratty little child to look at a hermit crab by saying, "LOOK, GABEY, WOUDLN'T THAT CRAB TASTE GOOD?"

That night, Will stayed at the hotel with Rob's mom, while Rob and I went to a Seattle Mariner's game with Rob's friends who were getting married.  It was my first baseball game, ever.  I had a $7.50 beer, and that definitely helped me get though it.  And then, apparently, my sister in law's baseball fantasy boyfriend hit 2 homeruns.  Bravo.

The next morning (Sunday, July 17th), we went to the Space Needle.  It was probably cool, I guess, but not worth the exorbitant admission fee, particularly when you have a 2 year old with a 5 minute attention span, and you arrive there 5 minutes before his nap time.  But whatever.  It brought back memories from when I watched the entire Frasier series while I nursed Will during the first several months of his life.

 

Melissa wanted to make sure to keep her eyes open.

Afterwards, we happened upon the "Bite of Seattle," and Will got to try some Mango lemonade.

Then it was time to head back and get ready for Erin and Wyatt's wedding.  We tried to get Will to take a nap in the hotel room and Rob went into the bathroom to practice his guitar.  Endearing.

The wedding was seriously the most awesome wedding I have ever been to.  And I'm not just saying that because Rob was playing his guitar in it.  It was really a great wedding.

 

Rob playing Power of Two by the Indigo Girls as the family was being seated.

The day after the wedding (Monday, July 18), we went to Mt. Rainier, which was cool.

We did a couple of small hikes to see some big trees and another waterfall for Will.

Then it was time to come home.  Will has been having a tough time readjusting, I don't know if he is still jet-lagged or what.  He's been having some trouble sleeping and then on several mornings he has slept in until 8:30 or even 9:00.  He wants no part at all of daycare.  He still goes on Mondays and Wednesdays (so that in theory, I can work on my article for the Howler Monkey volume.  In practice, I have barely even started it), and he has since moved into the 2-year old room.  He used to love going to daycare, and on Saturdays and Sundays he would stand at the door with his shoes and hat, getting agitated and asking for "Mo" (his teacher).  Now he doesn't want to go at all.  I have to drag him outside kicking and screaming and then he beats on the door saying "Inside!  Inside!"  When we get there, he just cries and cries and says "No no no no!"  And of course he doesn't eat anything the whole day.  It is breaking my heart.  I hope things get better when I'm back at work full time and he is on more of a consistent schedule.

Anyway, I am exhausted at the moment because Will slept in our bed last night and he totally hogged my side, so I was left clinging to the edge.  Plus he intermittently kicked me in the ribs all night long.  Then for some reason I didn't have coffee today and I am kind of feeling like I might pass out soon.  Guess I'd better end this then.  Thanks for reading.

Arroz y frijoles

First of all, I want to thank everybody who left a kind comment on my previous entry or sent an encouraging email.  Seriously, you cannot even begin to know how much that helped.  Our families and a few close friends have been instrumental in getting us through this rough patch, but sometimes, a word of encouragement from a complete stranger is what ends up getting me through the day.  I can't say enough how thankful I am for each and every person who is helping us survive.

February continues to suck; there are moments when I find myself feeling like I might just make it after all (like, when I have read kind blog comments or emails), and then there are other moments when I come home from work and lay down on the couch in the dark and cry.  Those latter types of moments have to be few and well contained, given that I have a small child to look after.  But still.

Right after all of this happened and we were faced with the realization that we were going to be sh*t, flat broke, we knew that we were going to have to make some changes in our lives to scrape by.  Part of the problem with that is that we were pretty much living at Maximum Frugality before all of this happened.  I mean, we much don't buy anything but groceries and basic supplies.  We have only 1 car, and we drive it less than 10 miles a week.  I don't buy or use wasteful things like paper towels (messes can easily be cleaned up with an old sock that is then thrown in the wash and reused).  On the rare occasion that I  wrap something up in aluminum foil, I don't throw away the foil when we're done with it; instead I wash it and use it again.  In terms of becoming more frugal, it was difficult to figure out how else we were going to cut back.

One thing I thought of was that I would have to stop buying anything organic, and we would just eat arroz y frijoles (rice and beans) for dinner every night.  Rice and beans are pretty cheap.  A 1-pound package of dried black beans costs $1.67, and even if I spring for the quick cooking brown rice, that is around $2.00 a package (and it lasts for several meals).  The way I make rice and beans is loosely based off a recipe called Aztec Black Beans that I got from Fat Free Vegan.  Not that rice and beans actually requires a recipe.  But when I came across this one, I realized that I could make it in the crock pot and then it would be ready when I got home from work.  Excellent.  I typically soak and boil a batch or two of beans over the weekend, and sometimes I freeze some if I don't think we will be eating them right away.  Then to make my version of the Aztec Black Beans, I put a pound of cooked black beans in the crock pot (I find that cooked beans work better), along with a jar of salsa (Value-Time brand at Schnuck's only costs $1 for a 16 oz jar and it contains no high fructose corn syrup), and I also add some frozen corn to the mix.  I give it a good stir, set it to cook for about 7 hours, and it is delicious when I come home from work.  Usually I make rice the night before, so it is all ready too.  We eat it with tortilla chips, and sometimes Rob puts cheese on his.  I figure at most the whole thing costs about $8 or 9 to make, and it lasts 3 of us 2-3 dinners (sometimes Will eats additional leftovers for a few more meals), so that is cheap.  Cheapity cheap.  And good for you too.  And it just happens to be the only thing that Will will eat, so that is a plus too.

Even before The Incident, we ate arroz y frijoles for dinner a lot (usually I'd make it once a week), but afterwards that was all we ate, probably for about 3 weeks straight.  It was so easy, and so cheap.  I spent vanishingly little at the grocery store and began to feel like I was channeling my inner Ma Ingalls... pioneering through this hardship in the most frugal of fashions.  But then at some point, Rob mentioned as kindly as possible something to the effect of, "Could we eat something other than rice and beans?"  And I had to come up with something else that would be cheap and healthy and that I could also get on the table while working full time.  It has been a struggle.  I hadn't expected either of us to get sick of arroz y frijoles.  After all, that is what we ate every single night for dinner for an entire year when we lived in Nicaragua.   I even trained myself to eat rice and beans after numerous bouts of The Vortex, which had likely been initiated by none other than rice and beans.  Nothing like throwing up rice and beans for days on end and then beginning your foray back into the world of solid food with a nice big bowl of rice and beans.

This whole difficulty we've been going through has put a damper on all of our lives, and I really think it has wreaked havoc on every organ system in my body.  My running has suffered a lot, which is ironic, because usually running is what lifts my spirits when I'm feeling blue.  But this whole thing has made me not even want to run, so you know it is bad.  I had originally been planning on running the St. Louis Marathon this April, but that was the first thing to go out the window.  The marathon entry fee, not to mention the new running shoes I would need to go with it, were out of the question.  I have kept running here and there, but for the first time in about 7 years, with no marathon in sight.  The shoes I'm wearing are by now quite ancient... I've fully run and trained for 2 marathons in them, which makes them have about twice the mileage that I can normally get out of a pair of running shoes.  It had been so far so good though.  I thought maybe I'd become like some of the more hard core runners from our running club back in Urbana.  There was one guy who'd been wearing the same pair of shoes (racing flats, no less) for something like 10 years and had run 100's of marathons and ultra marathons in them.  Well, maybe that is a bit exaggerated, but still.  I had remained confident that my Mizunos would see us through this bad patch.  Then, seemingly out of the blue, I started to have the characteristic pain in my medial lower calf which pretty much always indicates that my shoes have reached the end of their use life and I need a fresh pair.  Damn.  New running shoes are not in the current budget.

Well, I decided that rather than give up running, I'd quit dancing around the issue and become a Barefoot Runner.  I am not kidding.  Rob has been a convert for some time, though he generally wears Vibrams or some other type of minimalist shoe that doesn't mess with your foot's natural heal strike pattern but that does provide protection from the elements.  I have to say, I've been intrigued by this issue for quite a while, and after I read Born To Run (about a year ago), I thought it was something I might actually try out someday.  The premise is that barefoot running is supposed to be the best way to run to stay injury free, because modern running shoes alter your gate and heel strike pattern in a way that actually causes you to have injuries.  I'm not sure I buy into the argument completely whole heartedly, but given my current situation, it is something I have decided to pursue.  So I announced this to Rob and it looked like what he thought was "Oh Lord," but what he said was that I should be sure to ease into it and I should probably start by getting used to barefoot walking before I tried to run.

But I'm Melissa, and I don't think I've ever eased into anything in my entire life.  This week, we had unseasonably warm temperatures which finally melted all the snow.  I put Will in the jogging stroller and we went and found a really great footpath.  I discovered that running barefoot is the funnest thing ever.  Seriously, who wouldn't love squishing around in cold, wet, mud?  It is a fantastic feeling.  The footpath is along a beautiful street, and as all these people drove by in their SUVs on their way to their 4 million dollar mansions, I smiled and waved to them and was like, do you see me??  I am running BAREFOOT.  It was pretty awesome.  I did notice that my heel strike pattern was completely different than when I am wearing shoes.  I was totally landing on the balls of my feet as opposed to the heels.  And my lower medial calf pain became unnoticeable.  So enthused I was with this barefoot running, that I went out a couple days later (this time Will stayed at home), and ran farther.  I think I may have pushed it a little bit too much because now I can barely walk.  My calves are ridiculously sore (though completely different than the initial calf issue that had prompted the shoe shedding in the first place), and I realized that that is why Rob had cautioned me to take it easy.  Running barefoot completely changes the the way you land on your feet, and it takes your muscles a while to get used to it.  Duly noted.

One more thing and then I've got to end this:  As for nursing Will, we haven't completely stopped, which is a miracle.  When he turned 18 months old, I didn't nurse him for 2 days, but then he got send home from daycare with a fever (most likely because he is teething) and he was just walking around here totally miserable, crying and chewing on his fist.  I felt so bad for him that I've let him start nursing again about once a day or so.  And the other day in his misery, he actually asked to nurse, which is the first time he's ever done that.  I was exhausted (from too much Barefoot Running?) and was laying down on the floor watching him play, when all of a sudden, he came up to me, started tugging on my shirt, and said, "Nay nay?"  I couldn't turn him down.  And I feel okay with how things are.  In some ways, I feel like I might have just needed a break from nursing, and two days of not nursing him was weird but somehow refreshing, and now I will be able to hang in there for a little bit longer.

Oh, and the novel.  I've been working on it.  We'll see.

Thanks again, everybody.

February sucks too

I haven't been able to write lately, because a little over a month ago we suffered an Unfortunate Incident which all but ruined us.  As far as Unfortunate Incidents go, I suppose it was the best kind to have because in the scheme of things, we still have each other (so far, at least), and we still have our health (again... so far at least), we just have no money.  I am not going to write in detail about this incident because there is a slim chance that there might be some Legal Action taken someday in an attempt to recoup our losses and also because I don't feel like broadcasting the details to the world.

Ever since the Incident occurred, there has been a moratorium on anything remotely fun or joyous in our lives.  Everything is somber.  At first I couldn't eat anything for days (great for saving money) and got very skinny; then at some point I shifted and realized, you know, Schnucks brand tortilla chips are cheap, and eating half a bag of them sure makes me forget my troubles.

In the midst of all of this, winter rages ferociously around us at all times.  We experienced the Great Blizzard of 2011 last week, though honestly, it didn't end up as bad as they were predicting.  Wash U closed down campus during the worst of it (something which apparently happens next to never).  The snow here wasn't so bad, but the 8-some inches of ice we had made (and is still making) everything ridiculously treacherous.  Even now more than a week afterwards, we can barely get the car out of the driveway what with all the ice piled up at the bottom.

Did I ever mention that I hate ice?

Hate it.

Hate it.

Hate it.

I can handle snow and even cold weather, though I dislike it intensely.  But I hate ice.  Back in Urbana, we would always get an ice storm the first week of December, and the ice would persist until April.  I am not kidding.  I hated it, oh my god, did I ever hate it.  I had been under the impression that St. Louis experienced less ice than Urbana (being that St. Louis is always 5-10 degrees warmer), and thus moving here would be an improvement.  But I am feeling very, very gipped at the moment.  I walk to work, and the sidewalks are a solid slick of ice.  It is like walking on a glacier.  I hate it.  On my way in this morning, I actually started crying.  I hate this winter.  It is the third worst winter of my life.  (The worst was 2 years ago when I had hyperemesis and the second worst was last year  when I was home alone and iced in with a baby who cried 12-16 hours a day).

In terms of dealing with the aftermath of The Incident, I am doing so the only way I know how.  And by that, I mean, I am rereading The Mists of Avalon.  The history of this coping strategy is that the second time I was in Nicaragua-- when I was there alone to do my pilot study-- I found a tattered copy of this book in the night stand by my bed.  I had many difficulties and panic attacks throughout the duration of my pilot study, and I took to reading The Mists of Avalon to forget about my troubles.  It was a very effective strategy.  At the time, I found the book to be somewhat poorly written (the dialogue mainly, was tiresome), but the book's epic nature (it is almost 900 pages) kind of made up for that.  I got hooked, and I brought the book home.

After the Unfortunate Incident, I didn't know how to cope with it, so one night I went down to the basement and searched out my copy of The Mists of Avalon, now held together with duct tape.  Superb.  I am finding that the second time around, I am actually more forgiving of the over-the-top dialogue and unbelievable scenarios.  It is a great distraction.

All of this reading reminded me that at my core, I always wanted to be a writer.  Before graduate school sucked all the life and creativity out of me, I had written fiction, or at least attempted to.  The problem was, most of my ideas were too large and grandiose (like... the 900 pages of The Mist of Avalon) for me to actually finish.  And most of what I wrote was so cringe-worthy I couldn't show it to anyone.  But there is one particular story idea that I had about 9 or 10 years ago, when I was working in the Lab after college, that has stayed with me. While I was taking care of the frogs and tadpoles, I would lose myself in my thoughts, sketching out the plot and developing the characters.  I still thought of this story from time to time after I went to graduate school.  And then when i was in Nicaragua for a year doing my dissertation research, I actually started writing it.  No kidding:  I wrote the first chapter on a Palm Pilot while I was out in the forest while the monkeys were sleeping.  It was in the dry season, when they would wake up about 5am and then go back to sleep during the oppressive heat of the day from about 8am to 3pm.  It was kind of awful being out there in the forest all day with them.  So I distracted myself by slowly and laboriously writing Chapter 1.  I remember so well, typing it out word for word while the monkeys slept in the big mango tree that was the site of so many battles between the groups for access to the fruit.  It was exactly 4 years ago, February 2007.

On a whim, I opened up the file on my computer and re-read that chapter.  I realized (okay, this is very snobbish of me) that it was the best thing I had ever read.  The world needed to hear this story.  I was going to finish it, somehow, some way.

But now I'm kind of stuck.  I have next to no time to work on such an endeavor, and seriously, if I am going to do a good job of it, it will require a ton of research.  The kind of research that will make my dissertation look pale by comparison.  The story is all there in my head, but it will require a lot of work to make the details believable.

I am hesitant to pour that kind of work into it.  For starters, it seems like the kind of thing I would write but then never be able to show to anybody.  And that seems like kind of a waste.  Besides, even if I did somehow find the strength to show it to somebody, it is my impression that it is actually very hard to get a book published, especially for a nobody like me.  If I poured years of my life into this and it got rejected, how could I ever come back from something like that?  I don't know.

Something else that this entry was supposed to be about was how I have come to acknowledge (while not completely accept) the fact that my nursing days are over.  The last 2 or 3 months have been like hanging on to a rock wall with just my fingernails, and I cannot put up that fight anymore.  On Saturday, William will be 18 months old, and I'm going to call that the end of this.  In many ways, it makes me immeasurably sad.  I will soon be facing that moment when I am nursing Will for the last time, and I can't even think about that without getting all choked up and hysterical.  Yet on the other hand, I am so frustrated and sick of nursing him that I dread it to the point of loathing.  I dread nursing him to the same extent that I dreaded pumping any time that I ever pumped.  It is cold and insanely unpleasant, and there is no milk coming out whatsoever.  When the Unfortunate Incident occurred and I went days without eating, drinking, or sleeping, that pretty much sealed the deal on the approximately 2 drops of milk a day that I was producing at the time.  If I still was actually lactating, I think I could keep it up.  But I just cannot do this if my only function is to be a human pacifier, with no milk, nutrients, or antibodies coming out.  No amount of heroic effort is going to get me to relactate.  I have done everything and been unsuccessful.  I need to accept this and move on, but it is so hard.  My whole life has been centered around breastfeeding for the last 18 months.  At this point I don't even know who I am without it.

Ugh.

Time to read some more of The Mists of Avalon, I suppose, and try to go to bed.

 

 

Indianapolis marathon

First.  It has been a long time since I had the chance to write a blog post.  To update in a nutshell:  1) I do not know if I had mastitis or not, but it went away with a lot of nursing, hot showers, and tylenol to keep my fever down.  2) Thank you to the people who provided midwife suggestions in the comments on my last blog post.  I've done a lot of investigating since I last wrote, and aside from the one midwife that someone suggested, there are apparently no other midwives in St. Louis.  Not even Certified Nurse Midwives.  The tough anti-midwifery laws (that were only repealed in 2008) have left their mark on this state.  If you are a midwife, please come to Missouri.  We need you.

Now, cutting to the chase.  The whole family went to Indianapolis over weekend, and I ran the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon.  It was my 10th marathon overall, and my second one since giving birth to William.  I ran Indianapolis in 2008 and had a major PR that day-- 3:37:49.  Things are a bit different now!  Not only do I have a little child to take care of, but throughout the course of this training, we moved to Missouri and I started working full time.  I've managed to do all of the long runs on the weekends, but since we moved to St. Louis, I have barely been able to run during the week.  In fact, I have never, ever trained so poorly or done so little preparation for a marathon.  I'm not even sure if I hit 40 miles/week during peak training.  I messed up the timing and did my one and only 20-miler 4 weeks out instead of 3-weeks out.  For two of my long runs (a 15 miler in July and a recent 18 miler), I ran through fever and mastitis.

On Friday night before the marathon, we stayed with the MeyPfans.  It was great to catch up with the MeyPfan clan, and William loved hanging out with Bryn, Shay, and Liam (and playing with all their toys).  Will stayed up way past his bedtime.  It was kind of difficult to get him settled down for the night, and once we finally did, he did this sleep-cry thing, wherein he fitfully tossed and turned and would utter a small wail in his sleep about every 20 minutes or so.  He tends to do this when he is either sleeping in a different place or teething (or in this case, both).  I finally brought him to bed with me, where he romped around and cried for a while, and then eventually passed out with his head on my neck (one of his favorite sleeping positions) where he snored loudly.  I do not think I slept at all the whole night long.

On Saturday, we got up at an ungodly early hour to head downtown, where I still needed to pick up my packet.  It was ridiculously cold out. I vowed I would never run a marathon in November again.

During the first mile, I forced myself to keep it in check and run very nice and easy.  I got to the Mile 1 marker in exactly 10:00, I thought, geez, maybe I have taken it too slow.  So I picked it up to about 9:00 minute pace and stayed there for a while.  Around mile 5 I caught up with the 4-hour pace group and thought I would stay with them.  I've never run with a pace group before, so I thought it might be fun.  Four hours hadn't been my goal.  I actually didn't even have a goal, other than finishing.

It turns out that I did not like running with a pace group.  There were a lot of runners in that group and I actually found it really hard to maneuver, especially at water stops.  We were all running so close together that people were clipping my heels or bumping my elbows from time to time.  I don't know, everybody else seemed to be having fun, so that's great.  I just found myself getting claustrophobic.  Plus, a lot of people in that group were all teched out-- meaning, lots of GPS units, heart rate monitors, etc., and there seemed to be a constant stream of buzzing/beeping from dozens of peoples units.  I've got nothing against units-- I've run with various units in the past (though nothing that beeped).  This time, either because I didn't care or was unprepared, I was old-schooling it with just my ancient Ironman watch (the same one I had with me for a year out in the forest in Nicaragua).

Even though I had told myself not to get cocky and pass the 4 hour pace group, I passed them within a few miles and felt a lot better to have more space.  I stayed right off the front of the pace group, running right around 9:06 pace for many miles.  My cheering squad was at Mile 11-- Rob, Will, and Rob's parents.  I veered off the course just slightly so that I could kiss Will (all bundled up in his snowsuit).  He had a little bit of snot on his face, but I didn't care.  He smiled, and that was great.

My ugliest marathon to date: red shirt, orange gloves, maroon headband, pink on my shoes. And what is up with my face in this picture? It looks like I just got my wisdom teeth removed or something.

I was still feeling pretty good at this time, but my stomach was kind of weird and I couldn't really eat or drink gatorade at the water stops.  I knew that this was a bad sign.  The only thing I could sort of choke down was Sharkies, so as I ran past the family, I asked Rob if he had brought any more of those with him.  He had.  I kept running and Rob caught up with me in a little bit to hand off the Sharkies.

Mile 14 kind of looped back around where Mile 11 had been, so I got to see the family again.  William was still smiling in his snowsuit.  Rob jumped in and ran with me for maybe a quarter mile.  I gave him my gloves when he broke away this time.  My fingers were freezing and I didn't really want to run bare-handed, but gloves seemed to be making it worse.  Whenever I'd grab water from one of the aid stations, water would slosh out of the cup and get all over my gloves.  No gloves seemed better than cold, wet gloves, though neither was ideal.

The crazies started to creep in around Mile 18.  I couldn't even eat Sharkies at this point, and gatorade was out of the question.  Nothing sweet.  I ate some pretzels, but I didn't enjoy them.  I could hear the 4-hour pace group behind me and I thought, just keep them from passing you until mile 20.  I was feeling worse and worse but still managing to maintain pace.  If my fingers would not have been so frozen, I think I would have fished out my cell phone to call my mom and have her read me the paper or something, just to give me something to focus on.

I saw Rob again at mile 22.  He was on his bike, alone this time.  The family had taken William indoors.  Rob rode alongside me, saying encouraging things.  I couldn't say much back because I didn't feel good.  I kept reminding myself that this is not as hard as giving birth.  Instead of giving in to that terrifying abyss of craziness, I tried to think things like "This isn't so bad."

My pace dropped.  I ran a 9:40.  Rob was still riding alongside me.  "The 4-hour pace group is going to catch me," I said.  He kept telling me that I was doing great.  He said that just up ahead there was a woman from our running club in Urbana.  I really do not know her very well, but I have talked to her a couple of times.  She is some kind of phenomenal ultra-runner; in fact, I couldn't even believe that she was doing a road marathon and that she was doing it at roughly my pace.  Rob told me that I could catch her.  I really doubted that I could, but I figured, why not give it a try.  What's the worst that could happen?  I kept my eye on her, and my next mile was a 9:30.  I could tell I was getting closer.  My next mile was 9:06.  And the 4-hour pace group still hadn't caught me!  I was getting closer and closer.  I didn't care whether or not I finished in 4 hours, I just focused on catching up to Tracy.

It was hard, oh my god, it was hard.  I dug deeper than I thought possible.  Rob stayed nearby on his bike, saying something encouraging to me every little bit.  Finally, I think about mile 25, I caught up to Tracy.  When I got there, I realized she was running with another woman from the club too, Kelly.  I hadn't recognized her in a stocking cap.  It was great to catch up to the two of them, but I couldn't mince words.  It was taking every ounce of my being to keep going at this pace.

And there was mile 26.  I rounded the corner and gave it everything I got, into the finishing straight.  3:59:49.  Under 4 hours by a nose.  Over 20 minutes slower than the last time I ran it, but who cares.  It wasn't the fastest marathon I've ever run, but this was by far, the gutsiest.  I had no idea I had it in me, to dig that deep for really, no apparent reason.  But I really gave it my everything, left with absolutely nothing in the tank.

I shuffled through the finishing zone, completely repulsed by all the food.  Somebody handed me a water bottle, so I took that, but really, all I wanted was to get to Rob and get the heck out of there.

By the time we got back to our car, I was freezing, and I couldn't stop shaking.  My teeth were chattering so loudly that I couldn't talk.  We went back to Rob's aunt and uncle's house, and I really was not in the mood to make small talk or pleasantries; my lips were blue, and I was feeling awful.  I took a shower and tried to convince myself that it made me feel better.  I sat on the couch and watched Will romp around.  The world was spinning though, and I felt all kinds of nauseous.  Like, oh my god I'm having a flashback to hyperemesis kind of nauseous.  I realized that I hadn't even drank anything since I crossed the finish line, so I tried to take little sips of water.

I kept feeling worse and worse and was finally like, okay people, I need to go.  The strangest thing was, even though all other food seemed repugnant, the one thing I wanted was a vegan chili cheese dog-- a weird thing I had eaten at some vegan restauarant with Rob and one of his cousins in Chicago years ago.  When I told Rob that a vegan chili cheese dog was what I wanted to eat, he looked a little pale, like, how on earth am I going to find this?  We piled into the car and drove to a Whole Foods, which I swear was about a half hour away.  I couldn't even get out of the car when we got there, so I stayed with Will while Rob went in and foraged for my survival.  He came back out with a gigantic container of vegan chili.  And I thought, of course! I always eat vegetarian chili after a marathon.

By this point I felt even more terrible, and eating was the last, absolute last thing I could fathom doing.  Which is strange, you know, because I can pretty much always eat.  I gingerly took a spoonful of the chili broth and it stayed down.  Waited a couple minutes and took another spoonful.  I couldn't eat any of the beans or tomatoes or peppers.  Just the broth.  And just one spoonful at a time.  It was slow going, and a time or two I really thought it was going to come back up.  But eventually, I started to come back to life.  I could speak again.  I could eat a couple spoonfuls at a time, with some of the beans.  At last I was feeling much better.

We visited Aimee and Brett and the kids for a while, and I had perked up enough to have a good time.  The car ride back to St. Louis was long and somewhat miserable, but we made it.  My next marathon-- Marathon #11-- will probably be the St. Louis Marathon this April.  Logistically, it will be much easier (right in my own town!), and this time, I think I will not wait for 3 hours after I finish to eat or drink anything.

Thanks for reading!

First week (almost)

First of all, I want to say thank you for everybody's kind words about my Grandma Florence. It is sad to have lost her, but it is so nice to know how much she meant to people near and far. Thanks again, it means so much.

Well, by now I've got almost a week of the new job under my belt. The job itself is good, the campus is beautiful, and my co-workers are unbelievably fantastic. When I showed up on my first day, everybody hugged me and they apologized that they didn't have the "Welcome Melissa" banner hung up in time. They're great people. It's just that everything else about this whole situation is incredibly stressful. St. Louis is stressful. I have never ever in my whole life lived in a big city (don't count Paris... I never drove there), nor have I ever wanted to. There are so many cars, and so many lanes of traffic, all the time. I miss Urbana.

We can't move into our new house until Labor Day weekend, and for the time being, we're staying in an extended stay hotel that is about a 30-40 minute trip to campus. Did you know that an extended stay hotel room is pretty much the same size as any regular hotel room, they just jam a kitchenette in there? Said kitchenette was supposed to be fully stocked with kitchen items; there are a few bowls and plates, but as far as cooking items, our only assets are a skillet and colander.

Will's sleep has been difficult to say the least, but it is getting better. The first night we were here, I think he cried all night long. The second night, only part of the night. And so on. What is difficult is that we are all in the same room, and Will is a very light sleeper. So after he goes to bed by around 7:30 or 8, Rob and I just kind of sit here in total silence and darkness. The first two nights, we had a lot of trouble getting him to sleep. Rob finally abandoned the attempts to get Will to sleep and just put him in the pack and play sitting up. We gave him Blue Seahorse and his favorite monkey book and he just sat and played quietly (in the dark) for maybe a half an hour. At some point, Rob looked at him and he was still sitting up, but had his eyes closed and was completely motionless. So Rob gently laid him down on his back, and Will stayed asleep. He was clutching his monkey book in his hands though, and he brought the book up over his face. It was kind of hilarious. Eventually, I carefully removed the book from his grasp and put it over to the side. Miraculously, he stayed asleep... well, until about 1 in the morning when he woke up screaming. But that is beside the point. I still consider the falling asleep on his own thing to be a major breakthrough. The past two nights, we've done sort of the same thing. He nurses but does not fall asleep, I put him in the pack and play (sitting up) and he plays with Blue Seahorse and monkey book until he gets tired enough to lay himself down and go to sleep. It's kind of amazing. I wish he would do that for naps too, but not a chance.

Will's daycare doesn't open until the Tuesday after Labor Day, which is stressful. Rob and I are both trying to work and take care of Will, and did I mention that it was stressful? But in a way, it might actually be less stressful than if he were in daycare. It sort of lets me ease into this not-being-with-Will all day long thing. I am terrified to take him to daycare. What if they forget and feed him something not vegan?! And how on earth will he take a nap there? In the "toddler" room, they have the kids sleep on cots. Cots?! Are you kidding me? When we visited the place, we put Will down on one of the cots to show him what it was like, and he promptly heisted himself off of it and crawled away to go find a toy. I know these people are professionals (it is one of these fancy day cares that costs a million dollars per month), but still, I don't think they have any idea what they are going to be dealing with. I asked them if they ever expel a child for crying too much, and they laughed and told me no. But seriously, they are in for a wake up call. I am terrified to send him to daycare, but in the same sense, I feel that we are all just hanging on by a thread, trying to work while juggling child care.

Will outside my office

Playing on the floor of the hotel room. Gross.

Well, his highness is fussing, so I guess I better turn off the computer and try to breathe very quietly for a while so that he doesn't wake up. We could be in for a long night.

Thanks for reading

Mysterious benefactor

When I was 16 or 17, I drove around a lot more than I do nowadays, and I developed a habit of leaving my windows down in the rain. Not completely rolled down-- I'd just leave the windows open a crack so that the car wasn't quite as stifling hot when I got back into it, and invariably when I did so, it would rain. I even wrote a poem about it (that is back when I wrote poetry). Well, the poem wasn't literally about leaving my windows down in the rain... the windows thing was more of a metaphor for other bad habits I couldn't seem to break.

We've been parking our car on the driveway this week, because our garage is full of boxes left over from our garage sale that we are still trying to figure out what to do with. I had to run an errand yesterday, and the car was ridiculously hot after being out in the sun all day. Will was soaked through with sweat when we got home. So I left the windows down, just a little. I guess I still haven't broken the habit.

And then I promptly forgot about it. I didn't remember about the windows until today, when I was nursing Will before his nap, and it started pouring down rain. Well, there was nothing I could do about it. I got Will to sleep (it took forever for some reason), and then I tiptoed downstairs to look out the window and see if it was worth it to dash outside and roll up the car windows.

Much to my surprise, I saw that there was a black tarp draped over the car. I did not recognize the tarp, so I was a bit confused. I sent Rob a quick email, "Did you put a tarp on the car before you left for work today?" My message confused him. No, he replied, he had not put a tarp on the car.

Well, someone had put a tarp on our car.

With the tarp covering the car, there wasn't much of a point of me running out in the torrential downpour to roll up the windows. I didn't know what to do exactly, so I just waited it out. I did other stuff around the house, and after a while, the rain quit as suddenly as it had begun. I looked out the window again and saw that the tarp had been removed.

The only way to explain this is that one of our neighbors must have seen that the windows were cracked and put the tarp on the car when it started to rain, then taken it back off when the rain ended. Weird. I'm wondering if it might have been the construction workers who are working on a home across the street. The tarp looked like something they might have had, and we all wave at each other sometimes when I'm going in or out of the house to take Will for a walk.

At any rate, my thanks goes out to whoever put the tarp on our car. Although I feel like kind of a loser for leaving my windows down in the first place, it is nice to have such caring and thoughtful neighbors.

Only in Urbana.

Garage sale

The Ragfields have decided to have a garage sale. Actually, it was mainly me who decided we were having a garage sale. Rob looked kind of pale and wan when I informed him of this decision, because it would necessarily involve dealing with our clutter instead of continuing to trip over it or shove it into the storage room and pretend it doesn't exist.

I hate clutter. I hate, hate, hate it. The clutter in our house actually keeps me awake at night sometimes, but trying to do something about it has just seemed so overwhelming... where to begin? We got rid of a lot of stuff before we went to Nicaragua for a year, but we stopped short of actually having a garage sale because we were both way too stressed out to put in that kind of effort. We boxed up a lot of things we didn't need, stored them for a year, and then moved them into this house where they have remained untouched (in some cases) or strewn about the floor (in other cases).

Well, I've had it. Clutter be gone. I cannot live like this anymore. Over the past several weeks, I have aggressively gone about de-cluttering our bedroom and Will's bedroom. Each of our rooms had numerous Scary Boxes Full Of Junk We Don't Know What To Do With in it. But I finally got rid of it all-- either organized, thrown away, recycled, or put into bins that will go out for the garage sale. It was a fantastic feeling, to finally go to bed in a room that contained no boxes of junk that threatened to strangle me in my sleep. There are still some scary rooms in our house-- the storage room, the office, and the garage-- but if our bedrooms are relatively clutter-free, that is a huge relief.

At any rate, the main reason why I started writing this is because I need advice: what do you do about change? As in, how much change should I have on hand for the garage sale, and in what denomination (ie, quarters, dollar bills, fives, etc)? I've priced everything to be 25 cents, 50 cents, a dollar, and so on, so I don't have to deal with dimes and nickels too much. But I'm at a loss as to knowing how much change I should have. Any input from the experts would be appreciated!

We're planning the sale for this weekend (Friday and Saturday actually). If you're in the area, feel free to stop on by. Who knows, maybe we'll even have something for sale that you want.

Well, the baby is crying; I've got to go.