KALB 5k

51:54.

6:39 less time than the Pioneer Day 5k.

And the reason for the faster time?

How many of you have ever had a personal cheerleader?

I'm not talking about having someone in your family who cheers on the team for the win.

I'm talking about a personal cheerleader who is a combination of a perky cheerleader with a sunny disposition and a pitbull (I truly mean that in the nicest way.).

When I didn't think I would be able to keep walking, because at one moment I didn't have any feeling in my feet and one buttock . . . the cheering was ever present "You CAN do this!"

When I am quite sure I lost a lung on a turn because I was wheezing like an old pump organ on its last gasp . . . the encouragement kept whispering "It's not much farther!"

I can't take credit for this.

Sure, I did my part with sweating and walking, but this finish time is all Beth's.

Without the pom-poms, she still cheered. Although at one point, she did do some cheerleader dancing moves, it was mostly just the field chatter that makes you believe anything is possible.

So today I completed my second 5k.

I'm kind of proud. I'm not dead yet. We got a private police escort (because when you bring up the rear and everyone else is DONE - they sort of want to make sure you don't get lost or run over by someone who doesn't believe you are part of the celebrants who are ready to pick up their awards and go home) and I finally dragged my carcass over the line.

Other than needing some water and a quick deep breath to make up for the asthmatic lack of oxygen in my lungs, I'm fine.

While I am convinced that oxygen normally fills my lungs, there were a couple of times I felt for all the world like I did when I was a kid and almost drowned in a swimming pool. The rain this morning left a humid, dribbly calling card that made it hard to breathe.

Fortunately, Beth was breathing for us both.

Now, I need to find my next goal. I need to get another 5k lined up in the sites and keep training. Otherwise, I totally know I will revert to the comfort loving slacker that my genes most certainly are compelling me to be. It must be genetic! Why else would it feel so good?

But I digress.

I'm actually pretty proud of being able to do this. Although the people who run are always going to be an inspiration to me, I am enjoying the process that goes on for these events.

While it is always a challenge, it is sort of what makes it worth it. Though slow and rusty to respond, there is still enough competitive DNA to make me want to succeed even if I have lost a lung, am breathing through a straw, am in pain and can no longer feel my limbs.

The athlete buried under years and pounds and scar tissue still wants to do well.

Thanks to God the Father, who has blessed me to want to keep trying, and to Beth, who makes it seem like a fun thing to do when decent people are drooling on their pillow, it's becoming something I am looking forward to doing.

Who knows what the future holds? Although I have no way of looking into the future, I do want it to be on my feet and not in some sort of buggy because I can't move myself anymore. I just hope this process will make life longer, fuller and continue to be the blast that it usually is.

Even when it hurts, just knowing that I can do something to make things better through the pain is worth it.

Now, if you will pardon me, I'll be in the bathtub marinating in Icy-Hot. I'm sorry to say you will have to get your own, as I don't believe there is any left in the house...

Valley of the Dolls

On the back of many cleaning products years ago was a dislaimer that the product contained 'harsh abrasives that may damage surfaces'.

Perhaps I should bear the same warning.

Though I never set out to offend or cause people to be wounded in any way, there are days I am not master of my domain when it comes to my tongue or my thoughts.

Oddly enough, I thought that was part of my mortal journey to learn to control that part of me which isn't up to snuff. But in discovering there is still a broad chasm which I am not even part way across in no way minimizes the damage that has been inflicted upon more tender souls than my own.

Years ago, I read a fairly useless novel entitled 'Valley of the Dolls'. When Daddy walked in the house and saw me sprawled in the chair reading said book, he commented, "You really must be hard up for entertainment if that is the best you can do."

The one thing I came away from the book with was an understanding that there are people who prefer that everyone else in their life act according to their own personal desires and level of tolerance and that anything that might upset their personal apple cart was not to be condoned. With a careful substitution of mechanical women, the men in the story had an idyllic life (to them) and managed to keep their own desires and choices at the forefront of life.

In the scriptures, there is a passage that talks about the tongue being a sharp sword (see Psalms 57:4). How many times has that part likening a tongue to a sword been applicable to me?

Though other people are allowed to express themselves in ways that are not socially becoming, I am beginning to learn that I am expected by other people to never have a bad day or a moment in which I fail to meet the invisible line of personal expectations set by them for "other" folks.

The truth is that I do get angry, frustrated and hurt.

I also am hurt sometimes by the things that OTHER people have wounded me with in their 'off days', but I try really hard to keep that from distracting me from seeing who they really are the rest of the time. I attempt to make allowances and keep a decent perspective even when I am licking my wounds that their own sharp tongue inflicts in me.

But I have started to realize that the ability to understand and compensate for the fact that everyone has a bad day or a bad experience from time to time is something that is hard for others to deal with or understand. IT's like 'it's okay that I'm having a bad day, you will understand, but YOU can't ever have any lest you hurt MY feelings.'

I am not perfect. I have tried really hard to not pretend I am.

I reach out in the writing and speaking that I do mostly out of a sense of profound loneliness in my life that is frequently due to my own actions. I have a tendency to drive people away when they get too close because I truly am afraid that I will disappoint them and never be able to live up to the measure of expectation in their eyes. So, I strike first. Preemptive and unpremeditated on a conscious level, but nonetheless, still a strike.

Compelled to speak when my opinion doesn't matter to ANYONE but me, I haven't yet learned that even on my own blogspace, my words can wound.

I worry about going to hell.

There isn't anything so frightening to me as the idea that I would be cast off forever from my family and what few people have thus far tolerated my presence.

And I am concerned that my lack of self-control where my thoughts and actions are concerned will be the tipping point when the day of judgement comes. There appear to be abundant witnesses to all the bad I have done who can testify in open court about the lack of redemptive material substance in my life.

Somehow I am not convinced that nursing a sick kitten back to health will add up to a lot when stacked against the sinking balance of the pain and hurt and verbal violence I have brought into the life of tenderhearted souls who are suffering under their own personal load. Then I have come and, instead of lifting and consoling and helping, I make the burden heavier and worse to endure.

I'm sorry I get angry about things that bother me. I truly wish I had an unflappable gene that made every slight or misplaced moment mean nothing to me due to my long-range views of an eternal meaning that kept minor annoyances below the sweep of the radar.

I'm sorry that I mouth off about the moments in my life where I feel let down by circumstance or the choices of others. I should be so much more understanding of their choices because I am practically the patron saint of mediocrity and worse.

I'm sorry that I seem to create a list of offended parties whom I have wounded. The worst part of it is that there are many of them who will not accept an apology when I truly mean it.

I don't have a delete button in my personal life. Though my blog has the ability to delete postings and turns of phrase that are objectionable content to the people wading through mortality with me, my life lacks that crucial click of the mouse that can remove offense without leaving a scar.

So, by way of apology to every single person whom I have ever hurt or offended, I am sorry that my lack of proper self-control has hurt you. I apologize most humbly for the suffering and wounds I have inflicted in your heart and soul. And most of all, I apologize for falling short of what I should be, not in your eyes, but in the eyes of Father.

You Ain't Got The Right!

CLASSIFIED AD:
Mild mannered woman in faded jogging pants seeks sanity in world filled with spam.

Remind me why it is that ANYONE ever thought email was a GOOD idea?

WHEW!

I feel better now.

Here's how this scenario plays out.

Sitting at my desk reading the news and email, I received one that frustrates the bejeebers out of me.

You can have ANY opinion you want to and this little chick will fight to the DEATH to see that you can have your opinion. Even if I don't share it.

But please, do not send my email address to your favorite damn political action committee!!

I do not care if they are life's blood to you, they may not mean anything to me. The fact that you do not respect me enough to keep my address a private thing means now you have opened up my email box to a host of ads for products and services that I don't need or want. You have callously allowed strangers to send me materials with which I may not even agree or want to have in my home. I don't need Viagra or any 'natural' enhancement supplements. I am not interested in donating to the 'Save the Darter Fish Fund'. That doesn't make me a bad person. It makes me selective.

So thanks.

Thanks for nothing.

I realize that sometimes people mistakenly believe that causes should be universal in appeal. That is as likely as everyone being your friend.

Oddly enough, the belief that YOUR cause is EVERYONE'S cause via email is the QUICKEST way to lose friends I have ever seen.

Cyberspeed is way faster than an elementary school playground when eliminating friends.

So, unless we have a longstanding relationship in which the political give and take in our conversation is enough for us to agree, disagree and discuss without losing the important issue at hand of being friends, please do not send me your political crap.

There is enough of that floating around in the world without your generous contribution.

If this means we aren't friends anymore, I'm willing to live with that. Boo hoo.

Diet Products and Delusions

I just love the plaid Bobbie Brooks jacket I had in college. It was one of those 'goes with everything' jackets. Sadly, it shrunk. (stop laughing - these things happen over time with clothing!)

While contemplated photos from my past life, I realized that the pictures aren't something to lament and wail over, but rather a pleasant reminder that who I am today is in large measure due to that skinny girl back then who was tenacious enough to make an attempt to seize the bull by the horns (or whatever needed grabbing) and try to make the best of the offerings given.

What I would like though is the body I left behind. Even a blurry, distant version of it would be nice. I will, however, insist upon keeping the brain cell I currently have which is crammed full of the useful information gleaned from stupid mistakes and forthright choices that have given me the experiences and yes, the wrinkles, imposed by a life that has hopefully been well lived to this point.

As I sat her pondering the changes that time has brought on, I came across an ad for a product that is like a big Telfa pad that you are supposed to stick to the bottom of your feet and suck the toxins in the body right out through the soles of the feet and into what, by morning, becomes an icky blackish brown colored pad. It reminds me of the color of the Swiffer pad after I mop around the dog's chair. YUCK!

Then there is the green tea that takes your tacky Dunlop spare tire dangling over your belt and turns it into flat, sexy abs and a body that would make men faint at your passing. Yeah. If green tea does that, why does Buddha look like he does? Hmmmm?

My personal favorite is the colon cleanse products that are on the early morning/late night infomercials for the hapless people who are up at 3:15 am when their husband is on a scout trip and their son won't sleep...oh, maybe that was too revealing...

This cleansing product lays claim to the ability to remove the 'concrete-like' buildup in your colon that makes you anywhere from 20 to 40 pounds heavier and makes you feel tired and listless.

I don't remember any of my doctors over the years indicating to me that I was filled with this type of buildup. And since more than one has indicated that a bit of weight loss was in order, I'm certain it would have come up in the exam.

The smiling skeletal spokesman tells us in enraptured tones that this product (allegedly) cleans up the colon slick as a whistle and makes our bowels function in ways never before imagined. Of that I am sure. You take that stuff and spend the next week in the bathroom or at a nearby state park in the outhouse.

And by the way, if this is supposed to be oh so good for you to do, couldn't they have a spokesman who didn't look like a walking corpse with a pencil-thin mustache?

But maybe that is the 'desired outcome' from the product. As an aside, it also alleges to remove worms and parasites from the body.

I don't believe I reside in the swampy jungle nor drink and wade in the Nile. I steadfastly refuse to eat uncooked meat or undercooked meat and I seldom eat dirt now that I am an adult. So where would I have obtained these delightful parasitic creatures that their product is so willing to rid me of and more importantly, why would I want to LOOK at what their product was flushing out of me like their enthusiastic bone man touts?

He reminds me of Jack Skellington, but in a creepier way.

Then there are the myriad pills that cut appetite, boost metabolism and, in short, shine light on you, make you sing Christmas carols and snow on yourself. If they really worked all that well, no one would ever need more than one package.

It is not easy to wade through it all.

I'd like to have a product that I can take that has no side effects, removes the weight overnight, gives me abs of steel, and quietly replaces my woeful lack of willpower with nerves of steel that steer me and my shopping cart away from all the wrong foods and gives me the energy and stamina to avoid the afternoon naps that are my best method of survival on a bad day.

When you find it, please tell me what it is so I can buy one. I promise to do the same for you should I come across it first, but only after I take it so you can see how good it works.