What happens when I wear make up to the gym

I figure I'll go ahead and do my update now since I can get it in.

I have kid who is napping, puppy who is napping and sick kid who has spent all afternoon coloring and drawing.

And I should say that I really appreciate that she can entertain herself so easily and has so much focus. Really, I do. I even admire her for it and wish I had a quarter of it. The problem? You ask? Well, everything is a master piece. Do you know how small my house is? How I am suppose to save every. single. masterpiece? I am always relieved when she tells me some of them are meant for others. Then I won't have to wait until she is at school or in bed to throw out the masterpieces nor will I have to deal with the subsequent and inevitable guilt of throwing out a masterpiece.

So I digress. Anway . . .I am probably not going to get much running or writing in Friday or Saturday since Carmella has to stay home from school and I have social commitments on Saturday and a race on Sunday.

Sunday: Rest, went to Monkey Joe's, jumped around, took kids for a walk.
Monday: 4 miles speed workout on the treadmill 31 minutes--little slower than usual. 20 minutes weights.
Tuesday: 10 miles-- no idea about pace or time.
2 mile walk with kids and Lola
Wednesday: Long run. According to Garmin it was just under 19 miles in 2 hours and 51 minutes. But I didn't think that was right so I checked the route again here and it was just under 20 miles. My GPS kept going out the first 8 or so miles and I made lots of turns. It is frustrating that I can't really depend on Garmin.
1 mile walk with Lola to work out the kinks in the afternoon.
Thursday: 35 minutes on the elliptical and 4 miles on the treadmill in 31 minutes.

Today I went to the gym around 2pm. I never go at this time since the nursery is not open but Ryan was home today and watched the kids so I could go. Since I had to take Carmella to the doctor today I put makeup on and fixed my hair. Normally I spend my day in my running attire with wildly knotted hair and no makeup. Doing hair and makeup takes time away from running or doing one of the other million, I think, more important things I have to do. However, I do try to make an effort to look good whenever I need to be my child's advocate in person. Going to doctor's appointments is one of those times. I think people are more apt to listen to me if I looked pulled together (even if, really, I am not). Plus I have found that I never run into anyone I know when I do look good. I only see old classmates, ex boyfriends, old co-workers when I am hideous and disheveled. So getting dressed up when my kids are sick assures me that while I am tending to sick kids I won't also have to worry about making social niceties and small talks with blasts from the past.

I know, I know, get to the f-ing point. Sorry, like I said I have sick kid who is entertaining herself and napping kid and napping puppy. I can afford to be slightly self indulgent right now. Go write your novel you say? Shush, I am being frivolously self indulgent not lofty pursuits indulgent.

Point is that I went to the gym today looking much better than I normally do when I am there. For the most part there was no one there. I was on the elliptical and this guy came over and started talking to me. He offered me a magazine first and this forced me to take my headphones off. Then we started a conversation. We talked for the 20 minutes I had left on the elliptical. All the while I couldn't decide if he was hitting on me or not. I kept thinking either he was or that he was just trying to figure out the appropriate moment to ask me if Jesus was my personal Lord and Saviour? And would I? Like to come to bible study with him?

But that never happened and instead he offered me a pamphlet on triathlon training. Mmm, the cult of tri-ing. Interesting and very nice and all but I am a runner and an idiot on a bike and while I am a good swimmer I don't like getting kicked in the face or swam over or peed on. I even told him all this.

Then I went and did my treadmill run and afterwards he called me back over to chat. After dropping the husband and the kids and puppy into the conversation several times he asked if I had a sister. So I don't know maybe he was hitting on me, maybe he was selling me on some tri program, maybe he was just being friendly. All I am saying is that no one ever talks to me at the gym--except my pal Mike and that is because he is friends with everyone at the gym and feels sorry for me because I have no gym friends(even though I have been going regularly for over 3 years)--I am persona non grata. I am gym loser. See? Amazing what a hair brush and little make up can do for a girl.

Well, yeah, so anyway I don't know if I am going to get run anymore this week. I'd like to try and get to 50 mpw but it isn't looking hopeful. I am at 37/38 mpw. A few rest days is probably a good idea though if I want to do well in the half on Sunday. So I'll just be okay with whatever.

As far as novel pursuits go . . . it is coming along, slowly. Not sure how much I got in today-- at least another page, maybe 2. My time got cut short and I find I spend too much time editing, reworking what I did the day before. This has always been a problem for me. I know it is probably a better idea to just keep writing and then go back but I like to work stuff in, change it, move things around every time I come back to it. So at this rate I am thinking I will be finished in a year. Nora Roberts? Joyce Carol Oates? Obviously, I am not.

Owning Time

The snooze button has been passed.

In our almost 8 years of marriage Ryan has always had control over the alarm clock. (Yes, we only have one. It does have 2 alarms on it though.) He has always had to be the first up and if I was getting up earlier--like for a race--he would set it for me. But last night, after I told him I would be getting up at 5 am, he relinquished control of the alarm clock to me.

Me!

I can hardly believe it myself and I have to admit that I was ridiculously excited to have the alarm clock on my side of the bed.

And now? Now that I am in control things? Things are going to be different. Time is going operate differently.

Last night, since I have to get up so early now, I went to bed first and set the alarm. Ryan came in a bit later and checked the alarm.

"5 am?" he said, "You are going to be getting up at like 4:15," he laughed. I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking: poor, foolish, naive Nat. She knows not what she does.

"No, I'm not. I set the time right," I informed him.

"What! Why would you do that? You really are crazy!"

"I don't like doing math in my head. It doesn't make any sense to set the clock ahead 45 minutes if I know it is 45 minutes ahead. That is just dumb. I am not tricking myself into getting up earlier because I know it is fast."

And then I really upset him when I told him that I don't do snooze. I tried to explain how research has shown that you are more tired from hitting the snooze button than just getting up. This of course flies in the face of everything he has ever known. He has the alarm go off almost an entire hour earlier than he needs to get up so that he can hit snooze 5 or 6 times. He thinks there is pleasure in the snooze.

But to me? It is so fucking irritating. I've been pissed off about it for years but since I don't have to go to a job I have been powerless to change it.

You see. Unlike Ryan, I don't sleep through snooze. So I am up after the first time the alarm goes off. And then I will have to wait nine minutes for it to go off again and for him to hear it, reset it and set again. All the while I just lie there not sleeping--even though I could be since I don't have to be for up another hour or so.

But now? I am happy to say that I am slave to snooze no more.


Because now? In our house? I own time. Mwahahahahaha

And anyone who has ever come to my house will tell you that time is held hostage here because we have no clocks--at least none with the correct time displayed.

And yes, I got up at 5am and wrote/typed for an hour. And let me just say it is amazing anyone ever got anything written at all with there being that delete button. But God bless the keyboard for it and whoever invented cut and paste. Typewriter? Can't imagine it. Long hand? No way. But I got 3 more rough pages and a sketch of how chapters 1-4 are going to go. So progress.

I forgot how hard it was

I really think I am a masochist after all.

Why else would I continually choose difficult--for me--endeavors? The easy? I guess, shrug; it bores me.

Some people out there can just run a few miles and be fine with that.
Not me, I need to run marathons. It isn't easy, ever. I do keep thinking it will get easy but so far it hasn't.

Some people get both their kids potty trained and think: Yeah! No more poop.
Not me, I get a puppy.

I guess I like a challenge.

I must because I generally think of myself as a lazy person. I really want things to be easy. And I even go so far as to think things should be easy but most things are not--for me. (See, life is hard! Dad, you were totally right about the "real world.")

So for things to be easy must not really be what I want in life after all because it seems like I continually choose to do things that-- for me-- are difficult and challenging-- if not fly completely in face of good sense.
I guess maybe masochist is just a fancy word for dumb ass.

A couple of weeks ago I was reading somewhere on the Internet an article about ultramarthoners and the effects of cortisol. The article said that the stress of running 50 miles causes the body to release cortisol and that causes runners to have that runner's high from endorphins. They said it can cause epiphanies --hallucinations even. Well, I didn't need to run 50 miles to have one--an epiphany that is. Maybe I got lucky because it is Lent and even though I am not Catholic I do have a lot of Catholic friends (guilt by association hahaha). And, I did celebrate fat Tuesday last Monday with a bunch of them. We even talked about Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. So maybe all that is why on Thursday's long run--the 2nd day of Lent--I had an epiphany. Or maybe it was just the cortisol.

Oh, here I am with some of my Catholic buddies celebrating fat Tuesday a day early:

So what was my epiphany?

Well to tell the truth, when I was discussing Shrove Tuesday with my friend I remembered a short story I had written. It is set in the forty days of Lent. One of the characters gives up her sanity for Lent, the other finds hers. So on my run on Thursday I was thinking about that story and out of the blue I remembered another story. It was the second story I had ever written. I wrote it almost 14 years ago.

There was a lot I liked about this story. My professor actually said he was jealous of the title and wished he had thought of it. How huge of a compliment is that? Which is also why I will not be blogging about the title since titles are not copyrighted and I'll just have to hope and chalk it up to ethics as to why he won't use it-- or anyone else from my writing class. I did at the time have a boyfriend read it. He liked it too. So much that he adapted it and made a short film based on it for a school project. He swears he gave me credit and that I gave him permission but I don't remember that and I really wasn't too happy about that he used my story-- mostly because I have never seen said film and he was, by that point, an ex boyfriend. Oh well.

At any rate this story has haunted me. It has always had problems that I could never reconcile. I had rewritten it once and tried a second time but just couldn't take it anywhere new. I was at a dead end and set it aside. Not once-- even in graduate school-- have I pulled it out to look at it and try again.

On my run Thursday --after remembering it--I decided to give it another look. When I got home I dug it out of my trunk--the trunk which Ryan has begged for years for me to throw out but I won't. It has "my papers" in it.However, I haven't even opened the trunk since before we were married. It just moves with me and sits in the garage covered in dirt and dust.

So on Friday--Lala this should please you-- I started writing again. And immediately I remembered why I had placed all that aside--the writing, not just the story.

I had forgotten how hard it is for me to create something out of nothing.

The pressure of it. The pressure that I am the only one with the answers is maddening. Can I tell you that since Friday I have googled to no end, gone to my bookshelf and asked people off the wall questions. Why? I am looking for answers. I know that I will not find them in any of those places but nonetheless I look, I search, I ask, and I google.

The problem is that when I started writing I thought I knew. I thought, for the most part, that I knew what was going to happen and that all it would take was some fleshing out and finally I would have that story out of my head. I thought it would be easy.

But it hasn't worked out like that at all. By the third sentence three new characters showed up. I was very surprised by them and at first I thought they were nothing but then in the second paragraph I gave one of them a name that in my heart I knew was too big for her to be just a background character. And once I wrote her? There was no taking her back.

Still, though, I didn't think it was a big deal.I thought I could easily work it in. But then I handed out another name and I realized that this wasn't just one story anymore, it was two. I have only written three pages but already I know so much more.

And it is invading my mind like you wouldn't believe. I dreamed about them--the characters-- the other night and today on my 10 mile run I thought about them the whole time. It has been stressing me out worrying about how I am going to make all this information work in one little short story. And it was then, today, somewhere in that 7th mile that I realized this isn't a short story at all. It is a novel and while they aren't yet written I know what the first two chapters are going to be.

Have I written them yet? No, not yet. I did have to go pick up my kids and play with them today, but tomorrow. Tomorrow I will make a go at it.

It is very hard for me to make myself sit down and write. It isn't so much the writing but rather the sitting still and intensely focusing. I feel overwhelmed and the need to get it done right then--afraid that if I leave it? I may never come back to it. But the sitting still is the hardest part. It is antithetical to my nature.

Really, it is. Just ask Lala and the pediatrician who diagnosed me withADHD at age five and prescribed Ritalin for 15 years of my life. But I-- regardless of difficulty-- really think that I am suppose to be a writer. Why else would I be plagued by these people and these stories that only exist in my imagination?

And so I am going to take the lead from that same professor who once liked my title so much and write first thing in the morning like he does. He once told me that writing is one of the hardest things he does: so he does it first thing everyday-- before he does anything else. So starting tomorrow, I am promising to get up at 5 am and write for one hour before I have to get the kids up for school. I am going to try to do it every week day.

And I am writing this here because blogging about running some days is the only thing that actually gets me out that door and running. So I am hoping that if I commit here to writing a novel I will actually do it.