Month: July 2016

On turning 21 again

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

 

Today is my birthday. I turned 21 times 2. But I still think that I am 21. I started my day off having coffee in the hot tub. It was a cool morning. 

Then I went for a 12 mile run.  Seriously, who needs birthday spankings??!? I wore my shirt that says ‘I run because punching people is frowned upon” just because I like that shirt.  

  

Then I spent the afternoon at work.

  

After work I came home and played the yard game Kubb with the kids. It involves knocking down blocks with sticks. It was fun until I asked the kids to clean up. Then they tried to knock each other’s blocks off with sticks. It involved throwing blocks at each other, crying, slapping, and breaking things with a touch of swearing.  I was really hoping the kids wouldn’t fight for my birthday. Maybe next year… 

 

Paul had play practice tonight, so I went out to eat with the kids. I got my free birthday beer, Blu Bobber with blueberries in it.

I feel like I’m 21 again!

Birthday blues

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

Tomorrow is my birthday.

What do I want? Something that can’t be bought in a store.

I want a day of peace and tranquility. Just one day that is problem free. I want an escape from my normal routine.

Every day is the same. I start a couple loads of laundry before heading off to work. I deal with problems at work. Then I deal with problems at home. Sometimes simultaneously. After I make supper, clean the kitchen, and fold laundry I finally get to go to bed. I wake up and do it all over again the next day. Although I enjoy working and keeping busy, sometimes adulting can be monotonous and the responsibility burdensome.

I have to work tomorrow. After work, the kids want to do something with me. All I want from them is peace. I don’t want to hear any fighting. Even when we play games, they constantly tease each other by calling names or saying that their siblings suck. They say that it is all in jest, but I don’t find it very funny.

Paul has play practice on my birthday. I should’ve known to lower my expectations when he got the lead part in the summer play. He doesn’t have time for me anymore. I was hoping that he would go up north with me last weekend. When we got together with theater friends last week, he spontaneously offered to take them sailing this past weekend. So he did that instead. Then he asked me to crew for his race last night, but I was replaced by his theater friends. I was okay with that because I only wanted to be a sub. However, he has been sailing with a much younger single woman (not alone) from the theater that thinks he’s hot. I guess I would care more if she was attractive. I was hoping to sail with Paul for almost a week for our anniversary, but we cut it back to a weekend for play practice. I am getting really sick of it already.

I feel left out. I didn’t know all of the inside jokes. I am just an introvert who wants to feel included, but doesn’t want to go. I feel like no one cares about me. The kids really don’t need me much anymore. Sometimes I don’t really care about me either. I almost got hit by a car this morning while I was out riding my bike. The lady almost went through a stop sign. She slammed on her brakes last minute when she saw me. I didn’t get angry like I usually do. I didn’t really care. Hey, I’m still here!

Although my best friend Lisa moved home almost two months ago, we have only seen each other twice. I don’t feel like running with her. I would rather be alone.

When I was a kid, my mom made a very big deal out of my birthday. It was the one day of the year that my life wasn’t all about my autistic brother. I think because of that I have high expectations of how that day should go. Every year it seems harder and harder to get excited. My birthday always signifies the middle of summer. It is going by so quickly this year. I don’t want summer to end and I don’t want to get any older!

Tomorrow I will be 21 (doubled). Gulp! Ready or not, here I come.

Weak end

/ Outrunning my demons / 2 Comments

I sat alone by the lake close to the spot where my brother almost drowned. “Why didn’t you try to save me?” I heard him ask. Because I was only six. He told me that he still has nightmares about drowning. How can that be? He was only two. Sometimes when I am all alone the memories scratch my mind. 

I was hoping that my weekend up north would be peaceful and relaxing. For the first time all summer, I had a weekend without plans. I decided to go up north with my two daughters to prepare for Angel’s graduation party next weekend. I cleaned the cabin and hid the clutter. My parents still have boxes with my middle school books in them. 

Saturday morning I received a call from my son. He said that the car wouldn’t start. As I sit here typing, my car is broke down in the front lawn awaiting repair. There has already been fighting over the use of vehicles since Alex got his license almost 2 weeks ago. This is the start to the busiest week so far this summer. My youngest is in summer school and needs a ride. Angel got asked to babysit and provide transportation for 3 different families this week. Plus she took on Arabella’s pet sitting job while she is in summer school. We need a car! I had to find a ride to work and back. 

I ended up letting Alex drive my car this past weekend while I was gone. He was asked to pick up the mother of his girlfriend’s best friend who was too drunk to drive. Great! He was happy because she bought him food at the drive thru. I don’t even know this woman! It is not too uncommon for new driver’s to be the designated driver. That’s real life in the drinking state. I know people that have their kids pick them up from the bar almost every weekend. I suppose it is better than driving drunk. What kind of life is that for a teen? 

With all the driving around that my kids are doing, I should put an Uber sticker on the car. Maybe they can make enough money to pay for the gas.

The whole rest of the weekend my daughters fought something terrible. It even carried over into today. Arabella brought a friend up north. She made rules for her friend that she was not allowed to talk about how awesome her sister Angel is or spend time with her. The rules didn’t work out too well. Her friend didn’t like being bossed around. Arabella didn’t want to play the games that she wanted to play whereas her sister did. We tried playing badminton, Arabella would only be on the team with her friend. She didn’t want to play by the rules and got mad at her sister when our team was winning. Then she chased her sister around the yard with the racquet. 

They screamed at each other. Arabella accused Angel of stealing her friends. Her friend was crying because she liked both of them and just wanted them to get along. It was absolutely miserable. I just wanted to pull out my hair. I have never seen Arabella so jealous and angry at her sister before. She even told me that she was afraid that the dog she was pet sitting would like Angel more. It is hard because Angel is older and has better people skills. Last weekend her cousins told her that they liked Angel but not her. Then she tries to force them to like her and it doesn’t work. 

I spent the weekend worried about problems. I was irritated by the constant fighting when we could be having a fun time. Then I thought about memories that made me feel sad. 

I wish I could just do the whole weekend over. 

The purge

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

I was always a writer. I started scribbling in diaries before I could write. Now those old letters seem strangely reminiscent of hieroglyphics found in a dark cave. It doesn’t make sense to me anymore. It is not even me anymore.

I wrote my first book in grade school. I wrote for hours and hours a fictional story about a girls orphanage. It was a childhood dream of mine to give lonely little girls a home. I wrote a story about their struggles and how I saved them. Then my middle school self thought that it was stupid and threw it out. Then I began to write my story.

Almost 5 years ago, I became friends with my ex-boyfriend Brad on Facebook. I asked him for my old pictures back. He sent me a big stack of my pictures to my home address. These were childhood pictures too old to be on digital print. He wanted one thing in return, his diary back. When I was going out with Brad he was in the military and kept a diary while he was on a Navy ship.

I searched through my stack of old journals. I found the diary and started to read it. I was hoping to find a riveting piece of historical non-fiction. But instead found a romantic novel obsessing about me. It contained page after page of personal biography about my life, my family, and my struggles. There was no way I was going to give that back, so I threw it out. We were both happily married to other people. I thought it would be forgotten, but I thought wrong.

It was also at that time that I threw out all of my high school notes written back and forth between friends. My childhood wasn’t the happiest part of my life. I was afraid that my children (my oldest at the time was 13) would find them. I didn’t want them to see me. I didn’t want them to be like the teen me.

Those were hard days. It seemed like I was always searching for that glimmer of hope. I spent a long time in the dark grasping for light before I got out. Now it lingers behind me in another dimension like an abyss or black hole. I feel if I go back it will trap me and I will never be able to leave again. This weekend I felt a lot of sorrow where there should’ve been nostalgia. My demons were restless. 

So I purged away the old high school notes and Brad’s diary forever. Unfortunately, at the same time, I think I accidently threw out all of the letters that my mom sent me when she was in the hospital with my brother Matt. I feel very sad about that. But I don’t feel bad about Brad’s diary. Thankfully I kept all of my diaries.

There was a time (after I was dating a guy named Mac) when the words I wrote were powerful enough to almost destroy me. Mac found my diaries. Unbeknownst to me, he read them and tore out a few pages. He later tried to blackmail me with my own words. He threatened to send pages of my diary to my family members unless I took him back. It was terrifying, but I didn’t go back. Eventually he mailed the missing pages back to me. I certainly didn’t want something like that to happen again. I thought that Brad would move on with his life and forget all about it.

Then something happened, Brad’s wife passed away. Brad started contacting my mom asking if I was happy in my marriage because he still has feelings for me. It freaked my mom out and she warned me. A couple of months after that, I expressed sadness over the unexpected death of my neighbor. Brad sent me a message saying that he would be a shoulder to lean on.  

Then a month ago, Brad sent me a message asking for the diary back. I told him that I threw it out. I sent him a nice message saying how I hope that someday he will be happy again and how that has nothing to do with me. His future is not in the past. We haven’t dated since the early 1990’s when I was still in high school. 

Then this weekend my dad said that he received a long email from Brad stating that he was upset and hurt that I threw out the diary. He still has feelings for me. My dad said that his message was a little “off”. WTH?? I haven’t even seen him for over 20 years. Twenty years!! Two decades!! Why the hell is he bugging my parents about a stupid diary he wrote about me in 1992?? 

This is so insane that I can’t even believe that I am writing about this. Why does this craziness happen to me? Seriously, I wasn’t that great of a girlfriend. I am not even the same girl that I used to be. 

Driving? Me crazy

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

Last week my son got his driver’s license.

Initially I was happy to have another driver in the house. That makes a total of 4 drivers now. There is a bit of anxiety on my part having teen drivers. Although it is very nice having hours of extra time in the early mornings, evenings, and weekends not having to take them to practice, events, work, or social activities.

Apparently, a lot of other parents feel the same way I do. Well, the part about not wanting to have to spend hours of their week transporting kids. Angel even gets paid to provide transportation for other people’s kids. Really, it sucks that much! When you are single, you can go out on a Friday night. Married people without kids can do whatever they like. Even staying home is not that bad. You could have a nice romantic evening at home sipping wine watching Netflix.

Parents don’t have that luxury. Nowadays there are just as many events on the weekends as there are on the work days. The endless birthday parties, dances, events, tournaments, etc… Even going out on a Friday night is not sacred anymore. Sorry I can’t go, my teen has plans.. So, I totally understand.

Now that my son has his license, we are experiencing new problems that we never faced before. Angel was the absolute last kid in her circle of friends to get her license. Alex is the first. All of a sudden, he is the most popular guy around. Everyone wants a ride. But there is one problem, probationary license restrictions. He is only allowed to have one passenger that is under 18 and non family. We told him that we expect him to follow the law.

Over the weekend, Paul and I went sailing for the day. We weren’t very far from home, however a half an hour drive would take several hours on the boat. To be honest with you, I stalk my kids. While I was in the harbor, trying to relax, I noticed that my son was not where he said he was going to be. When I asked him where he was and what he was doing, his response was very elusive.

Of course, my mother mind goes right for the worst. I imagine that his girlfriend broke up with him and he is looking for a cliff to jump off of. Maybe he was drinking or doing drugs?? Drag racing my car? Getting into fights? Left for dead on the side of the road?? Parking with his girlfriend? A friend called me grandma last week and told me to get used to it. ALL bets are on my son to be the first to make that happen. What can I say? I am an anxious, worried sick, terrified mother of teenagers!

Later Alex told me what happened. He is honest to a fault. He picked up his girlfriend and her best friend disobeying his driving restrictions. He said that he spoke to each girl’s parents and explained his restrictions. They said that they didn’t mind as long as they didn’t have to do any driving. The new form of law breaking peer pressure. “But mom, I drive safer when I disobey my restrictions. I drive the speed limit”. Yeah, I heard that from a lot of drunk drivers too. 

But what is it to the other parents? They don’t have to do all of the driving. They have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Whereas, my son could lose his license if he gets in trouble often enough. Points are doubled for a probationary license. I’m sure there would be a hefty fine. Plus our car insurance rates would skyrocket. God knows that he is not getting the good student discount.

What does he get out of disobeying? He is winning the approval and becoming well liked by his friends and their parents. Automatic brownie points with the new girlfriend’s parents since she lives over 20 minutes away. Why would he want to listen to us after achieving this newfound popularity? 

Maybe I am making a big deal about nothing. It could be a lot worse. It could be texting and driving. Driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Drag racing. Road rage. Lead foot. Highway hypnosis. Aahhh! I can’t worry about everything! Can I? Will I? I will try not worry about what I don’t have control over. I have to let God take the wheel and drive!!

God help me! I have teen drivers.

Best friends fur ever 

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

   

 I have known many dog owners that sigh in relief after the 4th of July firework festivities are over. My brother Luke’s Boston Terrier is so terrified of fireworks that they have to medicate her to calm her down. Maybe she should be called a Boston Terrified. It probably didn’t help that their kids were afraid too when they were little. 

I have had a couple of pet emergencies over the 4th but they had nothing to do with fireworks. In fact, my dog loves fireworks. He gets excited and barks while we cheer. I can tell he likes it because he wags his tail and smiles.  

 
My cat and dog are best friends. I catch them snuggling together, grooming each other, and being playful even now in their old age. Heck, they get along better than my kids!

Our first problem on the 4th happened after we went up north for a couple of weekends. We took the dog with us and left our cat at home alone. How can I put this delicately?? Our cat started urinating blood one 4th. I took him into the animal ER. We ended up finding out that he had separation anxiety. He couldn’t handle being home alone, especially when we took his best friend with us. He would cry pitifully after we returned home, sometimes in the middle of the night. Now we try to find a pet sitter so they can be together when we are gone. Or if the dog comes with, I turn the radio on.

 

Look how sad and pitiful they look when we leave!

A few years after the first ER trip on the 4th of July, we had another problem. The extended family was up north with us at the cabin for fireworks. Our dog ended up getting into ant poison. He tore up an ant house like he hadn’t eaten in years. I was so angry. Normally in stressful situations I shut down, but this time I totally freaked out. I screamed, hollered, and cried. I accused my parents of trying to kill my dog by leaving poison out that he could get into.

I didn’t know what to do. We were several hours away from the animal ER. Not to mention that it was in the middle of the night on a holiday. This was back in the day before I could get on my phone and Google answers. I just didn’t know if it would be harmful or not. But my dog lived without even a symptom. Maybe it was because the ant traps expired in1982. Or maybe I should just disregard warning labels. It certainly didn’t do much for the ant problem either. 

One thing I know for sure. My pets sure seem to love their life with us. They love each other. I didn’t know if it would be like that. When we first got our dog as a puppy, we had another cat that was 15 years old. She could not stand our dog. The age separation was too great. Then one day my neighbor called. She asked if we had a white cat because if so she found it floating in her swimming pool. We were very sad. There were rumors being spread that it was self inflicted.

After almost a year past, we decided to take our chances and get another cat. This cat was a year older than our dog. After a short period of dislike, they became best friends. Now they are inseparable. 

Best friends fur ever!

My first tri

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

This past weekend I crossed doing a triathlon off my bucket list.

I was feeling rather nervous and edgy the evening before the race when I went to pick up my race packet. I was not familiar with the town, only having been there once before the race. The lake was a lot bigger than I remembered it being. I was afraid that I would have to swim across it. A few people told me horror stories right before the race about people grabbing legs and dragging you down while swimming. I spoke to the coordinator of the event who put my mind relatively at ease. The race was capped at 150 participants. I was starting in the last wave with my age group. 

It was hard to sleep the night before. I set several alarms around the house for 5 AM. Honestly, I was up before 5 at the first crack of dawn. I was really worried that I would forget something or that I would have problems with my bike. But all was well. My friend Cori and her daughter were also in the race. Cori is a half iron finisher so she gave me a lot of advice and a tri outfit to wear. She showed me how to position my gear to make for a faster transition.

Then Cori told me that it was a swimming tri. Instead of doing a normal sprint tri of 400 meters, this race was a 750 meter swim almost a half mile. This was a concern of mine since swimming was my weakest link. I started swimming a month before the race. The only experience I had before that were a couple of basic swimming lessons when I was a kid. I got a lot of swimming advice from Cori which was probably a mistake.

Cori told me to swim in open water to train. But Cori is terrified of swimming in open water whereas I am not. So I practiced swimming in open water after training for the marathon when the weather was nice. I don’t have a gym membership or a wet suit. What I did not practice was lap swimming. This would have helped me strengthen my core and swim in a straight line. The swimming course veered to the right. I am left handed with a stronger left arm that took me away from the course into deep water. I had a hard time swimming in a straight line and ended up zigzagging across the course with my head out of water to see where I was going. Big no no. I had a sore neck afterwards which really tells you that I was doing it all wrong.

I was not the last swimmer in my age group, but was close to the end. The distance was twice as far as what I was practicing for. I did not have good technique or form. It was my biggest area for improvement. I decided that I will start learning technique and will practice lap swimming over the winter. All in all I was satisfied for the amount of training I did. 

I don’t think that I really needed to practice the water to bike transition as much as I needed to practice the bike to running transition. It took several times before I got used to the wobbly feeling after biking to be able to run like normal.

The biking part of the tri went fairly well. I didn’t see a lot of people for this part at all. I passed one person and one person passed me, otherwise it was pretty lonely. For awhile there was no one on the road in front of me or behind me. At times I thought that I was on the wrong path until I came across an empty Gu packet. On the route, I did slow down a bit when three deer crossed the road in front of me. I started off the biking going pretty fast until I rounded a corner, hit a bump, and lost control of my bike. I flew into the ditch but was able to get back on the road before falling or crashing. It scared me a little, enough to slow down a bit. Thankfully no one was around to see my show. It was hard to stay motivated until I saw someone up ahead that I could pass.

I think that I was pretty average as far as biking goes. I need more confidence which will come with experience. I am still not sure how to easily switch gears and sometimes would put it on the wrong speed. I also have to work on my balance and keeping control of my bike while staying in my lane. Oh, then there is the chafing. I wasn’t quite expecting that. 

Last came the run. As I was biking in, I saw a lot of walkers. Running is my strong suit. I left my bike running. I ran fast and hard. I was able to pass about 15 people on the running. This is the first race that I ran without music. It was fun to hear the people cheer. I was worried that getting my music on would slow my transition. I also saw in the rules that it was not allowed and I didn’t want to be disqualified on my first tri. Lol. I also stopped at stop signs which was a bike rule although others didn’t. The tri was so small that they weren’t able to close down the roads. Although there were times I didn’t see a car for miles. It was mainly on scenic wooded back roads.  

Overall, I was able to complete my first tri around the two hour mark which put me right in the middle of my age group. My goal was not to place or even finish. This time I wanted to learn everything I could. Then take that knowledge to go further, improve myself, tri something new, push myself towards new goals, and to have a fun time competing. 

Tri success!

Boom bust

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

Wow, it has been a whole four days since I wrote a daily post. LOL. To tell you the truth, it’s scary how much I didn’t miss it. I was busy doing other things.

I’m not sure where to even start. It was a busy but fun 4th of July weekend. We started the weekend off by going up north and visiting with family at the cabin. There weren’t as many fireworks that evening as I had anticipated. I was able to take a lot of nice pictures on the lake though that I will share later.

Sunday morning I had my first triathlon. I went home to get a good nights rest before the big day. We didn’t see many fireworks at home either. Then we were up before 5 AM to get to the triathlon. I will describe that in another post. After the triathlon, Paul and I went back up north for awhile. Before I could make it into the cabin, three relatives and several strangers had to tell me all about my sister-in-law Carla’s night of drunkenness. It seems like all of the excitement happened after we left on Saturday night.

Then we went home to go to another party. We ended up watching them light off five fireworks. Some partygoers asked if that was all. Show’s over people. We had fun anyway, but I was dead tired after being up early and the tri.

On the 4th, we sailed into the city to watch fireworks. We docked at the local marina. We were going to go near where the fireworks were lit off, but we couldn’t anchor in the water there. We had several other sailors come with for the festivities. We didn’t want to lead them in the wrong direction. We were too inexperienced, so we decided to watch from the harbor. Everything was great except for one small problem. Our view of the fireworks was obstructed by trees. About 15 people came out with us to watch fireworks and couldn’t see much of anything. We felt bad about it but we didn’t really know any better. So this year the fireworks were a bust.

It wasn’t all a bust though. We got to know a lot of our sailing club members a lot better. We also ended up seeing our new friends unexpectedly at the marina who are new sailors. I finally found another woman that I think I could be really good friends with. I don’t really hit it off with too many women my age. She is a very pretty woman my age who is into both sailing and running. She also has a teenage daughter that seems to be a bit of trouble for her. She was very sympathetic when for a brief few hours I was panicking about the whereabouts of my teenage son. It was funny because we dressed the same yesterday. We’ll see if it ends up leading to a lasting friendship or not. 

My new friend also has a great short hair cut. I have been tempted to cut all of my hair off to look like hers since I love it so much. Would that be creepy?? I am getting sick of birds trying to land in my hair. My husband and a friend both told me on separate occasions recently that my hair looks like straw or good nesting material. When I tried really hard to make my hair look nice, my mother-in-law asked if I got my finger stuck in a light socket. My hair has never been my strong suit. It is wild and wispy with a mind of its own. Sometimes I think it would be so nice to ride with the window down, sail, or run without my hair getting wrapped behind the back of my earrings. What do I have to lose?

So even though our boom was a bit of a bust, we had a great weekend anyway. Unfortunately, I don’t have too many exciting stories to tell you today. Don’t worry, things will get better. Tomorrow will be all about the triathlon.

Give me a ring

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

Do you remember when we used to know telephone numbers?

It struck me the other day that we don’t while I was talking to a client on the phone. I asked her for the best way to contact her. She didn’t remember her cell phone number. She had to look it up on her phone. I thought that was kind of ridiculous.

Then I remembered that I didn’t know the cell numbers of my own children. Okay, I do know one because that number used to be mine.

But I do remember the phone numbers of my long deceased relatives. I will never forget them, but I don’t know the numbers of my own kids.

After my grandma passed away, I was tempted to call her number. I couldn’t seem to get it out of my mind that the number she had for my whole life was gone. She is gone. But I don’t know how to call my daughter.

What has happened to society? Does not having to memorize numbers make our lives that much easier?? It didn’t seem that way for the boater that we rescued last summer. He was stuck out hours from shore without even having a phone. After we found him and offered warm clothes and a beer, we gave him a cell phone to call for help. It took him a very long time before he could find a number to call because he was without his contacts. He ended up having to google a website to get the number of someone that he knew. I found that to be wonderfully sad.

Life is so much easier now that we don’t have to remember numbers. Well, as long as we don’t forget our phone. No worries, I can’t seem to live without my phone either. It’s not just my phone. It’s my camera, work portal, book, encyclopedia, doctor, map, news, friend, and my life. It is at my side more than my husband. I gaze at it for hours. It mesmerizes me.

But sometimes for a few short minutes, I long to be free from its hold. I want to go back to simpler days. Back to the rotary phone that was tethered by a cord. Ok, maybe not that far back! How about the first car bag phone? That was the phone that blew out my fuse on my first car every time I plugged it into the lighter. Or how about my first flip phone that I kept because it still has the last pictures of my grandma on it? The old land line that occasionally rang at midnight with no one there? Okay, maybe those days weren’t that great after all!

Now that I have my phone, I can’t fathom living without it. I wonder how many nights girls wasted sitting next to the phone?? Those days are gone. I can’t say I miss it, however sometimes I fantasize about being totally inaccessible. I don’t want to worry about work problems over the weekend. Some days I just want to unplug and commune with nature. Enjoy the silence. Old fashioned boredom. 

Maybe I should put that on my bucket list…