Author: Outrunning my demons

Winter fitness forecast

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Last year my husband and I bought cross country skis. We thought that it would be an excellent way to enjoy exercising outside in the cold snowy winter months. Running on icy snowy roads really isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. I did end up dusting off my treadmill last week. Not because of the snow, we haven’t had enough of that for my grandma to even write flurries on her calendar if she was still living. Last week brought about cool and very windy days. Even I am not crazy enough to run outside in the cold against 40 mph winds.

Last year we bought skis and didn’t get any snow. Really? Well, it figures. In the winter months, I cut back my running down to about 18 miles per week and let Jillian Michaels kick my butt an hour a week. I don’t have any races coming up until next May. I am planning on doing another marathon. Call me vain, but I love how I look all muscular, tone, and lean when I am training for a marathon. This time of year, who cares? I mean half of the month I don’t even bother to shave. I guess there are a few benefits to living in a cold climate.

I am really counting on snow to supplement my exercise routine. We really want to go cross country skiing this year. On average where I live we get a little over 50 inches (130 cm) of snow per season. Statistically speaking, we should be able to ski unless my buying skis last year gives me another year of bad luck regarding snowfall. Imagine if I bought a snowmobile?!? Geez.

My husband and I also depend on snowfall for our other form of exercise, snow shoveling. We have a moderately long driveway. All our neighbors hire someone with a snowplow or have a snow blower. We argue over who gets to shovel. Seriously, this doesn’t give us many sanity points with our neighbors. Yes, we are those fitness freaks. I am so happy that my husband and I are at similar fitness levels. We have so much of the world left to actively explore.

Old school stalking, part 2

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After the horrible first date, Mac talked me into going out with him again. The first couple of weeks were great. He became totally obsessed with me. He listened to all of my stories. Laughed at all of my jokes. At first this was all very flattering. He showered me with time and attention making up for several years of being ignored by my dad. He made me feel like I couldn’t live without him. So after a couple of months of being Mr. Wonderful, when he asked me to marry him I said “yes”. It was probably around this time that the problems started. You see, he didn’t have good enough credit to buy me an engagement ring. So I bought my own.

That was not all that I bought. I bought new tires for his car that ended up getting repossessed. He did buy me a nice word processor to type up my college papers on. But he was so jealous that I was in college that he turned it off on me when I was almost finished writing a paper for a 4 credit class. I had to start all over and ended up just turning it in before the class ended that day.

Then there were other things. Like the time I stopped in after work at 7 PM and he had stayed out all night gambling the night before. He woke up at 7 PM thinking that it was 7 AM. He thought I was kidding. He missed work that day. He started taking my prescription drugs.

Then things got really bad. He started to push me around. He grabbed me by the neck and threw me against the wall. He threw me around enough for me to get pretty bruised up. He lost his temper and punched his fist through the bedroom door. When I threatened to call the cops, he told me that he would accuse me of stealing from him after a couple of times that he had me cash his checks for him.

When I threatened to leave him he got very manipulative. He found my diaries and said that if I left him he would send them to my family members.

The final straw happened about this time of year. Mac was very obsessed with his appearance. He dyed his hair blonde and permed it. He even wore foundation to cover his ruddy complexion. One Thanksgiving, I picked him up to go to my grandma’s house. He forgot to put on his foundation and demanded that I stop at my parent’s house on the way so that he could borrow my mom’s makeup. I was appalled. No fricken way was I going to do that. So he was upset with me and during the prim and proper family meal with all of my extended family, we got into a huge fight. Swear words riccoched across the table. He ended up walking out. I wish I could say that it was the end right then and there.

He relentlessly pursued me over the next couple of months. There were times when I had to hide my car when I was at home. I had to have my friend drop me off at work so he wouldn’t see my car there. When he called, my mom told him that I wasn’t there. Once he left a rose under my windshield in the early morning with a apology note asking to get back together. It freaked me out because I lived an hour away from him.

When I lived with a roommate, he charmed her into thinking he was a great guy. She told him everything that he wanted to know about me. That is how I ended up having my name broadcast over the speakers half the night while I was at the county fair with some friends and another guy. “Alissa, please come to the information desk, Mac is looking for you”. I am so glad that I didn’t marry that guy. Had I known, the first date would’ve been the last.

Old school stalking, part 1

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When my friend, Kristi, set me up on a blind date with Mac she told me that he was going to school to be a lawyer. That really wasn’t accurate. What she should have said was that Mac was a high school dropout that had issues with the law. But what did Kristi know? She was a horrible judge of men. She was asking me to stand up in her wedding while her fiance was asking me to sleep with him. He was a big time cheater, marriage did not fix that.

I decided to go out on the blind date anyway. I had just gotten out of a long term relationship with a great guy who was in the military. He was going to be overseas for a year. It never would have worked out anyway because we were too much alike. We had the same personality, both were firstborns, and we both were left handed.

Kristi did set me up with someone previous to my relationship with the military guy. She set me up with her fiance Ted’s brother. He was a pretty nice guy. On our first double date with Ted and Kristi, they were in the backseat making out the whole time. That, I might mention, makes for a very awkward first date. It didn’t work out.

Mac and I decided that our first date should be a double date with another couple that I didn’t know, not Ted and Kristi. We were going to go bowling. About halfway to the bowling alley, the driver and his girlfriend pulled out some drinks. Apparently, they had been drinking on the ride to my house and needed to stop at a gas station to drop off their empties after almost getting pulled over. Okay, that was not cool at all, but it was not as if I had a cell phone and could call for a ride home. When we got to the bowling alley, it was closed for tournaments.

We stopped at another gas station, this time for gas. The driver went in to pay for gas while his girlfriend started rummaging through his things. She found another girl’s phone number in his checkbook. This is when she got into the driver’s seat and took off with tires squealing in a rubber burning jealous rage. She pulled into traffic without looking and cut off a guy in a Corvette. Cars in both lanes slammed on their brakes and honked at us. She pulled onto a side road, got out of the car, and while screaming tried to break the car windows with her purse. Mac sheltered me with his coat in case she succeeded and got glass shards on us. After what seemed like an hour of screaming and car battery, she took off into the early evening dusk on foot.

Mac drove the car back to the gas station to pick up her boyfriend. We literally spent the rest of the evening looking for her. We stopped at random phone booths to call her family. We drove up and down the side roads. Nothing. Finally after several hours of looking without finding, the driver took me home. Best first date NEVER! If I had known the future, I should have had the first date be the last date.

 

 

To my daughter’s stalker

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I have never met you and hope that I never do. I can understand why you would be obsessed with my daughter. She is that bright light in a dim lit room. Along with butterflies, even the darkest of souls are attracted to her warm glowing light. Sinking ships try to reach that light in this dark world.

I can understand why you said that you would make my daughter love you the way you love her. She is very beautiful. Her stage presence, her angelic singing voice alone has caused the most callous of hearts to open. You noticed that when you met her a year and a half ago on a school choir trip. Even though she told you that she had a boyfriend, that she just wanted to be friends, you thought you could change her mind.

After the trip, you texted, snapchatted, social mediaed, and called her all the time. It got to the point that she told you to stop, but you didn’t. Her boyfriend told you to stop and then you started harassing him. You told him that you were going to kill him at school performances that you knew they would be at and terrorized them in general. Then this summer you hacked my daughter’s facebook account.

We didn’t hear from you too much after that. Although I was disappointed that you decided to go to the same college as my daughter’s boyfriend. I thought that after you got into college and started meeting a lot of girls that maybe you would give up the whole idea that she would love you. She has had the same boyfriend for over two years now, a man I would be happy to call my son-in-law someday.

Then I heard you recognized my daughter’s boyfriend at college from facebook pictures. You punched him in the face. Even though my daughter’s boyfriend didn’t want us to know about what you did, we found out. But this week was the last straw. You hacked into my daughter’s boyfriends facebook account. You posed as him and broke up with my daughter. When she found out it was you, you told her that you loved her and would force her to love you. You said that you were going to find her and rape her. This time you went too far. My husband called you after this. He told you that you are never to talk to our daughter or her boyfriend again. He is not a man to be messed with, so I hope you got the message.

If you ever talk to them again, we will get a restraining order. That is if you are lucky.

Mud bath

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I am happy to say that I checked riding in the back of a pickup truck naked and plastered in mud off my bucket list at a young age. Times with Jody were always an adventure even when her dad wasn’t taking us to the bar or we were trying to fight off teen boys.

Jody’s dad was a farmer, so that in itself was always an adventure. I remember walking around the barn during milking time. Looking at the bull raging in his pen was always exciting. One day while we were riding around the field in Jody’s go cart, she told me that the bull got loose. We sped around getting stuck in the mud, trying to get away from the bull that never showed.

Sometimes Jody’s dad would take us on his tractor. I remember sitting on the back of the hay wagon getting caked with alfalfa. That night I sneezed while my grandma plucked all of the alfalfa out of my hair. It was a big tangled up mess.

But the best story was when I went with Jody to the gravel pit. Her dad bought the property and was building a house. It was a warm day and one of the pits looked like a hot tub of mud. So we took off our clothes, except our underwear, and jumped in the mud. We were neck deep in our hot tub of mud when Jody’s dad found us. We had to sit on some lumber and hold onto the bar on the back of his truck to get home. What a sight we were. Two preteen girls, naked and covered with mud, sitting up in the back of the truck for the world to see. That was one fun day until Jody’s grandma hosed us down in the milk house.

The incident at the public library

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Once, for a very short time in my life, I was a compulsive hand washer. It started after a frightening incident in the library parking lot that happened when I was 13 with my grade school best friend, Jody.

I met Jody in kindergarten. When I was really young my parents had me stay with Jody for a week when they took my brother Matt to the hospital. At the time, Jody’s parents were going through a divorce. I remember sitting on the steps with Jody at age 6 listening to her parents fight. Things may have been thrown, I don’t recall for sure. Just a lot of noise, a lot of yelling. I had my grandparents pick me up before the week was through.

I don’t know why Jody’s mom didn’t like her dad anymore. He was a fun guy. He loved to laugh and would buy us soda at the bar. One night the roads were way too icy to take Jody and I to dance class, so we went to the bar instead. He told me not to tell my mom as she would probably worry. I also went up north with Jody, her dad, and his girlfriend for the weekend. He had to stop halfway there because he was tired and needed a drink at the bar. Lots of quarters for soda that night. I think we may have even put some songs in the jukebox. When Jody turned 10 she had her birthday party at you guessed it, the bar! Jody was a lot of fun too.

When my mom told me that I could bring a friend with me to the library that night, I chose Jody. Once a month, my mom attended a support group for mothers of the disabled at the library. Most of the time the meetings ended after the library closed which is what happened that night. It was a warm summer night, so we waited for my mom in the car. We were talking when 3 older boys showed up at the car on bikes. They saw us and tried to get in the car. We locked the doors, but it was hot. We had to roll the windows down a little as the heat was stifling. The boys tried to pry their fingers in through the crack in the windows. They banged on the glass. That kept trying the car handles over and over, rattling on them, trying to get in. They taunted us, put their penises against the glass, and held condoms against the windows. I found the incident very frightening. 

It was after this happened that I washed my hands over and over. I washed them until they were cracked and bleeding. For months I refused to touch the car handles that those boys touched to try to attack us. Everything they touched felt unclean to me. I wouldn’t touch those handles even if it meant that I had to sit in the middle of the back seat. So I washed and washed until the memory and terror of that night faded. At least I had control over something. 

 

 

Snow tires

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In our school district, we have a late bus that drops kids off at various locations after after school activities. The late bus has been a good experience, well except for that one time. What can I say? Snow tires!

When my son was in middle school, he took the late bus to the drop off spot after wrestling practice. One dark, cold, winter Friday night I went to pick him up and had a little adventure. I attempted to make a Y turn and slid on the ice into a snow bank. So here I was with the back end of my car hanging out sideways on the road. My headlights were buried in the snow and I was afraid that oncoming cars would not be able to see me. Yeah, right about that time I had the image in my mind of getting hit by the bus. I called my husband in freak out panic mode. He was in the middle of making supper and couldn’t get there right away. 

Right after I called home two men, that were strangers to me and each other, showed up and pushed my car out of the snow bank. I really appreciated their kindness. Immediately after that, my son showed up on the late bus. He got in the car and exclaimed that he forgot his homework and wrestling gear on the bus. Big problem because the wrestling meet was the next morning. So here I am trying to flag down a school bus in the dark. The first stop I tried to send my son to get his stuff but the driver didn’t see him and left. So here I am driving along side of the bus waving and honking trying not to hit kids wandering around in the dark. Finally my son got his things off the bus. 

In the meantime, my husband set aside supper to help get me out of the snow bank. Except, I was no longer there. He was getting really worried that perhaps by snow bank I meant ditch. Or something really bad happened, like the bus driving around with my car in its front grill. I tried calling him in the process, but he already left. Thankfully, we all made it home safely that night. This winter I will be sure to have good snow tires.  

Pierced with anxiety

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This morning started out really rough, as Monday mornings sometimes do. My son got up late and missed the bus. Which technically wasn’t a big deal because he rode to school with my oldest daughter Angelique who drives to school. Angelique refuses to take him to school due to his tardiness, so he has to take the bus. As a result, Angel got into the shower late which disrupted the whole schedule which trickled down into a bad Monday morning for me.

I went to Alex’s room and confronted him for getting up late and missing the bus, which happened despite all my nagging. Well, I should say that I only walked two feet into his room because after that is an abyss I might not escape from without twisted ankles and broken legs due to laundry piles and missing assignments. Probably a couple of rats and definitely spiders. Paul and I told him that he is going to have to go to bed at 9 PM all week as a consequence for missing the bus. This prompted the response of “I hate you” several times to spew out of his mouth. I know, we are the worst parents because you can’t get your butt out of bed.

Angel got into and out of the shower late. She ran out of time to get gas in the morning and needed to borrow my credit card all day since she didn’t have time to run it back home. Oh, and did I tell you that while she was running late, she lost the car keys?? Mad scramble around the house looking for keys. By the time they left, I was shaking!

I figured that it would be the perfect time to change my ear cartilage piercing for the first time in over a year. The last time I changed it, I put in a crappy nickel earring and then left for the overnight sail and ended up with a red, sore ear that doubled in size. This caused a lot of anxiety, so much anxiety that even the thought of changing it again caused some panic within me.

It’s not as if I didn’t end up in the ER before due to an ear piercing. I got my ears pierced at age 6, my ears double pierced at 30, my doubles pierced again in my upper 30’s (they tend to close up if I don’t wear earrings in them for over a week), and my cartilage piercing at 40. But I didn’t end up going to the ER, Arabella did. After having issues with caring for my piercings at age 6, I told my daughters they could have piercings at age 10. Arabella wore the same earrings for so long that the back of her earring ended up getting embedded in her ear. So off to the ER with her for that feeling like a bad parent. It wasn’t her first trip to the ER and it wasn’t the last. Now she doesn’t even wear earrings and her piercing probably closed up. Geez. That was one expensive piercing too with the ER trip.

This morning I scoured my hands with special care. I’m sure an obsessive compulsive hand washer would be proud. I won’t tell them that last night I volunteered to do a dirty cleaning project. At times while cleaning, I broke through my latex gloves without knowing it. I imagined deadly germs seeping under my fingernails just looking for an entry spot like a cartilage piercing perhaps. I cleaned my earrings. The first earring I tried went right in, but it did not fit right. Then I tried a hoop earring. I could not get it in for anything. I tried until my ear started bleeding and figured it wouldn’t work. Since I got it pierced with a stud, I think that maybe trying to get a hoop in is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Or maybe because my hands were still shaking.

Finally, I got the third earring in with no problem and all is well. But I thought it wouldn’t hurt to change my earring on a Monday, just in case I needed to go to the doctor with a deadly ear cartilage piercing infection. It is very practical to think that going to the doctor is a heck of a lot easier, not to mention more affordable, on a Monday morning than going to the ER on Friday night. Ah, life with an active imagination…

The wait, the news

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Last night we received the news of my mother-in-law’s biopsy. I feel relief that it turned out the way that it did. We have been anxiously waiting for the past two weeks, putting everything on hold. Waiting to get that punch in the face that never happened. Worry that had me in a pre-ulcerative state. Worry that had me grinding my teeth during the night. Worry that tightened every muscle bracing for the punch.

Telephone calls spewed misinformation like the game telephone. News of a football sized mass in the stomach and lungs turned out to be two small football shaped masses in the stomach and chest. Small slow growing malignant tumors that will be treated with oral chemotherapy. Chemo is not going to be a walk in the park, nor is she out of the woods by any means. But, the prognosis is good. So much better than what we originally thought.

When we heard the bad news 2 weeks ago, we turned to google. Google is the hypochondriacs best friend. Website after website fueling our anxieties into one big ball of flames of death and dying. We literally thought that she might only have a few months, weeks, maybe a few days left. I really hate it when I let myself be worried by google. Every scrape, bruise, and cut has at least one website devoted to the belief that we are going to die from it.

Seriously, lets face it, we are all going to die. If anything, this has been a wake up call to not believe everything that you read online AND to treat everyday like it could be the last day.

Shipwrecks, Superior, Sailing, Survival

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Last week I had the opportunity to see Gordon Lightfoot live in concert. I am not a huge fan, but have a great appreciation for his music. It was almost magical hearing him perform The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald considering that today is the 40th anniversary of the ship’s sinking. Over a decade ago, Paul and I had the opportunity to go the Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Bay on Lake Superior near the location of the wreckage. I remember really enjoying the tour of the lighthouse there. I can’t imagine the solitude of being a keeper of the light over the cold lonely winter months. The summer months alone offer cool temps and solitude.

After touring the museum and lighthouse, we walked along the shore of Lake Superior. Even on the warmest summer days, the water is too cold to swim in. A few minutes of exposure gives you the pins and needles feeling. The average surface temps of the water are between 32 F and 55 F, so if you are thinking of visiting in the summer make sure to bring a winter coat. I have seen very hot days of 90 F on Lake Superior, still not a lot of swimmers.

On the way back, we stopped for a whitefish fry in Paradise. Then winding our way  back down Upper Michigan, we stopped at Tahquamenon Falls State Park to view the waterfalls. We decided spontaneously to take a hike from the upper falls to the lower falls and back. It was a total of 8 miles. This was before I became a runner. Why I thought that hiking an eight mile rustic trail in flip flops was a great idea, I will never know. Upper Michigan is an absolutely beautiful area to travel. If you do get the chance to put your feet in the water of Lake Superior that would be a great bucket list item. Or better yet, sail all of the Great Lakes. That may end up on my bucket list soon.

Last night I dreamt that my husband wanted me to go sailing with him on Lake Superior. I remember feeling trepidation towards those trepid waters. I woke up thankful that the sailboat is tucked away in hibernation for the winter. Absolutely no way we could be tempted to take a quick sail on Lake Superior even if it has been a warm November. I couldn’t fathom sailing or being on a ship on Lake Superior in November with hurricane winds and during a blizzard. Imagine if you can getting sprayed with ice cold water with 20 to 30 foot waves. I remember getting sprayed with cold water in 4 foot waves and that was bone chilling enough for me. That was in the middle of summer.

If you want a true survival show experience I would suggest November on Lake Superior. I bet even the producers of Naked and Afraid know that the survivalists probably wouldn’t even make it one day there. A couple years back, Paul went ice fishing on Lake Superior. It was during that weekend that Lake Superior claimed the life of the Lake Superior ice fishing expert and guide. What a fearful place, the lake that is so cold that it doesn’t give up its dead.

The lake does draw people in like a siren with its immense beauty. I would like to see the ice caves, only made under the right conditions, along Lake Superior. I have toured the Apostle Islands. I also toured the Pictured Rocks, someday I will show you those pictures. They are absolutely breathtaking. Someday I may even be brave enough to sail on Lake Superior. It is beautiful enough to draw me in, but it can’t keep me.