They See Me Rollin'

Meet your new best friend:

That, dear ones, is a foam roller.  And it will change your life.

Now, before you start saying things like, "I already have a best friend," and "I really prefer my besties to do fancy things like talk and breathe," you must ask yourselves these questions:

• Does your best friend ease back pain?  Hip pain?  Shin splints?  IT Band tightness? Any other pain in just about any other part of your body?  Because the foam roller does.

• Does your best friend sometimes monopolize the conversation?  Because the foam roller is an excellent listener.

• Do you ever find yourself saying, "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?" as your best friend magically loosens that tight, uncomfortable spot on your front hip that has been plaguing you for weeks?  Because you'll say that to the foam roller.  Matter of fact, I said it just last night. 

• Does it ever annoy you that your best friend came with a name all their own?  Because you're free to name the foam roller whatever you want.  Name it Ned.  Name it Betty.  Name it Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or Marie Curie.  I want to name ours Homey, but I haven't exactly run that by Husband yet, and have a sneaking suspicion he isn't going to find that nearly as funny as I do.  (Get it, Derek?  We'd literally be rolling with our Homey.)  (It's shameful how much I laugh at my own jokes sometimes.)

Really, though?  I want to carve our initials in a tree, I love our foam roller so much:  DC + KC + HC.  The foam roller isn't exactly a new fad, so I've heard a couple friends talk about them before, but it wasn't until Derek made this video that he started saying, "I think we need to adopt a foam roller.  Let's go to the store and give a foam roller it's forever home."  (He didn't exactly put it like that; Derek is just the tiniest bit less fanciful than I am.)

I watched it and agreed, and a month later, we had a foam roller of our very own.  We've each used it over the past few days, and oooooh.  Oh, my word.  It does all those things I listed in the first bullet point up there, plus helped me figure out that this weird shooting pain in my left leg was actually coming from my medial glute muscle; a couple days of rolling and it's almost gone.  I'm finally able to do a full forward bend again in yoga.  I've been rolling around on it in the evenings and go to bed feeling like putty.  The lady in the video calls it self-massage, and that's exactly how it feels, plus it does all this other stuff I can't usually be bothered with like strengthening my core.  

If you already have a foam roller, first of all, name it.  Second, tell me your roller's name.  Third, roll along with the video; she works you from tip to toe, front to back.  I had no idea my quads were so tight until I obeyed Madame Roller.  They were practically crying in relief from all the released tension.



Have you tried a foam roller?  Any other name suggestions for our beloved roller?

Dead Clumsy

Every once in a while I catch sight of someone's smooth, scar-free knees and I think, What, do you live in a bubble?  Where are your hard-earned battle wounds? but then I realize most likely they're just a person who doesn't fall down walking across a flat surface every other week and it's more like, Oh.  Okay.  What's that like?


This is what I'm doing today:

Around midnight last night I woke up fighting for air, an asthma attack catching me by surprise.  I managed to wheeze my way down to a hive-free, relatively open-airway existence about an hour and a half later, only to have Atticus scream his way through a night terror just as I was falling back asleep.

I had my alarm set for 5:02 am so I could go on an easy-paced four-mile run, and as I finally laid back down to hopefully get some sleep at who-knows-what-time (I never look at the clock if I'm awake in the middle of the night; I'll only torture myself calculating exactly how much time I have to sleep if I fall asleep RIGHTNOW, making rest even more elusive), I promised myself that if I got up and did the run, I could have a quick nap during Cade's nap time this afternoon rather than writing a blog post.  

I got up at 5:02, shrugged on my garb, and headed out the door, munching on toast during a walking warm-up.  

I'd been running for all of two minutes when, in the darkness between pools of light cast by street lights, I misjudged the placement of the sidewalk, my foot fell where the edge of the sidewalk meets grass, my ankle rolled and down goes Frazier.  (<----Just for yooouuuu, Derek!)

You probably don't remember that the last time I sprained my ankle was when, a couple months after Caedmon was born, I decided it was time to start running again.  I laced up my shoes, headed out the door, and fell down the front steps, badly spraining my ankle, forced to walk around in that crappy brace for a month.

This time, at least, I'm hoping it's just kind of, I don't know, wrenched or something, as it's hardly swollen, just hurts like a mother any time I try to do things like walk or go down stairs without the brace.  No big deal, right?  Right?

I wish I could blame the injury on the sleepless night, but most likely it's just a sad combination of lack of coordination, poor depth perception, inability to gauge little things like This is a sidewalk and This is grass- PICK ONE, NOT BOTH.  

I have sprained joints and broken bones just trying to walk from point A to point B on this earth, which, well, sucks, obviously, but the one good thing to come from all this chronic clumsiness is that I know how to fall.  I was set to fall hard right on the concrete this morning, but YEARS of practice have taught me to instinctively curl inward and roll upon impact with my inevitable opponent The Ground.  I should have a lot less skin than I do right now; instead I have a (PLEASE GOD hopefully fast-healing) wrenched ankle and sore knee, and that's it.  (Do me a favor and pretend to be terribly impressed that this is a skill of mine and not mildly horrified.  Thanks so much.)

I'd been hoping none of our children would exhibit any of these tendencies toward klutziness (the week before Adelaide started kindergarten I sternly warned her, "Do NOT try to jump rope off a curb," which was my virgin foray into the Land of Sprains, and it was a doozy), and so far, all has been more or less well. 

Then last week I got a call from the elementary school nurse.  Atticus ran face first into another kid in P.E.  The worst part about this was that when the nurse first called, she described the injury and told me he had an ice pack on it.  There was silence for several seconds and I said, "Okay, well, feel free to send him back to class when he's feeling better!" because I'm a terrible mother with a dwarf-sized sympathy organ, but then she said, "Um, you may want to take him to the doctor to get his nose x-rayed," and I was like, "Oh, you want me to come do something with this child who is, in fact, my very own son."  I went and got him and he was freaked out but holding it together, and yes, the bridge of his nose was swollen and bruised, but there was no way I was just going to take him to a physician who is well-versed in the healing arts; no, I instead called my mom who had me do a couple simple tests to make sure he didn't have a deviated septum- he didn't, so she said ice every other hour for 20 minutes and some Tylenol.  Boom.  No doctor required.  (He still has some bruising between his eyes and nose, so if any of you I know in the real world see him, that is apparently what happens when you high-five someone with your face.)

Aaaand today the nurse called again:  Atticus fell going up the steps to the slide and split open both lips.  There was blood.  Quite a bit, I gather.  (Like my mom cheerfully told me anytime my sisters and I sliced ourselves open above the neck:  "Head wounds bleed a lot!")  But he was pretty calm by the time she called, once again with an ice pack to his face, and she said she'd send him back to class soon.  

I'm not worried.  He'll learn how to properly fall soon enough, and I've had lots of practice treating injuries, in the meantime.  Silver linings, friends.

And So It Begins

The good news:  I am one week into half marathon training and- so far as I know, at least- have not yet died.

The bad news:  I am extremely annoying to be around right now.


If you do not set precise boundaries around our conversation, it will eventually end up at the topic of running, racing, or half marathons vs 5k's vs marathons vs 10k's vs whatever.

I am like a very excitable and frantic puppy.  It's like when you're pregnant with your first baby, and you talk about every single tiny detail, both significant and insignificant, to anyone who will listen, then you learn American Sign Language because no one around you should be spared news of your magnificent, excruciatingly fascinating pregnancy.

Then you get pregnant with your second and people ask questions like, "When are you due?" and you have no idea both because you don't keep track of that kind of thing this time around and you can't quite seem to remember what the date is on any given day.

With your third pregnancy the question "When are you due?" provokes first confusion then astonishment because you are often caught off guard with the news that you are, indeed, pregnant.  I can't tell you how many times people started to talk to me about pregnancy and I thought, Man, this lady REALLY likes babies, followed closely by HOLY CRAP THAT'S RIGHT I'M PREGNANT.  I can only guess at what it's like with the fourth pregnancy on; I imagine you're making supper for your slavering horde of offspring (I don't mean to sound derogatory- this is in fact what our children resemble thirty minutes before supper), and you're stirring the marinara and telling Junior to Put the granola bar down, for heaven's sake, we're eating in 90 SECONDS, then you feel something shift in your abdomen and turn around and look at that!  There's another one!

This may or may not be why we don't have four children.

This is my first half marathon, so I am that first-pregnancy woman, both amusing and slightly irritating to veteran long-distance racers.  Thankfully I have a running guru-friend who dropped off her copy of the book Train Like a Mother (it's excellent, I'm starting my second read-through as soon as I finish this) two days after I got ahold of her and told her I'm maybe-possibly-kind of thinking about signing up for the Des Moines half marathon, then met Cade and me for coffee this morning so she could answer my 4 million questions, all while being very encouraging and not even close to patronizing, despite the fact that she's training for a 50k (that's five-zero, 50 kilometers, an over 30 MILE RACE).  I check the race website obsessively, have attacked my legs with a rolling pin (to roll out sore muscles and areas of potential injury, not beat them into submission, although that's sometimes tempting), and yakked Derek to death about the whole thing.

As a result, I'll probably be posting a bit more about running and training and such until race day (OCTOBER 19TH.  I'M NOT FREAKING OUT AT ALL ALREADY.), unless I get injured, in which case you won't hear from me at all, as I'll be curled up in a ball crying and binge-watching Doctor Who.

So:  Exhibiting higher amounts of irritating traits, even more anxious than usual, and courting injury on an almost-daily basis.  Running is obviously excellent for my health.

Five Things Friday

• It's been one of those weeks, hasn't it?  Everywhere you turn, terrible, terrible things are happening, and then, when you're still reeling from the news, people start saying the most moronic, the most utterly hateful things and then have the gall to call it capital-T Truth, because apparently you get to do that when you're a Christian blogger and there is no end to your finger-pointing and your ugly, disturbing pride.  I see this man's blog shared and liked by well-meaning Christian acquaintances all over social media, and even though I know it's going to make me so angry stars bust across my vision, I do it.  I click through and I read.  Then I go on and on and on about it to Derek who eventually asks, "Why were you reading this guy's blog again?" and I have to say "I DON'T KNOW."  

I ended up spending waaaay too much mental energy on the whole thing, but thankfully I had the two Ann's to pull me out of the fury twister I was riding; both wrote beautiful pieces on mental illness and Christ and suicide and compassion.  (Actually it's Anne and Ann- I think I've made it clear how important spelling is to me.)  I encourage you to click on their correctly spelled names and read what they had to say.

• I have seen one, I repeat, ONE, Japanese beetle this year.  According to the Iowa Gardener, this is because of our last brutally cold winter; it killed most of the larvae happily sleeping in our soil (now millions of tiny corpses, MUAHAHAHA), and the large amounts of rain we got in the spring drowned out the rest.  Hal-lay-loo-yer and pass the basil that hasn't been eaten alive by beetles this year.

• This was our last full week of summer vacation.  School begins next Wednesday.  Adelaide is mostly ready.  Atticus is pensive.  I am saying what I say every summer:  "Hmm.  Homeschooling is suddenly very, very attractive."  Caedmon still believes he will soon be attending preschool, because he's three and when he says, "I am Batman," in his mind he is Batman, so why shouldn't "Adelaide's going to third grade, Atticus is going to Kindergarten, and I'm going to preschool!" likewise work?  Never mind that I've spent the last four months telling him he has a whole 'nother year before preschool- I'm just the Mother, what do I know?

• This week has been a good running week.  Not too hot, not too humid, and my various injuries have finally shut themselves up enough for me to run, run, run. 

I appreciate this all the more because this summer was the summer that I realized I'm not 21 anymore, and when my old lower back injury flares or my shin splints make themselves known I don't just get to elevate a foot or apply a heating pad for an evening; nooo, I have to rest and ice and coddle these high maintenance body parts for days on end before they'll give me so much as a couple miles.  Let's not forget about the asthma attacks, either, one that started to hit me when I was four miles from home and turned legitimately scary- and honestly, I don't scare easy when it comes to these two divas that I call lungs- I imagine the home that they have made in my rib cage to be some sort of Liberace-meets- the creator of the Bedazzler monstrosity, and they have one whole wall with different velvet knotted ropes hanging, each with each own placard:  "the gut," "the throat," "the skin," and on and on, and when they pull on each they make its subsequent organ break out in hives or swell or do a peristaltic boogie and Dance, Monkey, Dance.  I realize that it's my immune system that's really the problem, here; it's just that I've long thought of my lungs as my own personal mental whipping boy.  They're not to be trusted, and I'm sure they feel the same way about me.
I do try to keep in mind that even when All The Parts are hurting All at The Same Time, I still don't feel as bad as I did in my third trimester of my pregnancy with Caedmon, when my body said, "You want another pregnancy?  Okay, lady, I'm going to pregnancy symptom you TO DEATH."  This is why I laughed so hard when I first saw this on Pinterest a couple weeks ago:

I feel like that cat's face is the mental face I'm making half my waking hours.  Somehow Derek didn't find this photo as funny as I did (I roar every time I see it)- but then, he's never been pregnant.

• I couldn't think of a fifth thing in the three minutes I have to finish this post, so I called upon Adelaide in my hour of need, and here's what she's happy about right this second:

"Back To School Night is only three days from today, and school is only five days from today."  It's almost like she wants to leave me.  

Where I Give A Deeply Conflicted and Probably Completely Irrational Book Review

I've spent the last few weeks reading this one book.  Actually, I've read lots of books, but this one... I need to talk about this one.

Eat Move Sleep by Tom Rath.  Have you read it?  Did you hate it?  Did you love it?  Has it stirred angst in your innermost being like it has mine?

It took every single day of the three weeks I had it from the library to read it.  That never happens to me.  I'm a fast reader, and have no problem spending long periods of time sitting and reading, reading, reading (according to Tom Rath this will kill me; but then, according to Tom Rath most of the things I do will kill me).  I could only read a few pages at a time.  After each chapter, I would either nod my head in agreement with Tom Rath and his utter sensibility or hurl the book at the couch calling down a rain of fire on Tom Rath's head.  (You should get used to me saying Tom Rath.  I can't seem to make myself use just his first or last names and pronouns won't stick to him.  I bet even his children call him "Tom Rath," which is charming only if your name is Atticus and you dwell in the book To Kill A Mockingbird.)

It's just too much.  The entire book- which is pretty short, by the way- is too, too much.  The whole book is Tom Rath telling you the healthiest way to live your life.  He tells you what to eat and what not to eat.  He tells you when to move and when not to move (according to Tom Rath if you're not moving right now you're purposely killing yourself).  He tells you when to sleep and when not to sleep (according to Tom Rath I'm killing myself right now because I haven't gone to sleep for the night).  The real kicker?  There is no denying he's right about almost everything in the whole, God-forsaken book.

But you know what?  I can't live like that.  I can't exist solely on leafy greens, a handful of nuts here and there, and fish for supper every night.  And getting exactly 7-9 hours of sleep every single night of my life?  Even forgetting for just a second about Atticus's night terrors (which is impossible, by the way), I can't do that.  Okay, so I won't do that.  Do you know how many children I have hanging on me needing something right now?  Zero.  I have zero needy parasites constantly invading my personal space.  (I'm just kidding, my darling, darling children!  Except not, because very little about our relationship is symbiotic right now.  You are indeed parasitic at this point in your lives, children.)  Tom Rath wants me to shorten that glorious time every evening.  Tom Rath is a cotton-headed ninnymuggins.  (Just kidding, Tom Rath!)

The only part of Tom Rath's whole super-healthy life plan I'm able to execute with any success is daily exercise, and that's only because I am worthless without exercise.  Daily exercise is the only consistent cure that's ever worked for my moderate to severe stomach pains (I know, Mom, someday I will go to the doctor for it- just not today... or tomorrow... or pretty much anytime I don't think I'm about to die from it.  YOU MADE ME THIS WAY, MOTHER), my depression, anxiety, knee pain, back pain, and everything else that's wrong with me, mental, physical, and emotional.  Pain and the threat of mental illness are excellent motivators, as it turns out.

Everything else he talks about- and he talks about A LOT OF THINGS- I completely and totally suck at.  You know my whole New Year's non-resolution to eat more fruits and vegetables?  That's not an effort to be healthier (not for the most part anyway), but pure, Tom Rath-induced guilt.

I know he means well.  He's imparting hard-earned wisdom and knowledge about how to prolong your (miserable, as any life is without complex carbohydrates and sugar) life.  He has this rare disorder where he's missing some kind of gene that suppresses tumors in the body.  His body is constantly riddled with tumors, any of them potentially malignant or benign.  He combats this disorder by getting regular MRI's and CT scans to head off anything cancerous ASAP, and by living the absolute healthiest lifestyle possible.  Seriously, the absolute healthiest.  After reading his book, I'm not completely convinced the man isn't a robot.  (Or, based on the jacket photo, a mannequin and/or homicidal psychopath.  I said as much to Derek, who stated it was just a bad photo and he should have a word with his publisher about that.  I stuck with my mannequin/psychopath stance, but to be fair at that point I was almost done with the book and just looking for reasons to hate Tom Rath.)  (Just kidding, Tom Rath!)  (Kind of.)

Now, for any of you annoyingly healthy people who might be reading this:  I get it.  I really do.  If I were to eat healthier, and get more sleep, and move around more, it would become a habit, and a lifestyle, and blah blah BLAH.  Please just don't.  I am not putting this out there for you.  I am putting this out there so all my like-minded Oreo face-stuffers can rally behind me and then engage in a glorious opinion-validation loop (I've been on the internet enough to know that that is the true reason for its existence: it provides opportunity for anyone to find validation for their opinions, no matter how idiotic).

The problem with everything I just said is that it was a good book.  Like, I gave it four out of five stars on Goodreads good.  And I know I'm going to have to check it out and read it all over again, because I was so caught up in a guilt/hate spiral most of the time I was reading it.

You guys should read it, too!  Join me on this crazy train, won't you?

Happy All The Time vs Hates Everything

A couple days ago, I had too much to do at naptime and didn't get my workout in.  I knew I wouldn't be able to walk that evening, as Derek had to work, so after we picked Adelaide up from the bus stop, I changed into my workout clothes, slid the Denise Austin DVD I had checked out from the library into the DVD player, and prayed the kids would entertain themselves for thirty minutes while I exercised .

I should have foreseen what did happen; the minute the tv clicked on all three kids came scrambling (I haven't let them watch tv since April- a story for another day) and stood mesmerized as the opening credits flashed on the screen.

Soon enough, Denise started her jumping and lunging and twisting, I followed along, and the kids did, too, which was funny enough in and of itself.  They were seriously into it, especially Atticus.

The thirty minutes passed quickly, and I turned the tv off.  Mission accomplished.

I found myself in the same situation yesterday; picking Adelaide up, changing, inserting DVD, getting ready to workout.

The boys were just as excited as they had been the day before, but Adelaide remained on the couch, briefly glanced up when Denise appeared, and said, "Oh, it's Miss Perky again," in a dead, humorless voice.

I decided that this was one rabbit worth following down the rabbit-hole, paused the DVD, and turned to our daughter.

"Adelaide, do you know what 'perky' means?"

"Yes.  It means really happy and excited, like: *performs wild spastic dance with her eyes rolled back in her head*.  You know, like Odie."

"Odie?"

"You know- Odie.  Odie and Garfield?  Odie is happy all the time and perky, and Garfield is funny and hates everything."

I looked back at Denise Austin's manic smile frozen on the screen.  She is undeniably perky.  Then something occurred to me.

"Adelaide, do you think I'm like Odie?"

She began to speak, then hesitated before carefully replying, "Well... I think you try to be like Odie, but really you're more like Garfield."


I feel so transparent.

Off!

As I've mentioned before, I like to go for walks most evenings.  Sometimes a friend or two will tag along, but most of the time I'm walking alone.

One of my favorite places to walk is the nearby Heart of Iowa Trail.  I can jump on just a couple blocks from our house, and usually follow it for a couple miles before turning around and heading back home.  It's mostly shaded and almost completely solitary.  I rarely see more than one or two people while walking.

Last night, at about eight o'clock, I was on the trail, nearing the end of my walk.  I had just crested a small hill and was about to cross a street that intersects the part of the trail that goes through town.  And that's when I saw it:  fog.

It feels like lately I've been reading all kind of things about the need for spontaneity and living in the moment and carpe diem, and while I usually chalk all that up to a bunch of hippie crap, I decided maybe I should try to do small amounts of that kind of thing.  See, I'm really not at all spontaneous, and I tend to majorly stress out when plans are changed at the last minute.  Basically I'm the funnest person you've ever met.  Also, I use words like 'funnest.'

So when the urge to speed up and run through that fog seized me, I obeyed the whim.  After all, what's more fun and frolicsome than running through a low-lying cloud?

I had just reached the deepest, most dense part of the mist, and was actually really enjoying myself, when I opened my mouth to laugh.  And realized that the fog tasted nasty.

Then my eyes started to burn.

Then my notoriously unreliable nose registered a chemical smell.

It was about that point that a I saw a truck pull around the corner, a big machine of some sort in its bed, spewing a blanket of the noxious cloud over our little town.

I had been romping through a cloud of mosquito repellant.  No wonder my lungs felt tight.


The good news is, I didn't get a single mosquito bite last night!

Any Given Winter Evening

7:10 pm

Scene:  After helping Derek put the kids to bed, I have changed into my workout clothes, heavy coat, hat, and mittens, and am currently trudging my way to the gym, four blocks from our house.

My mood is gloomy and sullen.


Kristy's Brain:

I hate exercising.


Why am I doing this?  It's freezing out here.  Actually, it's well below freezing.  I could lose a finger/toe/ear!  Is a workout really worth a lost appendage?


Ouch!  Why don't those people trim that branch?  I swear it goes out of it's way to smack me every time I walk past this house.


My knee hurts.


My back hurts.


I hate this.


I could be at home, curled up on the couch next to Derek, reading a book/ watching old Friends or Frasier episodes/ playing a rousing game of Quiddler, but nooooo, I have to go work out.


It's too cold out.  I can't even breathe; it hurts my lungs.


Exercise is stupid.




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8:25 pm

Scene:  I have just finished my workout.  (Imaginary) Animated woodland creatures are frolicking gaily around my ankles as I lope home.

My mood is happy and buoyant.


Kristy's Brain:

I love exercising!


Aaaah!  Feel that crisp, winter air!  This weather is just perfect for running!


I feel fantastic!  


Maybe I should go ahead and run an extra mile tonight!


Maybe I should start exercising twice a day!


I'm so glad I went to the gym!


Exercise is wonderful!






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Fortunately, my normal temperament is usually somewhere in between these two extremes, because I don't know which is more annoying, pre- or post-workout me.