At church a few weeks ago, I overheard a woman talking to her friend about how much she liked it when her kids were all outside, because then she could clean her house in quiet.

I confess to feeling a flash of guilt, because I might just be the world’s worst housewife. If I have time to myself, the last thing I want to do is clean. Even if it’s messy. I know some might see this as a personality flaw, but I am puzzled by women who take delight in cleaning their houses. It seems like (from my outsider’s perspective) cleaning the house is good for their spirits, which simply baffles me. (Not that I am judging them. My life would actually be much more pleasant if I were one of those women. I just don’t understand it.) Sure, I like it when it’s clean, but I have a finely-tuned ability to ignore the messes. And cleaning doesn’t do anything at all for my spirit, except for a little flutter of hoping that the people in my house will know that I love them because look! How clean is that bathroom?

(I feel like I should add a disclaimer. My house isn’t disgustingly messy. I do clean my house…but not really with joy.)

Housecleaning is something I almost never do with my solitude.

Today, though, I cleaned my house. And if you knew how sacrosanct my Thursdays are, you’d know that that is a big deal. Usually on Thursdays I devote all of my (lovely, glorious, quiet) time to doing something creative. But, I think because of a change that might happen soon, I am restless in my creative time. My heart pounds and I can’t lose myself in any of my usual processes. And this morning, for no reason I can determine, I woke up with the itch. The itch to get organized, the itch to clean a little bit, the itch to have just one day when I acted like a normal housewife (whatever normal means).

So while the kids were at school and Kendell was at work and I didn’t have to be anywhere, I:

• Detailed the kitchen
• Cleaned the kitchen windows
• Organized the bathroom cabinet (giving myself tons of space for all of the stuff that had just been on the counter)
• Detailed the upstairs bathrooms

Hmmmmm. Typed out it doesn’t look like a lot, but it felt like I got a lot done.

While I worked, I thought about the poem “Housewife” by Anne Sexton. I first read it when I was working on my associate’s degree, so in 1991 or 1992. It was one of the first pieces of feminist writing, in fact, that I discovered. I was beginning to learn what feminism means, then, just barely dipping my toe in, and this poem was a revolution to me:

Some women marry houses.
It's another kind of skin; it has a heart,
a mouth, a liver and bowel movements.
The walls are permanent and pink.
See how she sits on her knees all day,
faithfully washing herself down.
Men enter by force, drawn back like Jonah
into their fleshy mothers.
A woman is her mother.
That's the main thing.

I was already married by then, the first time I read this. The poem ate at me a little bit. I troubled me, and I finally had to read it and read it and write about it before I understood why. It was because I didn’t want to be part of the group of women who marry houses. I wanted marriage—my future, really—to be more than just housekeeping. I didn’t want it, in fact, to be anything about housekeeping. Even if the house is the Jonah, pulling a man back to me.

What troubled me was that I was discovering I had married someone who really, really likes a clean house. And might likely be happiest if he were married to one of those women who marry houses. Who delight in housecleaning. But just as he hadn’t married one of those, I hadn’t married someone like me, with my ability to overlook messes. I was troubled by the conflict of not wanting to be that kind of woman for myself and knowing if I were it would make my husband happier.

I don’t know if my resistance has really accomplished anything; my lackadaisical cleaning perspective is the thing we fight about the most. But we both brought our cleaning issues into the home of our marriage; we have both compromised some and we have both resisted.

The house is clean enough.

Today, I was the woman faithfully washing myself down. But I didn’t do it with resentment because I chose to do it. No one asked me to clean out that neglected cabinet. But I was reminded today that while housekeeping can be all sorts of things—an expression of marital politics, a battleground, even, sometimes, a place we come to with laughter and unity—it is also, oddly enough, a form of creativity. A temporary one, to be certain, but still: it did do something good to my (anxious and terrified and excited and uncertain) heart today.

This girl turned twenty today.

Twenty! I can still remember how it felt when the doctor handed her to me for the first time. She was a beautiful baby, right from the start. My doctor’s last baby had been born just a few days before, and when he saw her he said “Wow, she is way more gorgeous than my baby!” (a story which still makes me smile). I took her into my arms and I saw that she was beautiful, but she was also something else. Right from the start, I could sense her strong personality. Think about how many babies come into the world on any given day…bajillions. Perhaps every mother feels that unique spirit emanating from her baby, though. The thing that makes—or, really, will make—this new person who she is. I’m not sure if all moms feel that, but I did. She wasn’t just another baby in the world to me. She was entirely herself, already strong willed and passionate and smart, I thought.

I couldn’t wait to see who she would become.

There is something about your first baby. You don’t know yet to savor because you don’t know how fast the days will pass, and so you look forward. I couldn’t wait for her to be born and then once she was here, I looked forward to all of her firsts. A few years after she was born, I read this idea (from The Poisonwood Bible) and it was so exactly true to how I felt as a new mom with Haley: “A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world.”

Two decades later, I am still cheering her feet. I am still watching her strong, passionate, smart personality develop. I am still so grateful to be her mom.  She has taught me…well, I almost wrote “everything I know about motherhood,” which isn’t true. I have learned about motherhood from each of my babies, from all of them. But she has had to be the trailblazer. The trial run, the person wise enough to withstand my bumbling attempts and kind enough to forgive my mistakes.

Twenty years in, I am seeing what I only could imagine as a possibility when I first saw her. Within those general traits of her spirit, she is creating her very specific life. I think she is amazing. I think she can do anything. I can’t wait, still, to see her future unfold. And, 7,300 days later (give or take a few leap years), I still am humbled that I got to be her mom.

Today is the day before my birthday; tomorrow I turn 43.

Which means today was the last day I could quip about being The Answer. (You know…in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the number 42 is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.) When I turned 40, the idea of eventually becoming The Answer gave me a little bit of consolation.

Once I’m 43 there won’t be anything left to look forward to.

The main question I’ve had at 42 is will my legs ever be normal again? I’m still trying to find the answer to that one. I’m still deeply frustrated. I just want them to stop hurting so I can run (and sit, and stretch, and tie my shoes) without pain again. I hope I find out this answer soon.

I’ve been thinking today, though, about what answers I have received while I was 42. Despite the silliness of the quipping, I really would like some answers. Of course, that all depends on what questions you ask. In the book, the theory is that the question exists in one universe and the answer exists in the other, and if they ever met in the same universe, everything would stop existing. Maybe that’s why I didn’t receive a ton of answers this year. 364 days later, I do think I have changed in fundamental ways. I have gained some hard wisdom and my perspective on many things has shifted. This really is because of different answers I have found from The Universe.

I don’t think I was anyone else’s answer, but I did figure out some things while I was 42. Some of these are vague and will probably only make sense to me, but I want to share them because it feels like a way of thanking The Universe.

Q. Should I run another Ragnar?
A. I don’t know if I should have. I’m glad I did though. I feel like I went back and made my peace with the race, even though that last leg was one of my life’s most miserable runs. Alternately, the question might be should I still run team relays? and the answer is, I want to. I’d desperately want to run the Top of Zion and the Red Rock relays. I just don’t have a team to run with.

Q. Am I strong enough to get to the top of Half Dome?
A. Yes! I know…it was just a hike. It wasn’t even really on my bucket list until the day I decided, on a random impulse, to sign up for the lottery. But once we got our tickets to hike, I got a little bit obsessed. I wasn’t afraid of the heights aspect, but of the strength. That I was strong enough to pull myself up those cables (not to mention survive the ascent of the sub dome) gives me a still, unshakeable inner sense of pride.

Q. Teenagers?
A. This is not just one question, but a daily series of them. A few times this year, mine have ripped my heart out through my ear drum. A few other times they have made me so proud I almost couldn’t stand it. Raising teenagers is not for the weak, so maybe the question has always been am I strong enough?, but in my innermost thought it has been am I doing it right? I’m not sure the answer has always been yes, but we still all love each other, and that is all that counts.

Q. What is the measure of my past choices? (Which isn’t even the question at all, only a way I can phrase it without asking the real question.)
A. I received an epiphany one Sunday this year. I’ve written it in my journal, and it feels too raw and personal and problematic to blog about, but too important not to list as an answer because it brought me so much peace. The answer to this question, which is “my kids,” brought me so much peace and understanding, I feel like it has changed my understanding of my entire last two decades.

Q. How long do I need to carry this baggage?
A. You should’ve put it down years ago. Strangely enough, I found this answer on Facebook. Putting the baggage down was related to seeing the baggage-related person as just a person. Not larger than life. Not perfect. Just human, which meant I could stop wanting and comparing. To be free of that baggage is so liberating it is almost terrifying. I almost don’t know who I am without it. But it is a pleasure to learn the answer.

Q. What are my responsibilities to the people I love?
A. This might be the theme of my entire year of being The Answer. I think The Universe was trying to teach me, in a way I haven’t ever fully understood, that the only person in this world I can really influence or help is myself. I don’t mean that in a selfish way, not in the sense of not being willing to help others. I just have learned that, in the end, someone might listen to me, and he/she might consider my advice, but in the end, my worries and hopes that they will hear me aren’t going to make them hear me. In the end, each person who I love is still autonomous of my concern for them, and will choose what they will. Me stressing about it won’t change their decision. (In that sense, Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” is also the theme of my year. “Determined to do the only thing you could do, determined to save the only life you could save.”)

Q. Am I ready yet?
A. I am close. I am working on it. I have perhaps turned a corner. It is close to time!

Q. What about J?
A. (This will be the most vague Q&A. I’m sorry.) The question of my entire adult life, and just last week, The Universe gave me a handful of answers. This is perhaps entirely life-changing. That it came so close to my birthday feels like a gift. I am ready to open it. If the answers fall in line, I could also be ready to explain what this means.

I wasn’t sure, when I sat down to write this, if I could find the words to explain my answers. Of course, there have been other questions, too, but these have been my big answers. Having written these, I feel better about my birthday tomorrow. Maybe I won’t always be The Answer, but I hope the next year still brings me many. Nathan asked me yesterday if, given the chance, I’d go back to my twenties. I’d take my twenty-year-old hamstrings and ankles back in a second, unless it meant giving up the knowledge I have gained. Forty seemed terrifying before I entered this decade, but as I am living in it I am discovering that it is a space where, yes, things start to sag and slow and ache. But it is also a time when things start to make sense.

I am grateful for every answer The Universe is willing to give me.

Sometimes I lose my scrapbooking mojo. This happened this winter. It was a combination of being in a pretty dark place throughout January and February and my need to redefine my relationship with my hobby. After a while of feeling entirely blah about scrapping anything, I ignored my desk for a few weeks, and then when I went back to it, I wanted to change up my approach a little bit, just to see if I could still enjoy scrapbooking.

Thus my idea of the Inspiration Chain was born.

The idea is pretty simple. Just start with something. Start working on a layout with an idea, story, supply, photo, or some other spark of creative energy attached to it. Then, as you’re working on that layout, pay attention to other sources of ideas for your next layout. The second layout might not look anything like the first one, but the genesis of layout number two can be found in layout number one. Then you just keep going, letting layouts build upon in other. Well, “build” might not be the correct metaphor. They link together, both backward and forward.

You can read about the first time I tried an inspiration chain here, on WCS.

I tried it again this week. I’m coming to my scrapbooking desk with a different sort of angle than I’m used to. I want to use the time I have for scrapping to get down on a layout the images and stories that will continue to matter. I want to not spend so much time worrying about embellishing or design choices or where to put stuff. I just want to get the stories paired up with photos. I don’t want to do any superfluous stuff; my focus feels sharpened.

Using that, and the idea of just starting, I decided to use the last photo I had taken. I absolutely meant to take some pictures last week of Kaleb and his cousin Jace, who spent some days at our house during spring break. But they were always so busy, outside doing boy stuff, that the only photos I took weren’t awesome—just a couple of cell phone snap shots as they headed off to longboard around the track by our house. Thoroughly non-amazing photos, but that’s OK because I just wanted to get down some of the details of their relationship. I made this layout:

And while I was working on it, I remembered a conversation I had with Cindy, who is Jace’s mom (and thus my sister-in-law), back when she used to scrapbook, too. We were talking about making pages about boys, and whether or not it was against the rules to use flowers on a boy layout. (We were young scrapbookers and hadn’t yet figured out that there are no rules!) She told me that she would feel totally OK with using flowers on a boy page that was also about a woman or a girl—so, a layout about a brother and a sister, or a boy and his grandma. I don’t know why I remembered that conversation after all these years, but it made me smile to have it come back to my memory so clearly. I decided right then that my next layout would be a boy layout that used flowers in some way. This is what I came up with:

Flowers and pink and a scripty font, all on a layout about a boy. My twenty-something scrappy self would be astounded! 

While I was working on this layout, I found myself thinking about how much Kaleb has grown since I took that photo of him smelling the grass. He’s leaving little boyhood behind, and entering the lovely joys of tweendom, but in that photo he was still just so thoroughly a little boy. It made me want to make a layout that showed the passing of time, but also something entirely girly, so I turned to some of Haley’s photos. Literal photos, from my film camera for the oldest one! This layout was so fun to make:

(I wanted to totally immerse myself in girly-ness. So I did!)

What was interesting about this second go at an inspiration chain is that the way the layouts flowed from one to the next was based on memory and emotion, whereas the first time I did it, it was more about scrapbooking product. But it really is helping me continue to break out of my scrapbooking blahs.

If you’re a scrapbooker, how do you decide what layout you’ll do next?

After reading discussions in several places about scrapbooking processes, I've been thinking a lot about mine. By "scrapbooking process" I mean the steps that I take, in general, to create a layout. It's fascinating to me to learn about different people's processes, especially the ones that are different from mine; occasionally, I'll undertake a different process to see what I can come up with and how it influences the layout I make—but I always go back to my way! 

I like to think that I start with a story, although technically that isn't true. I almost always start with a picture (or a group of them) that I want to write about. So really, my first step is processing them in Photoshop and printing my pictures, but in my head that is the step that comes before making a layout (just like shopping for products isn't usually part of my process).

 Once I have the photos—or, sometimes, right after I process them but before I pick them up—I write my journaling. Writing is my favorite part of scrapbooking, so doing it first is a little bit like eating chocolate cake before the lasagna. (Both delicious, of course, but...chocolate.) I spend quite a bit of time writing and revising the story, usually, because while I generally have a spark to start with, I don't always know exactly what I'm going to write or the direction I want the story to go. Sometimes I just have a feeling or an idea and I have to figure it out as I write. Sometimes the words pour out without any hesitation at all! (I love that.)

Lots of words, though, is the practical reason I write my journaling first. (It's also why I don't do a lot of handwritten journaling, much as I know it's important.) Once I've written and revised my journaling, I know about how much space I'll need.

As I was thinking about this post, that was as far as I got at first: my process is writing my journaling first. Of course, it has to go further than that or the layout would never get made! But I had to think a little bit about what comes next. I think for people who are better at design than I am, that is the first (or second) step in the process. But for me, before I figure out where I'm going to put anything, I design the title first.

In fact, on my layouts, all of the design is connected to the title. Color, pattern, embellishments, the font for the journaling—it all revolves around the title. This is precisely because​ I'm not very good at design, but am first and foremost a word person. After I've written my journaling, I have a place where the title grows from. I can't figure out what it will look like, though, until I choose the words themselves. Very often I'll pull words or phrases directly out of my journaling to make the title. Or the journaling has set the mood for the layout, so I can choose a title based on feeling. I like pun and bits of poetry and quotes for titles...I try to not use obvious ones like "Easter 2015." I want the title words to further the emotional tone of the layout. Once I have the title words, they have a "look" in my head, and then I start playing around with products to create that look.

(It doesn't always come out the way I think it will!)

Most of my creative energy goes into designing the title. After that I look for products to embellish, based on colors, but the title (which draws from the journaling) establishes the visual style of nearly all of my layouts.

I don't think I truly put that together for myself until I wrote this post!

Take one of the layouts I made recently:

This was the best thing that happened at Disneyland when we went in February. Kaleb and I were admiring a display of foam souvenir swords. He asked me if I would play swords with him, but just before I reached for one, Peter Pan appeared. There were no other kids around, so Kaleb just fought with swords with Peter Pan. It was awesome!

I didn't take my big camera to Disneyland; I didn't want to be encumbered by it. When this happened, in fact, part of me thought I'm not even going to bother trying to photograph this, because my cell phone won't do it justice. The photos aren't awesome but I'm so glad I didn't listen to that voice! I decided on printing one big photo rather than several smaller ones because none of them were really, really good. I thought one big image would be more powerful.

After I wrote the journaling, I wanted a title that would express how magical those minutes felt, both for Kaleb and for me. I hunted for a while for a quote about the magic of Disneyland...but nothing fit until I started thinking about the Peter Pan story, and then it was easy. I made the title with my Silhouette, and it couldn't be any other color than green, to go along with Peter Pan. I wanted it to be big, to pack a lot of visual impact, so I kept any other embellishments to a minimum.

Sometimes I look at other people's layouts and think how do they do that? Where do the ingenious ideas for design and embellishment come from? Not from a part of the creative brain that I possess. But after so many years of scrapbooking, and so many layouts, I'm comfortable with my approach. I try to mix it up so I can stretch myself and not get too comfortable, but my process is a reflection of who I am. I love my layouts because they capture the bits and pieces of our lives in stories and images, and I am happy I've figured out a process that works for me.

If you scrapbook, have you ever thought about your process? What do you start with?

When Haley was six months old, I volunteered to be laid off from my job so that I could be a stay-at-home mom. This was a terrifying choice for me because it meant relying only on Kendell’s income. I worried about being bored and lonely, but then I started imagining how it must be to be a SAHM on a street full of SAHMs. I wouldn’t be bored or lonely, I figured, because I’d be doing things with other moms. We’d go places with our kids and sometimes we’d go without them. We’d hang out in each other’s kitchens, I thought, sharing recipes and parenting tips while our kids played. I imagined going to the gym with friends, taking my kids to the library with friends, sharing news about the latest Gymboree sale (oh how I loved shopping at Gymboree when my Bigs were little!) and then going there to shop—together with friends.

It didn’t quite work out that way for me.

All of the young, married friends I’d made at work moved away when their husbands went to grad school, so my only source of friends became my neighborhood. I live on a street that has lots of kids, so my kids always have had someone to play with. (Or, as Kaleb reminds me to call it now, “hang out with.”) But somehow, those grown up friendships I imagined never happened for me. Partly this can be blamed on my personality. I have a hard time making friends, even though once I trust that someone is my friend, I think I’m a pretty good one. Partly it has to do with my husband’s unresolved OCD issues, which make inviting anyone into our house a stressful nightmare of whispered conversations about his worry that someone will spill something. Partly it’s that the things I imagined myself doing with friends weren’t things anyone in my neighborhood was interested in doing. Everyone else goes on walks together, but I’m not invited because they know I like to run. Their shopping styles are different than mine. They’re not all obsessed with books and writing or photography and scrapbooking like I am. I have friends on my street, but most of them aren’t close, and I’ve never really felt like I fit in.

It took me a while and then I started realizing that my lovely imaginings of a friend-filled life weren’t going to come to pass. I went through a few lonely years of wishing it were different. I prayed for a long time for friends (that sounds pretty pathetic) and I was blessed with a few very excellent ones, but by the time I found them, I had changed. I sealed up that well—the place where I’d imagined having a social life with lots of friends. Instead, I created a life that was happy without them. I needed solitude before I adapted, but now it is the medium I thrive in. I run alone because I wouldn’t know what to do if I had someone to run with; having to talk to a running buddy would interrupt one of my main reasons for running, which is the time by myself when all I can do is think. I shop by myself because I have my routine down, I know where I like to shop, and no one else but me has to witness any changing-room drama or despair. And when my kids are off at school and Kendell’s at work, I am happy in my solitude. I write, I scrapbook, I make quilts. I stay in my sweats and I don’t put on any make-up and my hair is a messy ponytail, but I am not lonely.

I am happy alone because I taught myself how to be happy alone.

I didn’t realize how entrenched in my isolation I’ve become, however, until someone in my family needed my company. My mom, when she came home from her back surgery, didn’t want to be by herself. She wanted me to come over and hang out with her. And I am more than a little bit ashamed of my response. In fact, I discovered that the well I thought had crusted over had really, over time, filled up with anger. I was angry that she was intruding on my solitude. I had to dig a little bit to discover why, but part of it had to do with my friendless (and, I hadn’t noticed, sort-of motherless) years. Where were you, I thought, when I needed company? When I had no one? I made my life as happy as it could be without people to keep me company, and now she wanted me to change everything to give her company?

I admit, not my most shining, empathetic, Christ-like moment.

But it’s true. I’ve grown so fond of my time alone that I resent it when anyone intrudes. It really doesn’t have much to do with my mom, but with me. I don’t want to reach out or to hope for friendships or someone to do things with. I want to keep that well capped because it’s too raw if it isn’t covered. Part of me thinks I need to write that I am too attached. That I am becoming a hermit. But I am rejecting that insight as the one I need right now. I can’t imagine, now, trying to be different. I don’t miss having someone who hangs out in my kitchen and talks because I don’t want anyone there anymore. I just want to be alone. The problem comes, of course, when other people really do need me, but I don’t want to give any time away.

I need to figure out a better balance, perhaps. I need to learn how to not feel resentful when my solitude is displaced by others’ needs. But I can’t imagine being different anymore. I can’t imagine having a whole bunch of friends.

This morning, I was waiting at the bottom of the stairs for the sculpting class at the gym to start. The two young moms in front of me, who come together every time, were talking about their daughters, and I could tell they have what I had wanted—the talks in kitchens, the sharing of children, the time spent at little tables with beverages at Barnes & Noble. There’s still a part of me that is sad I never had that, but the larger, more self-knowledgeable part of me knows I never would have. It’s not in my nature to be shallow friends with a bunch of people; I better at fewer yet deeper relationships. And not fitting in…well. That’s always how I’ve been. I don’t quite fit in on my street, but I’m not sure if I moved somewhere else I’d fit in there, either.

So instead of wishing for someone to keep me company all of the time, I’m just going to continue valuing the relationships I do have—with my small handful of friends, with my sister, and yes: with my solitude.

You know when you have those moments when you look at your kids and just think…holy cow, they are amazing? You can see it even when they’re stressing you out or making you crazy, whether they’re two or twelve or almost-twenty. I love those transcendent moments. Haley came home for Easter last weekend, and maybe it was seeing them all together that reminded me. Or maybe it’s that I am feeling stronger and happier as spring progresses.

Or maybe it’s just that they really are amazing.

I just feel like sharing this: I am so proud of my kids.

I am proud of Haley.

She is working so hard right now. She’s taking 18 credits at school, and not easy classes either—calculus and biology and Spanish. She works 30+ hours a week at two different jobs. She’s keeping her grades up and doing well at her jobs.

But even more, she is becoming emotionally intelligent. She is starting to see things from different perspectives. She’s a feminist. She makes me laugh. She is strong willed and determined and I love her so much.

I am proud of Jake.

Math and science come so easily for him, he hardly has to study. Even though he doesn’t love school, he works hard to keep up his grades while he’s holding down a job. He recently got promoted to the training manager.

But even more, he is working on the changes he needs for this time of his life. He is striving to overcome his weaknesses and learn from his choices. He makes me laugh in ways that are entirely his own and I love him so much.

I am proud of Nathan.

(Because why not dye Easter eggs without your shirt?)

Even with being on student council, the basketball team and now the track team, he makes sure he gets a 4.0 every term. He is early for church every Sunday and fulfills his responsibilities without complaining.

But even more, he is just a good kid. He is friendly and open and willing to talk to me about nearly everything. He makes me feel loved and appreciated and I love him so much.

I am proud of Kaleb.

He is getting better and better at enjoying reading. (He is working his way through all of Roald Dahl’s books.) He makes sure to get his homework done even without help and he has the best handwriting.

But even more, he is such a good friend. He tries to make sure everyone in his street posse is included when they go out to play night games. His sense of humor brings me so much happiness and I love him so much.

I am so blessed to be their mother.

A thing happened today that hasn’t since October (except for that one time in December that set me even further back): I got dressed in (my favorite) running clothes, found my sunglasses and a headband and my running shoes, put on some sunscreen, and then I went running outside.

Not that I haven’t been exercising. It’s just mostly been on the grim, tiny underground track at my rec center. (Cement walls, narrow windows that show the roots of bushes and people’s feet as they walk out, and it’s 6.2 laps per mile.) And on the ellipital at the gym. And sometimes at Kendell’s gym at work, where they have rowing machines—I don’t hate the rowing machine. (“Don’t hate” is the highest praise I can give a gym machine.)

There were those two times when Kendell and I went for a walk on the PRT and I ran for 9 lovely minutes.

But today’s running felt like the first real running I’ve done since October, when for some mysterious (but now finally diagnosed) reason, my hamstrings started to feel like someone was slicing them open with a venomous fang.

The diagnosis? I have lazy glutes. Which means that for all of my running years, my glutes have just been, you know, hanging out for a ride, but not contributing much. And finally my hamstrings had had it with the free ride and they started to complain.

When I suggested this possibility to my PT, he got a little bit uncomfortable. “Well…” he fumbled. “Generally people with lazy glutes have a, ummm, well, a fairly, well, a fairly flat bottom.”

Which totally made me laugh because I’ve had a “flat bottom” my whole life. (Jake and Nathan think it’s funny to call me “sheet cake.” Ha ha.)

It also made me think. What if my glutes have been lazy my whole life? Maybe THAT is why I wasn’t very good at vaulting. Or why I never finally mastered a double back. Just a little effort from my glutes might have made a world of difference to my entire life!

The diagnosis also gave Kendell ample joke fodder, because At Last! At long, long last, there is medical proof of what he’s always suspected: I am a lazy ass.

Whatever.

All I know is that knowing why my legs have continued hurting—despite 12+ PT appointments and yes, I’m totally afraid to open the PT bill that’s hidden under a pile of patterned paper—has made me feel entirely more positive about this entire hamstring experience. It feels like now there is something I can actually do to make things better. First off, I’ve been focusing on sitting less, because sitting encourages the muscle to relax and weaken. This week, I’ve added a bunch of exercises that focus on my glutes, and when I run I concentrate on…well, on squeezing my butt with each step. It is remarkably difficult, and it is, for now, making me run slower. It’s especially hard to get my left glute to get working (and my left hamstring is the one that hurts the most). Not only when I’m running, but also when I’m doing the exercises.

But (butt!) at least I know and can work on it. I’m feeling so much more optimistic. Maybe (as my deepest fears have continued to prod me) my running days really aren’t over. Maybe—I hope—I can be like the lady I saw running last week. She was old—white hair and wrinkles—but she was still running. That is what I want. In order to keep running away from getting old, I have to keep running. I am so hopeful that all of these glute exercises will help me do that!

I sort of have A Thing for books set in Ireland. It is the country I most want to visit, the one that has enthralled me since I was old enough to read. So, while I was preparing for my LTUE presentation by reading tons of book reviews, when I came across The Carnival at Bray I immediately requested that my library purchase it. Because not only is it set in Ireland, it’s also got a bit in Rome, and it’s partly about how music influences the main character. (A perfectly Amy kind of combination.)

Sixteen-year-old Maggie Lynch lives in Chicago with her mom, grandma, sister, and uncle Kevin, who’s also her godfather. Just before her mom uproots their lives and moves them to Ireland so they can live with her new husband, Kevin takes Maggie to see Smashing Pumpkins, and the concert utterly changes her. “The night had blasted her free of that shell, and she had merged new and raw and ready,” she thinks, after the concert. That is the self she takes to Ireland, to the small Dublin suburb of Bray. In a new place, she starts to figure out how to begin creating this new self.

The book opens with an epigraph from a book about punk music:

If you’re lucky, at the right time you come across music that is not only “great,” or interesting, or “incredible,” or fun, but actually sustaining. Your emotions shoot out to crazy extremes; you feel both ennobled and unworthy, saved and damned. You hear that this is what life is all about, that this is what it is for.
(Ranters & Crowd Pleasers: Punk in Pop Music)

The music Maggie discovers is not the music that broke the world open for me—she’s living in 1993 and so is influenced by grunge. For me, it was the underbelly, alternative music of the 80s, but I had this same experience, discovering a type of music that gives you an identity. I think the “right time” of the quote has to be when you’re a teenager (or maybe your first year in college) because that is when you’re beginning to figure out all the stuff about who you are. Music that gives you a language—a sort of environment you can explore—for your identity really can change your life, and so the parts in the book where Maggie is experiencing this were my favorite. Especially when she went to Rome to see Nirvana.

What I didn’t love about this book is a thing that many young adult writers do, and I almost never like it. Her mother is presented as both selfish and stupid, clueless as to how to really interact with her daughter. Probably because I am the parent of teenagers, I am bothered by young adult novels with parents who are the antagonists. I know—teenagers and parents don’t often get along, and teenagers really do tend to see their parents’ efforts at helping them as attempts to control them. I’m always a little bit disheartened by novels that do this, too, because by now the author should know better. Parents aren't always the antagonists. Teenagers are in a strange place where they are able to start building their lives but they don’t usually have all the tools or knowledge they need to do that. Hence their parents! I think YA authors do a disservice to teenagers by always presenting parents with negative motives and teenagers as being far more wise than them. It is a motif I am tired of.

That said, Maggie did get to have some compassion for her mother. She doesn’t ever respect her, but she does realize “it must be hard to be a mother. All those years of knowing everything about your daughter, of dressing her and bathing her and being intimately acquainted with her every need and want, and then one day you wake up and realize you don’t even know what kind of dress to buy her.” Yep. That is a hard place to be in.

In the end, though, I thoroughly enjoyed this young adult novel. I liked being in Ireland and having adventures with Maggie, but most of all I enjoyed watching her figure out her life. She goes through heartache, loss, loneliness, and the results of bad choices, but manages to find a sort of happiness. 

I'm eating a cookie while I write this post, which might tell you something about how my no-sugar efforts are proceeding.

For the first sixteen days of this experiment, I was so strong. Literally zero, nada, zilch—no cookies, candies, cakes, snacks, or sugary beverages passed my lips. My goal was to make it until Easter weekend, when I would give myself a reprieve to enjoy the holiday. I did have fruit, but not an excessive amount. I started to retrain my snacking tooth, so I was reaching for easy veggies (grape tomatoes, snap peas, baby carrots), almonds, and the occasional cheese stick for a snack, instead of candy. I was doing OK and absolutely on track to make it to Friday afternoon.

In actuality, I made it to the Thursday before Easter. That day, I went to the gym and then I had to go grab some things at Target that Nathan needed for his track meet. Maybe it was not eating after I worked out, or maybe it was the weather, but I got the weirdest headache. I took 4 Advil and then, two hours later, four more, but it didn't budge. What's worse was how I felt: spacey and unattached to my body. Actually, what I felt like was the same as how it feels when you're about 17 miles into a 20 mile run, and you're entirely out of energy and, what's more, motivation.​ You have no idea what compelled you to run that far.

My headache made me question what I was doing, pushing myself so hard not to eat sugar.

Plus, sometimes sugar does help my headaches. (Sometimes it makes them worse, though. I didn't say it wasn't a gamble.) So after everything else—a relaxing bath, a nap, and a neck massage—failed to touch it, I crumbled.

I ate some sugar.

Some lemon almonds, to be precise. They sounded the best. Of course, they didn't make the headache go away either. (I ordered pizza for dinner because I could.not.stand. the thought of cooking that night, and after I ate a slice I finally felt better.)

They did unleash the hounds of hell my previously restrained sweet tooth.

Well, sort of. I didn't eat any sugar on Friday, and I held myself back until Saturday night, when, I confess, I ate some jelly beans and caramel eggs while I arranged the Easter baskets. We had pancakes and buttermilk syrup for Easter-morning breakfast and I made my two traditional Easter desserts:

(lemon cake and berry pound cake)

I ate Reece's peanut butter bunnies, more caramel eggs and some cookies 'n cream eggs I got for Jake (who's allergic to peanut butter) and a piece of each cake and then more lemon cake just before I went to bed. Then I took a deep breath and resolved to restart my resolution. I actually was sort of looking forward to it, since I was feeling that icky, I-ate-too-much-sugar feeling, the one that makes you need to eat some buttery popcorn or salty potato chips just to balance everything out.

And I did fabulous for two and a half entire days.

But today, I just wasn't feeling it. I can't tell you why. I just felt full of the despair and anxiety that nearly begs for sugar. And I didn't even try to restrain myself. I didn't try to distract my craving with a salad or a big glass of water or cleaning the kitchen. Instead, I sat in my bed, reading Brave New World​, and I ate candy. The eight little caramel eggs I had left. Then four Ghiradelli salted caramel dark chocolate squares. And a raspberry dark chocolate square.

And now I'm eating a cookie.

I'm not sure what tomorrow will bring, sugar-wise. I think part of what's making me feel listless about this project is that I haven't lost one single, solitary pound for all of my efforts. My clothes don't fit any better. I have felt a little bit more energetic...but not a whole bunch.

Yep. It's probably discouragement, plain and simple.

Hence the cookie. Since today is already shot to hell, why not finish strong? (And by "strong" I mean "maybe I'll eat another cookie. Or that last raspberry dark chocolate square.") Maybe I'll feel better about this tomorrow.