Deep breaths. Sometimes that's all there is left to do. Just deep breathing and trying not to sob. It's been a week around here. Not all bad. But the good stuff just doesn't feel big enough to keep me balanced, and I'm walking around trying to swallow one of those obnoxious lumps in my throat. Not wanting to be a mopey mother but also wanting nothing more than to crawl back into bed for the rest of the day.

Haley and a friend—a very good friend, a besties-forever kind of friend—had an enormous blowup last week and are now not talking to each other. Watching this happen, and trying to give advice to my daughter, and thinking about adolescence and boys and friends and who you can trust in your life has brought up a whole bunch of my own old issues. Interestingly enough, it also feels like I have learned some things about my teenaged self as all of this has gone down. (Nothing like 20-years-too-late epiphanies!) I had forgotten how intense and consuming that first-love feeling is, how it can drive you to do illogical things, and how its rejection creates all sorts of negative energy. Haley's friend is turning that negative energy towards Haley—which is probably healthier than what I did, which was turn it all inward, towards myself, but still: the destruction hasn't been pretty.

I keep thinking about how hard I try, on Sundays, to make stuff like Isaiah interesting when I teach the 14- and 15-year-old class, and how while it is important to understand and know the scriptures, maybe there is something more we need to be teaching our teenagers. It's a pretty big leap from the Old Testament to self respect, and maybe right now what they need more of is the self respect. I know all too well how their decisions now will affect so much of their future lives and I wish I could be more competent at helping them shape something strong. 

Since I discovered Haley was a girl, I have worked hard at discovering ways to help her know that she can be strong on her own, that she doesn't need a boyfriend to define her happiness, and that she needs to understand herself before she can be happy in a relationship. Especially as she's gotten older. As she has handled this experience with her friend I have seen that perhaps this one lesson is something she has internalized. I think—I think—that she gets it just a little bit. Of course, it could also be that she just hasn't been hit hard yet by the first-love feeling, but I hope that even when she is, she'll not forget. What she does know for certain is that friends should be more important than boys, especially when you're fifteen, and I really, really wish her friend knew that, too.

Being a teenager is hard—you get reminded of that when you have your own teenagers. There is so much hurt in the world and so little that we moms can do about it. Toss in family dynamics and the constant tearing that is mother-teenage-daughter relationships and yeah: I have found myself thinking "just breathe" quite often this week, overcome by things I thought I had left behind, and by the reminder of just how swiftly my children have grown, and by unexpected emotional complications (who knew that this girl I've tried to help and take care of would turn so swiftly, and how that turning would make Haley miserable and me miserable about her misery and sad on my own and plus I still feel sorry for the friend, too, who is obviously hurting and it's like trying to bash away a brick wall with a toothpick—moving beyond this seems impossible).

Just breathe. Through the aching and the memories and the disappointment. What else is there? Breathing, and staying awake, and being here for when she might need me.

Which is an anniversary of sorts.

In knowledge of Young Boys
~Toi Derricotte

i knew you before you had a mother,
when you were newtlike, swimming,
a horrible brain in water.
i knew you when your connections
belonged only to yourself,
when you had no history
to hook on to,
barnacle,
when you had no sustenance of metal
when you had no boat to travel
when you stayed in the same
place, treading the question;
i knew you when you were all
eyes and a cocktail,
blank as the sky of a mind,
a root, neither ground nor placental;
not yet
red with the cut nor astonished
by pain, one terrible eye
open in the center of your head
to night, turning, and the stars
blinked like a cat. we swam
in the last trickle of champagne
before we knew breastmilk—we
shared the night of the closet,
the parasitic
closing on our thumbprint,
we were smudged in a yellow book.

son, we were oak without
mouth, uncut, we were
brave before memory.

I don't make sugar cookies very often. It's not because all the mess makes me crazy (it doesn't—in fact, the mosiac of spilled sprinkles always makes me pause in admiration: all those colors and shapes!), or because I don't like them. In fact, I love everything about sugar cookies—the softness of the raw dough, the way they smell baking, how happy they make my kids. It's one of our favorite activities to do together.

In fact, the real reason I don't make them often is because I make delicious sugar cookies, if i do say so myself, and because if I make them, well...I will also eat them!

Still, it's not really a holiday without some sugar cookies. So I'm going to share the love with this, my absolutely perfect sugar cookie recipe. Please note that this is only perfect if you like fat, soft, fluffy sugar cookies. If you're a fan of crispy ones, this will be the opposite of perfect!

1/2 cup butter or shortening (shortening makes for a slightly better texture, but it is also banned in my kitchen as I'm slightly obsessive about not allowing any hydrogenated vegetable oil to pass through our bodies)
3 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
6 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspooons vanilla
1 pint sour cream (2 cups)
8 cups flour

Soften butter by letting it sit on your counter for an hour or so. Field approximately 2,327 "when can I put sprinkles on the cookies?" questions. (It won't only be your youngest asking you this!) Cream butter/shortening and sugar until fluffy. 
I love this step just because it's so visually appealling!  Add eggs one a time, beating thoroughly between each one. Pause to sigh deeply over your mother-in-law giving up her chickens and the fact that you have to actually buy eggs now. Add vanilla with one of the eggs. (Please tell me you use real vanilla, not the imitation imposter!) Sprinkle the baking soda and baking powder over the creamed mixture and blend on low speed. (If you're ambitious you can sift the baking powder and soda together with the flour, but I am not ambitious that way.) Add half the flour, then the sour cream, then the rest of the flour. (I switch from the cookie beaters to the bread dough hook after I add the sour cream, because the dough is fairly stiff.) You want the dough to still be a little bit sticky—it should NOT be pulling away from the sides of the bowl. Sometimes I have to add a little bit more flour—a half cup or so—just so I can get it out of the bowl. If you add too much flour, your cookies will be dry.

Put the dough in a Ziploc and chill for at least four hours. Meanwhile, make the frosting:

1/2 cup softened butter
4 ounces softened cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla
dash nutmeg
drizzle (about 1/8 of a tsp) coconut extract
red and yellow food coloring
powdered sugar

Cream the butter and the cream cheese together. Add the vanilla and the secret Perfect Sugar Cookie Frosting ingredients (that'd be the nutmeg and the coconut extract) and some food coloring. I like the color to be pretty intense so I use the gel coloring. Now, start adding powdered sugar. I honestly don't measure this part, but I think I use about 1 1/2 pounds. It is ready when it tastes sweet enough and is stiff enough to spread. If you add too much powdered sugar, thin out the frosting with a little bit of milk or half and half.

Sprinkle your cutting board/counter with a little bit of flour and roll out a big hunk of dough—about half. Put the rest back in the fridge while you work. One of the big, soft, fluffy sugar-cookie secrets is to put in the least amount of flour possible, so don't overdo the flour sprinkling! The dough is a little bit sticky so you do have to add a bit. Roll it so it's about 1/3" thick, then cut out. Since these are soft, fat, fluffy sugar cookies, you'll want to skip the detailed cutters. Circles or hearts (who doesn't love a Halloween heart?) are best, although I do love this pumpkin cutter:  
(they still turn out basicaly round though!)

Since you are trying to avoid adding extra flour, you want to cut out as many cookies from the first big swath of dough. Get them as close as possible!
When you've cut as many as you can, gather the scraps back together, sprinkle a little more flour, and roll out again. You can do the entire batch, or leave some in the fridge or freezer for a later batch. If I freeze the dough, I do it with an upcoming holiday in mind—half the batch on Halloween, the other half at Christmas, or Christmas first and then the rest on Valentine's Day. Because, you know...if I make them, I will eat them!

Bake at 400 for 10-ish minutes. They are best (read: soft, fat, and fluffy!) if you don't overbake them—they should be done, but not golden yet. They'll be puffy when you take them out, but some will sink back a little bit. Don't worry—those dimples are just part of the deliciousness! 
 

Let them cool, then frost and, of course, sprinkle! And then: Have a cookie!

(if you'd like a printable version of the recipe, without my goofy ramblings, click here. There's also a download for some cute cupcake toppers there!)

I continue thinking about this blog post, on the blog of author Susan Henderson (whose novel, Up from the Blue, is making its way towards me as I write). The post is about when you can call yourself a writer, and the guest blogger (a literary agent) says the answer depends. In private, you should call yourself a writer right now. (Unless, of course, you have no writerly aspirations, because then it'd just be silly to look yourself in the mirror and say "I am a writer.") This is a way, of course, to convince yourself to be what you aspire to be. If you're in public, though, you're on your own, because if you claim the Writer title, someone will ask you what you write. "Blog posts" isn't a great answer, especially if your blog is read by approximately seven dedicated readers. Of course, I want to be able to call myself a writer in public, but obviously I cannot yet, since none of my writing is published. That would be when I could claim the title: when I have a published book.

I'm not sure when that will be, but after today I do know a title I am no longer sheepish in using: runner. (If you are right now rolling your eyes and thinking "really, Amy? another blog about running?" then you should take comfort in the fact that my race is a week from today. I'm thinking about running a lot because I'm, well, running a lot!) I needed to fit in one last long run today, and I was shooting for an hour and fifty minutes. (Counting time instead of miles because I was running in the canyon, where the mile markers are iffy and random.) The weather man'd said yesterday that today would be stormy, but not until this afternoon, so I felt safe in sleeping in until a luxurious 9:00, and then starting my run.

About two miles up the canyon, though, it started to drizzle. I thought it would clear up (still trusting that weather man) but it didn't really matter: I had to get my one hundred and ten minutes in, so I kept going. At first, the rain was refreshing, but as I worked my way up the canyon, it started to get worse. I looked up at the cliffs and had to stop, the storm was so beautiful: snow at the heights, warming to rain as it fell. Then I kept going, up a road I was determined to get to the end of. And I did, but when I turned around, I discovered I was running into the storm: a fierce, howling wind flinging the rain at my face, turning it into watery pellets and then, for a good ten minutes, shifting to hail.

A few cars drove past and part of me wished one would stop and offer to drive me back to my car, but I would have turned them down anyway—I still needed those miles. It wasn't as painful when I got off the road and back onto the trail, but the rain never let up. I felt like I was competing in a surreal biatholon, swimming and running combined. I wasn't just damp, I was soaked, all my spandex layers glued to me. It felt, in fact, like running in a wet suit, only I highly regretted my white running shirt, white sports bra combo. (Running should never feel like a wet t-shirt contest, but today? Yeah. A little bit, it did. At least my sports bra is padded.)

There were a few bikers on the trail, their backs muddy, water flinging from their wheels, but only one other runner. I passed him when I had about three miles left, and when I got to his shoulder he gave me a thumbs up. "You and I are hardcore, badassed runners!" he shouted at me, and I raised my fist in victory.

Maybe I continue to be not-very-fast, and to not be as dedicated to training as other runners. Maybe I'm too lazy to pull my butt out of bed for early morning runs. But running elevenish miles in the rain? That made me feel like a real runner. It made me think of a stanza from a Sharon Olds poem which is not about running: "I have wanted some epic use for my excellent body,/some heroism, some American achievement/beyond the ordinary for my extraordinary self,/magnetic and tensile." It made me feel heroic, a little, and as if I had achieved something extraordinary, as if I were tough, as if I really were a badass. It gave me the ability to say (if only for today), to claim my title:

I am a runner. 

I confess: I am not very reliable when it comes to my cell phone. I tend to leave it in my purse and forget about it, rather than carrying it around with me at home. Or I'll plug it in to charge and then leave it home accidentally. Or it'll be buried so deep in the dusty depths of my purse I don't hear it when it rings. Honestly, you're not very likely to reach me on my cell. In fact, I keep thinking I need to change my voice mail recording to something like "if you're getting this message it's probably because I left my cell at home, so leave me a message and eventually I'll figure out where my phone is and call you back." Only I can't remember how to change the message.

See: complete cell phone idiot.

This drives Kendell insane, as he is completely cell-phone reliable. I keep defending myself by pointing out that women's jeans don't really have the best pockets for carrying a phone. "I don't have any Big Dude Pockets like you do," I remind him. Or a big enough chest (several of my friends tote their cells around in their bra, which doesn't work for me in the least). Nor do I have the obsessive desire to constantly text my friends, like a certain teenaged girl does. (She always has her cell phone, too.) Probably, though, my neglect stems from a sort of passive-aggressiveness: I don't want to be a slave to my cell phone. It makes me insane to always be worrying about where my phone is. I like it tucked away in my purse, safe from being dropped.

This morning, though, pointed out what a cell phone idiot I really am. I dropped Kaleb off at my sister-in-law Cindy's house for his weekly playdate with his cousin Jace. When we pulled up to their house, he was insistent: he didn't want me to walk him in. His exact words: "I'm not a baby. I can knock all by myself, and you just sit in the van and watch me go in." So I did just that. I waited until my brother-in-law answered the door, and waved, and waited until the door was closed. Then I drove away and started working on my list of errands.

It wasn't until I was stopped at a particularly lengthy red light that I thought "hmmmm, I probably should check my phone." Dug it out of my purse to find it completely dead, so I plugged it into the car charger and ran into Jake's school to pay his lunch money. Ten minutes after that I realized that while my phone was charging, it wasn't actually turned on, so I did that, and a few minutes later the texts started beeping at me.

Seems I'd missed some important stuff. Namely: Kaleb's cousin had been sick all night, throwing up, and so had Cindy, so she'd sent me a text early this morning to tell me not to bring him. A text that I didn't get until after I dropped him off. Dropped him off at their stomach-flu-bug-infested house. Dropped him off and made their misery even worse.

Sigh.

There's no defending myself today. I'm completely embarrassed. (Although, I am not sure why my brother-in-law just waved back at me when I dropped Kaleb off—maybe he was too nauseous to think logically and run outside to stop me from blithely driving away?) I rushed back to their house to pick him up, and apologized profusely, and of course they were very nice about it, but I'm also certain that their internal dialogues included the thought "now we know what Kendell means about Amy." There's no defending yourself when the claims are right: I am a cell phone idiot!

• Why O WHY has my increased mileage (I'm doing about 25 miles a week now) resulted in me GAINING five pounds??? Seriously! And no...it's not muscle. I'm not sure what is happening here, as I have been working very hard this month on limiting my calories, especially sugar. (the following bullet point notwithstanding.)
• Learned today: three and a half hours is not enough time to digest a very delicious (Burger Supreme for you locals) but unhealthy lunch (cheese steak and fries and fry sauce and cherry coke) before a six mile run. It's probably not enough time to digest it for a half mile run. Can we all spell "stomach ache"???
• Another thing I learned today: running with an aching gut is just the motivation I need for running faster. I finished my six miles in 54 minutes, woot woot!
• I need to time my wearing-out of shoes better. I'm starting to get blisters, which is a sure sign I need new shoes. But my half marathon is in twelve days and I'm not sure if it's wise to switch shoes right now. Of course: either way, I'll be getting blisters right?
• My favorite running music right now: the soundtrack to the movie Whip It. Seriously, every single song is perfect for running. Even (I am ashamed to admit) the one by Dolly Parton. I once knew a girl who was just like Jolene and, oddly enough, her mother's name really was Jolene!
• A close second is Almost Alice which I think I already blogged about but it seems like a waste to delete that link after I made it. (Seriously: go listen to "Painting Flowers" and tell me it isn't an awesome song!)
• Sort-of running related, as it is one of my pieces of running equipment: apparently the Sansa MP3 player is indestructible. First Haley's nearly got washed out to sea during the Great Rogue Wave of 2010 and still worked. Then, during some parentless hijinks, mine got flung into a cup of milk. Yes, you read that right. At least it was skim. Once it dried out and I de-milked all the crusty little cracks, it works fine. In fact, my tunes were the only thing that helped me make it through today's excruciating run.

What's random in your world?

During what my mother refers to as my "black days"—my rebellious gothy unhappiness—I had one really, really bad stretch when I was perhaps completely dysfunctional. Absolutely unable to endure going to classes, where pretending to be normal or OK or fine was an impossibility, I would still get up in the mornings. I would shower and do my hair and get dressed in my black clothes, I would fling a book bag into the back seat of my car and leave the house. That hour of pretending for my mother I could manage. But I never pointed my car in the direction of the high school. Instead, I would travel a specific, meandering route: 7-11 for an extra-large coffee downgraded from black bitterness with an Irish Creme creamer; up the hill into the wealthy side of town past a specific boy's house and the houses where he sometimes appeared; past other large houses I admired simply for their beauty; back down another hill past my own house to make sure it was empty. I could have gone home then, since my mom had left for work and my dad was...well, somewhere (he wasn't working then, a fact that probably exacerbated my general darkness), but if I had any coffee left, I'd turn around and drive into Mapleton, the little town just southeast of us.

Mapleton is a pretentious place. It's full of large houses whose architecture is faux-country, surrounded by wide green lawns and horse pastures beyond the backyards. As you move east, toward the mountain, the houses grow larger and larger. Ponds appear in yards; turrets bloom on roof lines. Driving through the excess of wealth and privilege in my humiliating car was a sort of purposeful sprinkling of salt on wounds. I'd drive and cry, wandering the meandering roads, polluting the private lanes by ignoring the "private property" signs just to turn around in those wide, immaculate white driveways. I'd eventually work my way out of the neighborhoods and onto the canyon road, where I'd drive nearly to the top, to a little meadow we called The Party Spot, tucked away from the road. I'd sit there in my car, draining the coffee dregs, building my cocoon of impermeable sadness. 

It took my mom at least three months to figure out what I was doing each morning. This was, of course, in the ancient days before things like school websites made it much easier for parents to track their student's truancy. All I had to do was make sure I was home before the school's automated call was made (3:17 p.m.), intersect it, and I was off the hook. Luckily the mail came at about the same time, so I could rip up the increasingly frequent notices the high school insisted on sending. I'm not sure how she finally figured it out, but it was well into November of my junior year—nearly too late for me to dare driving that car so high into the canyon anyway. 

I don’t think of those days often, as life continues teaching me that whatever your old scars might be, there are always new ones to be made. I do dream about them sometimes, but yesterday I found myself nearly reliving them. Kendell's parents live in Mapleton now (although they didn't live there during my Black Days); their need for him to mow their lawn coincided with my need for a long run, so I decided to run my ten miles through some of my old sobbing grounds.

So I ran. Down the long main street in the tiny town tucked up close to the mountains. I ran to where it ends atop a great hill, “private property” signs indicating it’s no longer road but personal lane. I turned around and there were the mountains of my childhood and adolescence, splotched red, with just a cheekbone of The Face visible. I ran back down the street and then up a canyon and then back to my in laws’ house, and all the while I had a ghost with me.

Usually when I encounter my old self I feel her disappointment in my everyday, normal, average life. This time, though, she only drove slowly behind me, whispering out the window. She was just a companion, my old self, edging me on up the road. The yellowing trees dripped over the edge of the street, the gravel spoke under my feet, my invisible presence kept time; my breath doubled in my ears. I thought about how her wounds are still mine and yet those I have now are not even imaginable to her. She’s caught up in that cocoon and thinks the painful things she has now are the only ones she’ll ever have—thinks that when she grows up, and leaves, and becomes someone amazing, nothing will hurt her again. The ache in my lungs and the deep pulse I get in my pelvis during long runs: that physical pain isn’t what matters. She’d get that. But the other things, the stuff I keep hidden and no one knows: she wasn’t sure what to think of that. It gave her pause and an odd sense of hope, a flutter of light: she could see I coped anyway, or at least better than she was.

As I turned the corner to Kendell’s parents’ house, I thought about running with ghosts. I wanted a word to label what I was feeling. Not sadness, really. Melancholy, perhaps. I did feel, though, feel full of something unnamable. Can a single ten-mile run change a person? Because as I ran the last block, I thought of how I haven’t changed since I was that girl—I still get all sorts of bittercrazy over wanting one of those big, beautiful houses, too; I still feel the pull of the mountains and that deep sense of relief when I enter their presence—and also how I have. It has everything to do with the word "cope." That girl so caught up in her troubles that she was unable to cope still had something I don't anymore: the ability to feel, really feel. I've lost it. Certainly, it almost undid me. I still see the rippling repercussions of those days in my life. But that ability to experience emotion, even the rough parts? I want that back. I want the ghost of who I used to be to make me strong again.  

{I nearly titled this "the Zombie Apocalypse" because today I am feeling exactly like a zombie. Except for all the biting and killing impulses. Chasing someone down to infect them with my zombiness would take way too much energy. Instead, I am zombie in the "walking dead" sense. Sure: Moving around is happening. I even unloaded the dishwasher. But the brain? Not so much. Dull and lethargic and not even wanting to try to make myself feel better other than drinking copious amounts of hot chocolate which really isn't going to help anything.}

Dreaming used to be a part of my core identity. Some dreams were like movies, starring me, and I'd have fabulous adventures and then wake up and wish I could make them into a novel, only by the time I started penning them down they'd've already drifted away into dream fog. I had dreams that felt like revelations and dreams that reunited me with people from my past. I had long, satisfying dream runs where I could sprint without ever tiring. Dream babies and dream vacations and more dream babies.

Somewhere in the past decade, though, I lost my ability to dream. At least, to dream very often. I've had a few memorable ones, but not many and nowhere near how I used to. I'm not sure why—some combination of stress, sadness, defeat, and exhaustion I suppose. It happened right about the time I started teaching high school, which is also the time I started eking out a life built on three or four hours of tossing and turning. Then Kaleb was born, and we all know what a baby does to your sleep! Maybe, of course, it was only my ability to remember my dreams that was lost. It doesn't really matter, though; the result is the same: some essential part of me is gone.

Over the past month or so, I've been trying to sleep more during the night. (Instead of trying to catch up with naps.) This is hard for me not because I can't fall asleep—sit me down somewhere and I can, if you let me, be asleep in record time—but because night is sometimes the only time I can find a little bit of solitude. Still, it has felt important, so I've tried to limit my late nights. I also started taking melatonin consistently. And this week, those two things have given me something I didn't expect: dreaming. On Monday night I dreamed a poem and then wrote it down before it drifted away. I felt a seam of euphoria running through me all day, based on that dream and that poem. Last night I continued in my dreams an argument Kendell and I have been having all week—hence the Zombification today.

I can't say for sure if the dreaming will continue. Maybe it will vanish again. I am not even sure why I care so much, other than dreams feel like a representation of creativity. Maybe I am hoping that being able to dream will translate into being able to find my writing groove again. Then again, maybe I just need a nap. Zombies do that in the day, don't they?

Last night I kept dreaming that everyone I knew was calling me fat. "Yeah, you're chubby, of course!" Kendell said, and "you are a bit heavy, Amy" came from my mom. A random friend or two chimed in with "you could lose a little weight" and even my mother-in-law proffered a "you've been gaining weight lately, I can see it in your face" comment.

I was glad to wake up this morning!

I know the origin of this dream; it started with a real conversation Haley and I had about plastic surgery. I was pointing out the dichotomy of running a race subtitled "love your body" (The Wasatch Woman "10"k* which I ran with my sister Becky on Saturday morning)
and the swag bag, which included fliers from two different plastic surgery offices. Seems like plastic surgery is about as opposite from "love your body" as you can get, doesn't it?

The thing that frustrates me—and the thing that I told Haley—is this: why can't my  post-multiple-pregnancies belly be seen as a beautiful thing? Who decided that a flat belly is the only definition of beauty? (I bet it was women with flat bellies, don't you?) Why can't I see the rolls and the pudge as evidence of my body's ability to make a child? Instead, I tend to view my belly with frustration. It doesn't seem to matter how much I run, diet, avoid sugar, and give up unnecessary things like soda and Sonic slushes and ice cream and even (sometimes) white pasta. My underlying muscles might get stronger but the bare fact is that the skin on my abdomen is like a balloon that's been blown up to just-about-ready-to-burst and then deflated. Several times. A balloon that's had that experience isn't ever again going to be the tiny, shapely balloon it started out as. The tightness of its latex is gone. Just like my belly won't ever be flat again. The skin is just too stretched.

Unless I took one of those flyers up on their offer and had it all cut off.

But why would I—or anyone—need to resort to such drastic measures? Who decided that a little post-baby jiggle (the kind that never really goes away) isn't also beautiful? Why do I allow myself to be discouraged by someone else's view of beautiful? I wouldn't trade any of my children for a flat belly. They are definitely worth the jiggle! But there's a deep-seated voice in my head that, terrified of becoming overweight, taunts me, feeding on my discouragement (and not only on the weight thing, but on my failures as a woman in general, from housewifery to domestic goddesshood to the size of my chest, which is the only place I ever can lose weight) until I am a mess of self-hatred.

It didn't help that, at yesterday's race, my time for the 10k was 1 hour 7 minutes. What the? That gives me a 11+ minutes-per-mile pace. Of course, there's wrong with an 11-minute pace; running is all subjective anyway. Most people really only run against their own fastest time anyway. But that's the thing: Two days before I'd carefully timed my five mile run and it was a 9:09 pace. How did I slow down almost two full minutes per mile in two days? Especially when I felt like I had been pushing just as hard as I did on Thursday. As I ran, I was composing an essay about how running races has become a status symbol for women, so my head was filled with all sorts of arguments and countering voices pointing out that my logic was based on my own insecurities rather than intelligent thought. Facing down that time on the finishing clock was almost more than I could deal with.

By the time I got home I'd half decided that every single one of the women who finished in front of me was better than me. Not just faster. But they all had flatter bellies, bigger chests, and thighs that don't touch. They were wealthier than me, and not by luck but because they deserved their incomes more. They were prettier and all their houses were immaculate and they never fed their family Taco Bell. Plus their legs were always shaved, eyebrows always perfectly shaped, and calves always just the right shade of tan.

Needless to say, I had a good cry in the shower.

Later, by the time I had that conversation with Haley, I was annoyed with myself. How old do I have to be before I really can love my body? When can I finally reach the emotional I.Q. that allows me to look past what society says is a beautiful body and see the real beauty in my real body? I mean, really: what good does it do anybody to try to fulfill those artificial standards of beauty? Is the epitaph I want "stayed a size 6 all her life"? What is admirable about that?

I've not quite reached such intelligence. So I talked to my daughter while we drove in the dark. I thought about my own mom, who is closing in on seventy and yet still worries about how thin she is. I thought about my own demonic voice. And then I just talked to her, hoping I could help her knowledge come sooner than mine. Hoping I could teach her that her body is beautiful because it is healthy, because it takes her spirit out into the world where it can experience life. That a strong heart, swift lungs, and quick mind are worth loving, no matter the size of the jeans.

*Sidenote: turns out, some people actually ran 7.1 miles in yesterday's race, instead of the 6.2 miles of a real 10k. The race was mismarked, and the officials adjusted it only after quite a few people had already passed the mistake, and that's why it took me 1:07 to finish: I ran seven miles, not six.

RANT: The Sunchips debacle is really, really bugging me. See, they've been putting Sunchips into these biodegradable bags. Compostable, even. I don't buy a lot of chips in general, but I do sometimes get a bag of Sunchips. They're healthier than regular chips and they make me think of childhood trips to Lake Powell. The eco-friendly bag made me like them even more! Now, though, they are going back to regular bags because people have complained about the bags being too loud. Oh. My. Hell. Seriously? I think this is a reflection of why our environment is irreparable. Not because we can't repair it, but because we don't want to make any concessions. If an eco-friendly product isn't just as normal as a non-eco-friendly one, we don't want it. Let's continue adding to landfills because the alternative is a loud bag!?! Granted: the bag is loud. But who cares? When are you required to eat chips quietly? It's not like eating chips is a quiet activity anyway.

REALIZATION:7:30 p.m. is too late, now, to start a run. I am right in the middle of training for a half marathon, but have had a horrible headache for the past three days. Plus, I suddenly have this weird calf issue, which is probably a post for another day. Suffice it to say, I hadn't put on my running shoes since Friday and I NEEEEEDED to get in five miles yesterday. So I decided to run home after work. I didn't realize, though, just how dark it is at 7:30. Plus, the route I'd made for myself (because I only live about a mile away from the library, but I needed five miles) included a stretch of very busy road that doesn't have street lights. SO not a good choice! The two-mile mark of my run found me going very slowlyas I tried to navigate that lightless stretch of road. I twisted my ankle just a bit by stumbling on a rock, and nearly got run over, and barely made it through with my life intact. No more dark runs for this chick, unless I find a sweat proof headlamp!

READING: I had every intention to read some scary-ish books this month. I've got Lord Byron's Novel and More than You Knowchecked out. What I forgot to take into consideration is that October is when the long list for the Beehive Awards comes out, so I'm reading lots of teen novels instead. Some good, some ehhhhhh. What are you reading?

RESTARTING: My October goal to not eat any sugar until Halloween. I made it till Monday (a whole three & a half days), when, upon arriving home, I was unable to resist the lure of hot chocolate on the first cold-ish, rainy autumn day we've had. Since I'd fallen off the wagon, I decided to make a caramel apple cake, which I then snacked on all day yesterday. I'm letting myself have one more piece today and then, tomorrow, I'm back on the wagon.

REVEALING: Here's a sneak peak of the two quilts I've been working on:

They are going much faster than I expected. I have a couple of baby quilts I need to make, and one other gift-type quilt. Oh, and, I am now on the hunt for some boyish red flannel as Jake needs a new quilt too, and he wants flannel to replace the old one I finally, literally, threw away it was so worn out. He'd been sleeping with this quilt I made back when I was engaged...nearly twenty years ago. The batting is all torn inside and it smells weird, but he loved it. You'd think the fact that it was pink & floral would dissuade him but it was so comfy he didn't care. (He does, by the way, have non-pink bedding, but he doesn't love his comforter like he loved that flannel quilt.)