Positive Lease and Gratitude

I am sitting in the quiet lobby of a cancer clinic on a foggy, chilly Denver morning. I guess I mention it should be quiet. A woman is shouting on her cell phone in the annex above where I sit and is shouting about an argument she said had with someone in her life. This place is a hospital where people are fighting for their lives. It is serene. People come and go with chemo drips, oxygen masks, wheel chairs, and pale expressions. I am so full of gratitude this morning. I don't have to live with an oxygen mask, a chemo drip, a grim prognosis or a wheel chair. I get to wrap may arms around my daughter and have her tell me she holds me too tight.

I was in a coffee shop this morning and I am plagiarizing this, but won't soon forget it.
"Go home early and play with your kids."
"Technology is good, but people are better."
"Stir emotions."
"Run your feet. Not your mouth."
"Do the Hokey Pokey."
"Hold Hands, Not Grudges."
"Tell someone you love them."
"Pick up the check."
"Build communities, not empires."
"Dream Big, Act Bigger."
"Re-read your favorite book."

This comes from a coffee cup. Just a plain coffee cup that people toss in the trash every day, but when I listened to the woman above me in a hallway shouting to who seemed to be her arch enemy, I looked around and realized I am in a place this morning where people fight for their lives and I get to be grateful for mine.

Injuries

Okay so I am injured once again. Don't even get me started on how this happens twice in the span on 4 months. This is not about being "a victim" to the hobby or a victim in any regard. This is about the lack of ability to keep my head quiet and balanced without some form of exercise. The all-natural prozac in the form of sweat and pride.

I started out on an 11 mile run last Sunday. Mile 5 was met with a sore achilles. Now after 8 marathons, I have experienced soreness before so I am not about the respect it and stop. It is a minor discomfort. Well, I won't provide details, but I have a soleus that is swollen and tight and makes me cringe when trying to negotiate my stairs. This is swollen to the point that it is noticeable by my inspection and is about twice the size of the other leg. I am going to "go easy," but have to admit my head is a bit noisy; I am a titch ornery, and need to find the endorphins before Crazy finds me.

A day to remember

I cannot even begin to explain the pride I have for Izzy today. We left for what I thought would be a short jog to the running store to look for her first pair of running shoes. She explained that according to Ga and Pa, she wears a size 2 and 1/2. I assumed it would be a short excursion and we would be back in plenty of time to have a rest, after all, I think I had a whopping 3.5 hours of sleep last night, due to reasons that still remain a mystery - other than my wiring is faulty.

Okay, so we jogged up the huge hill around the horse pasture, watched the horse "use the potty," held hands while crossing the busy intersection, and jogged our way to "Salt Lake Running Company." To our chagrin, the store did not have what we wanted, "but come back in 2 weeks."

Izzy was determined our adventure was not ending there. We made our way to the grocery store, loaded up on water and headed West. Now I was thinking this was going to be one more block and then home. I mean, c'mon...I am tired. We made our way to 7-11 and she continued to tell me, "mom please do not tell me we are going home." Well I will spare you the play-by-play, but we ended up at a great cafe called "Food for Thought." After a great mint hot cocoa, awesome chocolate-covered strawberries, and coconut herbal tea, we were refreshed! To summarize, we jogged the streets of Draper and through the elementary school parking lot, dined on scrumptious sweets, visited the baby chicks, smelled the farms in the country, and made it home in time to soak our toes in the warm bath.

As Isabella was falling to sleep tonight, she reminded me the Kids Marathon at Thanksgiving Point was April 24th and she just had to get new running shoes in order to run this kids race. I cherish these times and hope I will always have this exquisite relationship with my little girl.

Insomnia

So I don't blog enough. I make excuses and then think "whatever would I write about today?" Well that is all going to change because I realized as I lay awake listening to the clocks tick that I can let the world know that I don't sleep. I just don't. I lost the ability to sleep when I was pregnant and have never found it again. I often panic in the early hours of the evening and think "How will I sleep tonight? How is that going to happen?" I mean sleep is such a basic physiological component to existence, yet it escapes me. It is something we all figure out how to do at the early age of, oh I don't know....birth, yet I simply cannot figure it out. On a good night, I will sleep without waking up 5 or 6 times. I find a solid night's rest about once a week. I try to express my frustration to some who tell me "Maybe you need something to help you sleep." Well that's just great. I have not slept for almost a decade. Do ya' think I may have tried "something" already? I do the math starting about midnight. "Okay if I fall asleep at this exact moment and sleep until 8, then I can make it through my Saturday and feel pretty good." Then 2am creeps up on me and the numbers are adjusted. Once I get down to about 5 to 6 hours, I realize I cannot force a slumber. I face facts. Anyway, here I sit and listen to the clocks. The cats are begging me to just come back to bed, crawl under the blankets, and wait for morning.