On the swell and the crash {Just Write}

There's grass weaving a pattern through the pavement. And there's wind carrying a scented cocktail of sea and blossoms. And there's me, running with mountains to my left, waves to my right, looking but not seeing. I left sub zero temps to escape to this paradise with my husband, and I have no business being anything less than euphoric as I run without hat and gloves for the first time in months.

But I'm not anything close to euphoric. At best, I'm content. At worst, I'm disappointed. And somewhere in the middle, I'm trying to talk myself into gratitude, willing myself to stay in the moment, loathing the way I can't seem to outrun the anxiety.

I want to believe that I'm easily pleased, that I'm mostly a happy person. But there are moments adding up to hours and days and even weeks when I'm close enough to the edge to lose my footing, when the sturdy trail narrows into inches, when I'm one footfall away from a faceplant.

I don't want you to see the ugliness. I don't want you to know how irritated I was with the rooster that kept waking me up at 3 am, or with the coffee maker that didn't have any filters, or with myself for leaving the camera charging cord at home, or with the way our plans were foiled by a road closure. Because for real. I'm in freaking Hawaii celebrating my wedding anniversary with my awesome husband. It's negative eleven degrees at home where my awesome children are being wonderfully cared for by my awesome parents. How the hell can I feel so crabby and disappointed with all that awesome floating around? What is WRONG with me?

Don't answer that.

Here's the thing. I know what's wrong. Imagine the ocean, the swell of the waves, the way they rise and fall. Imagine a mountain, the highest peak, the way it juts like the tip of a triangle into the horizon. I want to perch on that tip, that narrow, steep, impossible top. I want to float on that swell, that fleeting, porous, impossible top. But that's not how it works. How it works is that you crash into the sand. How it works is that you tumble down the mountain. (Jack and Jill will vouch for me on this). How it works is that the highs are never quite as high as we hope they'll be. And the lows are far too frequent.

I don't know what the answer is. Gratitude is a big part of it, I'm sure of that. Meditation and prayer. Hugging the awesome people in your life. Smiling more. Visualizing anxiety in the form of a person and then punching it in the face. These are all good ideas, but really, what do I know? I'm not the answer lady, not on this one.

But here's what I do know. It helps to know that we aren't alone. It helps to know that even people with picture perfect lives (guilty!) feel totally effed up at times. It helps to know that these valleys, these crashes, these crumbly-earthed trails, these are the rule, not the exception. No one gets to linger on that impossible top of the mountain. No one gets to float endlessly on the swells. I'm telling you this because I don't want to feel like something's wrong with me, and I don't want you to feel like something's wrong with you. If we must live mostly in the valley or in the climb or in the fall, let's at least give each other good, honest company along the way. Yes?


And speaking of good company, I'm just writing today, with Heather.

Hashtag Amazing

Different day, different place, same #amazing moon

I tried to take a picture of the moon as it rose above the mountains from my highly artistic perch in the grocery store parking lot. I wanted to show you. I wanted to say to the lady rifling through the too-yellow bananas in search of the green--I wanted to ask, "Did you see that moon? Isn't it amazing tonight?"

I wanted to post it on Instagram so all of us, all of us shopping for groceries under the same ridiculously bright moon, could agree on the beauty. So you could click the clear little heart for "like" while fiddling with your phone in the express line. All you needed were bananas and milk. So this picture of an amazing moon, well, that would be a bonus.

I live in a place that routinely takes my breath away, be it because it's zero degrees or because I caught a glimpse of Denali under the pink spell of a winter sunset. A mountain hundreds of miles away, and I can see it as I drive home from getting the eggs and returning the library books. How is this even for real? I think. And on I go, driving through postcards. Even if I could take a picture while driving, the picture wouldn't do it justice. Not to the moon, not to the mountain, not to the moment.

But beauty shared, eyes ahead, shoulders beside, is so much richer than a glimpse alone. There's something deep within my DNA, even as an introvert, that cannot see a beautiful thing without calling out to you to come see it too.

When we drove 4600 miles from Ohio to Alaska, we divided our lives and livestock into two cars. (I drove the children, and L got the dog. I'll let you decide who had the better end of that bargain.) We used two-way radios to communicate. We thought we'd just use them to decide on pit stops and clarify directions. But we could barely go 15 minutes without calling out. Did you see that? Gorgeous! Look to your right! Amazing!

By day four, we had a running road trip joke. Whenever we saw something beautiful, we'd ring to the other car and say in our best valley girl voices, "Hashtag aah-MAZE-ing!" It became a thing. The kids chimed in with their adorable little voices and a hundred times a day we were shaking our heads, saying can you believe this? Hashtag AMAZING.

The human condition is this: We need to see the beautiful things to keep from giving up, and we need to see them while standing next to each other, eyes lifted, not staring down at screens. So grab someone near. Tell them to look at the moon or the sunset or an open field or a two hundred year old building or whatever beautiful thing it is that you see with your own eyes. And I promise you, it will be doubly amazing without the hashtag.

In which I procrastinate on house stuff by signing up for a marathon

I should be hanging pictures right now. I should be making dinner. I started in on this project to finally hang my hallway pictures and then I got distracted by the urge to sign up for a marathon.

I've had the urge for about a year, maybe more, but I successfully ignored it (much like the hallway picture hanging chore), citing lack of time, the inability to commit, the impending transition to a then unknown destination.

But the transition is complete (all moved in, except for the hallway pictures). And I finally have the time to train. And I'm tired of waiting. I want to get this 26.2 mile long monkey off my back. For the record, 26.2 miles makes for a really heavy monkey, you guys.

And if I'm going to torture myself for three and a half hours, I should probably choose somewhere cushy to do it, somewhere not 5 degrees and snowing, somewhere that isn't dark all but 6 hours of the day. California, perhaps? In January, you say?

Sign. Me. Up.

So here's the plan. I'll bribe the family to come along with promises of Legoland and Sea World. Whenever they whine about how I forgot to feed them because I was busy running the whole damn day and then fell asleep on the foam roller, I will pleasantly remind them that if they ever want to see their precious Legoland, they will be nice to mommy at ALL times. (Insert Dr. Evil-esque selfie
pose.)

I will do this. (Run a marathon, Silly--not hang the pictures! Hanging the pictures requires way too much follow through.) I've been training for several weeks already, so I'll just keep going, knowing that's it's for real now.

If I lay all the hallway pics in the middle of the hallway, maybe it will force me to finally hang them up? #Don'tholdyourbreath #Justwatchyourstep

If you want to follow my training, I'll be chugging away on DailyMile. If you want to see how nice my hallway looks when after all the pictures are hung up, check back with me in February.

It's Monday, so of course {Just Write}

It's Monday, so of course. I start the morning by picking a fight with my husband about where to store the winter gear. It's the first fight we've had in months, and I'm listening to myself yelling about where to put the hats and gloves and shoes. I am excessively angry about mittens, and we are supposed to celebrate my husband's birthday today. Happy birthday to you, your wife is a shrew....

I'm walking back from the bus stop when my neighbor reminds me about the girl scout meeting at 5:15. Crap. Thought I'd have all the time in the world to make the birthday dinner, but apparently, not so much.

I hurriedly slice up the eggplant while my daughter asks me how to spell "have" and "does" and "what" and "fireweed". The timer beeps, and I grab the pot holder and run to the oven.

"It's a compound word. So first you spell fire, f-i-r-e, and then weed, w-e-e-d." I turn the bundt pan upside down, and out falls the birthday cake. And by fall, I mean fall apart. I try not to do the same.

My husband comes inside.
"The fence guy is finished...he just needs a check."
"Great. Ok. Can you take care of it? I'm busy ruining your birthday dinner."

I go back to the eggplant parmesan and the failed no-fail cake, tempted to spell another four letter word....s-h-i-...

"Jo, you told him we didn't need the back section done?"
My husband is back, and this is a question. A good one.

"No, he did the estimate before the neighbors put in the back fence, but I thought he was going to finish the part that theirs didn't cover. Oh my word, he didn't do the back?!"

We both race out the mudroom door to wave down the lumber-laden fence truck. On my way out, the door slams into my son's cheek as he is trying to get in. I return to find him in tears. Oh, buddy, I'm so sorry. Crap--is that another timer going off? What the hell did I set that timer for?

It's 5:15. Time for the meeting I forgot about. I take deep breath after deep breath on the walk to girl scouts. I tell myself that the intensity of my angst and frustration is in no way warranted by the circumstances. Nothing on my list of woes is a big deal. Not the stinky blue cheese spilled  all over the bread cutting board, not the useless 85% complete fence (that might not be rendered useful until next spring!), not the likely-mildewing laundry that I forgot to put in the dryer, not the ruined cake.

A few minutes into girl scouts, I listen to six of the cutest little first graders spontaneously break out into a chorus of "Down by the Bay." I take another deep breath, inhale the blessing of a healthy, happy (at least at the moment) child.

(I feel like I should leave out the part where I return to finish the dinner, mess up even more stuff, run out of pans in the drawers because they are all in the sink. And the part where my healthy, happy daughter throws such an egregious fit that she has to go to her room in the middle of dinner--screaming loud enough to make our ears bleed. Oh and the part where my husband's plate gets cold while he addresses the behavior with my daughter, the part where....)

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, I believe I was inhaling blessings or some other inspirational crap like that. But for real. If this is what my worst day looks like, then I can't conjure up one legit reason to complain. (Except maybe about the mittens. Those wet, stray, disorganized mittens really piss me off sometimes.)

::

I know I said it was Monday, but it's actually Tuesday. And on Tuesdays, we just write (in this case, about Mondays).

my monday moment of zen (borrowed from a view on a friday run)

In cloudy and in clear

When the notification popped up about the aurora borealis, I was peeling apples in the kitchen and the kids were racing scooters under a cloudless sky. It said to "expect a show come nightfall", that the northern light activity would be as high as it gets, that tonight was the night.

At dinner, as we discussed school bus seat assignments and the government shutdown and reading log prizes, my mind wandered hours ahead to how I'd catch the lights on my camera. As I scooped the potatoes onto plates and said yes to thirds on applesauce, I pictured what an epic Instagram the aurora borealis would make. Northern lights! With my own eyes! How lucky am I?

The clouds rolled in while I was washing the dishes, scrubbing the cinnamon sugar from the bottom of the applesauce pan. A half hour later, the sky reportedly lit up with green and pink. But I didn't see a speck of it.

I'm sitting now at the desk, typing, and the clouds have only grown thicker. This is the verge, the cusp, the almost but not quite. There's a metaphor here screaming to be crafted into a moving and inspirational essay about perspective. If someone could write it up all nice and pretty and goose-bump inducingly, and then send me the link on Facebook, that would be great. Until then, I'll just be here pouting about the clouds.

::

It was dangerously gorgeous on the way home from school today. And by dangerous, I mean, so pretty that I might possibly pay too much attention to the mountains and not enough to the driving. I want to capture it somehow, but I'm too tired to come up with words that do justice to the extraordinary beauty perched on either side of the road that loops between the ordinary places, from school to home, up the hill from the river valley.

It feels surreal to be in this vast and beautiful place, just driving my same old car, coming back home to my same old burgundy chair, the one I sat on in Virginia and Maine and Ohio and now, here in the last frontier.

See, this is why I can forgive Alaska for snowing on the first day of fall

There's a stage of moving when everything feels familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, when routine takes a solid four-walled shape within adventure's high-peaked circus tent, when life feels simultaneously risky and safe, when skin prickled hope mixes with bone deep contentment. I'm in that stage. We'll call it the honeymoon stage. It's also the can't-go-to-bed-angry stage, even when my beloved state promises lights and delivers clouds.

So good night, Alaska. I love you, for warmer, for colder, in cloudy and in clear.

Because life is as short as the winters are long

The snow came slipping in on the first day of fall. She was the guest that showed up for the party on the wrong Saturday, a month too early. But instead of retreating in embarrassment, walking backwards down the sidewalk in profuse apology, she came right up to the front porch, invited more friends. Next thing I know, we're surrounded by flakes.

It was the earliest snowfall in over 60 years. Alaska really rolled out the white carpet for us.

Can we let this sink in for a moment? I had to send the kids into school with snow pants in September. Also? I had to find the snow pants on a Monday morning with zero minutes to spare. Which did not create a considerable amount of merriment and glee on my part.

When the bus returned that afternoon, the kids came barreling off, begging to put off homework until after they had a chance to play in the snow. Because it might MELT before they could play! Um, you guys? Eight months. You have EIGHT MONTHS to play in the snow.

Oh well. I gave in. Go play. And yes, you can have hot chocolate. And sure, marshmallows too. Because life is as short as the winters are long, and I'm going to try to say "yes" as much as possible.

::

My husband is home after five weeks away. He essentially deposited us in Alaska and then took off for military training. Which was remarkably similar to the pattern of medical residency (times two).

It goes like this. We move somewhere new (Maine, Ohio), and before I can say "honey do list", he disappears into the halls of the hospital for lordknowshowlong. The only differences this time were that he didn't come home to sleep and he did his own laundry. Will I get in trouble if I say it was easier this time?

I'm so glad to have him home. This didn't register super high on the list of difficult things we've done, but it was still on the list. He's already back at the hospital, but at least he's not four time zones away. He's definitely worth the extra laundry.

::

Last Monday, I had to change my running route because a bear (a BEAR!) was reportedly meandering down the bike path that I normally run. So I pulled up my big girl shorts and found somewhere else to run for a few days. I'm faster than I used to be, but I won't be outrunning a bear anytime soon. So 'tis best I continue to employ bear avoidance tactics and leave the 1x10m bear sprints out of my speed workouts.

Why yes, those ARE ice chunks on my hat and fleece

This Monday, the running obstacle of the week was snow. The good news was that I didn't have to spend much time digging out my hat and gloves. They were already in the middle of the floor along with the entirety of the winter gear for our family of four. (See above: locating snow pants in zero minutes.) There's another upside here to snow, maybe two. First, who needs a hydration belt when you've got snow flying straight into your face? Second, it's damn gorgeous and beats the heck out of a treadmill screen.

Yes, I miss crisp fall days and apple picking and outdoor soccer and acorn squash from the farmer's market and watching with my own eyes Giambi's walk-off homer in the thick of the Tribe's hunt for the wildcard. (Shockingly, we don't get the Sports Time Ohio channel in Alaska. Lame!) I could stir up trouble in my heart thinking about how long eight months of winter running is going to feel. But what's the point of that? I've decided to take it a run at a time, to take each day and mile for whatever it is.

Today the sun came out clear, and the snow on my roof went dripping into the driveway. Grass is glistening green again, and the mountains are the brightest white. It's September, and my lungs are filling up with the clean, cold air of the last frontier. I can see my breath, and every morning there are so many opportunities to say yes.