Procrastination is the greatest nation in the world, a friend of  mine used to often say.  I can procrastinate with the best of them (though I always leave a buffer zone to make sure things really do get done), but I didn’t realize how much of a daily thing it was for me until I had a baby.  I never thought that one thing I’d miss the most was the ability to procrastinate.

Procrastination, how I miss you!  Not that I’m unable to do it, but if I do put off cleaning up the kitchen and writing some thank you cards or throwing the laundry in at key moments there just isn’t time later and things (sometimes important things) don’t get done.  Sometimes I wish that I still had the luxury of curling up on the couch to read instead of starting in on the very daily very routine things that just have to keep going around the house.  I don’t think I’ve ever gone this long without at full night’s sleep and without procrastinating on a daily basis.

I miss them both.  It doesn’t surprise me that I miss the sleep, but it just doesn’t sound right to say that I miss having the opportunity to procrastinate, does it?

So I thought that after a week long break, I would be ready to follow through on my next running goal.  I decided that since there are several 10K Turkey Trots nearby on Thanksgiving that I would print out a running plan and try to PR.  I’d do a little speedwork and keep my mileage between 30-40 miles per week since it’s getting colder and my motivation seems to be flagging when it comes time to get out of bed.

By day two of the plan, the day I was supposed to do a tempo run but never got around to it, I was remembering that there are two things I’m bad at following through on: running plans and dieting.  For some reason, for all that I’m structured and scheduled and self-controlled as soon as I start working on either of those I lose it.  I’ll have my perfectly sane easy to do plan and I decide to exercise my right to rebel against whatever parameters I’ve so carefully set up.  I find it all psychologically interesting but personally very very frustrating.

So now I’ll start that training plan next week.  Boy, does that sound familiar.

But I have still been running this week, despite all that, and will probably still make it to 30-32 miles.  While I’ve been out I’ve tried to pay attention to the sensory experience that running is.  There is something very gratifying about running during the autumn season as the world around me is changing so rapidly.  I could run the same route on a daily basis and see different things; deer, poised to run if I start towards them, black squirrels rushing around with their distinguished tails flipping out behind them, the spicy scent of leaves in the rain, corn fields dry and golden, the colorful gusting of leaf showers as I run down the road.

The world is a beautiful place right now and somehow that beauty is (I hope) bringing me back to a place where I remember that I don’t just run to meet my goals but also for the sheer love and beauty of it.  I think when I get to the end of any event I find myself out of balance and the goal and hope for a faster time has replaced the love and pure joy that I find out on the road.  This week, even though I didn’t get done what I wanted, I am trying to reclaim some of that balance.

Today, after sleeping in and missing my chance to do my long run (which was fine since it was raining sideways the wind was blowing so hard) I finally got out to run six miles in the rain.  No GPS, no time limit, nothing but me and my ipod and three layers of shirts, all of which were soaking wet by the time I got home.

And it was beautiful.

I haven’t seen the colors that vibrant in a while, set against the misty white of the clouded sky.  Leaves underfoot as my sodden sneakers splashed through puddles.  Leaves everywhere, in all shades and shapes, sometimes fluttering above me and sometimes falling with the raindrops as the wind shook the trees.  It was glorious.  It was peaceful.  It was everything you’d want a rainy run to be, the kind of run where you just can’t help smiling the whole time, even though the wind sometimes gusts so hard that you feel like you’re not actually moving and your socks are drenched and your shoes squish with each step.

This week I think it’s safe to say I can check off “Enjoyed my runs.”  Maybe next week I’ll have it in me to tackle the tempo runs and intervals.

You know you live in a small town…

When the walk from your house to your husband’s office is just across the parking lot and takes only one minute.

When your next stop at the post office is another minute’s walk away.

When you decide to stop at the library “while you’re on that side of town” even though all that means is you have to cross a street to get there.

And when the longest part of the trip is the wait to cross the street because your town doesn’t have a stop light.

I love it!

I never set out to hate Meijer.  Really I didn’t.  It just seems that every time I enter the doors I come out missing California with an intensity that nothing else is able to inspire.  If you’re from the West Coast you might be asking what Meijer is, a question I asked when I moved here eight weeks ago.  It’s sort of like a super Walmart but with a shorter name and a better produce section.  You can get your socks, green onions, and light bulbs all in one store that takes up about five city blocks.  Well, not quite that, but you get my point.  It’s huge one-stop-shopping for your convenience.

Back in September, I finally managed to venture out with a newborn baby and a grocery list a mile long having not done any shopping since we’d moved.  I loaded the sleeping baby into the sling and then proceeded to wander around the enormous store only to discover that the brands weren’t the same, I didn’t know where anything was, and food was more expensive than I’d anticipated.  We finally made it to the check-out line and Isaac began to wake up.  The clerk couldn’t have gone slower if she’d tried and the drunk gentleman behind me, whose wife had left him unattended, kept crossing the grocery lane divider trying to add his snacks and vodka to my grocery pile and then apologizing profusely when I’d put them back on his side.  In the midst of this, the now hungry baby began to fall apart.  I didn’t feel comfortable feeding him in the car in the middle of the parking lot and we both cried the entire ten miles back home.

So I didn’t mean to start hating Meijer but that left a bad impression on me and our relationship from then on has been doomed.

It took me a while to go back, but when I went the other day, it was the same sort of thing.  How do that many people manage to stand in the aisle and park their carts in such a way as to keep anyone else from passing them?  How do people almost run into a woman carrying a baby who is staying on her side of the aisle?  It was like I’d gone on the day when all the shoppers got the memo to walk straight down the aisles pushing two carts, one off to the left and one off to the right in order to occupy maximum space.  HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR ONE PERSON TO TAKE UP THE ENTIRE AISLE, PEOPLE?

Then there was the long pharmacy drama and the wait that was so long that the baby woke up and started crying.  He didn’t cry on the way home, thank goodness, but I did.  All I could think about was how much I missed California.  I mean, there are plenty of weird people there, but at least it was a familiar sort of weird.  Meijer people weird just makes me homesick.

I had to go in the following day as well, this time with Clint, to look for some long underwear so we can avoid paying thousands of dollars per month on our heating bill this winter.  The one bright spot in any trip to Meijer is the fact that they have ice cream.  Really good ice cream (no light flavors to be had) at $0.99 for a junior cone which is deceptively named as it is HUGE.  And my philosophy is ice cream can make anything better, even a trip to Meijer.  Oddly enough, I’ve eaten more ice cream lately than I ever have in my life…

So we got our ice cream cones and walked outside into the 30+ degree weather.  As we walked to the car we passed a mother and her little boy.  As soon as we’d walked by I heard him ask, Mommy, why are they eating ice cream when it’s freezing outside?

Apparently they will know we are Californians by our ice cream cones in late October.

And the fact that we have three layers of thermal underwear on to make eating that ice cream possible.

Which is really quite a lovely time of year.  But it does beg the question,

now what?  Is it bad to hope that a strong wind picks up and blows all the leaves into our neighbor’s yard?

Husband: Wait, you want me to take him out of his car seat just so you can take pictures of him by some pumpkins in the freezing and rainy weather?

Me:  It’s fall and we’re at a pumpkin patch, of course we need pictures.  That’s what moms do.  Besides, I need to document the fact that I actually purchased a turtleneck for the first time since second grade.

Has anyone else noticed what an imprecise science taking photographs with a baby is?  “Smile at the camera” means absolutely nothing to them!

Every mom needs pictures that their son will roll his eyes at later, right?  He looks so impressed.

I figured that we had to get photos like this soon as fall seems to be peaking and heading towards winter (am I the only one who thinks mid-October is a little early for that?).  People are starting to use phrases like “snow flurries” in everyday conversation, which is a little worrisome and a little exciting.  Pretty soon Clint can pull Isaac away from his warm car seat so we can get pictures of him with the snow flurries.  Snow flurries!  It will be fun!

I am having one of those weeks where I question why I run at all.  This should have been on my horizon, this feeling of let down and general dissatisfaction that generally pops up after a running event.  I guess I just didn’t expect it to hit because I wasn’t officially training.  I skipped my run on Monday with the excuse that I’d just run a half marathon the day before at a faster pace than I intended and was sore.  A decent excuse, I guess, but then I didn’t want to run yesterday either, even though I got out for five miles in the afternoon.  And I didn’t want to wake up this morning and run either, though I got myself out the door and into the crisp 33 degree pitch black morning for seven miles.

Sometimes I wonder why I run.

When I think about running events I realize that I don’t particularly love any of the stages.  The training part is hard and I worry that I’ll get injured.  The event has me nervous because I’m afraid I’ll fail and disappoint myself.  Then afterward it’s over and I have nothing more to look forward to and I lose all of whatever motivation I had.

It’s days after an event that I wake up not wanting to run and with the realization that the house is a mess and the books are still in boxes and I have a to do list a mile long that somehow never gets shorter and I still don’t want to run because I feel aimless.  That’s when I want the fairy of Structureland to swoop in and organize my life.  I want a bunch of goals and a training plan and the chance to clean the house within an inch of its life (that is such a weird phrase… as if the house had a life).  Oddly enough, when I crave structure and am stressed I want things clean and I want to run a lot.  Those two things are generally not the most conducive to life with a new baby, I have to admit.

I need a plan.  I need some motivation.  I need… something.

Any cures out there for the post-run blahs?

Seriously.

That was coldest event I’ve ever done.  When we left the house at 7:30 (when it was still mostly dark) the temperature sign said 32 degrees.  That is cold.  Why do people come out in the cold that early to run?  I don’t know.  But there were more of us crazy people than I thought there would be and some of them were wearing shorts!

This was the inaugural Wild Life Marathon, half marathon, and 5K that ran along the Falling Waters Trail.  My only two complaints about the run was that they ran out of race bags before the end of registration and the fact that they needed a few more porta potties.  You can never have too many porta potties on a course.

The starting line was in downtown Concord.  There were a few die hards doing the full marathon and quite a few more people than I thought there would be doing the half.  I was so cold it was ridiculous.  I don’t know how to warm up for running in the cold, so the start was a little painful for me.  It didn’t help that I am in dire need of new running shoes.  That probably explains why the day after the side of my shin and two toes hurt.  My quads too, but that has nothing to do with my shoes and everything to do with the run.

The course was straight, flat, and out and back.  The out and back and flat I was on board with but not so much the straight.  You have to play some mental games with yourself when you can see straight down the course.  For the first half I ran with three other women (two of them were 50!) who were pushing a 7:45 and sometimes faster pace.  We really didn’t talk much (and trying to talk when your lips are frozen is a little embarrasing anyway) but the comraderie was helpful in running a faster pace than I’d anticipated.

Originally I’d wanted to run faster than my last pregnancy time of 1:59.  Ideally I wanted to finish in under 1:50.  I was quite hopeful on the first half that I might be able to do really well but the last few miles which I ran mostly by myself (except for the guy running right behind me whose footsteps were out of sync with the beat of my ipod) and the fact that I had to stop at a porta potty at mile 9.5 (note: it is difficult to pull up your running tights when both your hands and legs are numb) meant that I finished in 1:46:26, 33rd out of 160 runners.  I suppose you could knock off a minute or two for the bathroom break, but that’s not official and feels like cheating.

I felt pretty good about the time.  It was faster than I was expecting and the same time I got for the Fresno half marathon last November.  I did not expect to run sub-8 minute miles for the majority of the course so it was cool seeing that I could do that.  I definitely need to do some speedwork though, if I want to improve my time.  It felt good knowing that a year later, even with being pregnant, my speed (if you can call it that) hadn’t suffered.

Clint and Isaac were there at the end with flowers which meant so much to me.  I was asked by someone if I was the female winner since I was carrying around flowers (yeah, I wish I could run a 1:28 half marathon).  Nope, I just have a great husband who loves me!

Isaace pretty much slept the whole time and woke up feeling great.

It is normally my policy to never wear yellow, but I made an exception with the race shirt.  I earned every bit of that yellow fabric running a cold half marathon nine weeks after giving birth!

Dear Isaac,

I feel that at two months, you’re not at all the little helpless adorable blob that we brought home from the hospital.  At the same time, when anyone asks what you’re doing these days, I suddenly draw a blank while at the same time wanting to somehow convey that you’ve grown and changed so much that I’m just waiting for you to ask for the car keys and walk out the door.  I feel this way especially on days I go to the extra work of putting on your jeans, spending far to long trying to hike them over your large diapered bottom.

(Dear Old Navy, how ‘bout a few snaps on those jeans you make for 3 month olds?) and squeezing those superfluous but cute shoes onto your little feet.

If it were up to me you’d wear sleepers with feet on them until you’re 18.  Partly for the convenience, partly because it would scare of the girls, and partly because I hate the fact that you seem to be growing up way too fast.

You are becoming a lot more smiley these days.

It’s a good thing for you that some of your best moments come at 4 AM, when you’re gabbing away (trying to verbally process your day, perhaps?) at entirely the wrong time and I peer into your Moses basket only to see you grinning and cooing at me.  It’s a good thing you’re so cute, Mister.  There have been a few times, however, when you’ve been looking me straight in the eye, your face close to mine, and suddenly you will full on smile and make me want to burst into tears because it’s just the most precious thing in the world and all of the poopy diapers, late nights, and spit up down my clothes can’t take that away.

Speaking of poopy diapers, your father has decided that using certain words such as poopy, potty, and binkie, are not going to become a part of his vocabulary.  Now I’m just waiting until you can talk so you can go up to someone in the nursery to inform her that you’ve soiled your diaper and need to go to the men’s room.  I think that will be hilarious.

Among other hilarious things is your strong rooting reflex which we have had no end of fun with, entirely at your expense.  I used to think it was funny when some unsuspecting person held you cradled in their arms and you decided to use strong non-verbal cues to announce to them that it was dinnertime.

Even funnier though, was the day we discovered that if we placed our nose by your face you would swing your head around and try to latch on, only to be sorely disappointed at the lack of milk.  I know, I know, SO cruel.  But oh so funny!

These days, when you’re not hungry, you enjoy putting everything but your pacifier in your mouth.  With that, you play a fun game called Projectile Pacifier, in which you pretend that you are going to suck on it and then vehemently spit it out.  Weee!  Hours of fun, right there.  Other than the pacifier, which you don’t want, you seem fairly content to try to eat the edge of your clothes or blanket if they venture close enough to your mouth and you adore your hands.  One hand, both hands… you love whatever combo you can get and the hand sucking has become your first line of defense when your world begins to crumble.  Both hands fly to your mouth and I can almost see you thinking, “Happy place… take me to my happy place…”

Everyone still asks how well you’re sleeping and I really can’t complain except for the fact that you don’t sleep all the way through the night and you haven’t started making our bed in the mornings yet.  Or making us coffee.  You usually only wake up once during the night, sleeping from 9 until 2:00 or 3:00, then going back to sleep until 7:00 and then sleeping another couple of hours.  I’m trying to keep you from becoming an early riser, mostly because I already have dibs on that time of day.

On a few nights you’ve slept up to 7.5 hours, holding that out as a glimmer of hope to your sleepy parents.  Nap time is less consistent and I never know if it’s going to be a super nap or a no nap day.  Everyone needs a little adventure, right?  The other day you fell asleep, by yourself, right after I set you on your stomach for tummy time.  There you lay for an hour and a half as I walked back and forth in awe of the wonder that was my sleeping child.  That has not happened since and I am trying to deal with the disappointment.

This month has marked several firsts for you.

(No, reading was not one of them.)  We began using cloth diapers, which you seem to like.  You took your first shower and deemed it infinitely better than a sponge bath.  You also have developed a fondness for looking at the mobile of Winnie-the-Pooh on the crib you rarely sleep in.  Unfortunately, the mobile is not in tune with itself and its abridged rendition of a lullaby is pitiful indeed.  Not quite as bad, however, as the swing, which you also seem to love.  The swing runs swiftly through 16 songs that sound like they’re being played by one of those roaming ice cream vans that terrorize neighborhoods on late summer evenings with their musical Smorgasbord of Happy Birthday, The Wheels on the Bus, and Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer.  Other firsts include a football and soccer game and a barn dance so that you’ll have a well-rounded social life.

I also started pushing you around in the running stroller this month.

So far so good, though we aren’t running together yet.  Sometimes while walking in the neighborhood I’ll break into a run just to test it out but I never make it past the first bump in the road before I start worrying about killing brain cells.  And goodness, if you ever play soccer you’ll do enough damage there.  You seem to like the stroller pretty well so far even if it doesn’t play songs out of key like everything else we put you in.  When you’re not in the stroller you’re in your Baby Bjorn and now that you’re so big you get to face out – something you very much enjoy.

I used to think, back in the day, that once we got the whole nursing thing down it would be an easy and discreet experience.  However, I have discovered that discreet nursing is actually a contradiction in terms, especially when the baby in question is as noisy as you are.  You sound a little like the main character in What About Bob when he’s at dinner and making all sorts of expressive sounds of pleasure while at the table.  That’s you only a bit smaller and flailing around while hidden under a blanket.  Discreet indeed, my little Milk Monster.

Fortunately you are not a slow eater.  I’ve heard some moms talk about how their child will nurse for an hour.  You are done in ten to twenty minutes, tops, and have still been able to grow a delightful collection of chins.

Thanks to your adroit eating skills I will never be one of those women who reads War and Peace during nursing sessions.  Having come to terms with that, I read you T.S. Eliot instead.  It’s nice having a captive audience.

You have become quite cuddly these days, nestling into my shoulder and neck when I hold you.  Sometimes your arm will slip around to my back and it almost feels like you’re holding on, which I love even though I know your arm just happened to be in the right place at the right time.  I think you may have inherited my constantly cold hands though and we go back and forth, me startling you with my icy fingers during diaper changes and you reaching your cold hands around my waist or down my shirt to retaliate.  Fortunately, you have also learned that you love being clean and get very happy when we change your diaper, so the cold hands are quickly forgiven.

You are so much more alert and interactive now, watching us as we walk around the house, making sounds and smiling at us when we look at you and making it sound like you have something you desperately want to say if you could only form the words correctly.

Your smiles and little laughs are precious, as is your discovery that you have a tongue that you can stick out.

Maybe I shouldn’t encourage it, but I do.  We might be unlearning that in month 3… who knows.  In the meantime, you are such a joy, Little Man.

Love,

Mom

I may be nervous about this Sunday’s half marathon (hopefully I can do it in under 1:59 – my slowest pregnancy time), but there are some good things about Sunday’s run as well and I need to remember that.

1. I finally get to run on the Falling Waters Trail!  I heard about this trail when we were out for the interview and was so disappointed when we moved and I was told not to run on it alone.  Because of that, we’ve been here six weeks and I’ve never been on the trail.

2. I will get a baseline for how fast I am now, and who doesn’t like a place to start from.  Plus, if it takes me 2 hours maybe I’ll shave twenty minutes off by the next half marathon!

3. The trail is flat.  Hurray for flat!  Michigan is surprisingly hilly and flat will be a nice change of pace.

4. I haven’t gotten a new running t-shirt since the beginning of July and am long overdue.

5. Autumn is a beautiful time to run, especially right now with the cold setting in and the leaves changing color rapidly.

6. There will be no gnarly road kill to run past.  You think I jest.  I do not.  You should see some of the raccoons and other crazy looking wild life that ends up along the side of M-60.  Haven’t seen any deer yet, though.

7. I get run in a safe place where I’m not in danger of becoming road kill.  Back roads in the country have their charm but being passed by a semi-truck going 60 when there is no bike lane to run in is not one of those charms.

8. I get to run in (what I’m assuming will be) a small event.  As someone who detests running with thousands of people that will be a welcome change.

9. I get to feel like a hard core runner out there in my running tights on a day when the high is supposed to be 49 degrees.  What that means for 8:10 am, I’m not quite sure.  It’s barely light by then!

10. I get to run in an event five miles from home and it will actually only take five minutes to get there.  Unlike LA, where it takes forty-five minutes to get anywhere, it seems.  Plus I’ll get to know the running community around here better.

This will be fun!