Category Archives: Parenting

It’s so corny to say that I would marry him all over again.  But I would.  Largely because I don’t think I have stayed so late at a party since our wedding night.  Honeymoon babies have a way of making your wedding seem so special…. since yanno, you’re pregnant and nursing and tired and paying a babysitter anytime you leave the house after that.

When we decided to pile books all over the place as our wedding decorations I didn’t think about how one day I would be cursing his piles of books all over our marital home.

When the viking helmet became a crucial part of his wedding day attire I hadn’t planned on it turning into a keepsake and taking up permanent residence on the mantle in our living room.

When I sat on the back deck of our weird duplex and power drank a glass of wine in my Punky Power headband and the overalls I wore throughout my pregnancy with Emily I never really thought that I would come home from our honeymoon knocked up.

But we did.

And all of a sudden we had a new house and a baby and I quit my job and we navigated a brand new life with grace.  We were a family of four.

But for a week we were newlyweds.  It was just the two of us.

I got day drunk.

He got sleepy.

It was so, so good.

Four years.  We have only been married for four years.  So much has stayed the same.  And so much has changed.  The last four years have simultaneously gone by faster than any four years of my life and held some of the longest days.

A few weeks ago we were in the kitchen talking about marriage and I said that I finally was coming around to believing that maybe we could make it, maybe, just maybe we really would be those old folks with the rocking chairs one day. He looked at me and said “This marriage isn’t ending until one of us dies.”

He’s not a sentimental guy, at least not verbally.  I thought that was the end of his train of thought.  “I am not talking Murder One,” he added.

Cheers, MQD. Happy Anniversary.  I am super happy that you plan on staying married to me and not killing me.

You know those bad dreams that start with you getting off the school bus at some familiar-ish looking building and you realize it is a high school and you have an exam and you have no pencil and no pants?

The start of last weekend’s triathlon at Lake Belew was not too dissimilar.  Ordinarily my pre-race freakout takes place in the pre-dawn hours and it is quiet and kind of dark, not a lot of time to think about what you’re planning on doing.  However, due to the late start of this race (9:30 am!) it was plenty light out when I arrived. Typically I scan for the registration tent and the portapotties.  But they were blocked by trucks.  Huge trucks filled with bikes.  And college athletes.  Cue panic.

It seemed that everywhere I looked there was another gaggle of 20-something hard bodies, blissfully unaware of their 2% body fat.

I quickly scanned for Grown Ups.  There had to be Grown Ups here, right?  Oh, and there were.  Lots of them.  And each one looked more seasoned than the last.  These people were Athletes.  They trained and ate “fuel” instead of food and probably woke up at 5:00 am and kept their bicycles in their living rooms and OMG WHAT AM I DOING HERE?!

That’s pretty much how I was feeling pre-race, like I was in way over my head.  My partner-in-crime and the woman I blame/credit with my thinking that this is even possible reminded me that the further you go the more people tend to look like swimmers.  Swimmers – that strange breed of folks that have perfect, giant shoulders (making their bodies resemble a chiseled triangle no matter the shape) and that seem to miraculously not look tired at the break of dawn since they have been up before the sun for swim team their entire lives.

Got my  transition area set up quickly and did not have my Superman towel with me for the first time ever.  My spot was smack dab between one of the aforementioned college triathletes and a fellow old enough to be father that surely could have kicked my ass.  For the first time in the history of my triathlon career I did not take a pre-race selfie.  That is indication enough of how self-conscious I must have been feeling.  Popped down to the dock to feel the water and was pleasantly surprised.  Cold but not take your breath away cold.

Wetsuit on with little struggle and stood in line for a bit. This was a fantastic, staggered start open water swim so you run the risk of running into only a few swimmers and being kicked by just those in your immediate time spot instead of 300+. I was worried about hydrating enough on the bike (since I sort of feel like I am going to crash when I get my water bottle out of the cage still) so I pounded some water and decided that I would pee in my wetsuit! Yes! Another first!  First race in a wetsuit, first time clipped in to my bike, first time riding more than 25 miles outside, firsts all over the place.

How was the swim? It was good. I tried to put my head down and just swim and not sight to awful much.  My watch said I had put in 1.35 miles when I was finished with my .96 mile swim, however, so perhaps a little more sighting might be necessary next time.  You can see from the image here that it was a far cry from the triangular route I was gunning for.  I am particularly fond of the period where it appears I was actually going backwards. All in all, swim was a positive experience.  Loved the new wetsuit.  Didn’t feel like I was going to die at all.  And for those dying to know… my wetsuit remains pee free.

And on to the bike. Transition was uneventful, got my wetsuit off quickly and dried off my feet and hopped into my shoes.  I had been on the fence about throwing on a long sleeve for the bike since the morning had seemed rather chilly but it had warmed up nicely so I was good to go.  Straight out of transition was a hill on the bike (WTF) but I managed to be in the right gear and get up and out uneventfully.  I concentrated for the first 30 minutes on “cycling.”  I tried to drop into aero when I could, I tried to not fear the gear shift and just do what I knew to be the right thing.  All of the time in the saddle that I have put in has paid off and I felt strong…  and then I got bored.  Do you have any idea how weird it is inside your own mind?  Or inside mine? So, I started looking around. I waved at a guy that I thought was walking the most enormous dog ever that turned out to be a donkey.  I sang songs to myself.  I screamed in delight when I passed a gas station and what was I am 99% certain an old friend of mine getting gas.  I patted myself on the back for not turning around to go back and say “How the hell are you?” and that deserves quite a pat since this is a guy that never travels without a cooler of brews.  Periodically I reminded myself that although this was a gorgeous morning it was not a casual bike ride and I needed to turn up the heat.  Those moments typically came seconds after a guy in a helmet shaped like a rocket zipped past me.

The second loop on the bike didn’t bring fatigue but it did bring a fervent need to pee.  So, I tried.  All of the reading that I have done regarding training for the Half Ironman tells me that peeing on the bike is a skill one must learn.  I am hard pressed to imagine myself whizzing around the neighborhood (HA!) so I thought this was a good chance to try.  Nope.  Not even kinda sorta.

As I came into transition I was grateful for that hill, popped my feet out of the clips early and coasted down the hill and to the dismount line.  Did not fall.  Huzzah!

My goals for the run were simple. I wanted to try and maintain a consistent pace and look at my watch as little as possible.  I wasn’t a mile into the run before I realized that I could never maintain my pace.  My first mile was at my 5K pace and it was because I was very likely going to pee in my pants.  Came around a bend and there was a portapotty, a glorious portapotty!  Took a pitstop (my first mid-race pitstop!) and kept on trucking. Mile two was also at 5K pace and I was beginning to think that my legs belonged to someone else.  Hit the water stop at 2.5 and my legs were once again the old legs I remembered, I didn’t come to a screeching halt, but the sense of urgency seemed to have left the building.  I was delighted that I was almost finished!  The run was a two loop out and back and when I turned around after my first loop I told the lady that she would seem like Santa Claus when I saw her next.  Sure enough she shouted “Ho Ho Ho” when I saw her the second time and that little bit of encouragement helped me kick it into high gear (that and the fact that it really was a downhill from there on out.)

As per usual I encouraged the volunteer that came at me to remove my timing chip to back up so I didn’t throw up on his head and paced around a bit after the finish line.  No puking!

Did I feel like I could have gone twice as long?  Oh hell no. But I am certain that come May 31 I will be ready. I have a 10 miler this weekend for fun and a 60 mile bike race on May 1 to look forward to… and a whole lotta training. Jones Racing Company did a wonderful job.  Tasty pizza and plenty of volunteers and people to help.  And a medal!

Lessons Learned:

Sunscreen.  Use more of it.

Tents.  Don’t sleep in them after a race.

Water is your friend.  Before, during and after a race. However, once the sun goes down if you plan on sleeping in a tent – beer is your friend – your very best friend.

The final lesson:  I am going to keep moving. Keep moving this old body of mine and keep being grateful for the opportunity to do so.  I moved my ass a little over 35 miles and then I ate some good food and drank some cheap beer and I woke up feeling awesome.  Also, pigtails.  Always, pigtails.

Diet and exercise.  It’s not an uncommon pair of things to talk about.  Doctors, nutritionists, fitness enthusiasts, jacked up freaks on late night infomercials – lots of people like to remind you that you can’t lose weight or change your body without diet AND exercise.

As a cardio junkie I am prone to nod along during these conversations.  I believe in the power of a good sweat – so much so that I probably haven’t written about anything that wasn’t tangentially related to exercise in over a year.

And here’s where it gets dicey.  It’s cool to talk about fitness and healthy eating habits but when you talk about the scale – it’s no bueno. Everyone wants to chime in and tell me that the scale is just a number, muscle weighs more than fat… I get that. I really do.  But the scale and I had a little situation last spring.  And I am still reeling in the after effects.

A little background….

When I first started triathlon training in 2013 I had no idea what it meant to race as an Athena.  (Click the link for a great post from SwimBikeMom about the Athena class.) The sport of triathlon lets athletes choose to race against their age group or their weight class.  To qualify as an Athena a woman must weigh 165+.  My entire adult like I have hovered around 175.  I was firmly in the Athena camp.  But as a gal that is pushing 5’10” I raced in my age group.  Why?  Truthfully – it wasn’t shame, I wasn’t scared of the A on my calf.  I have always been happy to tell anyone what I weigh.  I don’t freak out when a nurse weighs me in a hallway and I have never been embarrassed. I really do buy into the “your weight is just a number” thinking.

I never opted to race in the Athena class because I am competitive somewhere underneath my newbie swim cap.  I didn’t choose Athena for my very first race because I didn’t know what it meant.  And I placed in the middle of my age group.  After the race it dawned on me that I would have placed third in this all women’s newbie sprint tri if I had raced as an Athena.  So, for my next race I opted to stay in my age group for two reasons. First and foremost –  I decided that if there was a possibility to hit the podium in my first season than what would motivate me to push harder?  And second – it seemed like maybe racing Athena would be a dick move if I did it just to place.

So, I stayed in my age group.  And I hovered around the middle of the pack.  Not bad for my first season. And then the fall came and the holidays.  And then the race season was looming for 2014 and I was still too chicken to go farther but I planned to conquer my fear of open water swimming.  I had a full schedule of half marathons and sprint tris and I was excited.  And then I jumped on the scale and it said 163 – in January.

I couldn’t race as an Athena if I wanted to.  For a moment I felt elated and then I remembered that the scale is just a number and if I was to believe all the rhetoric I had been feeding myself (ha!) for the last fifteen years I shouldn’t be so excited.  So, I tried on my leather pants (the holy grail of “Holy Shit, do these fuckers still fit? that I keep in my upstairs closet) and they did! They felt good.  I could sit down even.  Sit. Down.  And breathe.

That weekend I got out of the shower and dried off and I put on my underwear and a bra and I dried my hair before I got dressed.  This might not seem all that interesting (unless you are conjuring up a mental image, dirtbag) but I stopped standing in front of a mirror in my underwear about ten years ago.  I can’t get dressed if I spend the ten minutes it takes to dry my hair criticizing my body so I just stopped looking.  I just get dressed before I stand in my bathroom.

But for some reason I didn’t hate this 163 pound body.  It didn’t really look all that different than my 175ish pound body.  But I was nicer to that girl that weighed less.  And that is fucked up.  Super fucked up.

The next morning I stepped on the scale again and it was 164 and I was cranky.  The day after that 162. I compulsively weighed myself daily and then eventually it said 159.  (I might have been able to cut glass with my collar bones that day.) It was the beginning of March and I decided that I was maybe making myself insane.  I felt good.  I needed to back up and stop weighing myself like a crazy person.  I weighed myself again at the end of April.  162.

And so I stopped.  I stopped logging my food.  I stopped weighing myself.  I had a full summer of races planned and I had made it.  I felt good, really good about myself. I shamelessly wore a red bikini all summer.

And then it was fall and then it was Halloween and eventually Thanksgiving was looming.  I pulled out a pair of jeans that had fit the previous winter (the coveted size 8 jeans that had taunted me for years) and they didn’t even kind of button.  Shoved them back in my closet and tried not to think about it.  Thanksgiving weekend.  I yelled at my kids while I was trying to get dressed for church and I looked at the scale.  I just looked.  I hadn’t stepped on it in months because I was too good for it but now I was avoiding it because I was terrified.  I was already cranky with the way my clothes were fitting and having a number to attach to that feeling would just send me into a downward spiral.

So, I made a choice.  I decided to not worry about it.  I wasn’t going to let the number on a scale make me hate Christmas cookies or sweet potato pie or shitloads of Bailey’s in my coffee.  I would step on the scale in January just like everyone else and let the chips fall as they may in the interim. (The chips fell into a bowl of cheese and then right into my mouth, as you may have guessed.)

On January 2nd of this year the scale said 188.8.  Between March and December I ran 828 of the 1,015 miles I ran in 2014.  And I gained 29.4 pounds.  That’s a lot of muscle, guys.  Ha.  I did some serious damage in the month of December of the booze variety, so a good bit of that came right off as soon as I hopped on the January Sober Train.  But the rest of it? That was a direct result of being one of those people that fell face first into the big bag of chips called “I can eat whatever I want, I ran today.” Maybe add a side order of “I am almost 40 and my metabolism is in the shitter” and you have yourself a solid 25 pound weight gain.

So, what now?  I wrote 1200+ words about the number on a scale for what reason? I guess this is just some kind of weird Public Service Announcement.  I know I am not the only one with a twisted relationship with their scale.

So, what’s my plan for 2015?  A diet?  Nope, but I’m back on the logging my food wagon.  I’m back on the weigh yourself once a week wagon.  And I am registered for the Raleigh 70.3 Half Ironman.  Do I think that swimming 1.2 miles and biking 56 miles and running 13.1 miles will magically make me healthier again or feel better about myself?  Not really.  But everything I have read about endurance racing says the same thing.  You have to eat right.  I will have to learn to put the right food into this old body of mine or I will injure myself in training before I ever get to the starting line.

In 2013 I decided to become a person that exercises.  I did it.  Two years later and I really can’t imagine skipping a workout.  I guess now I have to learn how to eat right.  I really only know how to eat not much at all or whatever the fuck I want. There has to be an in between, right?  Because, diet and exercise.  This year I will learn to eat right.  And maybe next year I will learn to have a healthy relationship with an object that gives me only one small piece of information about my health, my scale.  Or maybe I will just keep trying on that same pair of jeans.

Edited to add: I know a lady doesn’t talk about her weight… but I am afraid the Lady Ship has sailed.

Oh hey, guess what?  It’s December and I can’t stop crying.   If you’ve been around a while you have likely already guessed it.  I hate the weird lull between Thanksgiving and Christmas when you hemorrhage money and you wonder what it is all really for and you wish you could just climb into bed with the people that you love and knit hats and wear sweatpants and eat pizza and watch movies on repeat. Oh?  That’s just me?

But when I am not moping I am hanging Christmas lights and loving my people. That’s the real pisser about the Winter Time Blues.  It’s broken up by a lot of really great moments.   This year’s funk is extra special.  Because the only thing that makes me sad and scared and completely anxious more than cold weather is good, good news.

When MQD and I got engaged I was elated.  And then terrified that I wouldn’t get pregnant.  When we got married and immediately got pregnant I was over the moon and then beyond scared that I would never be able to grow a healthy baby.  When my perfect Lucy Q arrived I was certain that I would never be a good wife and a good mother at the same time and that my marriage was destined for the shitter.

So, I started running and swimming and biking and smiling and taking good care of me and of my people and things were good.  Really good.  For years, really. This last month things have been so good that I am starting the road to self-sabotage that I know so well.  It starts with candy wrappers shoved under the seat of my car.  And then I start skipping the gym.  And then I stay up too late too often and then I sleep in too often and then I start to knit hats and wear the same pants every day and whoa.  Before I know it I am weeping.  MQD says that depression is thinking about the past and that anxiety is obsessing about the future. I think I am anxiously wallowing in the present. I am a multi-tasker.

It has been more than ten years since I was fearlessly hopeful.  I had a new house and two new cars and a baby on the way and I was Living.  Things were Good. They were just going to get Better. Right? It was ten years ago that things started to crumble and I started to dismantle that dream one house, one car, one marriage at a time but it still haunts me.  I am so fucking scared to get excited because it hurts so bad when it falls apart.  I feel fearlessly hopeful for a moment and my head caves in and the “Don’t do this, you know better than that, you won’t survive heartbreak twice” starts inside my head and I beeline it to the gas station for M&Ms.  Not even my regular gas station because I don’t want to see anyone I know.

How long?  How long until I won’t be afraid when things get really good? And what’s so good, you wonder?  Nothing.  Everything.  We renovated the kitchen.  I like my kids.  My sweet three million year old dog is healthy. My husband is fucking awesome and he listens and he loves me so much and he really, really likes me.   And I have great friends.  And a Life that I really, really want.  I am good at struggling, I am good at working towards a goal.  But what do you do when you look around and you think “This.  I want this, just like this.  Can’t it stay just like this?” That’s terrifying.

I hope you had a good Thanksgiving.  I hope that you felt the same kind of  all consuming gratitude that I enjoyed.  And even more than that – I hope that if you are in a moment of your life that is Good that you can find the strength to let it be.  Being happy shouldn’t be so damn stressful.

To the gym.  To the grocery store.  Thanksgiving leftovers are gone.  And it’s not time to start eating cookies day and night.  Not yet.  Thanks for being here.  And for reading.

Here’s a weird thing to say out loud.  I think I was a cool kid in high school.  I didn’t know it at the time but as my 20th high school reunion approaches and the boxes of memorabilia have come out of the attic, I have had to face the truth.  That girl who spoke graduation weekend and got good grades and had a few nice boyfriends and friends in lots of different cliques – she was lucky.  If I am honest with myself  (or if I look at a high school yearbook with a discerning eye) I think I was, gasp, popular.

So, I should be excited about my upcoming high school reunion, right?  I even got conned into kicking around ideas with the planning committee, now if that doesn’t scream “in crowd” what does?  I should really be looking forward to this, right?

So, what gives?  I can’t be the only one that feels like I might throw up and has a knot in her stomach.  (Ha.  I never censor myself.  And I just did.  See? I must be nervous.  It’s not a knot in my stomach.  It’s a week’s worth of shit.  And about 12 teaspoons of Metamucil.  I have a friend that gets vicious diarrhea when she is nervous.  I am jealous.  It seems I am having the opposite problem.)

What am I afraid of?  It’s not seeing the people I knew in high school.  The 20th High School Reunion no longer holds the mystery it did once.  I am unlikely to be emotionally sucker-punched by an old flame or startled by the icy chill of a former friend.  The internet has kept us in touch as much as we’d like to be.

It’s me.  I am afraid to go home and see me.  High school me, that girl with so much potential.

I am in a good place.  I have fought hard to make peace with who I am and where I am and I no longer make self-deprecating jokes about figuring out what I want to be when I grow up.  I am in a really great marriage.  I am proud of the mother and the wife I have become.  My athletic endeavors give me something to make small-talk about. I feel pretty good (discounting the turd baby, of course.)

But fuck, I am nervous.  I really don’t think I am scared to see a bunch of people from high school.  They weren’t scary then and age has tempered most of us by now.  It has to be me.

Does she look scary? I mean, she looks kind of bitchy, but I don’t know about scary.

So, here we go, 2oth High School Reunion Weekend.  Listen up Kelly circa 1994, your hair looks smoking, I will give you that. And you look like you have had a decent night’s sleep in the last decade.  I will cop to being super jealous of that. But you don’t have this one thing that I have now.  You didn’t know what you wanted. You thought you wanted to be an actress so that you could pretend to be all kinds of different people.  You thought that if enough people said “You’re so talented” or “You’re so funny” or the holy grail of teenage self-worth “You’re so pretty” that it would be enough to make you happy and it never, ever was enough.

But this life, this family, these people that love me – this is so much more than enough. This is all that I ever wanted.  And I have it.   I won’t return triumphantly home to say “Look at me, look at me and my fancy self and my great big life” but instead… Instead I will try to listen. I will say “How are you” and “tell me about your life” and “show me a picture of your kids” and I will let my smile speak for itself.  And I hope that when someone says “Did you see Kelly at the reunion” that someone will reply “Yes, she looked happy.”  I also hope that nobody says “Sure, she looks happy but it seemed like she was full of shit.  Seriously.  Full.  Of.  Shit.”  One can dream, right?

To my fellow classmates, I am looking forward to seeing you. Please, feel free to tell me a poop story as soon as you see me.  It will level the playing field.  Seriously.