Now this is a girl who loves her pizza...

This is what happens when you don't nap all day and spend the afternoon at two class parties. I think I need to join her...

Marathon update

The marathon is two weeks from tomorrow. I guess I should be feeling all pumped up and excited. I should be glad that I don't have to run like a crazy woman over Christmas break because it's time to taper I should be picking out cute clothes to wear for the race and pumping my brain full of positive thoughts.

I'm feeling stressed and nervous. I haven't run much in the last week, mostly because it's been nearly impossible to find the time with Isaac. I used to turn the tv on in the playroom, close my bedroom door, and let the kids fend for themselves while I did a quick 4 miler on the treadmill (it takes me almost exactly as much time as a show on Noggin). But I don't dare do that now that Isaac has become Body Cast Man. He doesn't fit in the jogging stroller either (believe me, I tried). It's really just the next five days I have to mentally survive without a good running solution. Although Utah is out for Christmas (you can't fit a cast like that in the cheap seats of an airplane), my family is coming to "help" over the holidays, and in my book the greatest help anyone can give me right now is 30 minutes to myself to take a quick run.

I also have two issues with my booty that I'm afraid might affect my marathon performance. I'm sure that you'll be excited to know that the rest of this post will be devoted to my bottom. If you don't feel like reading, don't. Yes, I am turning into an old lady. The first problem is a literal pain in the butt. It started out about six weeks ago, shortly after my first 20 mile run (when Isaac was home from the hospital the first time but not yet mobile). We're not sure if it was caused by the running or all of the heavy lifting I've been doing, but Eddie and I think it's ischial tuberosity, and if that's the case, then from what I've read, not much can be done about it. Rest doesn't help too much, stretching doesn't help much, medications don't help much.

The other problem is that I haven't quite figured out the right formula of protein bars, drinks and gels to keep me from needing to find a portapotty on the marathon route. I'm usually good for the first eight miles or so, and then my colon decides to relax. On my last 20 miler, I spent a good five minutes in a construction portapotty, and I don't have that kind of time to waste if I'm running injured and still want to come in under 3:40.

So you can talk to me in fifteen days about the marathon, but right now, I'd just as likely bite off your head if you were to politely inquire about it.

Newsflash: sometimes Mother does know best

For the last few years, Oreo Truffles and Peppermint Bark have been staples of my holiday baking. Every year I end up swearing over both of them when the white chocolate seizes up and turns into a gloppy mess. My mom, often on the receiving end of the telephone line from my foul-mouthed tirades, always tells me that I should swear off the cheap white chocolate chips and buy white baking chocolate (not that "candy coating" crap, because it's nasty).

I've never believed her. My mom's tastes in chocolate tends to run to Sharffen Berger, Valrohna, and other chichi brands. Ghirardelli and Guittard are ok and she only uses Nestle as a last resort. This is the woman who filled up a Central Market grocery cart this spring with several hundred dollars worth of chocolate for making my sister's wedding cake. So I just thought she was being snobby. I mean, after all, weren't white chocolate chips just the same thing as the stuff in the bar, but in a different shape?

This year I guess I was feeling flush when I did my holiday baking shopping. I sprang for a mix of chips and bars. I started out my baking with chips, but ended up with the inevitably seized up mess, so I decided to break out the bars. They worked beautifully! Instead of swearing over ugly truffles and uglier peppermint bark, I have beautiful truffles and gorgeous peppermint bark! It's delicious too!!!

So I guess Mom really does know best. Maybe that means I should revisit her position on things like wearing slips under my skirts and not allowing my kids outside in cold weather without their jackets.

Book #67: Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee

Title: Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee
Author: Charles J. Shields

Before reading Mockingbird, I knew a couple of things about Nelle Harper Lee. I knew that she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. I knew that she had been the research assistant who worked with Truman Capote on In Cold Blood. And I knew that she had a reputation for being quite a recluse. In fact, she's so reluctant to be in the public eye that she refused to take any part in the publication of Mockingbird, so although it's a complimentary look at her life, it's definitely an unauthorized biography.

Shields does a great job painting a portrait of what life was like growing up in Monroeville, Alabama (Nelle and Truman were next-door neighbors and best friends), gives lots of insight into her childhood and family life (her father, A.C. Lee, was the inspiration for Atticus Finch), shows Lee as a stubborn nonconformist who abandoned law school to move to New York and write, and suggests reasons for why Lee never published another book (most of her literary support system either died or retired around the time she finished her second manuscript) and why she withdrew from society.

When Lee published her novel, she was about the same age that I am now. She had dreamed of being a writer since childhood. She had worked on her manuscript for several years, even quitting her job for a year to devote herself full-time to her story. When it was published, nurturing it became her full-time job. She went on book tours and speaking engagements nearly nonstop for a couple of years, at which point she worked for several more years on the production of the film version of the novel. So from its incubus until Peck accepted the best actor trophy at the Oscars, Nelle Harper Lee had lived To Kill A Mockingbird for at least a decade. I know I have such a one-track mind lately, but even though NHL never married or had a child, it seemed to me like TKAM was her baby. It took years to create and years to promote, and its success definitely took her by surprise. It seems like people sometimes judge her unfairly by saying that since TKAM was her only novel, that she didn't live up to her potential as a writer. Would someone say that about a SAHM who only had one child? I don't think so. As I try to figure out what life holds for me in the post-baby stage, I really hope that I'll be able to find something fulfilling and productive, but I also know that with all of my babies, they, like Lee's novel, definitely need nurturing in the post-production stage.

Holy cast!

Isaac came home from the hospital today, sporting the big mama of all casts, the infamous spica cast. It weighs as much as he does, and looks like this:

Have you ever had a crack in your windshield?

When I was student teaching, I had to drive from my apartment in Provo to Skyline High School in Salt Lake City every morning. It was usually dark, and there was lots of road construction. I tried to avoid driving behind those huge heavy trucks hauling gravel, but one morning one of them sent out a rock that hit my windshield. It got a tiny ding, and I thought I was pretty lucky considering the earsplitting thud it made. When I left school that afternoon, I was shocked to find that the tiny little ding had spread like a spider web all across my entire windshield.

Today, I was surprised to find out that the same phenonmenon that makes tiny windshield cracks blossom into a big mess of glass also applies to broken bones. Maybe not all broken bones, but to my kid's broken bone. What was such a teeny tiny fracture that it barely registered on the x-ray last Friday is now a serious enough break that Isaac is back in the hospital and the surgeons are considering putting in plates and screws to stabilize it. He's having an MRI done tomorrow to rule out the possibility that he might still have some infection in the bone, and then they'll decide what they're going to do with him.

So, while we're not exactly back to square one with Isaac, the "it's just a broken leg" rejoicing has definitely been tempered. Ugh. Happy holidays and all that.

That's it. I'm messing with Texas

Dear Texas,

Even though I know it's not your fault that you have such a sucky climate, from time to time I still feel the need to point it out to you. It's the middle of December, for gosh dangit, and it should not be 75 degrees and muggy when I go outside to run at 7:30am. My air conditioner should not be running around the clock when my Christmas decorations are up. Do you realize that there's something sick and wrong about that? I know, you'll say that if I hate the climate here so much, I should go move to Oklahoma, which is getting pummelled by ice storms right now, or Minnesota, where the sun doesn't shine unless it's below zero, or Alaska, where the sun doesn't shine at all. I have relatives who live in all three of those states, and I'm guessing that they'd probably be happy for a chance to spend some time with Texas right now.

But enough is enough. It got hot here in March this year. It's been hot ever since. It's now two weeks from Christmas, and it's still freaking hot. I thought that Texans were joking when they warned me that the Houston climate had two seasons, "hot" and "hotter." I guess they weren't. Every time Eddie talks about a great cardiology opportunity in the Houston area, I send him my best nostril-flaring glare and warn him not to even think about it. I love so many things about living here-- I love the restaurants, the shopping, the great schools, the cheap housing, the relatively short commute for Eddie, the zoo and museums, the beach, and the friendly locals. I do not like the fact that I don't think my body has been truly dry since June of 2005.

Speaking of the locals, dear Texas, what do you do to inspire such loyalty from them? Do you pay them a kickback? Because they seem relatively unperturbed by the sight of candy cane lights on palm trees, of Santa wearing shorts, or of Christmas displays where Santa is riding a surfboard. They even seem to be proud of totally incongruous things like putting jingle bells on their flip flops. One thing that you've shown me is that the crusty New Englander in my heart needs seasons. Four of them. One of them must be cold. I may be tough about a lot of things, but I'm hopeless when it comes to the weather.

Sincerely,

Hot in Houston

My lack of gaming skills makes me a bad mom

We've been pretty cooped up around here lately. Isaac's white blood cell count has been on the low side and I don't want to expose him to unnecessary germs, his cast is very cumbersome, and Maren is too mobile for her own good. When Bryce was a baby I took him out somewhere every single days (zoo trips are necessary for five-month-olds, aren't they?), but somehow, over the years, I've gotten worn down and we now go nowhere. Not to the store (the cast is too big to fit through the hole in the cart), not to the Chick-Fil-A playground (germs are not our friends), not to church (see #2), not anywhere.

While I'm not totally insane staying home with #3 and #4 in the same way that I would have been with #1, Mondays, when the big kids go back to school, have been hard for Isaac. Today we took a jog in the stroller, baked our final batch of Christmas cookies, did some laundry, watched a LOT of Noggin, read books and played with Playmobil. Then we looked at the clock and it was 10:00 am. Eddie called about that time, and I started whining about how hard it is to entertain him. Eddie's suggestion was to turn on the Wii and play a few games for Isaac.

I hate the Wii. I don't know if I hate to play it, because I refuse to play it. I hate it on principle. On the principle that I was very, very bad at any and all video games I came across as a child and teenager, and there's just about nothing I want to do less than subject myself to mortification in front of my children (or anyone else). It's no coincidence that any sport I've ever been good at involves zero hand-eye coordination. It's a skill I'm naturally lacking and have no desire to improve. Eddie has suggested that I practice in private until I'm comfortable going public, but why would I want to spend any more time doing something I know I hate to do? We had friends who invited us to their house last year to play Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution, and I had sweaty palms the whole way over. Too many flashbacks to getting smoked by my little brother playing Super Mario Brothers. Somehow, denying my three-year-old the right to watch me play video games for his enjoyment makes me a bad parent. He might be "sosososososo happy" making cookies (a direct quote from yesterday, which made me smile because I've been worrying that his bad luck would rub off on his mental state) but until I pull out the big guns (literally), I'm apparently not living up to my duties as a parent?

In my mind, that's what dads and big brothers are for. I might bemoan the fact that I'm doing dishes or folding laundry while they bond over the Wii, but I'd rather be scrubbing toilets than actually playing it myself. And that's why, even though Bryce has not touched his homework yet today, he's now working to "catch the king of the pond" for his poor hobbled baby brother.

Book #66: The Abstinence Teacher

Title: The Abstinence Teacher
Author: Tom Perrotta

Ruth Ramsey is a divorced fortysomething, plodding along in life, teaching sex education in a New England public school when she gets blindsided by the religious right wing. After admitting that "some people seem to enjoy oral sex," a brouhaha of epic proportions ensues in her town, resulting in the school board adopting a curriculum based on abstience. Ruth, a die-hard atheist whose mantra has been "condoms, condoms, condoms" has a hard time swallowing her pride, and her new teaching responsibilities. She soon learns that her daughter's soccer coach, Tim, is one of those crazy Christians. He's a born-again who turned to God to try to stay sober. Despite their differences, Tim and Ruth seem strangely drawn to each other.

Perrotta, the author of Election and Little Children, is a satirist. Both Ruth and Tim have been painted with fairly broad strokes. I almost felt like I was watching Crossfire, or Mary Matalin and James Carville (see, it works for them!). His overall message seems to be that being a closed-minded atheist is as bad as being a blind follower of Christianity. As if we didn't know that already. Perrotta, as I already knew, is a master at building sexual tension, so the book was entertaining for that aspect alone. And he's really, really funny. At one point, Ruth says that "Pleasure is good, shame is bad, and knowledge is power" and I guess that her statement applies to Perrotta's novel too.

Book #65: The Alchemist

Title: The Alchemist
Author: Paulo Coelho

I'll admit that I suppressed a groan when my book group selected The Alchemist to put on our reading list this year. I generally hate "spiritual" books. I particularly can't stand anything written by Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie wasn't terrible, but everything else I've read has been positively gag-worthy). I also knew that a lot of readers compared The Alchemist with St. Exupery's The Little Prince, which I also hated. And believe me, it wasn't just because I was struggling with my French because I hated it just as much when I read it in English.

With those incredibly low expectations in mind, I have to say that the book wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be. I'll liken it to eating dinner at Applebees. In my mind, I hate Applebees. Applebees represents all that is bad about cheapy chain restaurants with bad microwaved food. But a year or so ago I had dinner at Applebees and it wasn't awful. It wasn't great, but it wasn't awful.

And so it was with The Alchemist. It's a fable about a boy who dreams about finding a treasure, follows his heart, and takes a circuitous journey to reach his treasure. The main point of the book is that we can all accomplish great things if we follow the inner promptings of our heart and stay true to the desires within us. I think that for someone who is as unattached as a sixteen-year-old shepherd, that's probably true. But as a 32-year-old mom with a house and four kids and a husband, I sometimes need to temper my dreams. So I'll give Coelho points for inspiration, but not for practicality.