Mandajuice

Things I'll be thinking about during tomorrow's half marathon

My time.

My feet.

Not dying.

My time.

My knees.

Water.

My time.

My feet.

Not puking.

My time.

Water.

Not crapping my pants.

My time.

My time.

My time.

Beer.

Things I WANT to be thinking about during tomorrow's half marathon:

My breath. (Not my breathing.)

My heart. (Not my heart rate.)

My children.

My People.

My writing.

The breath-taking throng of human tenacity surrounding me and how amazing it is to be part of it.

How much I love the streets I'm running on.

How lucky I am to live in this city, in this decade, in this season.

In this body.

How this body used to belong to a sad girl who didn't know she could run.

How this girl knows her body can fucking FLY.

How I should slow down and look up.

How I should enjoy the view.

How lucky I am.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

(My time.)

Wildwood

My most recent breakup with Joel has made for a difficult few weeks, especially since this one is our fourth and final end. No backsies. We couldn't live together, I couldn't live apart from him and now I'm permanently stuck in the very predicament that was causing my misery. (Don't waste your money on the tasting flight, just trust me that irony pairs perfectly with crow.)

My mood is better than you'd expect, actually. I'm still smiling at strangers, happy with my clients, singing along to the radio and texting cute boys, but then the lyrics will remind me of him (Fuck you, Bruno Mars!) and I'll start sobbing like a ten-year-old girl, only to be perfectly fine again five minutes later. It'd be disconcerting if it wasn't so terribly normal. I've spent two and half years with a plus one at my side. This DUDE's been hanging around all the time and now he's gone. Poof! Just like that. No matter what the reasons were, I still need to grieve that loss. Dude loss. (Or can I just carry it forward and use it to offset future dude gains?) (<-- See that? TAX humor! Win!)

None of this is supposed to be easy and it isn't. I hate it when people ask me how I'm doing because they don't really want the truth and I don't really want to lie. Grief, even when long overdue and self-inflicted, is never pretty. Beautiful perhaps, gut-wrenchingly, horrifically human, but never comfortable to watch from the bleachers.

Sorry about that. I promise it's not contagious. I'm just an over-sharer. I didn't let him tattoo BE WHO YOU ARE on my chest for nothing.

I'm also a terrible actress, so I'm going to skip the stoic facade where I pretend I'm fine! and totally okay! Instead I'm going to cope by running my ass off. I figure I'll run 100 miles for every year we were together. That's an easy 250 miles for this tough-ass broad, even if sobbing while running up a mountain isn't as easy as I'd hoped. (You can breathe or you can cry. They are mutually exclusive.)

I plan to run as many of those miles as I can on the Wildwood trail in Forest Park.

Ironically enough, my friend Brie introduced me to it on the last day of JoelandAmanda. (I actually read the final e-mail in our Dear John exchange from inside the Honey Bucket at the end of the Leif Erickson trail. There's one trip to the bathroom I'll never forget!). Anyway, I'd been feeling like a broken, useless, pile of shit all day and that run saved my ass almost as much as Brie's secret toilet paper stash. She and I gave each other therapy all the way up the hill (which was hard) (in a good way), but the downhill was magical.

Her sweat kept splattering me in the face; there were so many bees I thought for sure I was going to inhale one; and everything was so green in every direction that I wondered, briefly, if I, myself, had turned into part of the mountain. I would call it an out of body experience except I don't think I've ever been more inside my body than I was on that run. We flew down that mountain whooping and hollering and giggling like schoolgirls.



I've never felt stronger or more alive. More present. More ME.

It turns out trail running is heroin. One shot and I was DONE.  Since I no longer have a plus one, on Saturday night I geared up (chapstick! toilet paper! water!) and went back for a hot trail date with myself. This time I had a goal - run five miles up, cry like a baby, and then book it back down in time to catch the sunset. 

Apparently I was still in the bargaining stage of grief because it felt like every step I ran up that hill spawned a new want. [breathe in] want, want, want [breathe out] want, WANT. Every footfall screamed at me. Want! I want so many things I'll never get. I want to be different. I want to change the past. I want to change perceptions. Perspectives. Events. I want him. Himhimhimhimhimhim. All things I can't have. If you're counting steps, ten miles is 20,000 wants.

I am SO on Buddha's shit list.

Or maybe not, because at one point on my way down the mountain I started to sob with the sheer gratitude of knowing I'd found this perfect green vessel for my grief. A place for me to stomp all my wants straight into the ground. A place for me to FEEL everything without holding back. I've decided to spend this summer sweating and crying and giggling and singing all of my grief right into the forest until there isn't anything left inside me but strength. It's beginning to feel almost sacred, this idea of giving my tears back to the trees.

Then I remembered something a cute Jewish professor (who was also a runner) told me on our first (and only) date, "Terwilliger still holds my divorce in its hills."

And my floodgates opened. Because how many other runners had left their tears on this exact stretch of trail? All of a sudden I wasn't just crying my OWN grief into Wildwood, I was crying for everyone who had ever experienced a loss and then handed it over to this forest. I felt like I could see every dying parent, lost dog, never-born child, painful divorce and unrequited love that had ever been felt there. So many tears! No wonder Oregon is so wet all the fucking time! I was surrounded by grief, almost as if I was running through mother nature's emotional compost bin.

Only instead of sadness, all that grief filled me with love. With acceptance.

Because we can't grieve if we never love. 

Grief is an expression of love.

So I'm going to keep handing my grief  - and my heart - over to the trees of Forest Park. I'm going to lean into the downhills like I lean into everything - love, discomfort, grief, vulnerability, opportunity. At some point I know I'm going to run too fast, trip over a twig and break my face, but I won't regret it any more than I'll ever regret loving Joel. Instead, I'll just book it down the next hill with the same fearless fervor as ever.

Balls out.

(Oooh! There's my next tattoo!)

If I get over this break up sooner than what seems normal, it's only because I've already been grieving it for months. I haven't met him yet, but some day I'll get to make someone the happiest man alive. I'm only sad it wasn't Joel. I loved him ferociously. (I fear only Henry Miller really groks how much.) But I'm determined to not let this grief change me. I'll stay this wide open and vulnerable and brutally honest and loud and abrasive - and beautifully, frightfully flawed - for the next guy. And he will love me BECAUSE of those things, not in spite of them.  

Until then, I'll have me.

And Wildwood.

Cinco de Mayo

I drove out to the beach today,
thinking it best to cry behind my sunglasses
while the kids busied themselves building sand castles.

But the water was too blue
and the sun too bright
for tears.

Until that hipster on the blanket down the beach
used his towel to clean the lens of his cell phone camera
before taking a picture of his girlfriend

and I thought of you.

Human Flight

Last night I was up at 1AM with the first real PANIC AT THE DISCO attack I've had in a few months. It was strange, actually; I'd forgotten how awful they are. But I've been struggling with a brain-body dilemma (Brain wants one thing, body wants another. WHICH ONE DO I LISTEN TO!?!?) and it's costing me a lot of sleep. I probably shouldn't have picked this particular week to stop going to therapy AND to invite everyone I know over for a party this weekend. My bad. It also doesn't help that a bunch of my hair got singed off during a bad dye job on Monday. There is literally a chunk missing right in the front where I normally part my hair. Oddly enough I keep forgetting I look like a freak because it's just that far down my list of things-to-give-a-shit-about.

Anyway, this morning I did what any exhausted, potentially insane woman with crackhead hair would do: I put on a hat and went for a run. In the sunshine. Along the Portland waterfront. Which was totally hideous, as usual:
Since I haven't posted in a while, it's probably worth noting that I didn't really have a choice. I'm training for a(nother) half marathon on 4th of July. This time there won't be any walking because I'm sticking to a training program and today was a seven mile day. Oh! And two weeks ago I ran my 8-minute mile on a treadmill. Can't wait to do it again at a track because YEE-FUCKING-HAW!

Anyway, today the sun was magnificent. The temperature perfect. Nearly everyone I passed had a shit-eating grin on their face. Especially one woman, who I noticed wasn't running on the path, but on the concrete wall beside it. I couldn't figure out why she was running up there. I just kept going: over the Burnside Bridge, under the Portland Oregon sign, down to the west bank of the river all the way up over the Steel Bridge and back around.

It's such a magical loop that I screwed my time up because I kept stopping to take pictures. It usually takes me about a mile to hit my groove, but today it came right away. Of course my life isn't all shits and giggles at the moment, so by about mile 2.75, I noticed my mind wandering to Things Over Which I Have No Control and my anxiety came back to thwomp me in the lungs. I was sad, defeated. I couldn't breathe. But I haven't been doing all this work for nothing, right? So I buried myself in the feelings, dug deeper into my body, picked up my pace and started gulping air into my belly like it was a pelican's craw.

It worked so well that by the time I came up on the East side of the river, I figured out why that woman had been running on the wall instead of the trail. I didn't realize it until I ran it myself, but the wall is not only flat (and better for my knees), but separated into segments with these 6" gaps between them. Every time I jumped over one of the gaps, I felt myself hover in the air like there was no gravity.

Whoa. This body. MAN. Not to quote Mackelmore or anything, but this is fucking awesome. It got even better when I passed a cute bald guy in a "Running Sucks" t-shirt who must've seen me leaping around like a second grader because he flashed me the most genuine, open-mouthed grin ever. I totally thought that was going to be the highlight of my day, but no. 

By mile six, my knee started to hurt and I felt my face twist into a grimace. I was visibly limping and seriously considered walking the final mile.

But mama wasn't having any of that. I shook my finger in my own face and forced myself to look down at the water. To be in the moment, inside my body, on the most beautiful day I could remember. The water was so blue and the sunlight bouncing off of it was so magnificent that I got the chills. It felt like the glitter jumped right off the river and onto my skin. I seriously wondered if maybe I was experiencing a psychotic break or even just a blood sugar deficit. It was THAT physical.

And all I had to do was look up. To notice.

Who knew?

I'm on the verge of something really big right now. I'm not sure what it is because it hasn't happened yet, but in that final stretch today, I decided to sprint across the Hawthorne bridge. Full speed. Balls out. I finished my run and realized that my problems are, sadly, a lot longer than seven miles. But all I could think was I got this. I'm going to be fine.

My first 13.1 (Or how I ran across the Golden Gate Bridge)

On Friday, I woke up at 6:30 to head to the Los Gatos Creek Trail with my mom where she meets her friend, Sharon, at least three times a week to walk around the lake at the crack of dawn. I joined them for the first few minutes of their regular walk and then took off running on my own. Somewhere along the way, I decided to run to the Lexington dam. It's funny, this thing you do as a runner, where you sometimes get half-way through your longest distance ever (in my case, that was 6.6 miles round trip) and think, I FEEL FINE! I'll just keep going another mile! But you forget you'll have to pay for that extra distance at the END of your run, when you're generally not feeling quite as perky or ambitious as you do when you decide to keep going.

But the dam was 5.5 miles away and I wanted that god damn dam. I texted my mom to tell her not to wait for me and wrote my ass a check for an 11-mile run. Unfortunately, having never run that particular trail before, I somehow took a wrong turn and ended up on a muddy trail in the mountains, no where near the reservoir. I finally cut my loses and turned around. My round-trip mileage was still a personal record at nine miles, the last one of which I walked with my mom.

The next day my right knee was KILLING me. It was the first time I've ever felt any pain after running and I can probably thank that sprint I did down the mountain after I got lost. (BUT RUNNING DOWN THAT HILL WAS SO FUN!!!) So I decided to run only three miles instead of the five I wanted to do. That was Saturday. When I got home, I was headed to the city to hang out with my brother and since the ONLY thing I had wanted to do for myself during this vacation was to run the Golden Gate Bridge, I googled the route before we left and tried to figure out the best time to run to avoid both tourist congestion and fog.

Google said 7:00 AM, which was perfect. We'd have plenty of time for Dim Sum before I headed to my cousin Krystal's at 1:00. WIN!

Except the next link I clicked on informed me that the bridge would be closed to pedestrians Sunday morning FOR A MARATHON.

INSERT EXPLETIVES.

(MANY.)

The first thought that went through my head after all the cursing and the lamenting that I'd saved my ONE FUN THING for the very last minute was, fuck it, I'll just run the damn race! I'd just finished my 12th mile in two days, I could wade my way through another 13.1, right?

I immediately went to register myself only to find that the race sold out weeks ago.

So I posted a craigslist ad seeking anyone willing to sell me their race entry and bib so I could run. (Don't send me hate mail, I know it's against race rules. Bite me.)

No one answered, anyway.

I was screwed. I decided to head to San Francisco, drop the kids off with my brother and run the bridge that afternoon, in spite of my aching knee. I WAS GOING TO RUN THE GOD DAMNED BRIDGE. Even if it killed me.

Then, as we were pulling into the city, I got a text message from someone who saw my ad and wanted to sell me his girlfriend's bib and you know what that means, right? I said yes.

TO RUNNING A HALF MARATHON THE NEXT MORNING.

I'm crazy! Especially since I could. not. even. walk. The twelve miles I'd done over the previous two days had hobbled me. It was the most I'd ever run. Ever. That night I limped my way alongside the kids to the yogurt shop like a geriatric and then worried all night about my stoopid knee.

Bengay! Tylenol! Icy-hot pads! Stoopid, stoopid knee!

But I still got up at 5AM, threw on Ms. Anna Bank's race bib and spent forty minutes looking for a parking spot. I finally limped my way down to the waterfront - fifteen minutes late - and headed straight for the Port-o-Potty. In spite of not drinking any coffee, Mother Nature decided to bless me with a pre-race gift. (THE GIFT OF POOP.) (Which I've been told is a good race omen.)

Anyway, I only mention the poop because A) AWESOME! and B) as I was sitting on the throne, I checked facebook and saw that my friend Sara had posted a picture of herself IN THE STARTING LINE OF THE VERY SAME RACE!

Sara and I went to high school together and each of us has since lost over 100 pounds. We've kept in touch mostly via facebook, especially lately, because we can geek out on running together. I had hoped to meet up for a run with her while I was in California, but I knew she was recovering from surgery and her doctor hadn't given her the pass to run yet.

I think this is pretty much the definition of kismet.

It took us approximately thirty seconds to find each other after I messaged her because we ended up in the same corral. (KISMET! AMIRIGHT!!?) Then I told her about my stoopid knee and that my only goal was to run as much of the bridge as I could and FINISH THE RACE. No time goal whatsoever. Which was EXACTLY what she wanted to do too. Normally Sara could smoke me in a half marathon, but because of both of our injuries our timing was perfect!

We walked/ran the whole race side-by-side.

Isn't Sara's smile absolutely infectious? She kept it on her face the entire race and I caught it the way you'd obliviously catch a yawn. I was totally terrified going in this morning, but seeing her changed EVERYTHING. Not only did I finish my race, but I got to catch up with a fantastic old friend the entire time. We were so busy talking, we never even put in our ear buds. The view was everything I ever wanted it to be and when my knee got sore or she got tired (she hadn't run in over a month!), we stopped running and just walked. Sara literally saved me from injury. If she hadn't been there checking her Nike+ and keeping us on pace, I am 100% sure I would have run too fast, too far and overdone it. I would have taken myself out for the rest of the season.

(ME AND MODERATION. TWO GREAT TASTES THAT HAVE NEVER MET ONE ANOTHER.)

KIS-FUCKING-MET. I'm telling you.

It was a perfect "race." I got to run across my beloved bridge and I got to do it with a beloved friend.

I never ran long or hard enough to get out of breath, which was hard for me (and I know it was hard for Sara too because she's an Athlete with a capital A), but it's been nearly twelve hours and my knee is FINE.

FINE!!!

Thank you Sara! Thank you kismet.

The most important thing I'll take from today was how much being injured SUCKS. I overdid it earlier in the week and I paid for it every. single. step. of that 13.1 miles. The whole race hurt my body in a way I've never experienced before. So instead of going balls out all the time, I'm going to reign myself in a bit and give my muscular fitness time to catch up to my cardiovascular fitness. (Oddly enough, after the first mile or so my heart/lungs can run forever. It's my knees/hips/feet that hate me.) I'm going to be more consistent with my weight training and yoga. I'm going to follow an ACTUAL training program so I never hurt myself again.

I'm also going to sign up for another half marathon ASAP.

May the poop and kismet gods be with me!

Thirty Seven

[If you're new to the naked face project, you can read about it here.]

[Age 36]

[Age 35]

[Age 34]

[Age 33]

[Age 32]

[Age 31]

[Age 30]

Doggy Dilemmas

*** EDITED 3/20 TO ADD*** I think there might have been a slight misunderstanding regarding my intentions in the post below. I might not be the best pet owner in the world, but I love my dog, Harry, very much.  Like anyone who's cared for a dog for more than fifteen years, I've become quite attached. And, like many dog owners, I've reached that point in his life when some very difficult decisions need to be made. Last year the Humane Society alone euthanized over FOUR MILLION dogs. Many of those dogs were put to sleep (as the euphemism goes) by owners who loved them very, very much. Every bit as much as I love Harry. I am now at the precipice of making that same sad decision.

While I appreciate your concern (some of you contacted my ex-husband and my employer. Others contacted my advertisers. One of you even posted an ad on Craigslist: "She wants to kill her dog") I understand that this is a highly emotional subject. I'm emotional too. But wanting to kill my dog could not be further from the truth. What I've really been trying to do is find the MOST humane way to bring my 17-year-old, adorable, but sadly frail and unhealthy pup to as gentle an end as possible.

For the record, Harry lost control of his bladder and his bowels more than two years ago. At first, I tried walking him before going to bed or leaving the house, but that didn't work because he refuses to pee or poop while on a leash (and since he's deaf and mostly blind, leashing him isn't optional). Then I tried making sure he had constant access to and free reign of the backyard. When that didn't work, I bought doggy diapers. If my earlier post didn't make you sad, this photo I posted on Flickr over a year ago certainly will:

Diapers killed what little dignity Harry had left. And they didn't even work! I tried disposables, bitches britches, the kind made for male puppies that wrapped only around his waist; I even tried combinations of all three and NONE of them were effective! Nine times out of ten, I'd come home to find puddles, piles... and a dog still wearing a diaper. He hated the diapers so much that no matter how happy he was to see me when I got home, he wouldn't even look at me.

I've tried everything. Now I'm trying to do what's best for him. Please keep in mind that neglected, unhealthy, abused dogs don't generally live to be seventeen-years old. I first drafted this post over two weeks ago and have since spoken with animal experts, friends, veterinarians, and even the Humane Society. I know exactly what my options are - have a vet come to my house or take my dog to a vet. Unfortunately, because the drugs used to euthanize animals are also likely to kill a human, this isn't a task I'm able to take on myself. I only WISH I could, which is a world away from murdering my dog.

In hindsight, I should have been more clear when I posted yesterday. I only had a few minutes left between clients and readers were complaining about how long it'd been since I'd written anything, so I uploaded the only thing I had in my drafts folder. I wanted to add how I've spent the last two weeks sitting on this decision so I could spend extra time with my pup. I've been letting him sleep in my room (a risky proposition!), feeding him my bacon, taking him for walks and making sure the children get to play with him as much as they can before saying goodbye, but I was sitting at the coffee shop with tears streaming down my face and clicked publish just to put myself out of my own misery.

I'm sorry if it upset you.

It upset me too.

And don't worry, I vowed YEARS AGO to never own another dog. Why would I when I've already had the best one there could ever be?

ORIGINAL POST (Un-Edited):

Mr. Harry is not long for this world, unfortunately, which means I'm in a bit of a dog-pickle. Harry is my first BABY, but he's almost 17. He walks around like every bit the centegenarian he is, all crickedy and stiff and NO, SERIOUSLY, IT TAKES FOURTEEN MINUTES FOR ME TO GET OFF THE COUCH. He's stone cold deaf, mostly blind and completely incontinent. Whether I'm gone five minutes or five hours, there is always a puddle and a pile. He's so old, he pisses where he eats.

While he's eating.

 

Five years ago he was a sprightly young chap!

Even sadder is that I'm an absolutely HORRID dog-owner. I'm never home. When my kids are with their dad, my homebase is at Joel's in NW Portland. When I'm home, it's because I have the cheeeeldren (ie: Harry's worst nightmare). I work nights, so even when I DO get home, it's late. He lives on the couch (which, obviously, needs to be reupholstered STAT). He can't play ball anymore. He can't go to the dog park because he doesn't come back when I call him. He can't even make it through a real walk anymore. He's just. so. old.

 

If I could, I'd find him some perfect old man in need of a lap dog, but the truth is, Harry no longer does well with strangers. He can't hear them come in and when he finally notices they're here, he's so surprised that his fear response kicks in and he can't stop barking. It took him two weeks before my roommates could even get him to go out in the backyard without scaring the shit out of him. Literally. He still barks at Sam and Terry, who practically live here and take care of him when we're out of town.

The last time I got home from Joel's it took me over an hour to clean up after him. I then had to leave to pick up the kids and by the time I returned, the floor was already destroyed again. He flinches when I pet him because he doesn't know it's coming.

I can't do it anymore. I don't think it's fair to either of us.

The dilemma is that I need to put him down myself. I can't take him to the vet. He's so old and disoriented that I think the drive alone would give him a heart attack. He's TERRIFIED of vets and animal hospitals. Always has been (ever since the hundred stitches he got from his last encounter with a bigger dog).

I know I can have someone come out to the house to help, but even that is a last resort (see also: stranger danger!). I basically want my sweet, old dog to take his final nap on my lap and drift peacefully into his next life. I wish I knew a way to make that happen for him.

So sad.

 

Genoa is never going to forgive me. Ever.

 

Rough and Tumble

Things haven't been easy this week, I'll be honest. I think Tuesday was one of my worst days on record and the cherry on top was finding out I didn't get into grad school. Fail! (My GPA from college was less than stellar, apparently, and they only took 45 out of 400 applicants.) The funny thing was that at a certain point in the afternoon, I purposely avoided the mailbox because the day had been just that spectacularly sucky that I was sure if I checked the mailbox, it would most certainly contain a rejection letter. Unfortunately, they e-mailed it to me right as I was leaving work instead.

But the strange thing is? I'm okay. I've been feeling oddly self-possessed lately and part of me wonders if this is how People Who Have Their Shit Together feel all the time. Not that I have my shit together by any means, but I'm doing better than ever before. I know everyone is getting sick of hearing about it (even Joel, who now works full-time as a copywriter for Nike), but I can only thank the running. I started off my Super Bad Tuesday with a run and then when shit hit the fan, I went to the gym to lift weights during my only free 20 minutes of the day. Today I ran the waterfront and the Hawthorne Bridge in the rain. I'm even leaving to go to the gym as soon as I publish this post because I need to use the treadmill to accurately time my miles.

I think it's actually the reason I haven't been writing as much. I no longer write for my mental health. It used to be that if I had a free hour, I'd sit down and write it out, but I can't sit much anymore. I'd rather be going. The stupid thing is that I still HATE running. I spend most runs locked inside my head with dueling voices screaming at me to quit and/or keep going. It hurts. It's awful. I hate it. But I can't stop.

And with that, I promise to stop talking about running. I'll just have to talk about my dog instead.

Going back to Cali*

Right around the day I filed my tax return, I got an e-mail invitation to a family reunion on Easter Sunday in California. My Aunt didn't have my e-mail address and went out of her way to make sure someone would forward it to me. When my cousin, Amber, e-mailed it to me I was honored. There's been a lot of water under that bridge and I've been worried that I'd actually burnt it down forever.

Apparently not.

For the first time in a long time, I had the money to Say Yes. So I did! I'm taking the whole clan to California for Spring break from March 30 through April 9th. Actually, only the kids and I will be gone that long. Joel starts a new job on Monday so he only gets to take a week off. Liza will be with us for about five days.

For me it will be ten days in the state formerly known as home.

I'm going to need an extra pair of running shoes and a hip flask if I'm going to survive, but my grandmother is turning 90. NINETY! So I can't miss it. Which makes it that much easier to get over myself and Joel will be right there next to me. 

So I'm good.

Actually, I'm stoked. I can't wait to run the squishy rubber track at Los Gatos High and show Joel the house I grew up in and the beach where I gave my first blow job. Both of my brothers are down to host and I can't wait to see them. I wonder if I'll cry when I see my nephews like I did the last time I was in San Francisco. They seem to grow so fast when I'm not around.

My only promise is to take a lot of pictures and see my therapist the moment I get back.

*... I don't think so.

Comme ci comme ça

Things have been good around these parts lately. I haven't heard back about grad school yet, but my tax return came in and I was not only able to pay back some debts and catch up on my bills, but buy fun things like car insurance! and running shoes! and a phone that actually turns off! My iphone 3 (not 3GS, just 3...) had been on its last legs for nearly a year, so I bought a new one, switched to Verizon and added myself to Joel's family plan, which saves me so much money every month that the phone basically paid for itself.

Which only makes the Siri-related tomfoolery that much more fun! I'm glad the poor gal doesn't have much of a long-term memory.

Lest you worry, I had already bought another kindle weeks ago, but that didn't stop the children from starting a cage match over who got my old phone to use as an ipod. I think Genoa may have won. Mostly because she wanted me to set up her e-mail account and Alex was too busy playing Minecrack.

Baby's first e-mail?

To Joel: "You smell like dirty socks and armpits!"I beg to differ with her, obviously. Oh! That reminds me; did I mention Joel and I are officially back together? Because that happened. It's not without complications, no doubt, but dude, you guys, we're like magnets, yada yada yada, nothing worth doing is easy. And no, we're not moving in together again.

We sealed the deal with Valentine's day tattoos.

He got his Alfred Hitchcock Geek logo on his arm and I had him write, "Be who you are." over my heart. Not sure I'm exactly sure who I WANT to be yet, but I seem to end up being me in spite of myself.

Since it was my BFF, Terry's, birthday, I also did the tattoo thing with her. Because she's the most generous person I know, I had her write "Share" on my shoulder. She's also a chemistry teacher, so not only is mine written in mathematical symbols, but the tattoo she promised her students was this rad atom:

It was fun to spread the badassery around my little family circle. Speaking of challenging badassedness, my boy is doing well. He might have a hard time paying attention in school, but at least he found a new reason to love going to church every Sunday.

What else?

Work has been delightfully busy, I've been running five miles at a go, I signed up for my first race, and this week Joel and I are making a last-ditch effort to see all nine Best Film Oscar nominees before heading to our friend Rachel's house on Sunday for a formal-wear pizza party in front of a live television.

Never a dull moment!

Even better? My next post will be about how I'm booking a trip to California so all five of us can attend a family reunion on Easter Sunday.

Hold me.