40 feats update.

#7.  Zak Brown Band - June, 2014
       There's just something about the heat of summer, a cold beer, one of your best friends, a road trip, flip flops in a field, and a country concert.  These guys put on an amazing show with great covers and let's just say the people watching was priceless.

#15.  Pippin Hill Winery (8/14) and Veritas Winery (10/14)

         Gorgeous scenery, great company, and the wine is getting better and better around these parts.  Looking forward to tackling a few more of these (on bikes??) through next summer.

#20.  Lucky Dog Animal Rescue - 4 hours so far

         One of my best friends, Liz, is very active with the organization which is based in DC and recently asked me to help out with a home visit for a couple looking to adopt a rescue pup from them but they live down here in Cville.  Well, I love the cafe they have in DC and I love dogs so sure, sign me up to help.  :)  Basically, I go and make sure the house and surrounding land is safe and that the potential owners will be able to handle the responsibilities of a dog and, even more involved, a rescue who might need some extra love and forgiveness.  Both of the visits I have done so far have been great, it's such a cool way to meet local people and work with a cause that I'm incredible passionate about but can't be too hands on with or I'll end up being the crazy dog lady who lives in the woods with 250 insane, but adorable, pups.  Check them out, it's worth it.   

http://www.luckydoganimalrescue.org     So much cuteness there.

#22.  Cherry tree, Spring 2014.  I feel like I'm going to need to get after this one a bit.  It's hard to pick, purchase, and plant a tree and 30 is a lot.  But we are in desperate need of landscaping so it's a good goal and our yard will appreciate it.

#16.  Annie Hall, 8/14.  Slumdog Millionaire, 12/14.

        Loved Annie Hall.  My mom said it was the first real romantic comedy that came out and it was really quirky so it's right up my alley.  And I adore Diane Keaton.  It was really cool to watch a movie from the 70's and not feel greasy or like I needed a cigarette to fit in.

        Slumdog Millionaire was incredibly well done.  Visually interesting, thought provoking, and beautiful to watch.  But it was NOTHING like the preview.  Which is fine, I just like a slight heads up when I'm going to cry or lose all faith in humanity.  From the trailer, it looked like a very inspiring, romantic tale of two kids who make it through a somewhat tough childhood and end up together.  So we settled in for a cute, uplifting two hours.  Add in extreme poverty, orphan labor, human disfigurement, murder, religious persecution, suicide, gang violence, and asshole greed and that's exactly what we got.  I'm just saying prep yourself.  

0 to 3,300 in 1 year.

I tried this last year.  I was 32 so I wanted to do 32 pushups a day for the year.  I think that lasted 5... maybe 6 days.  But I hate pushups.  I only do them because I feel like I'm supposed to.  Sort of like drinking a "recovery" smoothie after a hard workout when all I really want is a sleeve of Oreos.  Strength training is one of those things that is without a doubt good for you but I'm HORRIBLE at scheduling it it and getting it done because I'm just not inspired.  I'm working on that.

Back to my goal this year.  I have a bunch and that in itself might be a problem.  But a good lesson I've learned recently is that looking toward the future is necessary when keeping yourself from spiraling in the present.  So I saw that one of my heroes (Kara Goucher) posted a "Run 2015 miles in 2015" challenge.  That averages out to a little over 5 miles a day.  Totally doable if running was all I did.  But, in the summer season when I'm riding a ton for work and play, I drop back my running miles and I like that, I'm not willing to give that up.  But I really like this whole mileage for the year goal too.  SO, I came up with this.  I'm 33 this year so I'm going to run OR ride 3,300 miles in 2015.  That breaks down to about 10 miles a day.  Bring it.

I use various technology for each sport so I'm going to keep track of it all manually in a notebook.  Another thought is that my spin classes will count, but the mileage tracked on the bike is really off so I'm going to take my average mph that I normally ride and put that into the length of time I'm in class.

I think I'm most curious if this will be something I really have to go after or if it will add itself up during my normal activities.  Here's hoping it's the latter or my next December is going to be a busy one.  :)

You gotta date your spouse.

One of the best tidbits of advice that Dave and I received around our wedding was "you need to date your spouse." At the time, it didn't mean as much to us as it obviously did to them. Sort of like the advice you get before you have children to "sleep as much as possible". I mean, sure, we'll sleep, but what's the big deal? Why are you saying that to me pale faced, sweating profusely, and with that faraway look in your eyes, like you've seen the dark side of life that is the exhausting first few months of having an infant. Such advice, as important as it is true, very often doesn't resonate with the receiver until they've been down that road, stumbled down that path, wondering the whole time... "why the hell didn't someone warn me?"

I'm getting off track. Because having kids is nothing like choosing to spend your life with one person. Becoming a spouse is a mutual agreement (in most sane countries anyways) between two people to be there, for better or worse, accepting, or even better, LOVING that person for who they are and what they become. I think I'm pages and decades away from arguing whether or not that type of commitment is realistic for most people (believe me, I've seen the great outcomes of both sides) but one thing I've come to realize is the truth in that statement of advice we were given at our wedding. That in order to give any two crazy kids a shot at forever, a lot of EFFORT has to be spent on making the other person feel loved, special, valued, and part of a team. It's not something that can be put aside, even for a few days.  Because if there's one thing I've learned, it's that in these busy times of kids, homes, careers, and life, days all too quickly become weeks.  Weeks turn into months, months into years.  And before you know it, you're that couple eating dinner in silence because you spent the last decade paying attention to everything else but each other and left a void between you that is filled with all the things you never said.  

Because loving someone the way they deserve is hard.  It takes committment, creativity, patience, maturity.  It is much easier to assume that their love will always be present, always be available, and to lesson the passion and dedication you both gave each other in those amazing first few years, when you had nothing but time, when you talked about possibilities, not preschool pickups.  Living a life of forever with someone can be alarmingly unsexy... if you let it.  

Date your spouse.  Date.  Adore, dote, love, here's a good, seriously unromantic sounding word:  venerate. Like you did in the beginning.  Like you want to feel as you get closer to the end.  

I haven't been married long enough to pretend I have any advice to give on the subject.  But I did want to share the guidance we were given almost 6 years ago that resonates so much more with me today than it did then.  I look at that person differently now and unfortunately their relationship ended, which makes his advice even more profound.  I don't know what happened but I can only assume that someone, maybe both, got too busy and stopped trying.  Stopped leaving notes and giving compliments.  Stopped saying what they appreciated and loved and started keeping score.  The best relationships I know are those that are supportive, kind, and always assuming positive intent.  It seems so simple.  Here's to making it feel that way.

#8 and #15

                    #8 - 5 more marathon states.

Because, at times, my non-stressful list is a lot to take on and because I hope we'll all admit that running a marathon isn't a light matter, I'm going to take a few liberties here and count the one I ran in May towards my forty feats list, even if the countdown didn't begin until the end of June. It's my list, get your own with your own rules if you don't like it.  Damnit. 

So, Delaware, check. I wrote about it last week if you want to check it out. Great race, felt good except for the heat, kept me interested in what was out there race and time wise. So we'll see what's next. 

                    #15 - Monticello Wine Trail wineries 

Also done before the official list countdown began, Dave and I tasted at Burnley vineyards back in early Spring. It was during one of our ingenious "day dates" and always seems to relax us enough to enjoy the rest of the day together. We've never been big night owls so these day dates are a way for us to do something fun during daylight hours and make it home post bedtime chaos but early enough to get a good nights sleep because, let's face it, Rowan will still be staring us down over the side of our bed at 6am whether we stayed out til dawn or not. 

Cute winery, literally in someone's house but that was pretty cozy, and maybe a tad weird. We couldn't wait to get a nice day to enjoy, this winter was pretty rough so Spring was more than welcome. Great place to nap among the vines and the change of pace to go north of town was definitely nice. But, anything is pretty nice when you've got this handsomeness to snuggle up to. 

Forty Feats to Forty

My 20's were spent with a lot of questions. What will I do? Where will I go? Who will I meet? There is a ton of uncertainty in that decade and I had a very love/hate relationship with it.  I loved the mystery, not knowing how your life is going to shape up is very exciting when you're young and pretty fearless.  I also seemed to be naively confident in everything just figuring itself out.  I thought with hard work and a stubborn rebellion against mediocrity, I would certaintly end up with a life filled with happiness, excitement, and love.  But, I was also experiencing a low level, constant anxiety that I'm sure I shared with the majority of people my age.  The fear of the real world and how we would not only exist, but find happiness in it.  

I am so fortunate to say that by the end of my 20's, I had not only answered those huge questions, but I was thrilled with the outcomes.  I married the man of my dreams, built a house in the woods near a place I love dearly, became a mom to two amazing kids and two hysterical dogs, have a healthy body and the knowledge and dedication to not only keep it but to challenge it, and I have 3 (!) jobs that keep me inspired.  Seriously, things are that good.  

You would think that from here, I would just settle in.  Take deep breaths and revel in the hard work and choices that got me to this point.  Unfortunately, I'm not really built that way.  :)  We're officially coming up for air from the baby years and I find myself looking around, happy, content, and wondering...  now what?  I certainly don't want to change anything major.  Quite the opposite, I love everything major about my life (see above.).  More so I feel like I have a little more energy and time to get back to the things that I felt proud of and excited about before the major questions became my focus.  I want to stay interested, and interestING, to myself and those around me.  But the thought of taking on anything else was exhausting and I didn't even know I was missing anything really, or even where to start once I realized it.  Then came a random Facebook post from my dear friend Sam.

Samantha and I became friends 5 years ago this summer.  She is currently living in Germany with her adorable son and husband and is one of the more creative and interesting people I know.  I was not surprised at all to see her new website, entitled Forty Feats to Forty:  A Pledge to Relish our Thirties.  Her and another friend had each compiled a list of 40 things they wanted to do before they turned 40.  Perfect.  This was exactly what I wanted.  An mini bucket list filled with goals that will keep me intrigued and talking about things other than potty training.  

I decided that items on my list needed to fall into two criterea:  attainable and fun.  I wanted it to be motivating but not stressful.  And not a boring to-do list like "organize the pantry" but rather items that I look forward to, have never done before, feel will make me a better person, or am intrigued by.  I will have a larger, LIFE bucket list for sure but for now, with the busy lives and smaller budgets we have, this will be a way to remind myself of what is important outside of the daily grind, healthy dinners, swim lessons, baby sitters, vet appointments, conference calls, 8 hours of sleep that I NEVER get, and everything else that is constantly on our minds.  I wrote her, said "I'm in" and immediately started my own list.

I turn 33 tomorrow. I plan to check off all the items on this list by sunset of my 40th birthday. So I'm a little behind the other youngsters taking part in this life task but I consider that a challenge. Here's to staying interesting, intrigued, and excited about life and to becoming the person I always hoped along the way.

1. Finish a crossword puzzle.
2. Brew a batch of beer.
3. Take a cooking class.
4. Build a piece of furniture.
5. Visit Asheville, NC.
6. Go to a Steelers game at Heinz Field.
7. See 7 new bands in concert.
8. Check off 5 marathon states.
9. Set off fireworks.
10. Play a round of frisbee golf.
11. Go on a dinner cruise with friends.
12. Eat a salad with 5 ingredients grown in my own garden.
13. Take part (or start!) a huge food fight.
14. Send a message in a bottle.
15. Taste at all of the wineries on the Monticello Wine Trail.
16. Watch 75 of the Best Picture Oscar winning movies.
17. Learn basic, conversational Portuguese.
18. Hike/run/bike in 10 new state/national parks.
19. Watch the sunrise and sunset over a different body of water in the same day.
20. Volunteer 20 hours each for 5 different charities.
21. Run NYC marathon.
22. Plant 30 trees.
23. Take a cheese making course.
24. Ride a century (not BGC).
25. Go skinny dipping.
26. Attend a black tie event with Dave.
27. Paint a painting.
28. Be an extra in a film.
29. Ride a zip line.
30. Fry a pickle.
31. Race all events of a running or biking series.
32. Learn to play tennis.
33. See a show at Austin City Limits.
34. Read 10 books from the New York Times best seller list.
35. Create a joke from scratch.
36. Host a "lazy" adventure race.
37. Be an audience member for the taping of a live show.
38. Spend the day at a spa resort.
39. Host a rooftop dinner party.
40. Complete a photographic series and display somewhere.

         

                                             Happy Birthday to me. 

Me time becomes marathon time.

Our schedule is busy to say the least.  Like busy to the point where my friends and I exchange emails with lines such as "would LOVE to see you guys...how do the next two months look?"  There have been some great studies done recently on how all this busyness will affect us in the long term and why we feel the need to stay so busy but that's another post.  And, as apparently there are still only so many hours in a day, I constantly feel the pressure to choose oh so very wisely what we fill those time slots with.  There are of course the mandatory items.  Sleep (hopefully), work and school, eating well, travel time, attacking the never ending to-do list, and then, if there's anything left, maybe a few hours for fun and doing whatever we choose.  This is the time slot that I find the most stressful, ironically.  Maybe it's because all the other things aren't really an option.  But this time, the "me" time, is all you get a say in so it better be good and it better make you happy.  Do I nap, workout, see friends, sit and read, just sit, DIY, walk in the woods?  The possibilities are endless and therein lies the problem.

My alone time was pretty unstructured for a while which was great.  It varied from week to week, and I found myself feeling like it was the reset button I needed.  Until I decided to take on another marathon, my 9th overall (I think) and my first since the kiddos were born.  Training for anything with significant distance takes two major things:  time and energy.  And, you got it, those are the two things a working mom of toddlers has very little of.  But I was looking forward to a few things.  Hours on winding country roads, seeing the seasons change, feeling my body become more efficient as the mileage increases, checking off training weeks and looking towards a final date.  It brought back a lot of memories.  Unfortunately, things have changed a bit.  Which seems like the understatement of the decade.  And all of a sudden, a 22 mile training run isn't something you think about and plan for weeks, even months, in advance.  It's something that you remember you're doing the night before, throw together a route, check the weather - crap, it's supposed to ice?  where are those winter gloves? - and hope your overly supportive hubby can pitch in and pick up the kids when you inevitably don't hit your goal pace and are literally running too late to do it yourself.  (Sorry again, babe!)  It's something that you hope you have the time to enjoy along the way because Lord knows, when you get home, stretching is probably out, showering might happen IF they nap, and you'll be eating goldfish by the handful as a recovery meal while you simultaneously referee between the kids and catch up on work emails.

Fast forward, because time does little else these days, to the day of the race.  I made the decision to leave the family at home.  Judge it either way but this one was for me.  I had fought for training time, woken up early for speed work, managed to work jobs, keep a household somewhat running, and, to my knowledge, not kill anyone during the process.  Whatever happened, I was more proud of toeing that start line and excited about crossing that finish line than I think I ever have been before.  There will be plenty of races for the kids to see mommy run in, plenty of time to show them the healthy lifestyle that I hope more than anything they will take on themselves.  This one was mine.  And isn't that an important lesson in itself?  To show your children that it's ok to make time for yourself, to have hobbies and passions that you don't have to share/post/tweet to feel proud of?  What the hell do I know, but I would love to believe that by making, not finding, my own alone time and choosing well how to spend that time, I'll inspire them to set their own goals, athletic or not, and look inward for their own happiness.

In the beginning, I started this training program to see if the marathon distance was something I could see myself doing consistently again at this point.  Would it be attainable with our crazy busy lives, but, more importantly, would it be FUN?  I think hindsight is always a bit rosy but I can say that yes, there's something about 26.2 that I'm not done with.  I'll get my more relaxed alone time back soon.  For now, it will come and go with the race seasons, life commitments, and family milestones.

Expectations.

I'm glad we went.  Of course I am.  It's the place that I spent 17 summers of my life.  In childhood years, I grew up there.  All of it I remember so clearly and just as most profound things are, this trip was draped in fun, grateful moments and clouded by sad realizations.   

Having my family there felt very full circle.  All of the memories I have from being a child in that place, I got to witness with my own children.  Wrapping them in towels on the deck, buckling their life jackets, playing in the sand, watching them drive the boat, reading comic books at breakfast, walking to get ice cream, looking out the big bay window, eating at the picnic table, swinging in the hammock.  At times I felt like I was spending the entire vacation re-absorbing the place that holds so much family history for us, all the while dealing with the immediacy of impatient toddlers.  Because they have no idea.  They don't know what it's like to say good-bye to a place you love, to try and make sense of the passing of time, to attempt to balance the insistent and very loud present with the ever distancing past.

The place I thought I was taking my kids to, the place I grew up in, isn't really there anymore.  Physically and symbolically, it's changing.  Aging.  It doesn't logistically "fit" the life I have now and I guess that realization surprised me.  And I know I'll be ok with that at some point, but right now, it's pretty sad.  Those who know me well right now know that I'm in the process of giving myself breaks, of not putting too much pressure or permanence on how I'm feeling.  For this trip, I'm letting myself hang on to the memories we made while mourning the changes of the place I knew so well that my own children will not.  

So I took lots of pictures.

 Dinner in the hotel hallway.  I wonder if the monitor would reach to the pool...

Rowan loved to drive the boat.

Avery, not so much.

The pieces of bread Rowan didn't consume, the seagulls really appreciated.

 Daddy's girl.

New playmates!

French fries and gravy.  Americans will never understand.

Blueberry picking/eating.

Rowan's namesake.  I adore this photo.

 

 Loooonnnnnng drive.

Summer Thoughts

Wow.  Two whole posts in a year.  That's got to be some kind of record.  To my credit, it's been a busy year.  A busy and great and hard and fun and challenging and incredible year. 

Looking back at the pictures from January, I can't believe how much they've changed.  Hair, toofs, stability.  Such a difference in such a short time.  It's really hard to believe that we as parents can hope to keep up at all.  It seems to me so far that having toddlers is all about just that, keeping up.  People constantly tell me that time at this age flies by and I believe it wholeheartedly, during the hardest times, I'm actually a teensy bit thankful.  :)  But most of the time I feel like we're working hard at life, work, family, and attempting to have fun... all the while trying to hang on to moments before they become memories.  Because, to me, that blog post seems like yesterday.  And a decade ago all at the same time.

Halfway through the summer.  Fun times behind and even more to come.

 Very serious wheelbarrowing.

 Happy birthday, Mama Rooke!

 Weekly park visits

 Make your fishy face!

 We love visitors

  Goofballs.