A Running Monologue

2006-03-14T07:52:00.000-08:00

You’ve GOT to be kidding.

My roommate from college used to say, “It’s like dying from a thousand paper cuts.” She meant, of course, that while she had suffered no major devastation, she felt bombarded by small but painful inconveniences. Last week I was suffering from several annoying little paper cuts and one big ass thorn.

It all started with an announcement on Sunday morning that my co-chair, who had volunteered to organize, cook and serve our Ash Wednesday Pancake Supper, had not organized anything, bought anything, and would not even be present at said event. Guess who threw together a last minute pancake supper? Not a big deal really, just very annoying. The morning after the pancake supper, a faulty latch on the back gate let my wayward furry children, Ellie and Caribou, out to wreak havoc on the neighbors… again. I came home from dropping Harper Lee off at school to a hysterical phone message and a warning that the next time the dogs got out, they would be shot. Picture my body as the little cartoon thermometer gradually filling up with red-hot liquid until my head exploded. The next two days were filled with anxiety-induced nausea, crying, insomnia, and the grim realization that one of our dogs must be placed in another home. Meanwhile, my grandfather’s health is steadily declining, and my parents are under tremendous stress. Top it off with quite possibly the most laid-back, slow-moving building contractor in the universe, and you’ve got yourself several itching, burning paper cuts.

That’s why I decided to call a babysitter on Sunday afternoon and go mountain biking with Rob. “We just need to get out and blow off some steam,” I said. But being the stressed out worry-ball that I am, I was stiff and tight and gripping the handlebars of my bike as if my life depended on it and, consequently, was not riding too well. I was also trying out my new clip-less pedals for the first time at Fisher River Park, a fairly technical trail that often requires me to be able to put my foot down quickly. You know where this is going, right? I wish I could say that it had been an exciting, high-speed crash at the bottom of an awesome jump, but basically, I just went around a turn, forgot to snap my foot out of the pedal, and fell sideways into a pile of brush. It was embarrassingly stupid. So I dusted myself off and picked the bike up. That’s when I noticed the pain and the appearance of a piece of wood that had someone popped up underneath my skin like a tent stake.

Rob tried to get it out but to no avail, so we stopped by the drugstore on the way home for tweezers and hydrogen peroxide. Imagine how happy I was that we had actually paid someone to stay with our kids for this particular outing. After several failed attempts at home, including having Rob make a small incision in my arm with a razor blade, I packed a book for the long wait at the emergency room. The emergency room was no better. While I have had nothing but good experiences with our local hospital under normal circumstances, the emergency room is basically a glorified first-aid station, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never go there again. Basically, they told me, “We can’t find it. Put some warm towels on it, and maybe it will come out or just go away.” Huh? So I did.

Two days later my arm was red, swollen, and completely useless. Changing diapers, putting up ponytails, and maneuvering a twenty-pound baby in and out of a high chair is not easy with one arm. I went back to the doctor, who after an ultrasound said I did indeed have a foreign body in my arm. You think? They sent me to a surgeon who opened my arm up, dug around for over an hour, then stitched it back up and said, “If they’d just made a superficial cut on Sunday night when you first went in, this would have been easy to remove, but after two days, it has moved beneath the tendons and nerves. I’m sending you over to the hospital to be admitted, and we’ll do surgery this afternoon.”

Everything turned out fine. The surgeon removed the offending thorn, a long, thin spike-like thing that I now have in a jar on my kitchen shelf, my mom came for a few days, I have a ridiculous, but funny story to tell and one more scar to add to my collection. A $3,000.00 thorn was just the icing on the cake that was my week, and somehow it calmed me down. The whole thing just seemed too stupid to take seriously, and as always, it put things in perspective for me. I understand the fact that God has to grab me by the hair of the head and shake me once in a while. I’m quite exasperating, I’m sure. I just hope that next time His reality check isn’t quite as expensive

2006-03-01T08:30:00.000-08:00

Drunk Monkeys

Our living room is blanketed in an inch of white sheetrock dust. Until yesterday, the cats were making their way in and out of the house via holes they had torn in the insulation in our ceiling. The wind has been whistling through a very noticeable crack in the wall inside Isaac’s “bedroom,” also known as the sunroom. I can see daylight through the corner of my shower. There are stacks of Rubbermaid totes lining the walls of my bedroom, and just yesterday, I read an article listing the ways one might control stress in his or her life. The number one strategy? An organized, clean and clutter-free living space. Hmmm…

Needless to say, I am on the brink of madness. My contractor makes fun of me for my addiction to running, and I’m this close to saying, “You know, if it weren’t for running, I would have ripped your head off your body by now,” but I am refraining. Running is my last remaining link to mental stability.

Most days I do really well with the whole mess, but sometimes, usually in the middle of the night, I am gripped by anxiety so strong I end up crying and making myself almost sick. It’s totally a control issue. I hate it when things are beyond my control, and I’ve tried to make this into a learning experience, a way to grow, but sometimes I just have to get the hell out of here.

That’s why Rob made reservations a couple of weekends ago for the four of us to stay in a hotel with an indoor pool and shopping and restaurants close by. We didn’t go anywhere particularly special or even that far away, but we weren’t at home, and that’s all that mattered to me.

Harper Lee had a great time in the pool, and even Isaac, once he got used to the cool water, kicked and splashed and had a wonderful time. I’ve learned that this is an excellent way to get a decent nap of out him as well. Basically, Saturday was a perfect day. We swam, we napped, we took a leisurely stroll over to the bookstore and browsed the shelves for new reading material. It was exactly what I’d been looking for.

Then we went to dinner. It was not a bad experience, but it was not what one might call relaxing either. As Harper Lee sang, burped, and shot paper off the end of her straw all while wearing a paper “Fuddrucker’s” hat, Isaac shouted loudly and banged his fists on the table as if demanding, “Feed me bananas! More bananas!” In between veggie puffs being slung to the floor and repeated trips to the drink fountain for refills of lemonade, Rob and I managed to choke down a couple of burgers and some onion rings, both of which made us sicker than dogs later that night.

At one point, I glanced over at Rob as he repaired a mangled paper hat and began to laugh. “What are you laughing at?” he asked.

“Fifteen years ago, when we were out together on a Saturday night, did you ever once picture this? I feel like we’re having dinner with a couple of drunk monkeys.” I said.

He laughed. “Yeah, things have changed.”

But then I said, “Of course, if you think about it, this probably isn’t all that different from a Saturday night fifteen years ago.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, fifteen years ago, chances are good we were sitting at a table in some bar with people singing, burping, banging on the table and shouting, “Where’s my beer?” We might have even been one of them. The only difference is that now we are always the designated drivers.”

So, while our trip was a reminder of how things have changed, it was also a reminder of how much they stay the same. It’s true that instead of slamming back shots of Jim Beam, I was trying to grab just a few bites here and there of my burger in between wiping mashed bananas and drool from someone else’s chin, but I still love Rob, still enjoy hanging out with him, and still have a good time whenever we’re together. It’s just that now I love the drunk monkeys with us just as much.

2006-02-17T11:58:00.000-08:00

Naked Somersaults

Harper Lee loves gymnastics. She even has a balance beam and trapeze bar in the backyard, and she likes to practice her jumps, flips and rolls in front of the mirror in my bedroom. Usually this practice session takes place right before or after bath time while I nurse Isaac and watch “the show.” Because it is during our evening bath and bed routine, it usually means she’s naked. Have you ever watched a pre-schooler do naked somersaults? If you have kids, I’m sure you probably have, and if so, then you probably also know that it’s one of the funniest and sweetest things you’ll ever witness.

As Harper Lee leapt across the room with total joy and abandon the other night, I wondered when it is exactly that we lose that confidence, that happiness with ourselves, completely free from negative thoughts and self-doubt. I mean, think about it; even if you were completely alone in your house and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that no one would see you, wouldn’t you still feel weird rolling head over heels on the carpet without a stitch on? Maybe you wouldn’t, in which case I think you are probably very well adjusted… or slightly deviant. I guess it depends on just how “joyful” it makes you.

The point is this: At what age do we begin to feel ashamed? And, if you knew what age it was, what could you do to prevent it from happening to your children? Or could you? Don’t get me wrong. I have no desire to raise a colony of nudists. I’m not really talking about making sure my kids want to run around naked as jaybirds. I’m talking about making sure they appreciate what wonderful things their bodies are. Whether they look like a model or movie star is completely irrelevant. I want them to revel in the wonder of their bodies and the awesome things they can do.

I see Harper Lee running as fast as she can and extending her legs out into these crazy little crooked leaps with her arms stretched up to the sky, and it makes my heart ache to think about the day that some dorky kid tells her she has ugly feet or she runs like a giraffe or whatever completely false but stupid and hurtful thing kids might say to one another, because that will be the beginning. The little doubts will creep in, and suddenly, the arms will stretch skyward a little less and the leaps will all but disappear.

Or she may be one of the few, who despite the inevitable cruelties of childhood and, God forbid, adolescence, will take it all with a grain of salt, look in the mirror and say, “I like my feet. They run fast, they jump high, and they don’t smell bad.” And with that, I imagine, she’ll twirl around, shake her hips and leap through life, happy and confident. That’s one of my goals anyway.

2005-11-03T11:02:00.000-08:00

Happily Ever After

I like Disney movies as much as the next person, and I remember the magic of seeing “Sleeping Beauty” for the first time. My parents took me to downtown Asheville on a cold, rainy afternoon to see it on the big screen. I think my mom still has the picture of the three fairies that I drew on a notepad in the glove compartment of my dad’s truck after the movie. And now, almost twenty-eight years later, I get to relive the magic through my four-year-old’s eyes. She is in love with all of the Disney princesses.

Which is great, I guess, except that I am also seeing through thirty-three year old eyes this time, and I have to tell you, the princesses are not exactly the poster girls for the feminist movement. For her birthday, Harper Lee got a “princess” CD that she absolutely loves. We listen to it constantly. It’s cute and sweet, and she loves to dance to it, but I find portions of it faintly disturbing.

One song in particular is about “waiting for my prince,” which is harmless enough, I guess, but it’s the underlying messages that really get to me. I still believe that part of my problem as a teenage girl was that I had watched too many old movies depicting love as a type of search and rescue mission. I was supposed to sit by helplessly, while still working tirelessly to look good, and wait for some boy to search me out and sweep me off my feet. Imagine my surprise when most of the boys who searched me out turned out to be toads.

Finding “my prince” became way too important to me. It was so important, in fact, that I let what was essentially me slip by the wayside. In “waiting for my prince,” I lost myself. Sounds hokey, I know, but it’s true. I became so caught up in finding that perfect relationship that I completely let go of myself. I even began to do things that were decidedly not like me at all. And therein lies my problem with the princesses.

OK, so you want a prince. That’s great. There are some to be had. I, myself, have found one, but it didn’t happen until I quit waiting for him. That’s what I want Harper Lee to understand. She deserves a prince, if that’s what she wants, but she doesn’t have to wait on him to show up. He’ll show up when she least expects it, and in the meantime, she should be working on her PhD, writing a novel, creating abstract sculptures from used gardening equipment, finding a cure for cancer, teaching first graders to read, or whatever wonderful thing it is that makes her happy.

Men are wonderful. I grew up with a wonderful father, I have a wonderful husband, some of my best friends are wonderful men, and now, I have a wonderful son. I love them all very much, and they love me. But here’s the best part—unlike cartoon and silver screen men, they are real. They each love me for who I am, who I really am.

Rob Libbert loved me when I was a stressed-out grad student, he loved me as a sleep-deprived, unkempt mess of a new mom, not once, but twice, he loves me in sweaty running clothes, he loves me when I wake up grouchy with horrible bed-head, he loves me when I bitch and gripe about dirty laundry, and he loves me when I lose my temper and yell and scream. He just loves me, because I’m me-- warts and all. He has never once expected me to be what I am not. Real men don’t require that you be a fake, smiling-all-the-time, perfectly coiffed simpleton. If I teach Harper Lee nothing else, I hope that she at least learns this—sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between royalty and amphibians. The only way to be sure is to follow your own heart and be true to yourself. The toads will inevitably hop away. Only a prince can appreciate a real woman.

2005-10-19T11:50:00.000-07:00

Digging Up Bones

We dug Murphy up two weekends ago. The builder is going to have to excavate the area where he was buried in order to build the foundation for our new addition, so I made Rob get the shovel and dig his grave. I was not about to let someone else bulldoze his remains, but once we did it, I sort of realized how insignificant our remains actually are.

I have always been afraid of the destruction of my body, even after death. This is probably one more glimpse into my dark and slightly bizarre psyche that I would be better off hiding, but I don’t like the idea of not being “whole.” Some of my worst fears center around the loss of body parts, even if I’m dead and wouldn’t know the difference. I don’t want any parts lost, like, for instance, one half of me at the bottom of the ocean and the other half swimming away in the belly of a shark. I wouldn’t want to be cremated either with millions of my particles floating away from each other on the breeze. I also don’t want to die in an unknown area away from home and be left to decompose in a remote jungle or on top of a snow-capped mountain. Of course, rotting in a box under the ground doesn’t exactly make me jump up and down with joy, but it is my preferred method of departure from the world.

But now that I have sifted through dirt and collected the bones of my most beloved dog, I don’t know why this particular ritual is so important to me. Apparently, exhuming the remains of pets is one of the few things on Rob’s list that he just absolutely will not do, so while he did do most of the difficult digging, as soon as we saw a hint of the first bone, he handed the shovel to me and went into the house. I got down on my hands and knees and began taking him out piece by piece. I knew that after four years, all that would be left would be bone, and I had told myself that even if it wasn’t all gone, there was nothing to be grossed out by, because it was, after all, just old Murph. But he was gone, completely. Even the blue afghan I had wrapped him in was gone. We had a thick, blue blanket that we often curled up in together on the couch for naps, and that is what I decided to bury him in. Not one thread of that blanket remained. In fact, all that did remain were some long, skinny leg bones, ribs, a pelvis, what I guess were shoulder blades, single vertebrae, a skull and a blue and green lizard collar that I bought for him at some little hippie shop in Asheville. I cried when I saw that, but, for the most part, it was not horribly sad. I scraped the dirt from his eye sockets and looked at his funny little front teeth and laughed when I thought about what a goofball he always was, but it was not as bad as I had expected it to be. If anything, it just made me realize that we are not our bodies. Of course, intellectually I have always known this, but it really hit me as I sat on the ground looking at this tiny pile of bones that had once been my dog. It was Murphy, but not really. Murphy was so much more than this.

I’ve even begun to look at my living body differently. Sometimes I can be a little uptight about my physical appearance. I have no delusions that I am beautiful, but I like being attractive, and while there’s little I can do about my Granddaddy Stotesbury ears or my pudgy knees, I do work pretty hard to keep my body fit. The past couple of months have been pretty discouraging for me because of it. While I’m sure it is vain to admit this, my stomach used to be my favorite body part. Now it is a mushy pouch that rolls up and hangs sloppily over the waistband of my pants. I hate it-- not my stomach, but the way it looks. This, of course, is only superficial. When I look at Isaac, I am pretty impressed with my flabby abdomen. The fact that my skin could stretch to the absolute limits to accommodate a ten- pound baby and then snap back to a reasonably normal size is pretty darned impressive. And it’s done it not only once but two times. I guess I should cut my stomach and myself a little slack and take into account the magnitude of what my body is capable of.

It’s just one more mark of living. For all the time we spend obsessing over being “perfect,” worshipping airbrushed models and movie stars and spending millions of dollars in covering up our imperfections, what we are doing is actually covering up the signs that we have lived. At age 33, I have two yellow teeth from nerve damage incurred from pulling myself up on a table at nine months of age, a long pink scar on my right calf from an awesome mountain bike crash nine years ago, wider hips from Harper Lee’s birth, a long, angry-looking purple scar across my lower abdomen from Isaac’s birth, a sore hamstring from miles of running on roads and trails, freckles across my nose from days spent outdoors playing with my children, running with the kids, and riding my bike and wrinkles around my eyes from much laughter. Those things make my body imperfect, I guess, but they make my life so much better.

2005-09-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

“Sleep When the Baby Sleeps” and Other Loads of Crap

I am so tired I can barely see straight. Isaac is officially eight weeks old today, and we are not even close to sleeping through the night. We are up three to four times a night, and I am wearing thin. Actually I have crossed over from just “tired” to something altogether different. Sometimes it doesn’t even feel like fatigue anymore. It’s more like being on autopilot, a zombie-like state. It’s that level of exhaustion that actually prevents you from sleeping on the rare occasion that you can actually lie down and close your eyes. Why is it that at the time in your life that you most need to have it together and be at your absolute best, you are dragged down, bleary-eyed and almost constantly confused? In Isaac’s short time on this planet I have locked him in the car at Eckerd’s, walked out of the grocery store without paying, and almost rear-ended two different cars while driving Harper Lee to school. I’m not sure I should even be allowed out of the house much less to be the primary caregiver to two small human beings.

I finally had my major meltdown two days ago. Poor Rob stayed home on Tuesday to help me out after a particularly difficult night. It sucks for him, but that’s probably the reason I finally flipped out. On an ordinary day, I’d just suck it up and do what had to be done, but since he was here, I went ahead with the two-hour crying jag that had been building up inside of me for close to two months. Between me and multiple e-mails and conference calls from work, Rob said his head felt like it was being slowly crushed in a vice, and his hands actually began to shake. By Tuesday night, we were both lying crumpled on the couch feeling completely deflated. That’s a good word for it actually—deflated.

Don’t get me wrong—Isaac is a really good baby. He’s not a screamer, and he’s easy to love and care for, because he’s such a snuggler and very happy, but he is also a “booby baby” as my friend calls it, and his constant night-time snacking is beginning to wear me down. Of course now I understand why so many breast-feeding activists seem like these militant, breast Nazis. Support for breast-feeding, even, and sometimes particularly, from friends and family is appallingly low. I cannot tell you the number of times I have had someone tell me that I need to give him a bottle, formula, or rice cereal. Never mind the fact that breast milk is the way God intended children to be fed, that people have survived for centuries on breast milk, that babies don’t even have the enzymes in their bodies at this age to process rice cereal, or that every doctor in the universe agrees that breastfeeding is best. Apparently my troubles would all be over if I let Beech-Nut or Gerber do the work. So I gave in. I decided to try bottles of formula, and you know what? He did the same damned thing with a bottle that he did with me, so there’s nothing wrong with my milk. He didn’t sleep any longer with formula, sometimes he slept less, he was fussier, and his poop was just out and out scary. The lesson? Do what you know is right and what your heart tells you to do and tell everyone else to do the same… with their OWN baby.

Feeling testy? Hell, yes. I’ve not slept in over two months. Longer than that if you count the miserable nights of pregnancy. I have housework to do, journal entries to write, although most of you probably aren’t even reading this anymore and have given me up for dead, church activities to plan, another child that needs as much attention as the baby, 14 more pounds of fat to run off, cross-country meets, and a husband that I used to see more often than just stumbling past one another in the dark, wee-hours of morning. But, unlike the first time around, I know this too shall pass. Isaac will sleep through the night, and someday I’ll forget all about this. I’m giving myself at least until Halloween before I really lose a grip.

2005-09-01T10:50:00.000-07:00

Mental Notes

Well, for the few of you who don’t know, Robert Isaac Libbert was born on Thursday, July 28 at 7:33 in the evening. He was 9 pounds 14 ounces and 21 1/2 inches long. He was also completely breech resulting in my worst fear, a C-section. But everything went pretty smoothly, and we are doing just fine. Of course, in light of my last psycho entry and the fact that I’ve not written in over six weeks, most of you probably guessed that the baby had come. It has been pretty much the kind of five weeks you might expect.

In fact, this entry and most of the ones to follow for quite some time will probably resemble my living room at this moment—total chaos. Right now there are blankets and pillows piled up on the couch. Rob has been sleeping out here since we decided to break the evenings into shifts in order to allow at least a few uninterrupted hours of sleep for each of us. There are toys, baby swings, baby vibrating chairs, nursing pillows, bottles of Mylicon infant gas drops, dirty dishes, boxes of Harper Lee’s art supplies, and other assorted things that I ordinarily wouldn’t leave lying around all over the place. It is, in other words, my version of hell, but I am remaining amazingly calm about the whole thing. Unlike my first time around with this, I know that this period of my life will be distressingly short. While it feels like an eternity before your baby sleeps through the night and develops a routine, before you know it, you’ll wake up to a genuine little kid who dresses herself, makes her own cereal, and is spending the afternoon with friends without you. When people tell you to relax and enjoy this part of parenthood, they know what they’re talking about. Maybe it’s the exhaustion and bleary-eyed sleep deprivation that most parents suffer from for most of the first year, but the time slips away and is gone forever before you ever realize it.

Harper Lee has, in just five short weeks, gone from being my little baby to my little girl. I am happy, because she has taken her new role as big sister and big kid in the family and run with it, but I am just slightly heartbroken when she says to me, “Mama, I just don’t need you as much anymore.” Of course she quickly amended this statement with, “I still like you, Mama, but I’m a big girl now, so I don’t need you as much.” This is probably true, and I’m relieved that she feels such confidence in herself, but it was one of those moments that every mother has from time to time when she, very briefly, doesn’t recognize the kid standing before her. It is bittersweet to say the least.

Isaac, on the other hand, is every bit the baby. Just when I’m thinking of ramming my head through the wall from the sheer torture of late-night wailing, constant rocking, sore nipples and aching shoulders, he looks at me with those big blue eyes, forms a perfect little “O” with his sweet lips, squeals with delight and then flashes a huge, gummy grin. I am reminded of the wonder and joy of raising another human being, and I’m convinced that it is all part of God’s design. Harper Lee summed it up best. Yesterday as I watched from the hallway as she and Isaac snuggled on her sleeping bag, she whispered to him, “You’re everything I wanted wrapped in a little present.” She leaned over to kiss the top of his head and added, “You’re the best boy ever.” Who needs sleep?

2005-07-23T21:47:00.000-07:00

Don’t Blame Me… It’s My “Delicate” Condition

I am bored as hell. I’ve been sitting here flipping back and forth between the Tour de France, which I’ve already seen once today, and re-runs of about three or four different movies. I’m also gnawing on a chunk of raw cabbage. This is life at the end of pregnancy.

Last week I was praying that the baby would not come before I had a chance for some much needed “free time.” My parents met us on Saturday and took Harper Lee for the better part of the week to their house. I spent the next five days sleeping, reading, sleeping, watching bad TV and sleeping. It was awesome, and it made me realize how absolutely exhausted I had been. I don’t think it’s all that unusual to not realize the extent of your fatigue until you actually slow down, and then it hits you like a ton of bricks. That’s basically what happened to me, but after a few days, I was completely revived and refreshed. Take note here that a few days of doing nothing is a pretty healthy thing to do.

But the “free time” has passed, and my body is getting bigger every day. I have officially entered the “miserable” stage. I thought I had already reached that point a couple of weeks ago, but I was sadly mistaken. I cannot bend down to pick things up, walking is beginning to wear me out, I can’t roll over in bed, I can’t get off the couch without pain and feeling that something is tearing apart, I can’t get my tennis shoes on, my jewelry has been in a drawer for over a month, my stomach is so sore I can barely stand the feel of a cotton T-shirt on it, I have only two cotton T-shirts left that cover my gigantic belly, my shorts are riding up between my thighs like the quintessential fat girl, and I had to pull a chair up to the table at Subway today, because I could not fit in the booth. This sucks, and I am bored to death with it.

I still regard those who say things like, “I love being pregnant,” and “I felt the best of my whole life when I was pregnant,” as either being insane or liars. There is no way this could be the best. If it was, I’d have to off myself immediately. And here’s the politically incorrect question of the day: “While not everyone chooses to be fat, for most people it is a lifestyle choice. Why? Why? Why?” If I had to live like this all the time, I would be the meanest fat person alive. Why do fat people have that reputation of being jolly and funny? I don’t see how they possibly could be. When you are literally dragging extra weight around, you’re out of breath, you have trouble moving normally, you can’t get into and out of cars, chairs, the bathtub, etc. without difficulty, you sweat in odd and uncomfortable places, your joints hurt, your back hurts, and it’s just a pain in the ass. Is going to the gym really so horrible that you would choose to live this way over walking on a treadmill for 60 minutes a day? Don’t get me wrong. I hate the treadmill myself. It’s boring, but holy shit, it’s one hour a day in exchange for 23 that are pain and exertion free. I know, I know-- this is not the popular thing to say, and I know that I sound incredibly insensitive, but I am feeling trapped in a bulky, cumbersome body, and while I appreciate the miracle it is now a part of, I cannot wait to see it shrink back to normal size. God, please let it shrink back to normal size.

Anyway, as I was complaining, once again, about my misery and being trapped in a house when I should be outside running, biking, or gardening, Rob suggested I write. “Write about how you’re feeling,” he said, so you can blame him. Meanwhile, I’m just waiting for my water to break or for something, anything to happen. I’ll continue to cram my swollen feet into my “running” shoes and walking the roads after the sun has set in hopes of coaxing this kid out, and I’ll keep cleaning this house, although I am almost insane from picking up other people’s stuff and washing the same damned clothes over and over and over again, but hopefully the next time I write, I will have something new and interesting to talk about. Hopefully, I’ll be so busy, I’ll be longing for those days of boredom and waiting. Nah… I doubt it.

2005-07-14T18:15:00.000-07:00

Figured out how to turn on comments. Click on the "#"...

2005-07-13T20:58:00.000-07:00

I’ll Tell You What

We went to Chuck E. Cheese yesterday for Tyler’s sixth birthday, and Harper Lee’s fear and loathing of the giant-headed mouse has not worn off. She spent a good portion of our lunch eyeing the mechanical mouse at the front of the room with great suspicion, and I was hoping against hope that we could make it through the day without the one that comes out actually making an appearance, especially after I foolishly said, “Don’t worry, he can’t get out.” And we almost made it. Just as we were leaving the restroom for a final potty break before the trip home, out walked the guy in the ratty rat costume.

“I can’t go by that creepy thing!” she shrieked as we worked our way back to the table the long way.

Later that day, she said to me, in a very serious, miniature adult voice, “I’ll tell you what, I don’t like people dressed up. They’re scary. I think they’re bad people.”

And it’s pretty much been that way from the beginning. She has never liked people dressed up, as animals in particular. This past Easter, she ran an entire 1K kiddie fun run at our local park only to be carried across the finish line in tears, because a guy dressed up as a giant Easter bunny was handing out the awards. Later than night, we had to have a long talk about how the Easter bunny would actually leave her goodies. She was not at all happy with the idea of a strange rabbit creeping around her house in the dark. In fact, she was willing to give up the whole Easter basket thing entirely, telling me to leave a note that said, “Go away, nasty rabbit!”

Rob and I have decided that this does not bode well for DisneyWorld.

I guess what’s most humorous to me about the whole thing is that this, what I consider totally irrational, fear is coming from a kid who, in most instances, is completely fearless. She’s not afraid of animals, people, unfamiliar places or unusual situations (although she does have this hilarious involuntary shiver whenever she sees creepy, crawly things that, for whatever reason, gross her out at the moment), but a man in a dog suit is more than she can handle. It’s the stuff of nightmares. I guess it just goes to show that even the most fierce and brave among us have our weak spots. And, unfortunately, I think our fears only increase the older we get.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. I have totally different fears now than I did as a kid. I was actually afraid of a lot of things as a small child. My parents made sure of it. This is not a disparaging remark against my parents. Sometimes I think it’s necessary to scare children as a means of protecting them from the crazy world we live in, but my parents did their job a little too well, I think. I’d like to be able to make Harper Lee respectful and aware but not make her cringe at the thought of “what might happen” every time an opportunity presents itself.

As an adult, though, my fears have multiplied, and while I don’t wake up screaming in the night, as I did as a kid when I dreamed about monsters and ghosts, I do lie awake worrying about what some might consider irrational fears.

What am I afraid of? Well, let’s see. Where to begin? I’m afraid of snakes, not just in general, but snakes in the yard that might bite my child. Rob finds this one particularly funny which is bizarre to me considering Ellie, our dog, was bitten by a copperhead only last summer in our back yard and almost died, and there’s a snake living in the barn that he and Harper Lee have actually seen. I’ve only seen it’s skin hanging on the beam over my gardening equipment. Oh, and then there’s the little baby one that I just found, not even half an hour ago, trying to come in my front door when I went out to feed the cats. I pushed it back out with my toe and left it for the cats to torment.

I’m also afraid of being a bad mother, of having my children write down what they consider all my faults and mistakes years from now in a blog that they allow friends and complete strangers to read. I’m afraid of being irritable, having a bad day, or yelling about something stupid and completely ruining my child for the rest of her life.

I’m afraid of losing a child.

I’m afraid of being lost, of being replaced by some other woman that will raise my kids, and being all but forgotten.

I’m afraid of crazy people that are lurking around every corner, just waiting to wreck my world and destroy everything in it. Don’t believe they exist? Watch the news.

I’m afraid of losing valuable time on this gorgeous planet by worrying about things beyond my control.

See, I told you they might seem irrational, and I know that most of them are, although I’ve seen actual physical proof of the damned snake. Most of the time, I feel guilty about worrying as much as I do. To be as blessed as I am and to worry anyway seems fruitless, wasteful and downright dumb, but maybe my parents weren’t too far off the mark by instilling a little fear in me. Fear protects us and keeps us from having to face some of what we most dread. As long as we don’t allow it to completely debilitate us, fear is probably a healthy thing. It keeps me from allowing my child to play unattended in the barn, it keeps me from leaving her “just for a minute” while I run into the convenience store, it keeps me from tearing my hair out and screaming like a crazy person when I’ve told Harper Lee to do something for the hundredth time, and it keeps me from being too afraid of being afraid. Actually, it makes me realize that what I have is a good thing, and I need to do whatever I can to protect it and care for it, so fear can’t be entirely bad.

I guess it mostly comes down to maintaining a little perspective. Yes, there are those who murder poor children in Iraq with car bombs, but there are also some pretty good-hearted guys handing out candy and toys to those same kids who just want to be kids. There is much to fear, but I’ll tell you what, there is much to embrace too.

2005-07-07T14:43:00.000-07:00

Waxing Nostalgic

It’s raining like crazy here today, so Harper Lee and I headed over to the local movie theatre this morning for a free showing of “The Wizard of Oz.” Apparently there are free kid movies every Tuesday and Thursday morning during the summer. I just happened to come across this information while playing around on the Internet. Of course, when I got the listing of the rest of the summer’s movies, I realized that this will be the only one we actually go to see, since most “kid” movies are anything but.

Someone needs to tell Hollywood writers that fart jokes, suggested curse words and innuendo is not good quality children’s entertainment. I grew up with Walt Disney. It came into our house every Sunday evening at 7:00 without fail, and I loved it, but that’s when Disney made movies like “Pollyanna” and “The Apple Dumpling Gang.” Now they have even better feature length films, but they’ve chosen to ruin them by peppering the dialogue with words like “butt” and “What the…?” over and over again. Who is it that they are trying to appeal to? Not my three-year old and certainly not me.

Is it really so hard to imagine a modern world where kids are still completely innocent and where even mild references to sex and inappropriate language is unnecessary? It’s not, if you go to any showing of a classic kid’s movie like we did today. Today’s children are not so jaded that they can’t enjoy the same kinds of things that we did as kids. That’s something Hollywood has decided, and we have bought it hook, line and sinker. That was particularly evident to me today as Dorothy opened the door from her black and white house into the Technicolor dream world of Oz. There was a collective gasp of delight from every kid in that audience, kids that I assume have come into contact with full color films and TV, so what does that mean? It means they don’t have to have the latest, greatest technology at every turn in a movie-going experience. They just need something beautiful that captures their still-innocent and wildly active imaginations. They need something that is made for children.

2005-07-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

A Different Kind of Hunger

It’s that time of year again. Harper Lee has been forced to trade her morning dose of “Sesame Street” for Bob Roll and Phil Liggett. The Tour de France began yesterday. I’ve been looking forward to it since last year, and I knew when it began that I would begin to feel that competitive urge. I’ve been pretty good lately about accepting the fact that I cannot do what I’ve been accustomed to for so long. My workout regimen, as of late, has consisted of 30 to 45 minute walks three to four times a week. That’s all. So watching the tour has gotten some of those juices flowing again, and I’m ready to start training.

This time, though, I swear I’m going to be smart. Two weeks postpartum was probably too early last time, and although I don’t know it for a fact, that may have played a part in the “mystery injury” that plagued me for two and a half years. I’m going to try walking as soon as I’m able and hold off on running for at least a month, but it will be difficult. For one thing, it will be cross-country season, my favorite time of year. It’s bad enough that I’ve missed out on an entire summer of training, but to miss mile repeats at Fisher River and hill workouts on Cave Rd. is almost too much to bear. For another thing, I’m ready to have my body back. I keep trying to remind myself that I was still rather hefty during the Christmas holidays following Harper Lee’s birth, and that was three months later, and I know that I didn’t completely get back down to pre-pregnancy weight until I had finished nursing, which was an entire year later, so I’m attempting to maintain perspective. Still, I’m ready to be able to move like a normal person again and wear clothes that do not resemble something I might tie to a tree in a rainstorm to prevent being soaked.

I’m pretty psyched about getting back out on the mountain bike as well. That may take more than four weeks. Ow… just thinking about that bike seat after labor and delivery makes me cringe. I really do want to give the whole mountain bike racing thing a whirl. I have missed riding more than I thought I might, and having a race to prepare for is just the motivation I need to get out regularly.

Mostly, though, I think I’m just ready to get back to normal, whatever that means. Normal will have to take on a whole new meaning with two children, one of them a newborn, but being able to push Harper Lee all the way down to the creek on Golden Rd. would be a nice place to start. I know she is feeling frustrated with me. I’m sure she thinks an alien life form has taken over her mother’s body. I can’t hold her, carry her, or run with her the way I usually do, and my belly is becoming a very tired excuse, even to me. The other day she asked me to push her stroller down to the creek, a treat she usually enjoys on our runs and walks together, but quite frankly, I just can’t get my cumbersome body, the stroller and her back up the hill, so we stopped to pick wildflowers on the side of the road instead. She’s been a pretty good sport about the whole thing, but she also said, “You can do it, Mama. You always do.” This whole “having a baby” thing is pretty hard to comprehend sometimes… for both of us. Hopefully, this time next month, all three of us will be trekking down to the creek and back up again.

2005-06-30T14:45:00.000-07:00

The Beauty of Brevity

After a third phone call yesterday to ask how I was doing and if I had quit writing in my blog entirely, I decided that I had to take some sort of action. It looks as though this thing may turn into more of a journal than I had originally planned. At first, my aim had been to write a weekly essay. Posting every week turned into posting every two weeks, and lately, it has almost been a monthly thing. I have tons of excuses, but none of them seem particularly valid, since there is no real reason that I can’t just post a “quickie” as often as I want.

While the essays are fun, and I won’t give up on them entirely, I have to admit that just having the discipline to sit down and write something… anything… may be just the skill I need to work on. The whole point of starting an on-line journal was, for me, an exercise in actually doing something I’ve always said I wanted to do. I had said, for years in fact, that I wanted to be a writer, yet my writing was sporadic and not focused at all. While my journal has not been as consistent as I had wanted, it is something I’ve maintained for well over a year now, and I’m pretty pleased with that.

Another aspect of writing on-line that I had not anticipated is that it is a great way to keep in contact with people I rarely talk to anymore. I expected four or five people to read this thing when I first hit the “publish” button last year, but my “readership” has grown quite a bit. I’ve even picked up a few people I don’t know through mutual friends. For that, I’d like to say “thanks.” I’ve gotten some terrific feedback and heard from folks that I haven’t talked to in months and sometimes years.

So, I guess what I’m saying is, “Don’t give up on me yet.” Things have gotten crazier around here lately, and I’m pretty sure that trend will only continue for the next few months. Nothing like having a newborn, a pre-schooler and a hole in the side of your house to promote tranquility and inner peace. But the therapeutic benefits of writing in my journal are too good to abandon, particularly at this point in my life, so maybe my goals just need a little modification.

For a while, I may try writing smaller but more frequent entries. Part of my problem has been the fact that writing an entire essay has seemed daunting at times. I often bring unnecessary and unrealistic expectations to the keyboard. While I often don’t succeed, I have been trying to write an article of sorts every week, but when given the choice between grinding out a piece of literary genius (I know… I’m still working on that) or taking a nap, the nap has won by an overwhelming margin every time. However, if I lighten up on myself and just sit down to write, it doesn’t seem nearly as worrisome.

So here’s to new formats, to changing and adapting, to “going with the flow,” and to not worrying so much. Heck, I may even feel so inspired by my new self-liberation that I actually sit down and figure out how to add photos and feedback to this site. I might even go crazy and change the bright orange logo. Who knows? The possibilities seem endless, so keep checking!

2005-06-17T21:11:00.000-07:00

Vacation… All I Ever Wanted

Once again, I sort of disappeared from the radar for a while. It’s been a very wild month for the Libberts. Between the trip to Chicago, a week at the beach and a week of Vacation Bible School, we have been very busy. Any free time I’ve had has been used primarily for packing, unpacking, laundry and naps. Besides that, this pregnancy is moving along rather quickly, and I’m moving along more and more slowly as the days go by and the temperatures go up.

The trip to Chicago was fabulous. There were no fiery crashes to Earth, and no one was injured, maimed or killed, although at first, things seemed like they might be headed in that direction. We left the house at what we considered a very reasonable time, but Charlotte traffic was much worse than we had anticipated. In fact, it was at a dead standstill. The next time we complain about living in a tiny town with only one shopping center, remind me of this. Even if we lived in Charlotte, the likelihood that I would ever go anywhere or do anything would be about the same as it is here simply because just getting out the door is such a pain in the ass. Anyway, it was in the midst of this sea of unmoving cars that Harper Lee began to complain of a stomach-ache. Fifteen minutes later, the back of the Volvo, including Harper Lee, the car seat, all of her clothing, and blankie, had been sprayed with McDonald’s egg and cheese biscuit vomit. To get the full effect here, keep in mind that the Volvo’s AC was also not working. It was also at this same time that traffic began to move, but in the confusion of a vomiting child and a very pregnant wife trying to crawl into the back seat of a car moving down I-77, Rob missed the exit, and instead of heading south on 85, we went north. Fifteen miles later, we realized what we had done and that we would miss our flight. Even if we could have gotten to the airport on time, there was still the matter of a vomit covered car and child. We couldn’t leave the car in that state for four days, and Harper Lee could not get on a plane until her clothes had been cleaned and blankie was able to be sealed in a plastic bag and packed for the trip. Let’s just say that you have not lived until you have washed your child’s clothes and blanket out in a gas station bathroom.

The next flight was at 1:30. That gave us four hours to kill at the airport, which was not all that bad. Harper Lee was fascinated by the whole scene, and it gave us a chance to see if the upset stomach was a fluke or the onset of a more serious stomach virus. After many trips up and down escalators, through bookstores, and to the window to watch planes take off, we were ready to board. Harper Lee acted like an old pro. She handed over her boarding pass and was down the tunnel before we could get our bags together. She was completely unafraid. It was just a taste of what was to come for the rest of the trip.

To make a long story only slightly shorter, we boarded the plane, sat on the runway for an hour due to bad weather in Chicago, reached Chicago during rush hour, crept our way along the highway to our hotel for three hours, checked in, went to the pool and crashed for the evening. We had made it. Of course, Rob woke me at 1:30 that morning, his eye completely swollen shut and oozing pus, and said that he was driving himself to the emergency room. Apparently, somewhere between the rental car pick-up and Harper Lee’s second attack of vomiting on the side of the highway, Rob had cut his cornea. One tetanus shot and some antibiotics later, and our luck finally began to change.

It turns out that the vomiting was an allergic reaction to an antibiotic/ decongestant that I had given to Harper Lee for a cold I was afraid might cause her ears to ache on the flight. Once we had eliminated that, Harper’s digestive troubles disappeared. We spent a really nice day in the city where Harper Lee went to the American Girl store. That’s a trap for unsuspecting parents if there ever was one. And I made my first ever visit to Neiman-Marcus where the clouds parted and an unearthly ray of light fell upon a perfect pair of turquoise beaded-thong Manolo Blahniks. I, in my Wal-Mart flip-flops, felt only slightly out of place as I tried on my first pair of $730.00 sandals. We also went to the top of the John Hancock building and had lunch at a pretty neat little deli. Basically, our trip involved seeing my first ever really big city from nauseating heights and a trip to both a little girl’s and a big girl’s retail heaven.

The wedding itself was gorgeous. Jennie looked great, and it was only partly because of the killer gown she had found. Mostly, I think, it was genuine happiness. Thank you, Jesus. If ever anyone really deserved it, I think it’s Jennie. And I’m glad we were able to be there. Harper Lee did a great job as flower girl. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of her. She constantly amazes me, but this time, I was really blown away. Of course, being a total ham-ball and having never heard of anything like shyness or self-consciousness helps. It’s probably just a sign of things to come when my three-year old says to me, “I’m going to talk to people,” and begins to walk away in a ballroom full of strangers.

“Who are you going to talk to?” I asked.

“I don’t know. People,” she said, and then she proceeded to pull up a chair at a table of elderly women and regale them with what I can only assume were very amusing pre-school anecdotes, judging from the laughter at the table.

All in all, it was a good time—a trip of firsts for both Harper Lee and myself, some really nice family time, and a surprising amount of time for me to visit with my best friend. As usual, all that anxiety was for naught. Even when things seemed to be heading directly down the crapper, we laughed it off. I told Rob that this trip actually felt like a parenting milestone for me. In my eternal quest for the mellow attitude I so admire in others, I was finally able to take a potentially bad situation and roll with it. While projectile vomit and a missed flight could hardly be considered tribulation, I was proud of myself for dealing with it, laughing it off, and not making it any worse than it already was, which is my ordinary mode of operation. And you know what? Everything went just fine. Remind me of this three months from now when I have a pre-schooler who’s regressing, a colicky newborn and strange men wandering around my house with saws, hammers, bulldozers and other implements of destruction/construction. Remind me that attitude means everything.

2005-05-17T16:01:00.000-07:00

Blackberry Winter

We had a week of temperatures in the mid to high 80’s, and now it is cool and overcast. Every year, when the blackberry bushes bloom, the temperatures drop, and we are reminded one last time of the chilly days of late winter-early spring. But then, just as suddenly, temperatures will soar, and the long, hot days of summer will be here to stay… at least for a while.

Harper Lee is having her own blackberry winter of sorts this week. For two weeks she has taken monster three-hour naps and been so well-behaved that I almost became smug and complacent. “My life is on the easy road now,” I almost let myself think. But true to kid form, her mood has suddenly and without reason turned cool and overcast, reminding me of the last dark days of toddlerhood. Naps have been a struggle this week, her attitude is that of a spoiled major league ball player, and things became terribly ugly this morning when I refused to let her wear her favorite red cowboy boots with a pink floral sundress to the end of school music program. (In all fairness to her, however, I must say that she often wears said boots with flowered dresses to school, church, and anywhere else completely inappropriate, but today, I had to draw the line.) Of course, she does have a cold, and she is worn out from an exciting weekend with my parents, but a snotty three-year old can wear on my nerves like nothing else despite the reasons. That’s when I have to remind myself that these cloudy days too shall pass and that soon the warm, happy days of normalcy will return.

Hopefully Harper Lee will be back to her old self in a few days, because it is almost time for our much-anticipated trip to Chicago. My friend Jennie is getting married over Memorial Day weekend, and we are flying up next week for the festivities. It will be a series of firsts for all of us. For one thing, Harper Lee has never flown. I am nervous, and as always, my doomsday dark-side is worrying incessantly about all of us dying in a fiery crash, but I’m trying to push that aside and focus on the fun stuff as much as possible. This is quite difficult for me, since I am, like my dad, a stomach-acid junkie with an Eyeore complex. Right now the closest I can come to being the happy-go-lucky free spirit that I someday dream of being is thinking to myself, “If we plummet to the Earth in a high-speed fireball, at least we’ll all be together.” Secondly, Harper Lee has never been in a hotel. I think she will get a big kick out of this. Any place with a TV, a pool, elevators, AND an ice machine has got to be high class, right? And then there’s the trip into the city. Rob has been several times, but neither Harper nor I have ever been to a really big city. I’ve been to Atlanta and to Washington, D.C., but apparently, as indicated by Rob’s condescending chuckle towards my adorable, but provincial ideas, these two places do not count as true big city experiences. We are planning on going to the top of the Sears Tower. I’m scared but excited. Harper Lee will be thrilled. And, according to my gynecologist, there are some excellent department stores and art galleries on Michigan Avenue. Maybe I’ll find those Manolos I’ve been keeping an eye out for. At any rate, it should be fun. A weekend with Jennie is never anything less. *Personal note to Jennie: The dress came, and everything is fine. I will not be wearing a Food Lion grocery bag down the aisle.

So, as of next week, our summer plans are officially underway. We have weddings and beach trips and baby showers and vacation Bible schools planned from now until July, so things are definitely heating up. I, personally, can’t wait. Summer is what I live for. The days are long, the air is warm, and there are many watermelons to be eaten. And Harper Lee and I will spend our last days of summer together, just the two of us. We are all so excited about the arrival of our new baby, but there is a part of me that is a little weepy about Harper’s last days as the “only one.” I want us to enjoy this last summer together, but I know that this next season will be just as wonderful as any in the past. This has almost always been true of my life. About five years ago, I think I can remember lying around on the beach with several girlfriends sipping margaritas and thinking summers couldn’t get any better. Now we all spend our summers lying on the same beach, only under protective umbrellas and sipping Hawaiian Punch juice boxes, and we are thinking the same thing. Life can’t get any better… until it does.

2005-05-12T04:13:00.000-07:00

Go, go, go!

It’s 6:30 in the morning, I am up, I am actually doing something, and I’m not angry about it. Pregnancy just keeps getting weirder and weirder all the time. It’s one of those ironies I was talking about. Everyone says, “Rest. Get plenty of sleep.” But what you come to realize, particularly in the third trimester, is that this is next to impossible. For one thing, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to roll over in bed and find any position that could be called anything close to comfortable. For another, my mind is in overdrive almost twenty-four hours a day, but never more than as I’m lying in bed at 4:00 a.m. trying to slip back into sleep after my fifth trip to the bathroom.

For someone who is physically fit, and admittedly proud of it, pregnancy has, both times, been an humbling experience. There are those women, the 1%, who glide through effortlessly, but for most of us, the last three months become a sloth-like schlump through life. We waddle, we sweat, we grunt as we get up from the couch, and the simple act of rolling over in a lying position causes our heart rates to increase and our breathing to become labored. And there is no escape, I’ve decided. It happens whether you are a certified couch potato or an exercise junkie. My friend Michelle, who just delivered twins three weeks ago and who is one of the most physically active women I know, had to actually lift and move her belly with her hands every time she switched positions in the bed.

But what my body lacks for in activity right now, my brain has more than made up for. I lie awake every night, mostly in the early morning hours, reviewing the scrolling to-do list that is on constant play in my head. This is something else that I’m almost positive is true of pregnant women everywhere, because no matter how long nine months may seem to your body, it’s still not enough time to get everything done that needs to be done before the baby arrives. I actually think it might be worse for me this time simply because this time I know how much my life is going to be affected by the arrival of this baby. With Harper Lee, I was under the misguided notion that a few days after she was born, life would return to normal and I would be off and running in no time. Now I know better. I know that I better get this junk done now, or it may be a year before I’m even able to think of things like cleaning out the barn or organizing filing cabinets.

Mostly I’ve been thinking about this addition we’ve decided to make to our house. I’m so excited, but I’m also terrified. Rob seems to think that it’s no big deal, but I know differently. My argument is that Rob has never lived in a house with plastic sheeting hanging over the doors and windows in the dead of winter with no water because the pipes have frozen. While I doubt our circumstances will be the same as my parents’, I still say you can’t understand my fear and apprehension until you’ve had to go to bed with a toboggan on your head, and getting dressed in the morning was a time trial crouched in front of a kerosene heater. Still, I’m psyched about the kids each having their own rooms and getting to do a little decorating around here.

I’ve also been thinking about how I can best schedule my time for training once the baby arrives. I know and have known from the beginning that time for running and cycling will be more limited for me with two children, but it hasn’t dampened my desire to train and compete at all. I’ll just have to get a little more creative I guess. Mostly I’m excited about training for a half-marathon and a few mountain bike races. While daylight lasts, it won’t be so hard to get out and get a workout in, because Rob and I can tag team, but once winter rolls around, it will mean hours on the trainer, and I’m not looking forward to that. Still, there’s something to be said for hunger, and after five months of jogging around and at least six weeks of recovery, I’ll definitely be hungry for it. All it requires is a little patience… my greatest attribute.

And then there’s the other stuff—the missing bridesmaid dress, the disorganized filing cabinets at church, the end of semester grades for my students, and vacation planning—that fills up every other empty nook and cranny of my mind. I feel like I am constantly on go. The good thing, however, is that I feel the most productive I have in ages. I guess if I have to be awake in the wee hours of the morning, it’s nice that I’m not exhausted and grumpy about it. Summertime helps. Fresh air and birds singing from my open windows have done wonders for my mental health. If it was February, I doubt this journal entry would be so cheerful or would, in fact, even exist at all. Maybe that’s the answer to all my problems. I need to move to Florida. Maybe I could buy a Lincoln Town Car, a huge floppy hat, and some oversized black sunglasses, and the kids and I could tool around Tallahassee, sip virgin pina coladas and sit under huge rainbow colored umbrellas wearing our flower print caftans.

2005-05-02T14:04:00.000-07:00

My Dream House

“Stop the car! This is it, the one, our home,” I thought. I knew the moment we rounded the curve and saw it that this was where we were meant to be. And, as luck would have it, our names are already on the deed and our stuff is already unpacked and put away. It was the easiest house hunt ever.

Rob and I spent our afternoon yesterday touring three different homes in the area. It was our second round of fairly serious house shopping. We’ve been talking about building on or buying for several months now but hadn’t committed to either plan. However, time seems to be ticking by like crazy and in three months, we are going to have one more body occupying space in our shrinking domicile, so we were beginning to feel the pressure.

At first, I thought we had decided to just add on, but somehow I just wasn’t excited about the floor plan we had come up with. Something about it seemed lopsided and wrong. It just wasn’t what I wanted. Then last Sunday, totally by chance, we came across a beautiful house that was for sale by owner. From the front seat of the Volvo at least, it seemed to be the perfect place for us. A two-story brick house with a large, fenced-in and wooded back yard and an attached garage seemed like a good idea. When we got home, we called and discovered that it also had four bedrooms, a two-tiered back deck complete with hot tub and a finished basement that is perfect for a children’s play area. For the first time since we moved into our current house, I felt that moving was actually a possibility.

We set up an appointment to see the house, and over the course of the week, we discovered two other houses that also seemed to be possibilities. There were to be open house tours of those two houses on the same afternoon as our appointment, so we decided to make a day of it. I spent the entire week daydreaming about what potential treasure awaited us, and I was honestly considering giving up this place that I have so grown to love. I even prayed about it and said, “God, please don’t let us do anything stupid. If we are meant to move on to another place, let me know it beyond a shadow of a doubt.” I went out yesterday afternoon with every expectation that I would be hit with a bolt of lightning upon first seeing our housing destiny. I knew that God would let me know what was right, and He did. The only difference is that the lightning did not occur where I had expected it to.

The first two houses were brutal disappointments. I actually felt a little shell-shocked upon leaving the first one. It’s an old Victorian house with a fountain and garden out front that sits in one of Elkin’s oldest and finest neighborhoods. I wasn’t overwhelmed with the house, but it seemed to have some potential although I expected it would take some work. I’m not sure there are enough weekends left between Rob and me to ever, over our entire lives, even scratch the surface. It might have been a do-it-yourselfer’s dream, but it was most definitely a nightmare for me. There was no consistency whatsoever in the style of the house. It moved disjointedly from period rooms complete with twelve foot ceilings, plaster walls, hardwood floors and glass doorknobs to rooms with ultra modern flooring and appliances but period moulding and walls to an inexplicable bathroom covered all around with knotty pine paneling that one might find in a log cabin. It was enough to induce a psychotic break. We moved on.

The next house was lovely, but every room was about 2/3 the size it should have been. Two of the bedrooms had room for a twin bed, but that was all, and I walked around hunched over and feeling desperately claustrophobic. I looked up at my 6’5” husband, and we left without a second glance.

The third house, the one I had seen only a week earlier, was beautiful. It was an ideal house in an ideal neighborhood, and the construction was of high quality. But as I stood out on the porch overlooking the hot tub and spacious back yard, I knew that it just wasn’t enough. It was nice, and if we were just moving to town, it probably would have been a great purchase, but there was no view, not like the one I’m looking at right now, there were no memories, and it didn’t set off any alarms, bells or whistles. It was what it was, a lovely home that would be wonderful to live in… for someone else. The layout of the house was much more closed off than I had expected, and a low overhang at the bottom of the stairs required that Rob duck every time we went up them. I could already envision him lying unconscious at the foot of the steps one dark night after going down for a glass of water. We drove home.

And that’s when I knew. We would be fools to leave our home. If we learned anything from our house hunting expeditions, it is that we have a very nice place. It is not always perfect, and there are things that I don’t necessarily like, but they can be easily changed…well, they can be changed anyway. Everything that we loved about the other house were things that we could do to our own house without having to give up all the features we have grown to love-- the view, the land, the storage, the gigantic rooms, and the warm, homey feel that we have here.

So we’ve decided. We’re building on. We’ve come up with a new floor plan that I am much happier with, and with my dad’s expertise, we are going to figure out a way to make our roof line work. It will be messy and time-consuming, and we all know how well I deal with both of those things, but it will be worth it. Despite having a hole in the side of my house added to the stress of bringing home a newborn, I’m actually pretty excited about the design and decorating aspect of the whole thing. I’ve become a devoted fan of “Southern Living” and HGTV. And best of all, Rob won’t have to dig up any animal bones and move them in a U-Haul. We are ALL staying right where we are supposed to be.

2005-04-19T20:23:00.000-07:00

Isn’t It Ironic?

Anyone who believes that God is humorless is just not paying attention. Either that, or they have never been pregnant. I’m finding that this whole experience, maybe even more than last time, is an exercise in contradiction.

For one thing, there’s the whole weight gain issue. For those of you who have not been pregnant, there is a small but magical window of perfection that all expectant mothers are assigned as their ultimate weight gain goal. It is 25 to 35 lbs. If you are a small woman, some doctors will tell you that you should try for the upper end of that scale, while others might say 25 is all you really need. If you are a large woman, 25 is definitely all you need. Sounds simple enough, right? Under normal circumstances I might say, “Sure, 25 to 35 lbs. Anyone can do that.” But, here’s the cruel twist that you don’t read about in all of the “What to Expect” books—you are expected to maintain a reasonable weight goal while exercise becomes increasingly more difficult, your body holds onto water like its preparing for a trek across the Sahara, and food becomes about 1,000 times more flavorful and satisfying than it has ever been in your entire life.

Having always had a pretty healthy appetite, the food thing is not really all that unusual to me. I like to eat, but I always have. However, the sheer joy I get out of a cold bowl of Quaker Oat Squares before bed every night borders on the bizarre, even for me. Even chicken, which up until about three weeks ago, made me dizzy with nausea at the very thought of its stringy white flesh, no longer makes me ill. I don’t love it, but I sometimes eat it, if its mixed in with other good stuff. Fortunately, my cravings have run more to the fruit and yogurt category than to the junk food category. My grocery bill has increased quite a bit lately just because of the twice weekly trips to the produce section. Big deal, right? I’m stuffing myself with strawberries, grapes and cantaloupe. What’s the harm in that? Well, not much probably, except I can eat an entire cantaloupe without breaking a sweat, and then there’s that whole box of luscious red berries just begging to be eaten. You know how quickly berries can spoil. Still, I’m grateful that I’m not planning my routes through town to include stops for doughnuts and chocolate ice cream, although I’ve had a few more of those than usual if the truth were told.

All in all, though, my weight gain so far is holding pretty steady, and its actually right where it should be, but that’s with some pretty hard-core dedication to my old friend, exercise. What do women do that have no exercise program? Even if cantaloupes and kiwi remain my only vice during this pregnancy, what would the scale read if I didn’t work out daily? It makes me shudder to even think about it. And that’s the next cruel irony of pregnancy. Every doctor will tell you that an exercise program during pregnancy is a great way to keep weight under control, to relieve swelling and muscle tension, and to reduce stress. Here’s what they don’t tell you-- running two times a mile on the track with a few hill repeats at the end, which by the way, is a pretty normal afternoon for me, will leave you virtually crippled and desperately trying to fall into bed into just the right position with your body pillow, so that movement will be unnecessary when you are finally lying down. In all fairness, I guess I should say that my doctor DID actually tell me that I might need to back off eventually and that running more slowly and sometimes walking would be helpful. That is, I think to myself, unless I am at all concerned about the ever-present 25 to 35 lbs edict. You see, I can absolutely recognize the benefits of walking and even running a 10-minute mile if you’ve never done anything else, but to go from 6:50 to 7:00 training pace to what I’m doing now is proving difficult. It seems nearly impossible to get my heart rate up when I’m walking, and running is often so slow, I barely even sweat. That’s why days like yesterday are so dangerous for me. The sun was out, the kids were doing a workout that I love, and I felt good, so I ran. I mean, I really ran. It was still slow for me, but it was an actual workout with the kids, and I was sweating like crazy afterwards. I had my fix, and it was great… until, like I said, I got home last night.

Rob calls me the “lab rat,” because I continue to do things and then pay the price, but I don’t think that really fits. A lab rat can’t make the connection between the cheese and the shock, but I know exactly what causes my lower back and pelvis to hurt. I knew yesterday, as I was running with those girls up the hill past the college, that I would most likely be in pain by bedtime, but I didn’t care. The cheese I get is just too good to pass up. I guess I always ask myself if it’s worth it, and most of the time it is; it really is. The baby is in no danger whatsoever. My aches and pains are all bones and connective tissue, and even my doctor laughed at me this morning when I went for my regular check-up. “If you’re willing to pay the price, you can do what you want,” he said. I’m willing. I know that I have only a few more, if any, of those workouts left in me for quite some time, so I’m going to take advantage of them while I can. After a night’s rest, my joints always recover, and my head gets all the benefits of a hard workout. Besides, the baby needs a good thrill ride once in a while. It certainly didn’t seem to have any negative effects on Harper Lee.

I guess God’s sense of humor isn’t really as cruel as I sometimes feel it to be. I’m supposed to stay healthy and relatively slim, but I want to eat all the time and can’t exercise to burn it off, but it seems like one of those “bigger picture” scenarios if I think about it. If there’s one thing that might possibly even begin to prepare one for the rigors of parenthood, it is learning to deal with things when plans don’t work out just like you want them to. Sometimes I just need a reminder, and while I don’t envision God pointing at me and laughing hysterically, I do think He gets quite a chuckle out of watching me waddle around the track, gaze with horror at the bathroom scale, and stand staring into an open refrigerator. He smiles and shakes His head as I sit and obsess over pounds, ounces, grams, minutes, and miles and says, “Someday you’ll thank me for this,” as He lightly pats my head.

2005-04-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

Cooper River Bridge Run

I suppose some may think that varicose veins and retiring to bed at 9:30 in the evening, for a 32 year old woman, is sad, something that only old people do. I might have even thought that myself a few years ago, but I think that I have now found something even more sad and disturbing—being 32, or older, and living life exactly as you did as a 22 year old.

About a week ago, Rob and I drove down to Charleston for what I thought was to be an adult getaway with some friends. A guy Rob knows from work has a family beach house at Wild Dunes. It has nine bedrooms and sits near the beach but is still close to the city. The purpose of our trip was twofold, to relax with a weekend to ourselves and to participate in the popular Cooper River Bridge Run 10K. Ultimately, we got both, but it was in unexpected ways.

First, the housing situation was not what I had anticipated. When we arrived on Friday afternoon, we found five young women lounging across the two large sofas in the front room. They were watching “MTV Spring Break.” They introduced themselves as friends of the host; none of them, I noted, was the actual girlfriend of the host. We proceeded to choose our bedroom, unpack and went for a drive around the community. When our friends, Mike and Rachel, arrived later, I was relieved. Although the others seemed friendly, I knew that Rachel and I had something in common. She has two little girls, both under the age of four, and as we talked, we realized that we were there for the exact same reasons.

“I brought a book to read, so I can curl up on the porch later and relax,” I said. “Me too,” she exclaimed. We then proceeded to talk about our book clubs, our children, our lives as stay-at-home moms, and the fact that we were both secretly relieved to see the other this weekend. “Everyone else here is so young,” Rachel whispered, and I smiled and nodded.

Of course, we were wrong, Rachel and I. Later that evening, we discovered that despite appearances, no one was any younger than anyone else. Every single person in the house, and that number had now grown to 17, was between the ages of 32 and 36 years old. I was actually among the youngest. I looked around. At one end of the table sat the parents. We talked about our jobs, our children, school districts, sailboats, and working out. On the other end were the single people. Their conversation, although I was not part of it, seemed centered mostly around clubbing, gym amenities, Prada handbags, and the bitchiness of other women who I can only assume were not present. There also seemed to be much more alcohol flowing on that end of the table.

By the time we had returned home from our evening out, I was ready for bed. We “old folks” had stopped at a convenience store for cereal and bagels and gone home. The house was peaceful. I washed my face and went to bed. About an hour later, the others had also returned from their stopover at a local bar. I did not sleep for the next three and a half hours.
There seemed to be a lot of door slamming, running up and down steps, and yelling to accompany the loud music, hot-tubbing, and drinking. After going so far as wrapping towels around our heads to muffle the noise, Rob and I opened the front window hoping that the sound of the rain might drown out the voices. That worked for a while until a semi-drunken catfight broke out on the porch just outside our window. The window was closed again, and when I heard someone just outside my door shout in a silly girl voice, “You boys better not be naked in there!” I thought briefly of killing myself.

“What the hell?” I asked Rob. “These people are racing in the morning? Four hours from now?” What I soon came to realize is that not everyone takes running and racing quite as seriously as my friends and I do. Heavy alcohol consumption, next to no sleep, leaving for a race 30 minutes before the gun goes off, wearing garbage bags because its raining, or worse, not showing up at all because its raining are pretty foreign concepts to me. I walked around most of the morning with a confused, and probably condescending, look on my face. I just didn’t get it.

When I finally dragged out of the bed on Saturday morning and staggered upstairs to grab a cup of coffee, some of my housemates were amazed to see me dressed in running shorts and a tee shirt. “Are you going?” they asked.

“Yes,” I said, again looking around quizzically.

“Well, if the pregnant girl is running, I guess I have to,” someone said. Part of me thought, “Well, yeah, why wouldn’t you?” and part of me felt like saying, “Hey, don’t be misled by my appearance right now. Under normal circumstances, I’d already be at the race venue, stretching and warming up, and mentally devising a plan to kick your ass,” but I didn’t.

Of course, this race was very different from any I had run before. The registration had been closed for more than a week prior to the actual event, because they had reached their capacity of 42,000 runners. I have never been in such a cramped crowd much less while trying to run a race. The gun went off, and we actually stood around for nearly five minutes before beginning to move, and we still had to get to the start line.

Because I was 22 weeks pregnant, I went with every intention of taking it easy and just enjoying the run. Once I was there, in the race atmosphere, some of my competitive spirit came to the surface; however, the sheer inability to move through the people kept me under control, which I suspect, is a very good thing. Rob also kept me under control. When lamenting the fact that the race was about to start and he had not opted to run to the port-a-potty one last time, I said, quite seriously I might add, “That’s the beauty of running in a hard rain. If you still need to go a couple of miles in, you can just let it go and no one will know the difference.” Everyone sort of stared, and Rob pushed me over to the side and said quietly, “We’re among normal people now. Try not to scare anyone.”

The “race” was not much of a race. At this point, almost everything puts me into oxygen debt, yet I barely even had to open my mouth to breathe for the first four miles. Ten minute pace in a race, for me, would usually seem pointless, but as Rob and I zigzagged through the throngs and talked along the way, I realized what a great experience we were a part of. The newscasters that night speculated that there were an actual 50,000 runners that took part that day. We were among that crowd that inched its way across the old bridge for the very last time. Next year, the bridge will be gone, and the runners will cross the brand new Ravenel Bridge. It’s something I will look back on fondly, and it will be fun to say, “You were with me the whole way,” to my new baby.

Later that afternoon, Rob and I packed up the Volvo and headed up the coast to Litchfield Beach for a little peace and quiet. There we found an old-school hotel, clean and comfy, on a nearly secluded beach. We shopped in a couple of boutiques, toyed with the idea of buying a really cool painting of Ernest Hemingway, went for a walk on the beach, ordered pizza, and spent the evening in bed, reading and watching bad re-runs on TBS. It was great.

Although I had a miserable night on Friday, and I felt horribly guilty for leaving Rachel behind on Saturday, and I feel a little embarrassed by my hideously slow time for a 10K, it was a great weekend. It was definitely not what I had anticipated, but I ran, I saw friends, I walked on the beach with Rob, and I finally slept. It was exactly what I needed.

2005-03-30T02:27:00.000-08:00

Oh, Brother

It’s a boy! We finally got to see the baby after a week’s postponement. I went a week ago on Tuesday for our ultrasound only to find the technician deathly ill and on her way out the door. Apparently she had fainted or nearly fainted with the girl directly in front of me, so they sent her home. I was almost in tears. I do not handle disappointment very well. If there’s a set plan, and for some reason, it doesn’t happen, I get this horrible aching in my stomach, and I can feel the tears bubbling up and battering against the back of my throat. I didn’t cry, but I was less than enthusiastic about the rest of my OB exam, and we rescheduled for the following Monday.

I’m actually glad we got to hold off just because Harper Lee got to go with us to the next visit, and that was pretty cool all by itself. When we saw that it was a boy (And there was no doubt—he was hiding nothing.), Harper Lee said, “But I wanted a sister.” We laughed and asked her if she thought she would love a brother anyway, and she said yes. The ultrasound was perfect, and he measured out just right, but it made me realize how easily things can go wrong and how many potential dangers there are out there. As the technician scanned the screen, she said things like, “Now I’m looking for holes in the spinal column. That may indicate spina bifida… Let’s measure the fold of skin at the back of the neck. If it’s too thick, it may be a sign of Down’s.” Suddenly I felt like I was tiptoeing through a mine field, and even after she said everything looked great, I couldn’t help but wonder about the devastation of the excited, giddy parent who does spy a tiny black hole in the little row of white vertebrae floating on the screen. It was just one more reminder that this whole business is one big crapshoot.

Of course there were the thrilling moments as well. He yawned while we were watching, and although that seems like a pretty small deal, it makes it all real to me. There’s a kid in there, a real live yawning, squirming kid. We even got to see him push his tongue in and out of his mouth a few times. Harper Lee thought this was immensely funny, and she proceeded to stick her tongue out at him. And so it begins. There was also a brief moment when his eye popped open. His lids were closed for most of the exam, but just for a second or two, it was like he heard us, and opened his eyes to check out what might be going on.

Afterwards, Rob had to go back to work, but Harper Lee and I decided to hit McDonald’s for a celebratory breakfast. We were the only people under 70 in the whole joint, so it was just one big party. So much for my speeches on why we don’t talk to strangers. Nearly every person in the place came over to talk to Harper while we ate, and she told everyone about her new brother. She seems genuinely happy and excited. I am so glad. Rob and I are both only children, so we’re pretty unfamiliar with the whole sibling dynamic, but both my parents have brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, neither of them has a terrific relationship with their siblings, and that makes me sad. It seems like, although I have nothing to base this on from personal experience, that a brother or sister can potentially be one of the most important people in your life. I hope that’s true. I want that for Harper Lee and for baby boy. I want them to always have one another, to be able to call each other up in the middle of the night years from now, to spend their holidays together, to be friends, and to love each other. That’s what I imagine brothers and sisters are for. I hope I’m right

2005-03-23T16:45:00.000-08:00

Rain, Rain

There’s something so comforting about rain. Maybe it’s not really the rain, maybe it’s the security of shelter from the rain that makes us, in our overwhelming sleepiness, bury ourselves beneath our quilts. We had our first thunderstorm of the year this morning. I woke first to a loud crack of thunder, rolled lazily over and then was further awakened by two large dog bodies who could not get quite close enough to my head and protruding belly and whose breathing was hard and fast like they’d just run a 400. Rob and I readjusted ourselves to accommodate them, and we slept for another 20 minutes as one lumpy, heavy-breathing mound until compassion conceded to cramping and fierce baby kicks, and the dogs were banished back to their own beds. It was the kind of morning that just begs to be slept through.

Of course, that didn’t happen. Harper got up at her now usual rising time of 6:40 and ousted me from the bed with demands for waffles and "Zoboomafoo." “We’ll be stuck inside all day,” I thought as I staggered through the kitchen to the coffee pot. I did the quick run-through of “rainy day” activities that might keep us from going stir crazy and/or succumbing to the mind-numbing drone of the television, but nothing sounded particularly appealing.

The temperatures today were actually pretty comfortable, so after breakfast, when the rain had let up a little, I loaded up the stroller, and Harper Lee and I headed over to Fisher River Park. It was still sprinkling the tiniest bit, and I knew the trails would most likely be underwater, but a little rain and mud never hurt anyone, I reasoned, and so what if I’m not “supposed” to take my kid out in the rain to play?

The run I had planned with the jog stroller turned into more of a heave-ho slog through the mushy wet trails with 35 pounds of toddler on wheels, and running quickly became a slow walk. At first, as always, I began bitching to myself about how few calories I was burning, the futility of walking when I could be running and that demon named “pregnancy weight gain” laughing maniacally in the back of my head, but I soon realized that not only was my heart rate about 150, Harper Lee and I were having a great time finding “pretty rocks” and admiring the way the river looked just like chocolate milk. Before I knew it, I was actually sweating. Hallelujah!

We then headed over to the playground. It was, quite naturally on a day like today, completely deserted. The slides and swings were covered in water and the sand box was really just a dirty water box. We each stood and considered the situation. “Can you wipe it off?” Harper Lee asked
.
“I don’t have anything to wipe it with,” I said, “except my hand.”

“Well, I might just have to get wet,” said Harper Lee watching me closely for a reaction.

“Well, that’s up to you, but you don’t have any extra clothes, and you have to wear clothes at all times,” I said. Keep in mind, this is the same child that MUST change shirts if she happens to splash even the tiniest bit of water on the edge of her sleeve while washing for dinner.

“OK,” she shouted, running up the steps to the first slide. I dutifully wiped as much water from the bottom of the chute as possible, and Harper Lee shot out like a bullet, landing in a soggy pile in the wet mulch. She jumped up, waddled a few steps as only one with sopping wet pants can, examined herself closely and then looked at me with a little grin and said, “Oh well, who cares?”

“I don’t if you don’t,” I said.

She then proceeded to run around the playground screaming at the top of her lungs, “I don’t care! I don’t care!” She went down every slide twice after that.

Once her pants, panties, socks, shoes and the back portion of her tee-shirt were completely saturated, we decided to run across the road to the empty bike trails for a hike. I thought, “Well, it might be sloppy, but she’s already wet, so if she gets a little muddy, it won’t be a big deal.” Yeah, a little muddy. The trail was so slick, I slipped two or three times myself. Harper Lee, running at full speed, could barely stand. The first time she fell, it scared me. It was a long, fast slide that ended with a thud in a huge mud puddle. “That’s it,” I thought. “Get ready for a screaming, sobbing, long as hell walk back to the car.” But what I thought were tears as I made my way towards her were actually giggles. She loved it. Thus ended our hike and began our mud-slide/wrestling/ roll-around-and-get-filthy walk through the woods.

By the time we actually got back to the car, she was black from head to toe, and she rode home in nothing but a pair of damp, dark brown panties. As I glanced in the rear-view mirror at my mud splattered baby clutching an equally dirty Paceline Bicycles water bottle and saying, “I had the best time, Mommy,” I felt so lucky. What a great job this whole Mommy thing is. I get to spend my days, rain or shine, hanging out with the coolest person I know, a person who is as undaunted by a little rain and mud as I am. Maybe that’s the ultimate comfort, the knowledge that we are not alone.

Earlier in the morning, when Harper Lee began to lament the fact that there were no other children at the playground, I said, “Yeah, but most people aren’t going to be out at the playground on a day like today.” She continued to swing back and forth for a few moments and then said, “Some people aren’t crazy girls like us.” Amen, sister, amen, but isn’t it nice that we have each other?

2005-03-09T11:46:00.000-08:00

Competitive Waddling

What’s the difference between defeated resignation and calm acceptance? I’m trying to figure this one out, because I seem to be caught somewhere between the two when it comes to running and my increasingly uncooperative body. It’s a bit of a conundrum, because while I still love running and everything about it, I don’t love running right now. In fact, my feelings of joy, abandon, satisfaction, blood and guts-grit your teeth pride are coming less and less frequently. I might even go so far as saying that running has been a struggle and sometimes… gasp… a chore.

Here’s the part where the clueless might say something like, “Well, if you don’t want to do it, then just stop.” I actually feel myself tensing and becoming angry at the very thought, so just in case you might be thinking this very thing, let me clear something up. It’s not the running that’s the chore; it’s the battle against weight, crazy blood volume, loosening joints and a really sketchy pelvic area that is killing me, a battle that, I might add, would be a hundred times worse if I gave up running all together.

“So do something else,” you say. “Cross-train if you’re going to be that much of a freak about it.” Great idea. I have tried it, am trying it, will continue to try it. It sucks. First, just as Rob would much prefer the bike to a pair of running shoes, I much prefer the feel of my own two feet pounding the trails or roads to riding a bike, particularly when said bike is hooked to an immobile trainer in front of my television. The thrills of working out to re-runs of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” as compared to flying past trees and briar thickets and flinging mud all over creation along the trails at Fisher River leave much to be desired. While some may feel that running is not appropriate pregnancy exercise, mountain biking tends to be even less so. Besides that, the bike seat really hurts my crotch. It’s a pregnancy thing.

That leaves swimming. Have you seen me swim? Picture an otter. There you go. In my defense, I am learning to swim. Rob has actually taught me to swim with my head completely submerged. It’s a long story involving childhood ear infection trauma, so let’s just say that putting my ears IN the water and then actually moving in such a manner as to allow water to flow freely into my ear canal was a huge obstacle. Just writing this makes me shiver all over and feel the need for a Q-tip. Besides that, the pool is not really very convenient as far as location, scheduling and child care go. An excuse, I know, but a fairly legitimate one. Of course, the up side to swimming is that it doesn’t take much of a workout to get my heart rate up and to be completely out of breath. After running, there are few workouts that can create the same cardio effect.

And therein lies the problem. Yes, walking is a very good exercise. I whole-heartedly recommend it. It provides a good strength and cardio workout, particularly since running is not for everyone. But for a runner, walking is depressing as hell. I just don’t feel like I’m getting the job done. There is no endorphin rush, there is no competition, there is no walking “your guts out.” It just seems very recreational and meditative. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, I don’t know. Or maybe it’s like handing Arm and Hammer Baking Soda to a cocaine addict and saying, “Hey, it’s white powder. Same thing, right?”

So, what can I do? The same thing I’ve been doing. I’ll run when I can, and when I can’t, there’s walking, hiking, weight training and a nearly worn-out pre-natal “Yoga Mama” tape that I will continue to do for the next five months. Five months. I think I was able to hold myself together longer with my first pregnancy, and that’s been a bummer too. I was fully expecting to be running with the kids through at least the beginning of May. It’s March 8, and I’m already moving so slowly there is probably very little difference between my run and my walk. That’s where my dilemma comes in. Do I just give up and do what most people do, which is pretty much nothing, or do I calmly accept this “transitional period” in my life and continue my “running” and cross-training in the knowledge that I will be back, that I won’t be fat and slow forever?

Pppsshhhttt… I can’t believe I actually just wrote that down. There is no dilemma. “Good grief, Stacey, do you know yourself at all?” you might be asking. You’re right. There is no dilemma, because there is no choice. Do nothing? What the hell does that mean? Besides, if I can shave two minutes off a decent 5K time after having one baby, what will happen after two? The little voice in the back of my mind is whispering, “Injuries, pain, doctor bills, chiropractors, frustration, ya-da, ya-da, ya-da…” but I’m telling it to shut up and listening to the one that is shouting, “Half marathon, baby!”

Later. I’m going to the track.

2005-02-26T15:18:00.000-08:00

Spring Chicken

I have a diamond engagement ring that I love. It was the same diamond that Rob’s dad gave his mom, so it has some sentimental value, and I always go for things like that over big and expensive every time, but I always thought, somewhere in the back of my mind, that someday, when I got OLDER, I would really like to have a big diamond ring, not one big, fat diamond, but several chubby ones. Apparently, I am now officially “older.”

I have found myself recently scanning the jewelry counters for a new ring. What I really want is for Rob to surprise me, but it’s fun to look just the same. I’m surprised at myself for wanting what I think is pretty frivolous and ultimately pointless, but I want one nevertheless. I guess maybe I thought a large diamond wouldn’t really fit with my image, whatever that might be. Diamond rings seemed like older married mom or prissy younger woman stuff. They fit some of my friends perfectly and didn’t look out of place at all, but I couldn’t imagine myself with a gob of rocks on my left hand. I couldn’t imagine myself in a lot of ways quite honestly.

At one time, it would have seemed ridiculous that I, at what I consider the still very young age of 32, might be considering laser surgery for the varicose veins that are popping up in snaky little clutches all over the backs of my calves and upper thighs. I’m pregnant, so I knew it was a possibility, but just a possibility, like massive hemorrhoids and strict bed rest. You know it’s out there, but you don’t really expect it to happen to you.

And then there are all of the non-pregnancy related things going on that I also never expected to happen to me. The deep furrows that seem to have been plowed over night across my forehead, the tiny little creases and dark circles under my eyes, and the sudden realization that the juniors department, while the clothes still fit, thank God, just doesn’t offer the selection I need. I can’t see myself walking into my classes wearing camouflage Capri pants and a baby-doll tee that says, “Cowboys like it dirty.” I have, on more than one occasion, found myself wandering in limbo between the ridiculously hip-hop teenage section and the “sophisticated woman” section (translation: things my grandma would wear to church) of our local Belk. It’s one of the reasons I don’t shop.

I think maybe I’m just in a stereotypical 32 year old, self-made rut. I glanced through my closet the other day—actually, I dug through it furiously looking for anything semi-fashionable that would still button across my bulging abdomen—and I found hanger after hanger of brown, grey, black and khaki clothes. Picture that without gagging. My wardrobe had become dismal at best. I hadn’t been out to buy winter clothes in three or four years. I had a baby, I didn’t really work… much anyway, I spent a good portion of my time either in running shorts or blue jeans, I felt like I couldn’t get away for an afternoon of shopping, and then, of course, I’m a miser. It was pathetic. Add to that the new twist of an expanding waistline and the inevitable “ugliness” I feel as I morph into a pregnant woman, and I was feeling pretty low.

That might explain the sudden brain fart that led to an impulse purchase of “Dark Golden Blonde” hair color at Eckerd. As with bulging veins, hair dye gone awry due to pregnant hormones fell into the “that happens to other people” category for me, so I went ahead and slapped that color on my head expecting to be miraculously transformed within the 25 minute processing time. Well, I was transformed all right. I was transformed into a dark redhead. If you know me, I can see you wincing right now. If you don’t, just imagine Morticia Adams, and I don’t mean in the dark, sexy, weird Angelina Jolie way, just in the weird, washed out Vampira way. For future reference, dark hair does not suit me.

Now, instead of becoming hysterical and rushing out to buy another hair dye, I let this one sit for about a week, just to see if I might get used to it, but when Rob said, “Are you OK? You have looked so tired lately,” I gave up. “It’s this damned hair color,” I said and then I became hysterical and rushed out for a new bottle to fix everything. Instead of trying for a slightly lighter shade, though, I went in the opposite extreme, “Lightest Natural Blonde.” I had used this color before and knew what its results would be… I thought. I did get a little lighter, but I also got a little more orange. That’s where the hairdresser came in. “Honey, you don’t need to mess with that anymore. When you’re pregnant, it just won’t take. If you do it again, it may just get worse.” So here I am with my increasingly wrinkly forehead and my orange hair trying to think of what might make me feel better.

I did finally make it out to a local shop to pick up a few brightly colored “transition clothes,” those that are not really maternity clothes but that have a little more give and flow about the middle. I also have a dear friend who hooked me up with some really cute long-sleeved maternity shirts. All of my own were summer blouses, and since it’s still swinging back and forth between high 60’s and low 30’s here on any given day, I needed some warmer clothes to go with my tee shirts. It’s amazing what a hot pink shirt can do for the soul adrift in a grey and khaki sea.

Besides a few colors and a new hairdo, I think that spring weather will also help. Harper Lee and I found our first little purple crocuses pushing their way up through the mulch three days ago, and I am sitting by an open window as I type trying to soak in the fresh air and sunshine while I can. This is probably nothing more than a bad case of spring fever/ winter doldrums. I experience it every year, yet never cease to be mystified when it hits, like its all completely new stuff and that I don’t go crazy every February. The added hormone poisoning that I am undergoing and the fact that I do, at times, catch glimpses of someone’s “mom” in my bathroom mirror have not helped matters, but I’m not too worried. It’s nothing a little spring air can’t take care of.

I’m picturing me in a bikini, Rob, a cooler of Corona, fresh limes and a sunset in Key West… that’s what I’m picturing, but what I’ll get is cut-off shorts and a fat girl shirt, a crappy tasting O’Doul’s, some Jimmy Buffet on the CD player, and a rusted out lawn chair to sit in while I watch the sunset in State Road. Maybe it’s a sign that I’m getting old, but that sounds pretty good too. And if this aging thing is inevitable, I might as well have an extra carat or two on my non-alcoholic beer clutching, fluid retaining hand.

2005-02-17T22:32:00.000-08:00

The Church Lady

Why do we always allow one negative to completely erase any positives? In one quick moment last night, I allowed a single individual’s comment to completely decimate a pretty upbeat and happy outlook. It was our annual children’s Valentine’s Party at church. Sounds harmless enough, right? Wrong. I have come under the rule of the Church Lady.

We have, at our little church, one woman, the matriarch if you will, who knows everyone, is involved in everything, and whose approval must be gained no matter what the circumstance. Every church has one, and ours is really no different except in the fact that I am the one dealing with her. Her iron-fisted rule has become, over the years, a common and good-hearted joke among our congregation. We all know her expectations and her quirks, and we usually choose to laugh and go along, because there is really no reason to disturb the peace, and if truth were told, she is the one who does the lion’s share of work around the place. She is the woman who organizes meal deliveries to the elderly, plans special events, makes sure the children’s programs are kid-friendly and fun, orchestrates Bible school, greets each new visitor, and keeps things going just in general. She dedicates hours and money, and she is known over the entire community. All she expects in return is your complete allegiance and unquestioning servitude.

Last year, I was elected to our church’s session. As an elder, I automatically became the chairman of our Christian Education committee. At the time, that was not a big deal. I was a logical choice. I am a teacher, and I have a small child in the church. I was already working as one of the writers of our Sunday School program, and Rob and I teach the Youth Sunday School class on Sunday mornings. I figured I could make a few cupcakes and do a few crafts as part of my duties in the church. Besides, my friend Tonya was, at the time, our paid Christian Education director. Ultimately, she was in charge of all C.E. programs. That was, of course, until our full-time music minister announced that he was leaving to work at another church. This left his position open. Tonya was already serving as the pianist and children’s choir director, so she was the obvious replacement. With this new job, however, her position as C.E. director would become empty. Enter Stacey’s worst nightmare. Now, not only was I on a committee that had turned out not to be as clearly designed for one with my talents, I was now in charge, but in name only.

Christian Education had turned out to be much more centered around buying matching napkins and finding the right shade of candles than I could have ever imagined. Neither of these things are my strong suit. And neither is dealing with the “true” chairman of Christian Education, the Church Lady. I want to emphasize here that I bear absolutely no ill will towards this woman. In fact, in working with her, I have discovered someone who, despite personal tragedies too numerous to list, has dedicated herself to making our church the best it can be. I really do admire and respect her. But I do not want to be her.

I don’t think it’s even within my capabilities to be her. Like I said, Christian Education has turned into a “party planning” committee, and we all know what a good entertainer and follower of Martha Stewart I am. I HATE wandering the aisles of Wal-Mart with a whiny pre-schooler in search of holiday napkins, candles, glitter garland, doilies, construction paper, paint, party favors, the list goes on and on and on. It is, quite frankly, my idea of hell. The only thing worse is trying to get a crowd of excited and rowdy three to twelve year olds settled, so I can explain the rules or procedures to them for whatever activity we are doing. Maybe I was not the most logical choice. I may have a three year old, but I teach high school and college students for a reason.

So, it’s turned out to be not what I expected. I could live with that. What I’m having a hard time with is the Church Lady’s hope, insistence, demands that I be her replacement. For one thing, I fall miserably short on this count, and she lets me know it, and for another, I don’t want to be her replacement. I don’t have the mentality or the willingness to do the things that she does. At the end of my three years as elder, I am passing this stuff on to some other poor unsuspecting soul, and I’m done. There will be no lifetime commitments to plastic baby Jesus’s and lamb cakes. Don’t ask. But while I’m here, since I’m supposedly chairing this group, I’d like the freedom to do it my way. I may not be the Church Lady, and my way may not be the best, but if I’m allowed to do it my way, I can guarantee it will turn out better than if I am forced to do it in hers.

The Valentine’s Party is a good example. In the past, we have had a pretty wild hour of fun and games. Several parents and our minister have felt that things were getting a little out of control, so this year, in an attempt to not change too much, I kept the basics the same, but tried to organize it a little more and put the kids in separate groups in classrooms for different activities. After my initial freak-out when I could not find pink heart napkins for less than five dollars a pack, I was feeling pretty good about the whole endeavor. We had some great activities planned, and I had the incredible fortune of having a local restaurant owner actually donate 17 large pizzas. I was excited about our committee’s work for the first time in a while.

Of course, I was still nervous. I knew that I had “changed” things and that if every little thing did not go off without a hitch, there would be hell to pay. Overall, I thought the evening went well. There were games, prizes, cookies to decorate and eat, crafts, candy, free pizza and ice cream and a piñata. What else could a kid ask for in one evening? Apparently, there is more. While I knew there were some bugs and a few things I might have done differently, I still felt that the party had been a success. That is until the last child left and we began our clean up. The Church Lady was so upset, she told the minister she hoped he was happy with his “introverted party” and left before actually supervising the boxing up and packing away of all the party supplies. And just like that, I was left feeling frustrated and deflated.

I spent a large part of the evening and even some of this morning obsessing over my anger about the whole thing. Was it really so bad? I began to question everything I had done, and then I asked someone who mattered. “Harper Lee, did you have fun last night?” She said, “Oh, yes, Mama. I liked the flowers and my favorite was the cupcake.” And just like always, things immediately became clear. At the end of the night there was a stack of homemade Valentine cards for all of the shut-ins of our congregation, there were well-fed and appropriately sugared-up kids carrying vases of flowers home to their mothers, and Rob brought home a sleeping three-year old who was still clutching a half eaten Valentine cookie as he lifted her from her car seat. So what if the timing was off, if the piñata broke too easily or if things were a little “different?” Last night, church was still a fun place to be.

2005-02-08T16:54:00.000-08:00

Pickles and Ice Cream

“Man, if I had thrown up as much as Harper Lee, I’d have died,” I said to Rex, and just like that, I sealed my fate. The dreaded stomach virus has been making its rounds through our community this month, and it did not miss the Libbert house. In fact, it came for an extended visit.

Rob picked up a cold a couple of weeks ago, and it was pretty nasty—congestion, cough, headache, and general body aches and weariness. One day later, Harper Lee began throwing up and would not stop. Neither Rob nor Harper Lee have ever been particularly weak in their stomachs. Colds and sinus infections seem to be their Achilles heel, but Harper Lee had definitely picked up a “stomach bug” somewhere, and it was brutal. The husband of a friend once listed daycare as his number one health concern on an insurance form, and that’s probably pretty accurate, but the truth be told, she could have contracted it anywhere. The shopping cart handles at the grocery store keep lurking in my mind as a breeding ground for all manner of disease and infection. Wherever it was, it was effective and took a strong hold. My “mommy” gene went into overdrive.

Until you become a mother, you never realize the amount of complete “grossness” you can take. I spent all of Monday cleaning up vomit, washing pajamas and bed sheets, spoon-feeding Pedialyte, and cuddling a limp, worn-out pre-schooler in my arms while a non-stop parade of cartoon characters marched across the TV screen. Of course I washed my hands and even did the anti-bacterial hand gel on my hands and up my forearms.

By Wednesday, both Rob and Harper Lee were feeling better, although Harper’s stomach was still a little weak despite her apparent full recovery. Note to self: Do not allow child just recovering from stomach virus to eat handful of Doritos for lunch. (One of Harper Lee’s new mantras is “No Ritos for me!”) Anyway, things were looking up. I went to track practice that afternoon and left both Rob and Harper Lee at home to play and fully recover.

That afternoon I ran a pretty great workout- a very long hill, only 30 seconds slower than the summer, and 8x200 on the track. That was even after a long run on Tuesday. I was pretty pleased with my pregnant self. I went home, got Harper Lee ready for bed and made a HUGE veggie pita for myself. Oh, Satan, thy name is veggie pita. It took maybe a span of 20 minutes to go from feeling perfectly normal to kneeling in the shower floor wretching and reeling from the overwhelming nausea. Thus began one of the longest nights of my life.

Over the course of the next 12 hours, I threw up or had diarrhea every 20 minutes around the clock. That is absolutely no exaggeration. I know. I was watching that freaking clock every torturous minute. By morning I had lost seven pounds. Of course, Rob had encouraged me throughout the night to go to the emergency room, but cheapskate that I am, I refused. I would not pay for an emergency room visit. By 8:30, when the doctor’s office opened, I was completely dehydrated, so the doctor said, “There’s nothing we can do for you. You’ll have to go straight to the emergency room.”

Several hours and an IV drip later, I was at home passed out in bed where I remained for three days. Thank God for a good husband, who in his all-night vigil relapsed by the way, and loving grandparents. My mom came to clean and cook and Rob’s mom picked Harper Lee up for a “wild woman’s weekend” at her house. It wasn’t exactly the relaxed, romantic weekend to ourselves that we had pictured, but at least we got to rest.

Fortunately, I am almost back to where I started weight-wise, and the baby is growing very well. My midwife said babies are basically parasites that will get what they need regardless, so I was the one that took most of the abuse that week. I am continually amazed by God’s engineering genius.

But you know what, besides the health of the baby, I am most excited about now that this horrible thing has passed? Food! I have officially entered my second trimester, and it’s starting out better than my last time. With Harper Lee, my morning sickness was still in full swing. In fact, it didn’t pass for another three to four weeks. This time, though, my energy has sky-rocketed, and my stomach is feeling like it should. I’ve even begun my weird cravings.

This whole time I’ve sort of craved salty foods and occasionally really spicy fare. I particularly enjoy Mexican food, pickles, olives, and I recently decimated a jar of pickled okra. I also find myself scavenging the cabinets and fridge for fruits of every shape and size. All in all, I think my cravings have been pretty healthy… well, except for the Mexican food maybe. With Harper Lee I wanted RED meat almost exclusively. Towards the end I lived on peaches and watermelon, but at this point in my pregnancy, I was a hamburger and steak girl. This time, the food I want seems more like the kind of stuff I would want normally. It just tastes about a thousand times better than usual.

Of course, I still have the bizarre craving here and there. Last night, for instance, I had to have fried chicken livers from The Cracker Barrel. The reason I know these things are cravings is that I am willing to go out in the cold night air after I have already settled in for the evening to get them. This is something, no matter how much I wanted it, I would never do when I’m not pregnant. Those chicken livers were excellent, and the fried okra that came with them was just right. Today, of course, the thought of chicken livers doesn’t really appeal to me at all. In fact, I can’t believe I ate anything from a chicken’s body. Between Christmas dinner and a week of nothing but chicken noodle soup (although my friend, Kate, made some of the best soup I’ve ever had), I am just not into the poultry scene. I’m not sure I’ll ever fully recover my taste for dead bird.

So, I’m enjoying my new-found appetite, and I’m just trying to keep it in check. I keep reminding myself of the sudden explosion of my body during those last two months of pregnancy. I don’t want to gain too much weight, and I don’t want to ever be one of those women who use pregnancy as an excuse to just get fat, but boy, I sure would like a huge kosher pickle and a bowl of chocolate ice cream right now.

*Amanda, thanks for reminding me to get off my duff and get busy. It was good to see you.

2005-01-24T15:45:00.000-08:00

The Essentials

I don’t love cold weather, but I do love snow days. This weekend qualified as “snow days” although there was very little snow to speak of. What we got was a sheet of ice and brutally cold wind that felt like an icy blade slashing through my sweater. Harper and I ventured out for some milk and a few other odds and ends on Saturday morning, quite gracefully fell onto the concrete porch, clumsily stood back up, and went back inside. The milk would have to wait and so would countless chores and basic everyday events like getting dressed. It was officially a snow day, and that means one thing—books.

Of course, while Harper Lee is awake, those books include Rikki Tikki Tavi, Otto Has A Birthday, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and Rainbow Fish, but while she’s sleeping, I can sneak in a few pages here and there, in between my own little catnaps, of some good and not so good literature. Recently I just finished a book called Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. It’s a strange book. I found it in the Young Adult section of our local bookstore, and it’s our book club’s read for the month of February. I often say this after a particularly good book, but “this is one of my all-time favorites.” This statement, which I have made countless times, led me to wonder, “Hmmm… what are my ‘all-time favorites’?” I have read lots of books, some I loved, some I hated, and some that I can barely recall.

Many of them were not “bad” books at all. In fact, I’m pretty sure that while I was reading them, I quite enjoyed them. If I think back, I can often remember the titles of books that I read on certain trips or during particular events. I recall reading A Time to Kill during a five-hour layover at JFK airport on our way to Scotland. I remember a book called The Distance from the Heart of Things on my honeymoon. The main reason I remember that book at all is because part of it was set in Boone. I also remember a book that I really enjoyed on our trip to Mexico. I checked it out from the UNCG library during our summer session. It had a golden brown cover with a picture of wind-swept desert sands. It was about Christ’s days in the wilderness. I liked it very much, but I can’t remember the name of it or the author to save my life. It probably wouldn’t qualify as one of my “all-time favorites.” So what does?

I sat down last week and started a list of what would qualify for this “prestigious” list of literary achievement, and it’s a pretty eclectic mix. While it may not be particularly interesting to anyone else, I find that when “forced” to write down the top-ten most influential pieces of literature, film, art, whatever in your life, you are bound to see some unusual, maybe even bizarre, patterns emerge. If you haven’t ever tried this, you should. I think it’s probably good therapy to look at what it is that speaks to you.

For what it’s worth, here are my essentials. Now, keep in mind, these are not necessarily what I consider the “greatest works ever written.” That was not how I made my selections. These are the books that, for whatever reason, spoke to me in ways that have never really left me. Not only do I remember authors and titles, I remember characters, descriptions, dialogue, and feelings that ran rampant through my brain for days and weeks after I closed the back cover.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien
3. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
4. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
5. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
6. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
7. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
8. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
9. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
10. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

*Note: Ramona, the Brave by Beverly Cleary was in the original top ten but was replaced by another “adult” favorite; however, it should be noted that some of the most influential and character shaping literature comes in the form of children’s lit.

I topped it off at ten. That makes it hard, because there are dozens of other books I have loved, but those are the best, in my humble opinion. I did debate numbers 5 and 6, however, simply because I read them within the past six months, so they have not had to withstand the test of time as the others have, but based solely on first impressions, I have decided to include them.

Of course, there are those novels that I think everyone should read at some point in their life. They may or may not have been my personal favorites, but they offered something that everyone should have the opportunity to contemplate. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf should be required reading for girls… and probably boys too. I hated Richard Wright’s Native Son, but I’m grateful that I read it. And every American should read Huckleberry Finn before they die. That should just be a rite of passage or something.

My list is weird and not particularly scholarly, I guess, but I smile every time I look at the titles listed there. Some might look at that list and assume that I’m some self-loathing woman who reads primarily misogynistic male writers, but I think there’s more to it than that. While James Dickey is my favorite poet… collective groan from my feminist friends… I love Audre Lorde, Carolyn Kizer and Lucille Clifton too. I just like good writing, period. And so do many of my friends and acquaintances, thank God. Thank you, Rob, Rex, Terri, Deanne, Kate, Beth, Claire, Jonna, Jennie, Sandra, Dan, Stephanie, and Jason. Thanks for letting me borrow books, keep books, read your poetry, for reading mine, for sharing insight, and for plain old good conversation. Thank you for helping keep the written word alive and well.

2005-01-04T17:05:00.000-08:00

Goodbye, 2004

First, let me say that I have not died, been abducted, or given up on the journal. Second, if you’re still checking this thing, you are indeed a true friend or extremely bored. Either way, thanks. I have been busy with the holidays and such, but truth told, I’ve had more time on my hands than usual. My only excuse then is laziness and a bit of morning sickness. Actually the “morning sickness” has not been as bad this time around as with the first pregnancy, but the fatigue has been crazy and given a choice, I’ve chosen a nap over writing every time.

The end of 2004 has been eventful. Over Thanksgiving weekend, Rob and I discovered that we would be adding yet one more living, breathing, toy-weilding, mess-making person to our tiny two bedroom house. We were thrilled but decided to keep our secret to ourselves for another month when Santa would leave a note to Harper Lee in her stocking announcing the new arrival. I wasn’t sure I could keep such a heavy secret, and in fact, I did tell just a couple of close friends, but for the most part, I didn’t let on to a soul.

The baby will be making his or her appearance around August 4. I know… I’ve already heard the horror stories of swollen limbs and unbearable heat during July and August, but I’m trying to look at the bright side and recognize that at least we will still have the bright, sunny days of summer to look forward to during our weeks of unrelenting sleep deprivation. Lack of sleep is never appealing to me, but it seems somehow better in August than in the cold, dark days of say… February.

Unlike me, I am feeling pretty mellow about the whole thing. I guess you really do relax after the first one. It’s probably too early to say, but so far things seem to be going much better than before. With Harper Lee, brushing my teeth was a nightmare and when the farmers spread the fertilizer on the fields in early April-- whoa, Nellie! Most days I threw up at least twice and heaving became second nature, sort of like blinking or clearing my throat. This time, however, I’ve lucked out so far. I’ve only had a couple of incidents, and none involved becoming reacquainted with my lunch. Christmas dinner, however, was no friend of mine.

Now it is a well-known fact among those who know me that I am no Betty Crocker, Martha Stewart, Heloise, etc. Sometimes I feel really bad about this, like I’m missing some crucial piece of female genetic coding. Most of the time, though, I don’t give a rat’s ass. Christmas is different. I have very pleasant memories of Christmas as a child, and much of it revolved around meals. Mama, Grandmama, and Pap are all tremendous cooks, so there was never any shortage of good food to be had, least of all during the holidays. And while most of the real memories, the things that I cherish the most, were more directly related to time spent with family, holiday activities, Christmas trees and music, food was still always present, even if only in the background. I want Harper Lee to have those same memories.

I think I’ve established some pretty nice little holiday rituals for our family. Harper and I like to make Christmas ornaments, decorate one of our trees for the birds and squirrels, wrap presents while listening to Bing Crosby (her favorite is “Mele Kalikimaka” with the Andrews Sisters—that’s my girl!), and she loves helping Rob pick out our Christmas tree and then dragging out all of the moth-eaten, tattered ornaments of our youth. But I also feel obligated to provide her with a “traditional” Christmas meal, although it stresses me out beyond belief, and I never cook like that unless family is coming. I mean, get serious, Harper Lee would think it was a feast if we just had cheese pizza, “cob on the corn,” and Teddy Grahams.

Anyway, I had planned a meal that I thought would satisfy all parties, including my dad. But here’s a little known fact-- you have to THAW a turkey before you can cook it. You can thaw a 14 pound turkey in the microwave in about an hour and a half, but the neck and all the turkey innards will still be frozen solid, deep within the nether regions of the bird. This requires hot water, a pair of pliers, and pretty good upper body strength. By this time, the clock is ticking, people are wandering aimlessly in and out of the kitchen watching curiously and wondering how they could have raised such an idiotic child, and Harper Lee is beginning to feel the effects of too much excitement and not enough food, so you just keep jamming your hand into the dark abyss and pull and tug until drippy gobs of raw, pimply poultry flesh come of on your hands and your own skin begins to smell like a dead bird. Let me tell you, there is nothing better to a woman who is eight weeks pregnant than that.

The short of it is the bird was cooked, no one died of food poisoning, everyone had a nice time, and I have not eaten a bite of turkey OR chicken since. It makes me sick just writing about it. Afterwards, Rob and I had a good laugh as I lamented my lack of skills in all things “motherly.” In my mind, a mother should be able to cook a damned turkey for her kid at Christmas and do so with seeming effortlessness. I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never be that woman, but I also accept that this does not remove me from the list of good mommies.

My kids will be healthy, probably more so if I avoid trying to cook stuff I am unfamiliar with, and Harper Lee, I hope, will have good memories of our holidays together. I’m looking forward to making more with her and with this new person who will, I pray, appreciate me despite my shortcomings just as his or her sister does. Shoot, they’ll probably never know the difference. My way of doing things will become their “tradition,” and someday they’ll have to decide what their own will be for their families. Hopefully they can incorporate some of ours with theirs. I mean, I haven’t given up on my mom’s completely. In fact, Harper Lee and I cooked collard greens just this morning and had them for lunch this afternoon. Of course, we’re four days late, because we decided to load up the bikes and go for a trail ride in Galax, VA on New Year’s Day, but at least we got them in within the first week. That’s still good luck, right?

2004-11-29T18:43:00.000-08:00

Movin’ on Up?

“If I’d known I was going to have to die here, I would have bought a bigger house.” That’s Rob’s favorite thing to say to me about our little house that we have inhabited for seven and a half happy years. Of course I realize that having moved every year, sometimes twice, for most of his childhood, Rob is less attached to houses than I am. I, however, see a home as more than a building that houses our stuff and allows us to sleep out of the elements.

But the time has come to bite the bullet, as they say, and realize that this sweet little house is growing smaller by the day. Over the years, we have accumulated quite a collection of “stuff” as I suppose all families do. Of course, our stuff almost quadrupled with the arrival of Harper Lee. Babies are pretty equipment intensive. I understand that. But children who are not only only-children but only-grandchildren acquire more than any normal person should have over the course of a lifetime. There are clothes, books, dolls, doll beds, doll accessories, games, puzzles, giant horses, life-size kitchens, boxes and boxes of things with small parts, and the list goes on. Maybe we just need to buy Harper Lee her own place.

So several months ago when I was driving to the library, I saw that one of my very favorite old houses downtown was finally being restored. I had run by the house every evening for two or three years with my friends, Kelly and Michelle. I was always oddly drawn to the place, although we often joked that it was probably haunted. It was in pretty rough shape. The front porch was falling in, vines had taken over the sides of the house and the yard was an overgrown mess, but I liked it anyway. As I watched the workmen tearing down and beginning repairs, I assumed it had been sold to someone. However, after restoration was complete, I saw a “For Sale” sign in the front yard. Harper Lee and I went over to investigate.

This house is everything I think is cool about old houses. It has beautiful hardwood floors, a front hallway opening up to a lovely old staircase, a fireplace in the front room, an oak window seat in the front bay window, and a wrap-around porch overlooking the main street of Elkin. I could tell all of that just from peeping through the windows. It is also within walking distance of the post office, library, general store, butcher shop, soda shop and park. It is very Mayberry.

Over the course of a month or two, Harper Lee and I made two more trips over just to wander around the yard and sit on the porch imagining what it might be like. Finally Rob went with us on one of our peeping tours, and he loved it as much as I did. In fact, he seemed even less disturbed by the lack of yard space, storage space and the fact that the neighbors could come to visit without actually stepping off their porch than I did, so we made an appointment with our next-door neighbor who also happens to be a realtor.

We saw the inside of the house for the first time this morning. It was gorgeous! The floors were beautiful, and the tiny kitchen was made up for nicely with a cool little butler’s pantry that included several cabinets, counter space and an enormous dining table and benches. The benches even opened up to serve as trunk space. The fixtures were all period, the doors were “real,” and the bathroom included the original claw foot tub. There is also a strange little side room off the master suite that could be used for a laundry room, nursery, office or walk in closet.

I love it, but we’d be fools to buy it. For one thing, there is NO storage. The whole point of moving would be to expand our living space which this house does, but we have so much storage space at our house now that any extra living space we might gain in the new house would be taken up with all of our junk. Another not so cool thing about old houses—no closets. Actually there are two closets… I guess. There are two very skinny holes in two of the bedrooms, but I’m not sure what could actually be stored in there.

And then there’s the heat. The windows are gorgeous. They have lead glass panes and some even have the wavy imperfections that I always loved in my great-grandmother's house. They are also weighted. That’s cool and all, but it’s not very energy efficient, and in the dead of winter, I’m all about energy efficiency. There is new insulation in the attic and basement, but since the house is brick, was built in 1902, and there is no record of new insulation, I’m willing to bet that house is cold as crap in the winter or at the very least, expensive to heat. I have to have a good heating system. All the original doorknobs in the world cannot alter that particular specification.

There’s also the question of dogs and cats. A fence would be a must. Even if there were no animals in the Libbert family, I wouldn’t feel safe letting Harper Lee play in a yard right on the main street that was not enclosed. Of course, an old house like that would require the right fencing, the right fencing being wrought iron, not an inexpensive addition to say the least. That, however, is the least of my worries about the place. It’s beautiful but really impractical.

As a surprise, we also got to see a couple of other houses, one of which really appeals to me. It is a large cottage style house that sits far from the road and has plenty of storage space. It is also of good quality and is kid-friendly. It’s a little more than we would like to pay, but it makes a nice addition to my house daydreams. For right now, that’s what they are, just fantasies. Someday we probably will move, or we’ll have to add on to the one we have, but I’m in no rush. Although I was a little apprehensive about looking at new houses, I realized today that it was kind of good for me. I saw that there are other nice houses out there that have their own unique qualities and that would be just as much fun to own. It was also good for me in that it allowed Rob to see that our house is not quite the hell-hole he sometimes imagines it to be. Every house has its quirks and oddities. We do not have the corner on that market, and in fact, we’ve decided that we’re pretty proud of our little house. Sure there is a missing tile here and there and the black and white kitchen floor (who was the idiot that picked that out?! Oh, yeah…) is impossible to keep clean, but there are a lot of cool things too. A spectacular sunset every evening from my front porch, two large oak trees made for a lazy hammock, privacy that allows a virtual toddler nude beach all summer, fresh tomatoes from the garden, a barn to climb around in when it’s raining, cozy rooms, plenty of closets and a kickin’ heating system are not trivial qualities to be blithely overlooked. In fact, I seem to remember a young couple that bought a house for those exact reasons.

Ultimately, our realtor is going to have to find the absolute house of my dreams before I start making trips to the ABC store for empty boxes. Until then I’ll keep the dream house I have.

2004-11-14T13:51:00.000-08:00

Solitary

Here’s another one of life’s little ironies: When you’re so tired, you can barely hold your eyes open and no amount of coffee can bring you back to life, there is always a toddler who is either screaming and crying or is absolutely adamant that you play one more rousing round of Hi-Ho Cherrio. When the same toddler is at Grammy’s for the weekend, however, you can’t sleep to save your exhausted hide.

Harper Lee is with her daddy at Jonna’s house this weekend. I was supposed to go with them, of course, but on Thursday night as Harper Lee wailed, “I don’t want Daddy to brush my teeth. I want you to brush my teeth,” and Rob said, “Would you rather stay here this weekend?” I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have some much needed “alone” time. Harper Lee is, and always will be, the love of my life. I cannot imagine life without her. However, there are times that I can imagine going to the bathroom without her. There was a time, sometime in the distant past, that I peed without a single person throwing the door open and shouting, “Whatcha doin’?” but that was long ago.

I know this is just another “phase.” Kids do that, go through phases, I mean. Just when you’ve reached the end of your rope and have begun to panic over what you have done wrong as a parent, they move on to some totally different, but usually equally annoying, pattern of behavior. Harper Lee’s current phase is clinginess. It seems that she is quite the Mommy groupie these days, only able to function if I am there to serve her every whim.

On the one hand, Harper Lee is a complete angel. She is cooperative and funny. She loves to help me with chores around the house and cooking, and she is usually up for just about anything. She is also a fiercely independent little girl. I have never been the mother who has had to leave a screaming child at play school, thank the Lord. She likes to do her own thing, and for the most part, she knows that when I leave, I always come back. Babysitters are never an issue for us.

When I am around, however, I cannot be out of her sight. Even when she is watching a video, I must be seated right next to her. I absolutely cannot fold laundry at the end of the couch. I must sit with my body actually touching hers and watch “Aladdin” for the twentieth time without making a peep. I am also not allowed to run the vacuum cleaner. What if she had something important to say in the time it would take me to suck up some dried leaves from in front of the door? I could not hear her over the Hoover, and she could not wait 30 seconds for me to finish, so vacuuming is out of the question. We also have this new thing where she begs me to “play with her,” but what she really wants is for me to stand in the driveway and let her play. I am not allowed to sit on the front porch and watch. Neither am I to actually touch the ball, Frisbee, tricycle, etc. Harper Lee’s job is to throw the ball, catch the ball, run after the ball, and kick the ball. My job is to stand. There are also numerous rules that must be followed during these “games,” but I am not allowed to know what they are until I have broken one of them. It’s great fun.

Of course, I’m being somewhat sarcastic… somewhat. All of the above is true, but I cannot see the benefit of encouraging a three-year old despot, so I vacuum and I do laundry and I pull weeds while I am supposed to be standing, and I just let her freak out. It’s very tiring. Someday, soon I hope, she will realize that the entire universe does not revolve around her. Until then, we will have time-outs for whining and ignore tantrums while scrubbing the toilet.

I guess it’s flattering, in a way, that she wants me around. One day, I’ll long for this. When she is crouching down behind the car seat for fear that someone might actually see her with me, I will miss her clinginess. But it’s begun to take a bit of a toll on my nerves, and on my house. My house, which I used to think of as fairly neat and clean, has been overrun by junk mail, laundry, small puzzle pieces and an unusually large number of arachnids that are moving into the warmer climate of my house for the winter. A couple of years ago, these things would not have survived a week in my house, yet lately they’ve made an extended stay with us.

In all fairness to Harper Lee, this is not entirely her doing. I have, as usual, more going on than I really care to, and because of Harper’s inability to function without me and her sometimes refusal to nap, work that I once did quite easily has become more of a task. I’ve sort of been sucked into one of those vicious cycles where the messier my house and general organization becomes, the less I care to do anything about it, thus creating more mess. That probably explains the garbage bag full of credit card applications that I threw out yesterday and the proliferation of spiders that were sucked up to their death with my handy-dandy hose attachment.

That’s right—I used my time alone to clean the freaking house, and I couldn’t feel more rested and revived if I had gone to a spa for the weekend. I had a race yesterday morning, and I spent most of the day anticipating the fat nap I was going to take afterwards. Usually after a 5K, I want nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep, but with a small child, that is next to impossible. However, yesterday the small child was not here, so when I got home, I took a long soak in a hot tub and crawled wearily between the sheets. I went right to sleep… only to awaken 20 minutes later. Twenty minutes! Can you believe that? So with my monster nap out of the way, what was I to do with an entirely free afternoon? I turned on the TV, watched “The Godfather” (Harper Lee’s not the only one who can watch a movie more than thirty times.), and began cleaning. I cleaned from 2:00 in the afternoon until 8:00 in the evening, and then I graded essays until a little past one. I was beat, but man, I felt good. The desk was clear, the shelves were dusted, the floor was clean, the laundry was folded, the spiders had vacated, and every student’s paper had been read, edited and graded. I could finally rest.

It’s funny, but I always plan these “alone” times for sleep, watching movies and reading and then I end up working instead, but I seriously feel much better. The more I get done while Harper Lee is away, the more time I have for her when she returns. I even thought about taking a nap this afternoon, but all I could think of was, “What else can I do in my remaining two hours?” So I got up and wrote this entry. My journal has suffered almost as much as the house recently. And then, when this is done, I’ll probably run. I can sleep later tonight, and tomorrow, I can play… or stand… whatever the case may be. Whatever I do, though, I’m going to do it with Harper Lee, and all the other stuff will just have to fall by the wayside again. I haven’t seen her in two full days. Tomorrow, I’m going to stick like glue.

2004-10-31T13:31:00.000-08:00

Tuesday

“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” - R.E.M.

Only two more days, folks, and we will know, at last, the fate of the world. At least that’s how it’s been explained to me. I, for one, cannot wait until these elections have passed into the pages of history books, and the Earth, as always, continues to turn.

A few weeks ago, when Rob said he was sick of politics, I made the delightfully naive comment that I was enjoying the debates, that I found the issues really interesting and the news coverage informative. That was four weeks ago. Since then I have been bombarded with messages along the side of the road telling me that I am immoral. I was told by a gaudy bumper sticker on the back of a truck that I am not a Christian. I have even been made to feel guilty by my own parents about my apparently “weak” faith and my contribution to the end of our world if I cast my vote on Tuesday. This has ceased to be fun, interesting, or anything close to a reasonable exchange of ideas. This election has turned into a name-calling, mud-slinging yelling match between unreasonable people—on both sides.

Why is it so difficult for people to discuss politics without the conversation turning into a fight? I have yet to understand how anyone, Democrat or Republican, can honestly believe that the other side is “evil” and their side is the “moral choice.” Let’s get serious, people. Nobody that has their name on the ballot for President of the United States is a saint. I don’t think it’s possible. Call it cynical, but one does not rise to that position by being a “really nice guy.” To get ahead, they have to play the game, and like it or not, that game has some pretty unseemly rules. That’s OK. It’s not ideal, but I’m not sure that it could be played any other way. You’ve got to know that your guy, regardless of party affiliation, is probably an egotistical maniac at best and a liar and a cheat at worst. The thing we must hang our hope on is that the one we choose is going to, despite lying and cheating and sometimes because of lying and cheating, make the world a better place.

That said, I also have a hard time swallowing the idea that certain candidates are the Devil incarnate. John Kerry is not sitting around rubbing his hands together and with a sinister laugh, saying, “Let’s see how many unborn children we can murder today.” If you believe that, …well, I said we shouldn’t name-call… never mind. He’s said—pretty clearly, I think—that he thinks life is sacred, but that he does not believe a teenage girl who has been raped by her father should have to have parental consent to have an abortion. Agree or disagree, but don’t make it out like he’s Satan’s right hand man. Conversely, George Bush is not a drooling, toothless hick who wants to send young Americans to their death for a little oil. Will I vote for him? Probably not. I didn’t last time, so I don’t imagine I’ll start now, but do I believe he’s evil and the dumbest man on the planet? No. Hell, I think he’s sort of likeable in a good ol’ fraternity boy kind of way. If I had to choose someone to party with, George Bush would be my man over John Kerry any day!

I think both of these guys want to do a good job, and both want to do what they believe is “right.” Do they want power? Of course. Why the hell else would you actually sign up for this crappy job? There have to be some perks. But underneath it all, I believe they both want to do what they think will best serve America. What best serves America is, obviously, up for debate. So, on Tuesday, I will choose the man that most closely represents what I think is best for our country with the understanding that I am choosing just that—a man. We, all of us, are weak and sinful people. None of us are exempt, not our President and not those who feel morally superior enough to condemn him.

If God was on the ballot, I’d vote for Him. Since He’s not, I’ll just pick the candidate I feel best about and pray that God will guide him. We can argue all we want, but ultimately God is in charge. Whoever wins on Tuesday will not change that, so I’m not worried. As my friend, Dan, says, “We’ve had many Presidents, some good and some bad, and we’re still here.” Amen.

2004-10-13T18:19:00.000-07:00

October

October is my favorite month. I love December and all of the holiday festivities, but October has become the month I look forward to the most. I used to say that I didn’t really like fall, but that was when I was younger and apt to agree with anything my dad said. He always said that fall made him sad. “All the trees lose their leaves, and everything dies in the fall,” he would say. I would nod my head and agree, but looking back I realize that it was only the cold months of winter that he dreaded so much. He’s a stone mason and does almost all of his work either outside or in unfinished, and therefore unheated, houses.

I no longer see fall as the death knell for yet another year. Now it is a happy time full of possibilities. As a teacher, I always enjoy autumn, because the school year is new. There are new students, new lessons, and sometimes, although rarely, new books. The possibilities seem endless. In the fall, students are not nearly as annoying, loud, rude, obnoxious, indifferent, and out and out lazy as they always become in May. There is, for me, just a touch of that old idealism lurking around in the cool, crisp days of fall.

In the fall, there is cross-country. There are races, the high school meets and road races for us old geezers, and there is an intensity that I feel during the fall that doesn’t seem to be there at other times of the year. Those first cool days of autumn, when it’s just cool enough to wear a long-sleeved shirt and shorts for a warm-up but still warm enough to strip down to a jog bra for the workout, always stir up a competitive spirit in me. I suppose it is always there, but it becomes much sharper in the fall. Probably it is the adrenaline kick I get from watching the kids race. Nothing inspires me more than watching our kids perform, and I don’t mean just the top kids. Yeah, I love to watch Miguel run. It’s beauty in motion. Even if you know nothing about running, you can appreciate the gracefulness and seeming ease with which he runs. But I also like seeing other, less racehorse-like kids, run fast. It’s fun to see someone who has just been jogging around in a fog for weeks finally realize what it is they’re out there for and really rip one, to see them hang on when it hurts and to run other people down, to watch them fall across that line and know that there was not one more thing they could have done, to see what it is to have spent it all. It’s an amazing thing, and it makes me want to experience that thrill for myself all the more. It’s one of my greatest motivators… that and running around in the woods, the fallen leaves crunching beneath my running shoes, the cool air drying the sweat from my face, and glimpses of care-free, if only momentarily, kids running through the woods having “acorn wars” and yelling and laughing. I love cross-country.

I also love Halloween. It was sort of a weird holiday for me growing up. I didn’t live in a neighborhood. We lived on a farm pretty far off the beaten path, so in order to trick-or-treat, my parents had to drive me twenty minutes across town to my grandmother’s neighborhood. Basically, I walked around with my mom and a bunch of kids I didn’t know to collect treats from other people that I didn’t know. Don’t get me wrong—I loved it, but it was not the trick-or-treating experience I read about in my books. I also loved getting to dress up for school. Halloween parties, much like Christmas and Valentine parties, were a highlight of my elementary education. I remember the excitement of those mornings when I waited patiently for my mom to carefully draw freckles across the bridge of my nose and stuff pieces of hay into my dad’s work shirt or the thrill of riding to school with green paint on my face and a pointed black hat on my head. I actually thought all those clueless people not going to school would actually be stumped as to why there was a small witch in the white station wagon. Unfortunately, I think Halloween parties in school have gone the way of so many good kid-friendly traditions. People either equate children dressed up as pirates and action heroes as something related to the occult, or it's wasted time that could be better spent teaching our kids how to fill in bubble sheets for an EOC. Either way, it bums me out that today’s children so often miss out on some of the things that made our childhoods. Maybe that’s why I’m so jazzed about Harper Lee’s Halloween experience now that she is old enough to get it. I think I’m more excited about her black cat costume and trick-or-treating than she is, although I suspect that will change when she gets a load of the haul she will most likely bring home in her big plastic orange jack-o-lantern. Plastic jack-o-lanterns should be listed as an inalienable right for every kid.

And October holds some other pretty terrific memories for me as well. If you’ve never been to Boone, NC in the fall, you need to go. I loved October in Boone. We wore khaki shorts, thick wooly sweaters, big socks and hiking boots everyday. We drove along the Parkway and sat out on blankets in the warm sunshine. We played frisbee on the Mall. We had pig-pickin’s, tailgates, and chilly evening cook-outs on the porch of the ATO house. It was one of the best times of my life. And it’s when I met Rob. One of my favorite memories of him is the two of us walking across campus one late afternoon. We had only known each other a couple of weeks, and I think we had just left the campus cinema. Our first few “dates” were at I.G. Greer theatre, since we had met in an “Introduction to Film” class. Every week we were assigned some obscure older movie, and we met in the lobby and watched the movie together. Anyway, I don’t remember much about that particular day except that we were holding hands, and the yellow and red leaves had piled up ankle deep in the parking lot across from my dorm. I can still hear the sound of our boots dragging through those leaves.

And, of course, there’s Harper Lee. She was born on October 19, 2001. In ways it occurred out of time and place. I entered the hospital in the dark, early hours of morning, and I didn’t emerge until after dark the next day. Two days slipped away in the pale fluorescent lighting of my hospital room, and I have never been the same. I brought Harper Lee home in the cool--well, actually cold-- winds of October. When I think back on that blur of days, I think of sweet smelling hay, big bright pumpkins and leaves—always the leaves. In fact, our first outing with our new baby, after the trip home, was a stroller ride through downtown Elkin’s Pumpkin Festival. It was freezing, but in an effort to lessen my grief (I was missing the NCHSAA 1-A State Championship, which our kids won by the way), we loaded up the baby with all the fear and trepidation of new parents and set off as if on a grand adventure. We probably spent an hour or more in preparation for this journey, forgot the diaper bag in all the anxiety and excitement, and stayed at the festival for all of ten minutes. Mostly it was because I could not walk more than ten minutes, but it was also because we were afraid someone would call DSS on us for having a week old baby out in 40 degree weather. It was almost more than either of us could take, but we did it, and I still associate pumpkins with my tiny, sweet baby.

I have often said that if I could bottle my own signature fragrance, it would be of the deep woods in fall. The smell of pine needles and damp leaves beneath my running shoes is my favorite smell in the world. It elicits images of sweaty faced kids beaming with pride, of football games and Homecoming queens, of miniature scarecrows, witches, and vampires dizzy with sugar overload, of new romance in the light of a bonfire, and of love greater than I have ever known. I love October.

2004-10-05T13:28:00.000-07:00

The Long and Short of It

I love short hair. It’s easy to take care of, it’s easy to style, I think I look pretty good with it, and even after a sweat-drenched workout, it’s dry in five minutes and looks pretty much the same as it did when I started. So why am I growing it out? This is a question I have struggled with over and over again.

I first cut my hair in college. I had always wanted to try a short cut, but because of my round cheeks and Granddaddy Stotesbury ears, I decided that it would not be a good look for me. In college, though, I worked for this crazy woman named Delores who owned a small hair salon on King Street in Boone. Delores was this tall, thin, always put-together woman who knew all the latest trends—your basic nightmare. She also had a fascination/obsession with the color purple, not the novel or even the film, the actual color. Every article of clothing Delores wore was purple, her car was purple, her fingernails were purple, her lipstick was always a variation of purple, the shop was purple right down to the towels and combs, every room in her house was purple, her auburn hair had “violet” highlights, and her spoiled rotten Royal Standard Poodle, Champ, had his toenails painted purple every other week at the doggie salon. She was nuts. But she was a terrific employer for a college kid, and I got free haircuts. It was Delores that first recommended I take the plunge.

I liked the cut very much, but after several months—and a wedding engagement—I decided to “grow it out.” I cannot tell you the number of women I know that spent the months before their wedding growing out perfectly nice haircuts, so they could have long, luxurious hair on their special day. Most of them, of course, they chopped it all off again the minute they walked in the door from their honeymoon.

I don’t know about the rest of my friends, but I know that time growing my hair for my wedding was a huge waste. Not only was it hovering right around the 100 degree mark the day Rob and I were married, the church was not air-conditioned, and someone, me I think, decided to have candles in all the windows thus not allowing the windows to actually be opened during the service. After an hour long ceremony in sweltering humidity and heat and a few hundred hugs from friends and family in a receiving line at which time my veil was torn from my head at least 50% of the time, my hair was not long and luxurious. It was a sweaty, limp mess that would have looked a thousand times better ten inches shorter.

After being married for a while and wearing a haircut that looked dangerously similar to my kindergarten haircut, I cut it all off again. This time I went gradually. Every month for three months, I would return to the hairdresser and ask for just a little more until I was finally satisfied. It was the perfect haircut… to me.

I was thrilled with the new ease of my short hair. I could actually take a shower, dress, do my make-up and my hair, grab a bagel and some coffee and be out the door for work in less than 30 minutes. That was at least an extra 15 to 20 minutes of sleep every day. Over a lifetime, do you know how much sleep can be gained just from having short hair? I could probably actually extend my life on Earth just by getting rid of blow dryers and hot rollers!

Rob, however, did not think it was the perfect haircut. What is it with men and long hair? There must be something in their genetic design that makes them look for, even long for, a woman with long locks. A woman could have the cutest short do in the world, and most men would still prefer a ratty ponytail. Explain this to me. Rob was never rude or unkind. In fact, he often said it was cute, but I knew in his heart of hearts, he missed the long, golden curls of our college days. In college, I spent minutes, hours, probably days if it were added together, fixing my hair. I would wash, dry and then roll my hair on fifteen to sixteen scalding hot, spiky rollers to achieve my everyday look. Of course, in college I also stayed out until 5:00 a.m. and did keg stands. Not everything one does in college is practical.

And then I went completely crazy, and not only did I cut my hair again, I cut it in a short, short pixie. This did not fly at the Libbert house at all. He hated it. He didn’t offer this information up willingly, but since I asked… Now, the time to experiment with a super short crop of this type is probably best left to those periods in life when you are not eight months pregnant and swollen beyond belief. When your feet are too big to fit in your Birkenstocks, and people look at you with pity when you say you still have four weeks to go before delivery, a super-short cut is not going to camouflage those cute little chipmunk cheeks. I still say, however, that it was a really pretty haircut. My timing was just poor.

Since then, I have grown my hair out twice, and I have cut it twice. Variations in fashion trends, my hormones and my concern for or indifference to Rob’s opinion all factor in to my hairstyle at any given point. Right now it is growing again. I have made it through the horrible middle stages when the best you can hope for is an unkempt look, and it has actually started to look like a layered bob with some length in the back. I guess that’s why I spent most of last night perusing fashion magazines for a photo of a short cut to take with me to my next hair appointment.

I really can’t help it. There are times when I would like to try something new, something feminine, something that would really knock Rob’s socks off, but most of the time, I’m trying to get ready for work with a three-year old smearing lip gloss across her belly as I’m drying my hair, a task that I can skip completely with short hair. I also leave cross-country practice two days a week to drive directly to church or to Harper Lee’s gymnastics class. With a short cut, my hair would dry during the drive time, and I could make a semi-acceptable appearance. Now, however, I show up with limp, lifeless, soaking wet hair. Short hair just suits my lifestyle. It’s sort of like stilettos—they look good, but they’re impractical as hell. Long hair looks good… sometimes, but it’s impractical, at least for me. If I was willing to spend the amount of time it takes to really style my long hair, I’m guessing that it would look pretty good, and there are days that I might even be a “hottie” with long hair, but let’s get serious. The other 360 days of that year, it would be in a ponytail at best and a stringy, droopy mess at worst. Sure, there would be the Breck girl moments, but most of the time, the times when it’s raining, I’m running (does that happen often?), or when Harper Lee just doesn’t feel like entertaining herself while I blow-dry my hair in small sections with a round brush, it would look like crap.

I’m ready to go short again. And if I don’t like it—well, I can always grow it out.

2004-09-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

Everything but the Kitchen Sink

OK, so here goes. I actually have a few minutes to jot down the flurry of thoughts that have been whirling around my head for the past week. At first, I thought I’d hold off and wait until I had time to plan and write some carefully constructed article. Then I realized that even a poorly constructed one might be difficult to pull off, if I didn’t just grab the few random moments I had and scribble down my “words of wisdom.” Usually I like to have some general idea behind each entry. Today I have no idea, just lots of disconnected pieces floating haphazardly. Sorry, there will be no profound or deep revelations today about running, motherhood or life. Sometimes I just need to write. Feel free to skip ahead or just wait and hope for better things next week.

I told Deanne yesterday that I felt like a big blob of raspberry jam. You know when you scrape the very bottom of the glass jar and run the edge of your knife along the rim to get the last drops of jam and then place it on the bread and spread and spread and spread, trying desperately to make that tiny bit of jam cover an entire piece of Sara Lee 100% Whole Wheat? Well, I’m the jam, and I feel like I have been scraped from beneath the rim of the great jelly jar we call life and spread way too thin!

Of course, I’m being somewhat dramatic here, as is my natural tendency, but danged if I’m not pooped. It’s not so much that I have a lot to do for any single commitment as it is that I have a few things to do for many, many commitments. And then there is the fact that I am just plain old selfish. I have become somewhat resentful of having “places to go.” It seems that there is this fine line that stay-at-home moms must tread. On the one hand, we don’t want to be the mom who “has no life,” whose “entire identity is wrapped up in her children,” and we don’t want to be rushed, stressed, harried, or generally just pissed off. I thought I was walking that line quite nicely for a while. Now I find that I am leaning dangerously close to the angry “road rage” mom. Of course, none of this “rage” is directed at Harper Lee. Shoot, some days she’s the only person I know that doesn’t make me completely insane. Most of my anger is directed towards telemarketers that call during naptime, the construction guys at the end of our road who pave over the yellow lines and set barrels up in trapezoids across the highway and then look at me like I’m an idiot when I don’t know where I’m supposed to go, students that never turn in assignments and then wonder why they are failing, and crazy people at church who have nothing better to do than worry about where somebody put a vase of flowers on Sunday morning. And I resent not being able to write.

Yes, I know. It’s not as if I’m producing great works of literature, and it’s not as if I haven’t said for years that I’m going to write and then put it off and put it off, but I have actually stuck with a fairly regimented plan this time. It’s been regimented for me at least. I have always written, sometimes copious amounts, but the inspiration always seemed to fade, and I would go weeks and even months without writing a single word. This journal has been great in that it has forced me to write. The bizarre thing, though, is that I use the word “force,” not because I don’t want to write, but because it always takes a backseat to what “needs” to be done, and what “needs” to be done is usually everything but writing. The journal, however, has made writing another thing on my “to-do list,” which doesn’t sound very appealing but has been quite effective. Whatever works, I guess.

School is another thing on my list of weekly chores. I don’t guess it’s really a chore, although as I’m running late, once again, at 8:30 in the morning and watching the painful exercise that is my toddler putting her socks on by herself, or I’m sitting on my couch reading 53 essays in my “spare time,” it seems like work. If I’m honest with myself, though, I recognize the fact that not only do I have probably the best two groups of students I’ve ever had this semester, I also really like teaching. I am good at it, and I am actually paid to talk about the art of writing and great literature. What other job would allow me to sit around with a group of people, watch a great film like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” discuss it at length, and call it a job?

Then there’s church. This is a tricky one for me, because even as I write this, I know that I am being the ultimate in selfish and lazy. Of course, when I signed up for the role of elder (Yeah, that’s right… I’m an elder. Don’t blame the Presbyterian church, though. They obviously don’t know me very well.), I did not know that our choir director would leave, moving our Christian Education person into his position, thereby moving me-- dumb, unsuspecting me-- into her position. Now, in all fairness, the worst part of this has been almost wholly born by our pastor, Brian, but there are those times when I am caught like a deer in headlights under the withering gaze of Peggy Dudley or when I’m on the verge of tears, because I cannot operate a piece of Sunday School software that is supposedly made for kindergartners that I feel slightly overwhelmed and ready to run for the hills. Fortunately, these times tend to pass quickly. I guess it makes me appreciate those that go into the ministry even more.

And there’s running. This one is not a “to-do” as much as it is a “must-do in order to survive.” Here’s my selfishness again. I LOVE to run, and I do not resent one day of practice at Surry Central, nor do I regret a single meet or race that I have been lucky enough to have run in or witnessed. Any frustration regarding running is generally related to injury, which, by the way, has improved significantly since last year. It’s there, but not nearly as obnoxious as usual. Resentment and bad feelings in this area are reserved almost entirely for the perceived grief I sometimes get from outside parties. Running is one of those things that people who do not run tend to not understand. That’s not a put-down. They just don’t care, and that’s OK. There are plenty of things that I don’t care about myself. However, if you do understand running and it’s important to you, you will, in most cases, look like an obsessive/compulsive nut-case to the average outsider. OK again. But don’t make me feel guilty about it. Yes, it’s time consuming, and yes, we run in the rain, and yes, I had my two-month old at a track meet in the middle of March, but I’m happy, and so was the baby for that matter, and I don’t want any grief. And I will continue to run even if I have a second baby. If you had a second baby, would you continue to eat, watch T.V., converse with friends on the phone, read books? Maybe not as often or exactly when you’d like, but I bet you would still do those things. And if you didn’t, then you should get a life. The same applies to me. I may not be able to do it as regularly, and I may be out at the track at 9:00 at night, but I’ll still be there. It’s sort of like breathing.

Anyway, I have no idea where any of this is going, and my allotted naptime is almost over, but I got a chance to write. There is no message except to me. As usual I probably need to chill out and quit worrying. (Funny how writing this stuff down always seems to drive that message home to me.) I need to write if for no other reason than that. I’m feeling a little less like berry jam now and little more like a happy mom should. I think I’ll go empty out the robotic vacuum cleaner, do a load of laundry and clean the kitchen. My number one priority should wake up soon, and I have a lot of acorns to collect into pie pans with her. Will this rat race never end? !

2004-09-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

The Great Outdoors

It often seems that I go into a situation expecting something marvelous to happen only to be let down in the end. Unfortunately, holidays seem to sometimes fall into this category. Last year, I had created the whole “Currier and Ives” scene in my head, envisioning our family as we curled up in our fleece jammies beneath the tree, hot cocoa in hand, to read “The Night Before Christmas” to a wide-eyed and sweetly sleepy Harper Lee. Instead I became irritated with Rob for disrespectfully playing a computer game while Judy Garland sang “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” and then yelled at my dad for not turning the TV off at exactly the moment I was ready to read Christmas stories. Why can’t they read my mind and do everything the way I want it, dammit?! So I tried to go into this past weekend with more realistic expectations.

Our friends, John and Sandra, brought their three-year old, Samuel, up for a weekend of outdoor fun in the mountains. It was to be both Harper Lee and Samuel’s first camping expedition. We had originally planned a trip to nearby Stone Mountain State Park, but after further thought and the realization that the park gates close at 8 pm every evening, we decided to give ourselves an escape route from a possible hell. While all of us enjoyed backpacking and camping during our days at ASU in Boone, none of us had yet experienced the wonders of Mother Nature with our sometimes less than cooperative toddlers. Beds, toilets, and running water within twenty feet seemed like a good safety net.

John and Sandra live in a townhouse in Raleigh, a pretty far cry from the scene here in good old Surry County. There is a pool in their housing development that Sandra and Samuel visit everyday during the summer months and the grocery store, which by the way, sells every weird, organic thing I can possibly think of, is within stroller walking distance. At times I have been envious, but weekends like this always make me recognize the wonderful things that our little place has to offer as well.

On Saturday afternoon we took John and Sandra, along with the kids, to a winery tour and tasting at Shelton Vineyards near Dobson. While we sipped various wines, the kids had their own grape juice and cracker tasting. Shelton also has a summer concert series every year, and while we were there, a band was playing beach music out on the lawn to crowds of people in lawn chairs and on blankets. Harper Lee and Samuel danced, sang, and tumbled in the grass while we listened to the twilight concert, and Chardonnay, one of two Labradors the Sheltons own, romped with them allowing himself to be smothered with toddler hugs and kisses. If nothing else had happened, it would have been a perfect day.

But the fun had just begun. After driving home, Rob and John took the kids in the truck through the grass in the field and down to the edge of the woods to gather firewood. This was a very serious task and one that neither Samuel nor Harper Lee took lightly. They heaved and pulled small branches from the woods and carried them diligently to the truck to be loaded up. Afterwards, while Sandra and I prepared the dinner table, they built a fire in the fireplace on the back porch, which basically means Rob built the fire and Harper Lee and Samuel ran around squealing like banshees.

After roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over the flames and stopping Harper Lee just short of actual physical sickness from sugar overload, we stuffed two grubby, sticky kids into pajamas and zipped them up into their respective tents. This is where I began to hold my breath. Not only was Harper Lee now inside a tent, outside, she was also within earshot of the adults that were still sitting around the campfire having a beer and a little conversation. This, I thought, will be too much for her. But after ten minutes of unzipping the tent, peeping from the skylight and yelling, “Night, night” to everyone multiple times, she finally settled down and slept until 8:00 the next morning.

Samuel took a little longer. In his defense, however, there were a lot of strange noises out in the wilds of the Libbert backyard, and I’m sure it was a little disconcerting. For one thing, our dogs, Ellie and Caribou, were obsessed with sniffing the edge of his tent, there was an owl in the woods making an eerie trilling sound, crickets were chirping and the rooster down the road often becomes confused about when morning actually occurs. It had to make sleep somewhat elusive for a three-year old who’s only used to the sounds of a TV or air-conditioner or possibly a passing car in the middle of the night. Finally, however, he too drifted off and so did all four parents.

In the morning, after a breakfast of pancakes, we loaded up the cars and took the mountain bikes to the New River Trail in Galax, Virginia. With two pretty bushed kids and nap deadlines looming, we only rode about 14 miles, but it was a nice trip. With the exception of some sand in the eyes from Rob’s back tire and a panic-stricken moment in which a bee became trapped inside the bike stroller with Harper Lee and Samuel, they had a good time. They saw a giant heron, a nest of baby bats in the picnic shelter, they threw rocks in the river and they picked flowers. It was top rate as far as Sunday afternoons go.

So, as we waved to the Owens family as they pulled out of our driveway on Sunday evening, I had to smile. The weekend had been everything I had hoped it would be. When I asked Harper Lee what her favorite part of the weekend had been, she said, “Samuel, getting wood with Daddy, and marshmallows.”

“Me too,” I said. My favorite parts are always good friends, “Daddy,” and marshmallows. There is never any disappointment in that.

2004-09-09T18:05:00.000-07:00

The Second Time Around

I am, at my core, a very lazy person and quite self-centered. I like to take naps. I like to sleep late. I like to drink coffee and watch the “Today” show. I like to run, sometimes for long periods of time. I like to run races and watch races—most often on Saturdays. I am forgetful and thoughtless. I am a stress-monger. I want things the way I want them when I want them. I am not a morning person. I have a foul temper. And yet, I’m planning on having another baby.

It’s true that I am all of the things I listed above, but I also know that, despite those particular characteristics, I am also a good mother. I’m generally kind and although Rob will tell you otherwise, I am pretty darned patient. I don’t mind messy finger-paints on the coffee table, and I actually enjoy dancing around maniacally with a plastic tiara on my head singing, “I Am the Walrus.”

In one of my English 111 classes today, a student brought in a narrative essay about the birth of her first grandchild. As we read and discussed the paper, many of the women in the class began recounting some of their own childbirth stories. It was pretty humorous and made for a lively conversation, but it also reminded me of some of the not-so-wonderful aspects of becoming a mother.

I began to recall the hours of “rip your guts out” pain, the almost out of body experience that came between 7 and 10 centimeters, vomiting into a stinking trash can as I begged the nurse to please let me sit up, having the same nurse roll me onto my side and lie on top of me with all of her weight and push every time I had a contraction to dislodge Harper Lee’s head from my pelvis… well, I could go on and on. The point is I don’t remember a lot of “fun” stuff from the whole labor and delivery scenario. And things did not necessarily improve drastically over the next two weeks.

“If I can just get home,” I thought, “I can do this. Everything will be back to normal in my own house.” Yeah, right. At home, I could barely walk, severe bleeding continued, Harper Lee screamed non-stop from 6-10 p.m. every night, showering became an actual “goal” for the day, and something called “breast engorgement” took hold. Taking care of newborn is not easy in the best of circumstances. Taking care of one in a fevered, bleeding, exhausted state is just one of Mother Nature’s many cruel jokes.

So no one with a brain in her head would willingly choose to do this again, right? A couple of years ago, I would have said right, but as Harper Lee approaches her 3rd birthday this October, I find myself longing for another baby. I do NOT look forward to sleepless nights or thousands of putrid cloth diapers fermenting in a soapy pail in my laundry room, and I actually read an article once that said a woman’s milk production increases 150% with her second child. Holy crap! 150%?! That means that I will, in all likelihood, swell to unrecognizable proportions, explode and die before breastfeeding can even get off the ground, but I still want to do it again.

This can mean one of two things. Either time really does dull one’s recollection of the horrors she faced in those first few weeks, or the end product is worth any and all amounts of pain. It’s probably a little of the first one, but mostly it’s the second.

Harper Lee is hands-down the most wonderful thing in my life. All the clichés apply. I never knew real all-consuming love until her, she makes my life complete, etc. It’s truly one of those things that can't be understood until it's been experienced firsthand. I will forever be grateful that I have experienced it, and now that I have, I want to do it again. Having a kid is just out and out fun. Never before in my adult life have I been covered head to toe in buttered honey from a sopapilla-eating toddler patting my hair and white shirt with her grubby little hands and not cared one iota. Being a mom gives you permission to live and love with total abandon. Oh, if we could all learn from a two-year old.

My friend, Sandra, always says, “If you analyze it too much, you’ll never have a kid.” It’s true. If I wanted to sit down and think of all the “logical” reasons not to have another baby, I could make an impressive list. It will be tiring. It will definitely cut into what personal time I have left. It will put a damper on the “normal” life we have recently begun to reclaim. It will be two times harder with two little people to care for. But I don’t want to analyze it. All I know is that I want to add to what I think is a pretty cool little family. I want Harper Lee to know what it is to have family long after Rob and I are gone. I want to know what other incredibly unique and wonderfully strange person is out there waiting in the wings.

So, my lazy self is heading to bed as soon as this entry is finished. I have some hours of sleep to store up over the next several months or so. I’m not analyzing, and I’m not worrying. I’m just going with my heart. I think that’s what a two-year old would do.

2004-08-23T18:03:00.000-07:00

Shhhh… I Think I Hear Something

The subject of Brian’s sermon yesterday was “Listening to God.” I love the way some sermons are just tailor made for me. It’s as if Brian is reading my mind. Of course, I realize that he has no way of knowing what I’m thinking, but the One speaking through him does. Anyway, the point of the message was that sometimes we just need to be quiet and listen to what God is saying, that maybe hearing God’s word is only rare, because we are rarely ever really listening.

According to Brian, there are many hindrances to hearing God’s voice. One being sin. OK, so chalk that one up several times on my hindrance chart. The next was fear and anxiety. Oh, no. It’s a wonder God can get through to me at all—yet another example of God’s greatness. However, lately I have felt that He hasn’t been getting through to me. Of course, I take full responsibility. I know that it is not because He is not there. It’s because I am not receptive.

I have, for some time actually, been struggling with prayer. I do it, just not consistently or correctly. I know what I’m supposed to be doing, but I find it difficult. I didn’t always feel this way. I think it has gotten worse for me over the past three or four years. Maybe it’s been this way far longer, but it’s only begun to bother me now. What I do know is that I often approach God as one would a genie in a bottle. “God, please let Harper Lee sleep through the night, please let my leg get better, please help me to stop worrying so much, etc.” I hardly ever truly thank God, and when I do, somewhere in the back of my mind I’m thinking, “Remember to be thankful, because if you’re not, then He’ll stop helping you in times of need.” Is that the most messed up way of thinking you’ve ever heard in your life or what? It’s not as if God doesn’t see every little dark, creepy thought that floats in and out of my brain on a minute to minute basis anyway or that I even believe that God works in such a Bob Barker “Let’s Make A Deal” way. In fact, it pretty much flies in the face of everything I think about God.

So, what the heck is my problem? I have always believed that God is an incredibly loving and forgiving God. I believe that He watches out for us (my college days being a prime example), that He wants what is best for us, and that He loves us more than we love even our own children. This last one must be true, although it is beyond my realm of comprehension. Yet, I still approach Him as though I am waiting for the rug to be pulled out from underneath me.

I have gotten better. The year after Harper Lee was born, I almost found it impossible to pray without thinking things like, “Thank You for this wonderful child. I am so grateful. Don’t take this away from me. I would never forgive You.” My prayers always degenerated from pure gratitude to almost threatening warnings. It was making me crazy, so I pretty much stopped praying. But, as time passed, I began to feel better and less like a victim waiting to be pushed over the precipice into a pit of despair. I started to pray again, just not very well.

Part of me still feels a little threatened, as though my life might be brought to a sudden stop. Deanne told me a story the other day about a mother who was killed in a car accident the day before her son’s second birthday. She was driving the same road I travel every single day, and she was carrying her son’s birthday cake home. As she rounded a familiar curve, the cake began to slide, she reached across to keep it from dumping onto the floorboard, lost control, hit a telephone pole and was killed. Just like that, several lives were changed forever… over a birthday cake. Those are the stories that wake me up in the middle of the night. It’s not the stories of axe murderers and cat burglars; it’s the one where a simple everyday event can suddenly end the life of a perfectly innocent person. These are the stories that make me feel distrustful. Why are such gifts given and then cruelly taken away? I know, I know… I’m not supposed to understand, and answers will be made clear to us someday. I find very little comfort in that.

So, the question then becomes, for me, “How do I approach God when I am filled with these nagging fears and feelings that if I don’t play my cards exactly right, everything I hold dear will be snatched away in an instant?” Part of it may never really go away. I have come to the conclusion that my incessant worrying is, to some degree, genetic. My father is the worst worrier I’ve ever seen in my life. And there is only so much I can do about innate characteristics. I do think, however, that I can learn to control it, and one of the ways that I can best do that is to allow God to talk to me. If I could just sit for a few seconds every day and quiet the never-ending racket of to-do lists and “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that’s” then I could feel the peace that I have been looking for.

So often we associate talk of “inner peace” and “quieting our minds” to New Age mumbo-jumbo, but all it is, when you get right down to it, is shutting up and letting God get a word in edgewise. In fact, Brian did something yesterday that was completely new to me, at least in church. He said that there are actually two types of prayer. The names escape me at the moment, but the first was the most common type of prayer, the one where we make requests and ask God for things. The second, he said, was more contemplative. Its purpose, basically, is to get rid of all the noise in your head and to just feel God’s love for you and to feel genuine gratitude. He had us close our eyes and imagine being showered with more love than we could have ever dreamed possible, overwhelming unconditional love. Then he had us look at ourselves as God sees us. All I could see in my mind was Harper Lee wrapped around my legs, her little curls wet with perspiration, and I thought, “He loves me more than I love her.” It made me feel like a little kid. It made me want to cry. No one, least of all God, is out to get me. It was the most calm and peaceful I’d felt in ages. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t on the defensive. I was ready to listen.

Of course, life is a continuous journey and not a destination. I will still wake up in the middle of the night stressed out about laundry overflow, stupid and insensitive comments (mine and those of others), potty training setbacks, or moldy bread. There is no worry too small for Stacey. But at least now I feel that I am making my way back to an old friend. He’s been there the whole time, calling, leaving messages, and waiting. I think it is time to listen to what He has to say.

2004-08-12T12:47:00.000-07:00

Nine Years

It’s my wedding anniversary. Rob and I have been married for nine years this afternoon. Several people have asked me today if we are doing anything special this evening. I think we are, but when I say it out loud, it doesn’t sound like much.

Our babysitter, Jill, is coming over this evening around 6:30, and Rob and I are planning on heading out to Jonesville to see “The Village” at the local movie theater. Usually when Rob and I go out for dinner and a movie, the cost of the evening far exceeds the actual fun we have. By the time we’ve paid a sitter, had dinner and a bottle of wine, bought two movie tickets, and paid for popcorn and drinks, we have anywhere from $80 to $100 invested in an evening. The inevitable tallying of bills at the end of the night always puts a damper on what was a fun, although not spectacular, night.

So this time, we decided we would see the early movie and buy whatever fast food, bottled drinks, and/or convenience store snacks we want and smuggle them into the theater in a large pocketbook. I know… we are not seventeen, but I don’t care.

First of all, let me say, that we did go on a two-day mountain biking trip three weeks ago complete with a rustic cabin on the side of a mountain and a hot tub on the deck. We decided that would be our “official anniversary trip.” It was something we both enjoyed and wanted to do. I guess tonight is just time alone to commemorate the date of our marriage.

Anniversaries are so often built up in our minds, at least in mine, as this day that’s supposed to be non-stop romantic thrills, and the reality is usually a card and a nice gift. But that’s OK. Life goes on—the mini-despot still has to have her bowl of Cheerios and someone to brush out her inexplicably tangled hair. The cat still needs his rabies shot. This weekend’s yard sale signs still have to be staked out on the corner. And tonight will be two otherwise mature and reasonably sophisticated adults sneaking Big Macs into a most-likely mediocre movie. I can’t wait.

This “date” won’t be any different really than our regular ones, except that it might not end up costing as much as usual, but I don’t think that’s really the point of an anniversary. I used to think so, but now I realize that the real reason we should remember our wedding day is because it allows us to really think about, to consider, the person we’ve just spent another year with and what they mean to us.

Harper Lee and I took out my wedding video today and watched it before she went off to playschool. It was cool for her just because she got to see Mommy and Daddy, but it was also sort of special because she got to see my grandfather who passed away the year before she was born, and she saw friends and family members that live far away. I was just sort of amazed at how young we all were. I pointed out friends who in the video had only twelve hours earlier been drunk and said things like, “That’s Madison and Sydney’s daddy.” All of us have changed so much.

Mostly, however, I was struck by how young and goofy Rob and I seemed. We thought we were so old and so smart, but we had no idea what we were doing. Of course, that’s the way most people start out I would imagine—some far worse than either of us. It just makes the fact that people stay together at all that much more amazing.

Rob and I have changed a lot over the past nine years. Fortunately, our changes continue to complement one another’s. We often tell ourselves how lucky we are, and we know that it’s true. In a world full of lying, cheating, and general depravity, it’s nice to come home to a friend who’s seen you in every light possible and still manages to steer his car homeward in the evening.

Part of marriage, indeed a large part, includes sniping about unfolded laundry, unfinished bathroom remodeling projects, broken weed-eaters, and toothpaste spit that hasn’t been rinsed down the drain. Sometimes it includes bitching and whining and taking it out on the one person you know can handle it. It’s not fair, it just is. But much like the fact that Harper Lee often reserves her most hellish fits and lapses in sanity for me, her dear and constant mommy, I reserve mine for Rob. And while I know there is little comfort in this fact in the midst of Hurricane Stacey, it is a testimony to my unfailing trust that no matter what, Rob Libbert will always be there for me.

He is there to change my oil, to cheer me on at the end of a race, to hold my hand in the delivery room, to escort me to parties, to sit with me in church, to babysit while I run and while I’m at track meets, to watch TV with me at night, to rub my head until I fall asleep and to listen. I’m not always the most demonstrative person, but let it be known that I have used this day to consider the value of my husband. That’s the purpose of an anniversary, and I am rich beyond measure.

2004-07-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

Why I Run

I came across this today while I was searching for something else. Two years ago, Rex asked the kids to think about why they run. Some of them wrote it down, so I did too. And despite injuries, a more hectic lifestyle and the little changes that occur over time, more than 730 days have passed, most of which included a run, and these things still apply.

It’s always good to have people think you’re a little bit crazy.
It makes me tougher.
It makes me a better mommy.
It makes me a better wife.
I have a pair of black leather pants that I really like.
I enjoy eating omelets the size of hubcaps.
I like to feel the rain on my face.
I like to make improvements.
I like to win (even if it’s only my age group).
I like to kick other people’s butts.
I like Rex, Deanne, Dan, and Jason.
I love the kids.
It’s “my thing.”
I enjoy belonging to a group.
It’s an obsession, an addiction, a worthwhile pursuit.
It keeps me sane.
Endorphins.
It is a bunch of kids (either literal or at heart) running around in the woods in their underwear.
It forces self-reflection, self-observation, self-criticism, and self- congratulations.
It allows me to know myself.
It gives me time to pray.
It lets me create a fantasy world—to dream, imagine, pretend.
It keeps me sharp, both physically and mentally.
At times, it is spiritual.
I’m pretty good at it.
I like the shoes.
It gets me outside on a regular basis.
The unexpected rewards of just getting out the door—silos silhouetted against orange and lavender skies, tiny white slivers of moon, bright planets like diamond studs against blue velvet, honking geese in formation, foxes lurking on the beach behind collapsing sand castles or in the dim undergrowth of a laurel thicket, light brown deer with thin, waifish faces, wild turkeys, chipmunks scurrying along the edge of a trail, laughing teenagers jumping in the river…
Sweat.
Icicles that form on the ends of my hair in the cold, winter wind.
Breathlessness.
Freckles across the bridge of my nose.
For the nausea, stomach cramping and relentless urge to pee on the start line.
Exhausted naps after a good race.
Free Chic-Fil-A sandwiches and waffle fries with Dan.
The look on the faces of people who do not run.
For the little plastic trophies, but mostly for making people I respect proud of me.
To wear black.
In spite of and because of the idiots that swerve at me, blow the horn at me and yell, “Hey, it’s raining!” from their cracked car window.
For spatterings of red clay mud on my socks and shirt from hill repeats in the rain.
For some of the best friends I’ve ever had in my life.
It makes me proud.
For all these reasons and more, I run, and I am a better person for it.

2004-07-23T12:07:00.000-07:00

Comments on the Tour

Like anyone gives a rat’s ass, since every schmuck who’s ever flipped on OLN has an opinion, but here’s my take on the Tour day France so far.

1. The mountain time trial was complete insanity. I can’t believe no one was injured in the mass of people blocking the road. To say these guys have good concentration is an understatement. Racing the clock up nine miles of murderous mountain terrain in the sweltering sun would be distraction enough. Add to that thousands of camera-wielding fanatics who completely overestimate their ability to get the hell out of the way and the distractions become almost unbearable. And who is the guy that actually thinks it’s a good idea to run alongside these riders in his Speedo while millions of viewers watch? Never a good plan, buddy. The race officials should never have allowed the crowd to get that out of hand. God was watching out for some folks that day.
2. Everybody needs to shut up and give Tyler Hamilton a break. Do you know how many people I’ve heard say, “Anyone who’s ridden the whole thing with a broken collar-bone should have been able to deal with a little back pain”? It’s almost as if they are accusing him of being a wienie this year. First of all, I figure anyone who has trained as hard and as long as Tyler Hamilton is not going to just wuss out. The pain must have been significant. Secondly, he knew that he most likely did not have a chance to win. While I ordinarily would never condone this reasoning as an excuse to quit, why risk injuring himself further for mediocre results? The Olympics are yet to come. And finally, I cannot conceive of the mental toughness required to ride for 19 days with a broken collar-bone. Hard and painful just doesn’t seem to cover it. That is probably not something he wishes to ever endure again, and I don’t blame him one bit. Besides that, the guy’s dog just died. Lighten up, people.
3. Floyd Landis is the man. He deserved to win Stage 17, but since Ulrich had to be an asshole, I’m glad Armstrong stuck it to them.
4. Bob Roll is my new favorite sports commentator. Not that I had a favorite commentator before, but he is hysterical and doesn’t take himself too seriously. He’s someone I could hang out with.
5. I hope Lance Armstrong is not taking drugs. Rob says it seems almost too good to be true, and the allegations are certainly out there. These guys are not slouches, not a single one, yet Armstrong is pounding them overall. It’s bizarre, it’s almost superhuman, yet I have to believe it’s from working his ass off and doing what no one else is willing to do. Forget adultery and gargantuan egocentrism—I want to believe in what we’ve been seeing for the past two weeks.
6. OK, OK, OK—so Sheryl Crow seems like a nice, down-to-earth chick. It is sort of hard not to like her, but answer me this: How many times did Bob Roll and Phil Liggett interview Kristin Armstrong? “Tell us, Kristin, how is it sleeping on the floor of your hotel room when you’re eight months pregnant with twins just because your husband doesn’t like the freakin’ quality of the boxsprings?”
7. The Germans are not too high on my list of favorites right now. In a sport that usually seems to have the most supportive, non-confrontational fans, I was disappointed to hear the boos and jeers coming from the crowd during the mountain time trial when Lance Armstrong passed. According to Armstrong, he was even pushed and spit upon. That crosses a line, and it really disappoints me, although I am secretly pleased that it wasn’t American fans showing their butts. At the risk of sounding unpatriotic, that’s sort of a first.

So, that’s my take on it so far, and that’s the beauty of the Internet—any know-it-all fool with a computer can spout off ignorant and misinformed rants and try to pass it off as entertainment. Thanks for indulging me in my mine. Don’t for one second think that I know the first thing about cycling, because I don’t, and I feel like a fool for even writing this down, but that’s sort of the cool thing about the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong. People who have never followed cycling or maybe any sport for that matter, are somehow oddly drawn to watching this particular event and to witnessing Armstrong’s attempt to do what has not been done. I know that there are a lot of people out there who have no idea that it’s even going on, but there are a lot that do, and most of them weren’t watching six years ago. Call it cheesy, naïve, or simplistic, but it has been sort of a unifying shot of patriotism as we all gather around our sets every evening and watch an American kick some serious ass in a sport that has always largely been dominated by Europeans. Come Sunday night, I think I might even be a little bit sad that it’s over.

2004-07-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

Sex and the County

For those of you who know me, what I’m about to say may be rather shocking. I just spent 45 minutes on-line “shopping” for Manolo Blahnik shoes.

I say “shopping” because there is no way in hell I would ever actually buy Manolo Blahnik shoes, but it was fun to look. Admittedly, I had no idea who or what Manolo Blahnik was before the advent of Netflix and our subsequent semi-obsession with HBO’s “Sex and the City,” but since then I have become a little curious.

When I was in high school, I was quite the shoe girl. Again, if you have only known me within the last fifteen years, this is probably news to you. My closet today contains two or three pairs of Birkenstocks, a worn out pair of Old Navy flip-flops, two or three pairs of “practical” shoes for working, and anywhere from ten to fifteen pairs of the most foul-smelling, river-water-soaked, mud-caked running shoes you can imagine. Back in the day, though, I had a pair of shoes for every occasion.

I had thong sandals with flowers between the toes, these awesome Egyptian princess sandals, blue suede pumps, ballet flats, spectator pumps, mary janes, and shoes that actually required those little non-slip patches with adhesive that stuck to the bottom of the shoe to prevent one from falling and busting her ass. And I wore them. Everyday. To school. I’m not sure when things changed. Probably my freshman year at Appalachian State University. It doesn’t take many days of trekking back and forth through wind, snow and sub-freezing temperatures in Boone, NC for the blue suede pumps to become a thing of the past. Eventually those shoes were replaced by running shoes and hiking boots, and I’ve rarely deviated from that path since.

However, I do occasionally feel that old pull to buy something just because it’s cool. I have the cutest pair of black three-inch slides that I absolutely love but hardly ever wear. I bought them on a trip to Charlotte last summer, and I was with Rob. Those two things alone explain the purchase. First of all, we were in Charlotte for our wedding anniversary. Our plans included a nice dinner, a show and some late night barhopping. These shoes were perfect for the club scene. Secondly, as soon as I slipped them on, Rob said, “Damn! Why don’t you buy stuff like that more often?” Of course, I understand. My calf muscles immediately popped out, and my ordinarily stumpy legs looked halfway lean and sleek. I looked good. “Hmmm…” I wondered. “Why don’t I buy stuff like this more often?”

I’ll tell you why—because it’s been almost an entire year since I bought those shoes, and I’ve worn them twice including that very evening in Charlotte. Do you know what I would look like wearing three-inch slides to the Elkin Food Lion? Harper Valley PTA, that’s what. (To be honest, I remember very little about that show, but whenever my mom sees a woman wearing something that is inappropriately sexy, she says she looks very “Harper Valley PTA.”) Anyway, I’d look like a fool, like someone who is trying too hard. Besides that, have you ever tried to walk in a pair of three-inch slides? I know that some women can do it,—the Sarah Jessica Parkers of the world, I salute you-- but I can’t—at least not comfortably, and I’m all about comfort.

For one thing, I run. That means my feet have spread, my toes are callused beyond what is recognizably human, and orthotics just don’t fit easily into stilettos. For another, I am a mom of a very active two-year-old. That means my feet spread even more while I was pregnant, I am constantly in motion, and my back has enough pressure carrying a 33 lb. child around without having to deal with the horrible unnaturalness of high heels.

So, why was I spending my precious free-time perusing the shoe section of Neiman-Marcus? Because even me, the most comfort-loving, low-maintenance hippie chick around, likes to feel fashionable, stylish and sexy. Most of the time, I feel that way in a pair of worn jeans or in a black racing singlet, but every once in a while, I feel my inner Carrie Bradshaw creeping to the surface, and I have an overwhelming desire to shop. In fact, I’m going shopping tomorrow. I’m so excited I can barely stand it, but I already know what will happen. I will go with visions of a complete wardrobe overhaul in my mind, and I’ll buy basically a lot of the same stuff I have. There will be a blue jeans purchase along with several snug-fitting tees of multiple colors and maybe a dress or two.

One thing for sure, though. I am not coming home without a pair of killer high heels. They won’t be Manolo Blahniks. (Do you know how many hungry kids, church programs, cancer research, and women’s shelters you could support for the cost of a single pair of pink pony hair slingbacks?) But I’ll have some. They may be from Shoe Carnival, but I will not rest until I have a pair of back-twisting, bunion-grinding, Chinese foot-binding heels amongst my haul tomorrow. They may only be worn once or twice and only when we go out of town, but they will be there amidst the dog-chewed soccer sandals and road-worn Asics, and if only briefly, I can feel like the style maven of State Road.

2004-07-04T19:45:00.001-07:00

Rejected… Again

You know that kick in the gut feeling that is so prevalent in middle school? Yeah, well, I had it again just the day before yesterday. Unlike middle school, it was not in some humiliating face-to-face encounter in the school cafeteria. Instead, it came in the form of a really nice, upbeat letter from an articles editor of one of my favorite magazines.

When I was at the beach several weeks ago, my friend, Sandra, brought along a sack of old “Mothering” magazines that another friend of hers had lent her. I had never heard of “Mothering,” but I’m always interested in a good read, so I pulled one out and began to flip through the pages. It was a parenting magazine for sure, but it was not like any I had ever read. Its pages were filled with everything from articles on breastfeeding a toddler to home schooling, and the ads were of a decidedly “hippie chick” nature. They ranged from cloth diapers and Mayan baby slings to organic foods and midwife services. I immediately fell in love.

Of course, some of the material was a little extreme for this only slightly liberal, mostly conservative girl, but it was so different, I couldn’t help poring over the pages again and again. By the end of the week, I had read every issue cover to cover, and I immediately went on-line once we were home, so that I could check into subscribing. I was so excited, in fact, that I immediately sat down to write my own article for submission. “This is it,” I thought. “This is the perfect place for my work.” Not only did the magazine seem open to new ideas and voices, they actually accept unsolicited manuscripts.

One of the great mysteries of my adult life has been how to get my foot in the door to becoming a writer. It all seems simple enough, but it isn’t. At least, it hasn’t been for me. Maybe it’s because things have come easily to me as an adult. That sounds conceited and pompous, doesn’t it? I don’t mean for it to come off that way, but as an adult, things have just sort of landed on my doorstep. Incredible teaching and coaching opportunities, positions on committees and in organizations, honors and awards—these things have been afforded to me, and I am grateful. I am particularly grateful, because that was rarely the case as a kid growing up.

I was, as my mother used to say, “always a day late and a dollar short.” If there were nominations made for something cool like Governor’s School or for a really prestigious scholarship, I was on the list of nominated, but I was never the one chosen. When ten girls were selected for Homecoming Court, I was number eleven on the list. I was the only cheerleader on our middle school squad that didn’t make it onto the high school squad. Things like “You did a great job, but…” and “It was a really tough decision, but…” became the most dreaded words in the English language to me.

Of course, looking back, I realize that so much of it came from a self-esteem that was totally in the crapper. That’s an entirely different journal entry though. Fortunately, I kicked the bad feelings (along with a really stupid boy) to the curb my sophomore year in college, and things haven’t been the same since. It’s amazing what a little self-confidence can do to totally turn your life around.

So, here I am, twelve years later, and I find myself feeling those same insecurities. I was so sure that I had nailed it on the head with my article, and that “Mothering” and I were so made for one another, that I didn’t really even entertain the idea that I might be rejected. So, when I received a response to my article submission after sending my work only seven hours earlier, I was thrilled. I opened the e-mail to read a sweet, perfectly benign rejection letter telling me that while she had enjoyed my detailed article, there is a backlog of articles on breastfeeding right now and that they would have to pass. There it was—the steel-toed boot in my stomach. My ears began to burn, and my eyes felt teary. A knot formed in the back of my throat. I smiled as my husband said, “I’m sorry, hon,” but I don’t think I did a very good job of hiding my disappointment.

Of course, I did what I usually do when I fail miserably. “Just forget it,” I said angrily. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I don’t know how you’re ever supposed to break into this whole writing thing. Most people won’t even look at my work if they didn’t contact me first, and the rest aren’t interested in anything I have to say.” Feelings of doubt and utter stupidity began to well up. And then the voice of reason, known at my house as “Rob,” said, “Come on. You know yourself that all writers say that they went through hundreds of rejections before they ever got a break. How many times have you actually tried this?” And, just like that, the feelings went away. Where was he when I was in middle school?

So, yesterday, I sat down and scanned through a few more websites and e-zines that I thought might be interested in my work, and I submitted another article. Their usual response time is two to three weeks, so I’m expecting another swift kick to the abdomen sometime within that time frame. Only five or six hundred more to go.

2004-06-08T19:14:00.000-07:00

Go Out Hard and Come Back Harder

I just ran a kick-ass tempo run. It was not blazing fast, and I did not get as far as I have in the past before the turnaround, but that’s not what I mean. I mean I felt good (as good as I can), I felt quick, I hung on to people I shouldn’t technically be able to, and I came back faster. For those skeptics that think physical exercise has nothing to do with mental health, I say, “You’re crazy and need a good shot of endorphins.”

For two long, expensive years, I have been limping around with some mystery injury that orthopedists, chiropractors, and therapists could not explain. That is, until I met Dr. Bert Fields, my new personal hero, but that’s another story. Basically, I think I am on the road to semi-recovery. I have the sneaking suspicion that this is not something I will ever recover from fully. It’s all sort of related to leg length discrepancy, difficult labor and delivery and a somewhat bizarre running form to compensate for everything else. I have good days and I have bad, but I am never completely pain free.

Yoga and massage help, and mountain biking has been excellent for cross-training purposes when running is more than I can stand. All in all though, I shouldn’t complain too much. Some injuries sideline runners completely for months or years. Despite the pain, I am physically able to run and sometimes even to run fast. That’s a blessing in itself.

So after an awesome fall with several PR’s and a chance to run in the National Club Cross-Country Championship, I decided to use the winter to heal a little and not add unnecessary strain. But by March, I felt just as bad as I had in November, and I didn’t improve much over the next couple of months. In May, I started a second round of physical therapy. May, I thought, would be an excellent time to rest and “just run.” I decided not to push myself too hard or too much, to give my body a change and a chance to heal. Well, it changed. Healing is a different story altogether.

It’s now the beginning of June, the beginning of summer cross-country training. This is the time that we train to train. Cross-country seasons are made during the summer, and it is my favorite time of year to run. I have been looking forward to it for months. Yet, my butt, lower back and hamstring still feel like hamburger, and I’ve gained seven pounds since November. What to do? Run hard.

It came to me this afternoon as I was getting dressed to go over to the track. I thought, “I’ve rested for a good long time, and I feel worse than ever. When did I feel the best since this whole drama started?” It was in the fall. The fall when I was running 3 x a mile at 6:40 pace or better. The fall when I did 40 minute recovery runs. The fall when I finally broke 22:00 and later ran 21:32. I was running hard and, for me, fast. I hurt, but not as much and certainly no more than I do right now.

So, the question comes down to this: Do I want to be fat, unhappy and in pain or do I want to be lean, happy and in pain? If the pain is going to exist no matter what I do, wouldn’t it be nice to be 120 lbs and break 21:00? So, tonight, against the advice of my coach, I ran hard. It hurt, and even as I type, I have an ice pack strapped to my butt, but I’m happy and I feel good about myself. Sometimes life hurts, but damned if I’m not going to find the good stuff that goes with it.

2004-06-08T11:17:00.000-07:00

My Columbian Connection

OK, so some morning when I’m at home alone and I have no one to care for, I’ll give up caffeine. Rob decided that it would be a good idea to give up caffeine, and since I am considering a second pregnancy, I thought it sounded like a good plan. Rob is trying to rid his body of all foreign toxins for training purposes (let the record show he has officially overtaken me in the weird obsession with a sport category), and I basically thought, “Hey, what the heck?” Holy crap. I completely understand addictions now.

I don’t consume a terrible amount of caffeine. At least I don’t think I do. I do have an unusually large coffee mug, more of a coffee pitcher actually, but I fill it only once in the morning and I’m done. I don’t drink sodas, and although I would if it was available, I don’t eat much chocolate. So how much of a difference could skipping a morning coffee make? A lot.

I have felt like total crap today. Maybe it’s PMS, maybe it’s inadequate sleep, but I have walked around for the better part of a day like a complete zombie. It’s the same feeling I get when I have a terrible cold and have taken some sort of medicine to clear my head that actually just makes things fuzzier. I’ve felt light-headed, grumpy, exhausted, and one step behind all day. I spent most of the morning watching the clock and waiting, praying actually, for naptime. Poor Harper is asleep right now only because I forced her to lie down an hour and a half early. In my defense, though, she was tired and we do have somewhere to be this afternoon; however, I probably wouldn’t have pushed it up so far if I hadn’t felt so stinking awful.

After a 45 minute nap myself, I slid strategically from beneath the sleeping toddler, and wandered into the living room. I did not feel refreshed. So the debate began. Do I go ahead and stick it out and feel bad for two or three days, or do I end my needless suffering and make a pot of “real” coffee? I think if I’d had a guarantee that I’d only feel bad for today, I’d have gutted it out, but I didn’t. Why subject myself to a splitting headache, lethargy and general nastiness when the answer to my problem was in a pretty little red canister in the refrigerator? Scoop, add water and life could be good again.

So, as I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor, reading my latest copy of “Fitness Runner” and studying all the articles on diet and nutrition for optimal performance, I am also greedily consuming my daily pitcher of caffeine loaded coffee. I already feel better. The headache has gone, mental clarity, as much as there ever was, has returned, and I feel like I could actually face staining the trim in the bathroom without going into a fit of wailing and despair.

On the one hand, I feel bad that I made it a grand total of seven hours without my drug of choice, but on the other, I don’t care. I didn’t want to give it up in the first place, and if I do decide to get pregnant again, caffeine deprivation will probably be the least of my worries. Who cares about a missing cup of coffee when you’re puking your guts out, tired and confused anyway?

If Rob wants to give up caffeine, I’m OK with that, but I just don’t think I can… or at least, I don’t think I want to. We may just have to have two coffee pots brewing in the morning from now on. For right now, I’m not willing to acknowledge that I have a problem.

2004-05-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

Smooth Operator

I officially have the hairiest legs at the Libbert house. I came in the other night from a track meet after having been gone all day. It was late, and in an attempt to keep from waking everyone, I stumbled blindly through the house trying to get ready for bed without turning the lights on. Finally, however, I gave up and asked Rob if I could turn on the lamp. When I did, he said, “What do you think?” I looked over at him as he flexed his legs, and at first, I wondered just how much muscle mass he thought he had gained since I’d left earlier that morning. Then I saw it. He had shaved.

He had jokingly mentioned this possibility a couple of times before. I thought it was just for laughs. Now, I think it was to gauge my possible reactions to a husband with silky smooth legs. While we were in Georgia, I saw several cyclists with shaved legs, and it didn’t bother me in the least. I figure it’s just part of the sport, sort of like runners with Band-Aids on their nipples. Let’s face it, you’d be hard-pressed to really shock a runner… at least the ones I know. My friend, Jason, and I attribute this to the fact that athletes are much more in tune to their bodies and ALL of its functions. It’s really not unusual to see runners at races, both male and female, changing clothes in public or squatting in the bushes. This would probably mortify my mother, and I’m not sure why it doesn’t bother me, but it doesn’t. It just seems natural, and when you gotta go, and you’re in the middle of a field somewhere, you don’t have much choice. So shaved legs, in the big scheme of things, doesn’t really seem all that strange.

The next morning, Rob got up to join a group of cyclists for a 75 mile trail ride on cycle-cross bikes. He was gone the better part of the day, but when he came home, he was beaming. “I felt so strong,” he said. “I could have gone on all day.” This from a guy who complained about 10 minute jogs with me a short two and a half years ago. Of course two and a half years ago he was 55 pounds heavier and did little to no physical exercise. He’s always been an athlete, but he hadn’t done anything consistently in a few years. Just getting out on the bike and riding, along with more sensible eating habits, has completely transformed this person that I have lived with for nine years. He is more lean and fit than he has ever been, and I am really proud of him—partly because he’s a total hottie, but mostly because he saw a problem, and he did something about it.

Of course, the best part is that he found something he’s really passionate about along the way. He feels about biking the same way I do about running. It makes it easier for him to understand my slightly obsessive behavior and my drive to improve. I also understand his need to get out on the bike despite the leaky bathroom faucet and the knee-high grass in the backyard. Rob’s new interest has been nice for us as a couple too. I’m the runner and he’s the cyclist, but biking and running are two things that we can do together. I enjoy the mountain bike, and he no longer complains about pacing or length of time on the road when we are running, because we are both fit enough to go along with each other. Harper Lee benefits too. With a jog stroller and bike trailer, she can get out with us. She’s learning early on the benefits of physical fitness and, most importantly, that exercise is something fun that you should look forward to, not a chore to be checked off a “to do” list.

So, when Rob asked on Saturday afternoon, “Does it weird you out?” referring to his hairless legs, I could honestly say, “Not a bit.” It’s just one more indication that he’s serious about his sport. I can appreciate that. Besides, I have to admit, those legs rank right up there with men in kilts for sexiness. Now, if only I could find a kilt in extra large. Hmmm…

2004-05-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

Hero Worship

Rob and I went to see the Tour de Georgia two weekends ago, and it was awesome. Only a few days before, we had been talking about the fact that we never do anything spontaneous anymore. Of course, with a toddler in tow, it’s a little harder to act on the spur of the moment, but we decided that we should probably make an effort to be a little more “effortless.” Two days later, he called me from work to ask if I would like to head down to north Georgia for a couple of days of mountain biking and a world-class bicycle race. I phoned my parents to baby-sit immediately.
Another two days later, and Rob and I were cruising down the Interstate from Asheville with two bikes on the car and absolutely no time schedule. That afternoon we decided to pull over on the road and wait with an ever-growing crowd to see the race come through before heading into Dahlonega. Most of the people that lined the sides of the road looked like fairly serious cyclists themselves. Many were riding the same course, some were just there to watch, and some were there, like us, to do a little of both. Most that we talked to seemed fairly knowledgeable of the sport, and everyone had their favorite team or rider. Of course, most were there to see Lance Armstrong.
I am not a cyclist. I am a runner who happens to mountain bike occasionally. I know very little about the sport or the top riders, but I do know Lance Armstrong. It seems that everyone does. When we stopped for gas just before crossing the state line, we spoke with two old men inside the station. They looked like typical old men sitting around a gas station, but when they asked us where we were headed and why, they both said, “Armstrong gonna be there?”
Along with not being a cyclist, I am not a celebrity chaser, but I have to admit, I wanted to see Lance Armstrong. I just wanted to see him up close, to see if he looked as good in person as he does on TV and in magazines. I guess you could say I’m a fan, whatever that means. I don’t follow his races fanatically, and I wouldn’t jump in front of, say, a speeding bus or anything just to get his autograph, but I admire his talent and the fact that he’s known for his crazy work ethic. I’m big into work ethic. Talent and genetic gifts are great, and there’s no doubt that he has both, but he works hard too, and he’s serious, to a fault as I understand it, so that appeals to me. There’s also something about a sport as grueling and gut wrenching as cycling that I like. Much like running, cycling requires a mental toughness that most sports don’t. I’m a fan of anyone who can ride for 130 miles and then grind it up six plus miles of mountain and never stop racing.
So, I thought, “Hey, maybe I’ll get a handshake or something.” I didn’t really care about an autograph. I didn’t have anything for him to sign, and just seeing him was all I wanted. However, I had no idea what being a celebrity really means. After the finish of the fourth stage, the riders all went to their cars to change, refuel, and rehydrate. I walked along, completely clueless, looking for Lance Armstrong in the crowd. Finally, I saw an enormous group of people standing outside a touring bus. I glanced around. The HealthNet team was standing naked in the bushes on the other side of their car trying to change into dry clothes. Other riders were standing along the street talking to friends. There was only one tour bus, though. “I guess I found him,” I said to Rob.
I sort of stood at the back of the crowd. A handshake, it seemed, would be out of the question. There were far more serious people pushing toward the doors of the bus with their T-shirts, books, posters and pens in hand. I was not willing to go to such lengths. In fact, I felt sort of stupid being there at all, but I still wanted to see him.
Finally, after what I thought was a purposely long time (the other Postal Service team members had long since driven away, crammed all together in their little Subaru, not a tour bus), Lance Armstrong emerged from the bus to greet his adoring fans. Of course, the second he stepped out, he was mobbed by so many people, I still couldn’t see him at all. I decided to wait until I got a feel for the way the crowd was moving. “Either way, he’ll have to go around the end of the bus, so I’ll just stand there,” I reasoned. Sure enough, he rounded the front of the bus, pushing his bike and for a brief second, I stood two feet from Lance Armstrong… that is, until some jerk with a camera stepped on my foot and clocked me in the head with his elbow. And then, he was gone. But not before running over Rob who was wading through the crowd looking for me. That was our brush with greatness.
Of course, greatness is a debatable term. I admire Lance Armstrong tremendously. As an athlete, he’s one of the best in the world, and although he is much smaller than I had anticipated, and I like tall men, he is pretty hot, but that’s where my admiration ends. I know that it shouldn’t bother me, but the whole affair, divorce, dating a rock star thing bugs me for reasons I have trouble understanding myself. On the one hand, he’s just a person, and there are two sides to every story, and when it comes right down to it, he’s just a guy that rides a bike… really fast. If that’s the case, then what he does on his own time is really not anybody’s business. But, and maybe it’s unfair, I expected more.
Here was this guy who overcame cancer, who was the best of the best, who had a wife and three beautiful kids. He was the All-American hero. That’s what separated him from the others. There are other good athletes and other good-looking celebrities, but he was both of these things and a good guy, or at least that was his image. In a world of superstars accused of rape, infidelity, drug use, embezzlement, and general scuminess, Lance Armstrong represented the kind of hero kids need. To find out that he’s just a regular schmo was a let down.
Of course, I realize this is grossly unfair to Lance Armstrong. We’re all regular schmos. He’s just one that lives in the spotlight. Maybe that means he should be held to a higher standard, or maybe it means we need to reconsider what a hero is. Being a hero is more than an image, and it’s more than just being good at what you do. It’s being the good guy, not because of any ulterior motive, but because it’s the right thing. It’s realizing at the age of 20 that you are going to be a father and deciding at that moment that you are going to be a better person for your child. It’s not only deciding, though, it’s doing it. Being a hero is coaching kids to be the best they can be for 23 years. It’s asking them to do what they never knew was possible and then, when they are successful, taking none of the credit. It’s following your children to every track meet they run, regardless of how it might affect your schedule, because they are the most important things in your life. It’s coming home from work and dancing with your two year old even when you’re tired and the grass needs to be mowed just because they asked.
I am surrounded by heroes in my life, and I get to see them up close everyday. It’s a sight to behold. Sorry, Lance, upon closer inspection, it takes more than riding a bike really fast to be my hero.

2004-04-21T10:43:00.000-07:00

The Good Time Girl

The words “Spring Break” create all sorts of images. For me, those images used to consist mainly of bikini and short clad college students romping along Florida beaches. Loud music, sand, late nights and later mornings and, of course, beer all played an integral part in the typical spring break. Of course, that was ten… OK, twelve… years ago. Since then, Spring Break has taken on a whole new meaning.
Twelve years ago if anyone had told me I would be running 400 meter repeats in freezing wind and rain on my Spring Break, I would have thought they were insane. First of all, I didn’t really run twelve years ago. I jogged. And I certainly didn’t do 400-meter repeats on the track. I also didn’t willingly go out into the cold and rain. Now, however, not only do I do it, I look forward to it.
Last Monday was the first official day of Surry County School’s Spring Break. While most of the students were sleeping in late, the Surry Central Track Team was running. Every morning of their week off, the team meets to run and get some work done while the competition sleeps. The 400 workout is the most talked about, dreaded, or anticipated workout of the week. It all sort of depends on your perspective, I guess. I couldn’t wait.
I got up Monday morning to the wet and cold, and although I had been hoping that shorts and a T-shirt would be called for, I knew that most Spring Breaks are cold and windy, sometimes even snowy, so I pulled out the same old nearly threadbare tights I’d worn all winter, a waterproof jacket and my hat and headed to the track.
It was too cold to even stretch. All the kids were huddled beneath the eaves of the concession stand, and my muscles jerked and twitched so much, I could barely bend over to touch my toes. “Let’s just run,” I thought. Rex, Deanne and I began our slog through the wet grass around the perimeter of the stadium. Water was already standing, but my feet required as much soft surface as possible, so we continued on. After a few minutes, I started to warm up, and I could feel my pace quicken just a little as I thought about the workout.
The workout itself was unremarkable. I did ten 400’s at 1:42-43 pace with a 100 jog in between. For talented runners, that’s not all that impressive, but that wasn’t really the point either. The point was that I was running… pretty fast, under crappy conditions with several other crazy people, and it was fun. I guess if you don’t run, it’s really hard to read something like this and understand. But, if you do run, you know exactly what I mean. When I think of that day, the picture that will come to mind is of me running around that second curve, the wind and rain blowing directly into my eyes, squinting to see what’s in front of me, my feet sloshing through the puddle that always forms on the inside lane, opening my arms up and using that right arm to pump myself around to the final straightaway. I will think of Miguel running into the wind but looking as strong as ever. I will think of Deanne running step for step alongside me. I will think of Rex standing in the infield, watch in hand, turning blue from the cold just so he can watch some kids run fast. They are memories I will cherish forever.
Some people look back on their college days and feel a deep longing for their “glory days,” the days of their youth when life was carefree and everything seemed possible, and I admit, I enjoyed those days myself. I had a darned good time, and I look back on it with fondness, but I don’t think of those days as the end of good times and freedom. They were just different times. I wouldn’t trade them for the world, but I also wouldn’t trade my days as they are now in order to go back.
Life moves on in ways you could probably never guess or expect. That’s part of the joy of living, I guess. So, while my days of karaoke, beer coolers, and hanging out on the front porch of the ATO house until 5 a.m. are over, I haven’t lost my gift for having a good time. I could even argue that the “high” I get from running is better than any bourbon-induced euphoria, and the friends are more dear than ever. I may have traded Jack Daniels, the drink, for Jack Daniels, the coach, but I’m still a “good time” girl.

2004-04-14T12:06:00.000-07:00

Great Expectations… Lousy Results

I guess we all have a picture in our minds of what we should be, how we should be and where we should be at different points in our lives. I had a definite view of what I would be doing at this point in my own life. I would be a mother. I envisioned puttering around the vegetable garden in my overalls with Harper Lee, watering can and sunflower seeds in hand, I saw the two of us mashing up ripe bananas and adding them to our delicious, but nutritious banana muffins, and I looked forward to hours of finger paints, Play-Dough, storybooks and necklaces made of macaroni. And for a while, I had that.
But then the fact that I was a “stay at home mom” got out, and the phone began to ring. Before I knew it, I was volunteering for a Friday morning here, a Monday afternoon there, and as I looked over my calendar, I felt completely overwhelmed. However, this did not stop me. Despite the fact that being a mom is a full-time job and I was already committed to helping coach the high school cross-country and track teams, I took on a part-time teaching position at the college. Harper Lee was starting playschool at our church two mornings a week, so what else did I have to do? I might as well do what I love and make a few extra bucks to boot. I took on extra duties at the church, feeling compelled to say, “Sure, I’ll do it, if you can’t,” every time there was a need for a volunteer. I even started trying to manipulate Harper Lee’s nap schedule to fit my overextended one.
Soon it became too much. I began to feel tired, irritable, put-upon and angry, but I couldn’t figure out why. “My life is perfect,” I thought. “Other women would kill to be in your position. You get to teach two mornings a week, you stay at home with your child most of the time, you still get to work out with the kids at the high school. What’s your problem?” I became convinced that I was being a baby, that other women juggled much more difficult schedules than mine and seemed to function as perfectly normal adults. Why couldn’t I do the same?
Finally, I decided to try to solve this problem. Blubbering, “I’m happy” through choked tears to my husband every other evening did not seem to make it so. I needed to figure this out, and quite simply I think I was mildly depressed. I didn’t have a lot of the symptoms that most depression cases have, and I hadn’t undergone any particularly earth-shattering changes in my life. I was, however, feeling overextended and out of control.
I had to find out why. One significant reason that I had overlooked, but that my mother and a dear friend both mentioned, was a nagging injury that has persisted for nearly two years now. After delivering Harper Lee, I apparently sustained some scar tissue on my right SI joint. Without being too technical, it essentially means that the joint won’t move and running only aggravates the situation. My hamstring pulls with every step and since the joint stays exactly where it is, muscles must go the extra mile. It is painful, but mostly annoying. I am not, nor will I ever be, an immensely talented athlete, but I’m a serious one, and this injury has decided to hang around despite doctors, specialists, exercises, time and gobs of money. It’s sort of a bummer.
The next reason was less obvious. After much thought and many attempts to put a name to what was bothering me, I realized that I have become a “clock-watcher.” I spend incredible amounts of time and energy just watching the clock, trying to time snacks, outings, meals and naps to meticulously mesh with other commitments. Have you been around many toddlers? This is quite possibly one of the most fruitless exercises known to man. It’s one thing to try to fit one activity in per day, but two or three? Impossible… at least for me, and that’s all I have to work with.
True, Harper Lee and I had once established a schedule that suited her needs and my own, but as toddlers will, she has changed and needs a later nap time. This completely screws up the timetable that for two years has worked so well. What to do? Easy. I gave in. I decided that when this whole adventure began, I had one goal—to raise a happy, healthy child. If that means refiguring schedules, giving up a few commitments, and learning to say no once in a while, so be it. Those who know me and care about me know my reasons and would expect nothing less. It dawned on me that these expectations had been completely self-imposed and could, therefore, be completely self-removed. It was a liberating notion.
I immediately relaxed. I said no to the things I didn’t want to do or couldn’t do, I rearranged my schedule to include the things I wanted, and I quit watching the clock. If we get there, we get there, and if we don’t, we don’t.
Today, as I strung up pieces of brightly painted, uncooked ziti, danced with abandon around my living room and read “Winnie the Pooh” three times in a row without ever once glancing at my clock, I felt happy. Even my worn-out hamstring seems to feel better. This is what life should be. I’m not so naive to believe that we should only do what makes us happy. That’s unrealistic. There will always be laundry to do, toilets to be scrubbed and bills to pay, but what’s wrong with leaving some time for those things that just make you feel good? I will still keep my teaching position, because I enjoy it for the most part. I will still be at the track every possible chance I get, because it is one of my passions. I will still be involved at church, because I like it, I feel it’s important, and I want Harper Lee to experience the benefits, but I will also learn to accept that the world will go on if I don’t show up, and there are occasionally other people who can do the same job just as well and maybe better. I will learn to let go, and I will leave racing the clock for track workouts.

2004-03-24T18:30:00.000-08:00

Divine Contact

Recently I was in what can only be called a “funk.” It wasn’t depression, because it wasn’t consistent, but it was definitely something akin to the blues. Being who I am, I analyzed every possible reason behind this melancholy. I attributed my lack of energy and general irritability to everything from iron deficiency, a nagging injury that has been hanging around for nearly two years, repeated colds and sinus infections, a too late bedtime, the winter months, vast amounts of laundry that never seem to decrease no matter how often I run the washer to “stupid people” who I am convinced exist only to annoy me. I think it is most likely a mix of all of these, but it is also the head-smacking realization that being a mother is hard.

I found myself becoming increasingly intolerant of what I used to think of as fairly benign occurrences. A pen exploding in the dryer, thus ruining several articles of clothing, was almost more than I could bear. I found myself contemplating the murder of my favorite cat simply because he insists on crying (incessantly) the moment my two year old goes down for a nap. After mopping the black and WHITE kitchen floor for the second time in one morning, I actually spent time looking for a crowbar with which to pry the linoleum tiles up, so that I could throw them into the street. Fortunately, sanity prevailed at the last moment. I was in a perpetual state of PMS for over a month.

My two year old, Harper Lee has been doing what professionals might call “testing her boundaries.” I call it “making me nuts.” So, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Take charge and find a solution—this is my husband’s personal motto, and it seems to work. This is how I suddenly found myself, for the first time ever, shopping the self-help aisle at the local Barnes and Noble. I am NOT a self-help kind of girl. Reading “expert opinions” on my own personal issues has always seemed weak and wimpy to me, and now that I have done it, I’m sure it is.

I bought a copy of “Raising Your Spirited Child” on the advice of a friend. My toddler could easily be categorized as high energy and strong-willed. Being a strong-willed person myself, there have been some epic battles at the Libbert house for the past few weeks, and all at once one Wednesday afternoon, I lost it. “I’m a terrible mother,” I cried to my friend. “I have a potentially phenomenal person that I am responsible for, and I am so afraid that I’m going to screw up and have one of those kids that everyone dreads seeing.” She suggested the book.

I have to admit that the book is very interesting, although it applies only in part to Harper Lee, and it was helpful in recognizing that there are other people trying to make their way through the same issues, but I also realized as I was reading, that there are no answers in a book. My child is different from any other, and I am a different parent from any other. I have to set my own expectations, my own rules, and deal with her in my own way. It’s true that children don’t come with instruction manuals, so why was I trying to find one? I decided that while Harper Lee may very well be “spirited,” there are some things that I won’t tolerate. And while this renewed philosophy has made me into the quintessential “bad guy” for the past three weeks, she’s responding, and life at the Libbert homestead has improved.

Of course, being the treacherous villain has also added to my blah mood. It’s not much fun having to ride roughshod over a beautiful, buoyant bundle of squeals and giggles, but I also know that that’s life, that’s motherhood, and that’s the way it has to be if I don’t want a raging brat on my hands in a couple of years. Still, I’m looking forward to the day when there is not a single time-out, a single privilege revoked or a single screaming fit that morphs into uncontrollable sobbing all within the span of time required to fasten a seat belt. I probably have a while to wait, but if I stick to my guns, it will come, and she and I will both be the better for it.

Meanwhile, I am convinced that God has designed, in His infinite wisdom, safety nets for those moments when we feel that we cannot take it for one more minute. In fact, He threw one out for me just last night. After a particularly grueling bedtime routine that included wailing, throwing a stuffed dog, and blatant defiance, I was closing the door to her bedroom when Harper Lee said, “Wait, Mama.”

Exasperated and expecting some completely crazy request just to extend bedtime a little longer, I said, “What now?”

“I have to say the blessing.”

Feeling appropriately guilty, I walked back over to her bed and knelt down beside her. “OK, “ I said, folding my hands. “You say the blessing. Do you know what to say?”

Having never said her own prayer, I expected nothing, and for a few moments, she was completely silent and still. Finally, she said, her forehead resting on her pillow, “Thank you for my food. Thank you for my doggies. Amen.”

It was one of those moments that makes me feel proud, horribly small, incredibly lucky and overwhelmed with love all at the same time. I kissed her head and crept out, closing the door behind me, and I cried. I realized that this child, who at times can be so devilish, is, in fact, proof of God. She is His liaison to me. It is just one more example of the saying, “Anything worth doing is not going to be easy.” Raising her will not be easy, and there are days, maybe weeks even, when I am tired, irritated and need a break. Fortunately, there will also be Harper Lee with her nose buried in a yellow daffodil, her conversations with the dog, her warm, grubby hands patting my face and her sweet voice saying, “my itty bitty Mama” to pull me back to reality and put things in perspective. And the reality is, I’ve got it made.