Snowmageddon!

            Snowmageddon 2012 has hit Seattle, and I can’t help but think about the massive snow storm that attacked Seattle my first winter here.  Today as the snow continues to fall and coat everything, I am sitting on my couch, drinking coffee, and thinking about getting a head start on my packing for my big move in a couple weeks.  3 years ago when the snowstorm hit, things were very different.  So, in honor of Snowmageddon, I am skipping ahead a few months in the story to tell the story of Snowmageddon 2008.  Don’t worry, I’ll go back and fill in the blanks later.

            When snow started falling the week before Christmas break 3 years ago, it may be a bit of an exaggeration to say this (but very close to the truth), I was happier than I could remember ever being.  Sierra and I had gotten an apartment together with Lucy and her cat Bob in the neighborhood of Magnolia in Seattle. 

Magnolia is an interesting place.  The neighborhood is a peninsula composed of 2 large hills stacked behind each other.  There are only 3 entrances into the neighborhood: 1) the Magnolia Bridge, which takes you directly to the top of the 1^st hill, 2) Fisherman’s Terminal, which takes you through a marina full of docked fishing boats to the bottom of the first hill, and 3) Dravus St., which is a small bridge at the bottom of the first hill that goes over the train tracks that divide Magnolia from the rest of the world.

If you enter Magnolia from Dravus or Fishermans Terminal, and look up the hill, there are cities of apartment complexes towards the top.  This is where Sierra and I had our apartment.  We were about 2 blocks down from the top of the hill, 4 blocks up from the bottom. 

If you were to continue traveling up this hill, you’d see more houses, less apartments—giving the neighborhood the feel of a suburb that accidently found itself marooned in the center of a large city.  Continue up and over the hill, and the houses get a bit bigger.  At the bottom of the first hill, in the valley between the two hills, you find Magnolia Village.  This 4 block radius “Village” is composed of one bar, a couple restaurants, and a few shops.

Travel through the village and start your ascent up the 2^nd hill, and you’ll notice that the houses are getting bigger and bigger.  Once you reach the crest of that hill, you are looking at mansions.  Magnolia is where rich people go to retire.  The back hill ends in a cliff that drops off into the Puget Sound.  This hill is filled with huge mansions overlooking the water.  On a clear day, you can see the entire skyline of the Olympic Mountains above the water from the oversized decks and windows of these homes.

Magnolia was a unique place for me to begin my Seattle experience.  It is removed from the rest of the city, far from highways, disconnected from the main stream of Seattle life.  Living on the face of the first hill was like being in a college dorm.  There was one bar at the bottom of the hill that many of the apartment dwellers frequented.  The more Sierra and I and our friend Cristin frequented this bar, the more we got to know the apartment residents of Magnolia, and the more we realized that we all lived, if not in the same apartment complex, then at least a block or 2 away.

By the time Snowmageddon 2008 hit that December, I had gotten to know my Magnolia crew fairly well, had found myself a boyfriend, and had sprained my ankle.  My first 4 months in Seattle were eventful to say the least.  As I said, Magnolia is already cut off from the rest of the world, but then imagine Seattle getting hit with half a foot of snow.  We were truly cut off.  There was no getting in or out of Magnolia.  Remember how I mentioned we lived 2 blocks from the top of the hill and 4 from the bottom?  This isn’t just a normal hill…I swear the roads go up at 45 degree angles.  The sidewalks are grooved so that you don’t slip backwards as you hike up them.  When the snow finally dumped there was no driving up this hill, for fear of slipping backwards (I saw few cars attempt this unsuccessfully) and no driving down the hill for fear of not being able to stop (saw this too). 

We were stranded.  Time had stopped, no one was working or even thinking about working.  So what else was there to do but hike down the hill to the bar and enjoy our temporarily suspended lives?  But remember—I had a sprained ankle, which made “hiking” not so easy.  I decided to take off the boot I’d been wearing for 6 weeks and put on a small ace bandage instead. 

I have snippets of memories during the days of this snowstorm.  Walking down the hill, beers in hand, stumbling upon sledders who told us we could sled to the bottom on their sleds as long as we could do it without spilling our beers.  Walking up the hill, completely out of breath by the time we got to the top, feeling my ankle swell with every step.  I have an image coming down the hill again of Sierra, Cristin and I—we hit an icy patch and suddenly both Cristin and Sierra are simultaneously flat on their backs on the ground—I can’t still hear the “boom, boom” of them both hitting the ground in my mind.  I remember seeing cars strewn along the hill, left abandoned after attempts at escaping.  Then there’s me crying in the middle of the grocery store because I found out I wouldn’t be making it home to New York in time for Christmas.  There’s 20 of us at one person’s apartment, cooking a huge spaghetti dinner, staring out the windows to announce that it’s “STILL SNOWING!” which made me temporarily forget that I wouldn’t be seeing my family as soon as I’d thought.  I remember laughing and smiling so much that my face hurt. 

It’s funny how snow days as “adults” (if that’s what we could have been called at the time) can be just as much, if not more, fun than snow days as kids.  I’d lived in a city where 3 feet of snow didn’t shut down school, so my first Seattle snowstorm was a wonderful surprise.  I felt like a kid again, playing with my friends in the snow.

I remember looking back at the last 4 months of my life at the time and thinking about how different my life had suddenly become—how much more full of smiles and laughter it was, how much happier I’d become in just that short amount of time.  Looking out my window at Snowmageddon today makes me think about how much has changed since that snowstorm 3 short years ago.  Today, I am not running off to the bar with friends, but sitting comfortably on my couch, snuggling with my dog.  And that’s ok.  I’ll remember that snow storm as one of the most fun experiences of my life, but life is different now.  I’m not in Magnolia anymore, and neither are a lot of those people.  We’re all still friends, but I’d like to think we’ve grown up a bit.  We’re not living that “dorm” life anymore.  And I’m ok with that.  This past Monday I turned 28, and I think it’s time that I start thinking about being an adult.  At least some of the time…

Life is full of inverse relationships

            Running is the reason for my sanity in so many ways.  The main reason though, is that running serves as a cathartic release for me at the end of each work day.  From 7:30 in the morning when I walk into my classroom until 4:00 in the afternoon when I leave, my mind has one whole and complete focus.  Work.  26 first graders.  Teach them.  Help them.  Reach them.  Wrangle them.  Assess them.  Reteach them.  Herd them to lunch.  Counsel them.  Plan for them.  Make copies for them.  Sharpen pencils for them.  Talk to their parents for them.  Care for them.  Love them.  Shuffle them onto the bus.  And then what?  Forget about them?  That is not how this job works.  My day begins with one deep breath followed by an adrenaline rush until the end of the day when I finally breathe out.  I cannot simply flip the switch off and forget about these living breathing children that are my life for so much of the day. 

            However, to be sane and to live a productive life, I must be able to forget about them.  I need to enjoy my dinner without thinking about what they are eating for dinner (or if they are even having dinner).  I need to be able to see my friends and listen to them without constantly planning quietly in my head what I will teach the next day.  I need to be able to fall asleep without thinking about what social skill Johnny needs to work on tomorrow or how I’ll help my brand new student make new friends.  I need to be able to put my students into a pocket in the back of my mind, only to be pulled out the next day.

            My first 2 years of teaching, I struggled with this.  I could not forget.  I did not know how to forget.  I brought work home every night.  It wasn’t until I found running that I finally figured out how to put it all away.  I can envision a line chart of what is happening in my brain as I run (I was a nerd and actually made this chart in Excel but stupid blogger won’t let me post excel stuff).  As the amount of miles or distance covered increases, the number of thoughts in my brain about work slowly decreases until the end of the run where work has disappeared.  Or in other non-nerdy terms: the further I get into my run, the more I forget about those 26 children.  By the end of my run, I am relaxed and thinking about my life.

            Something similar to this happened when I moved to Seattle.  Sierra, Lucy, and I drove cross-country in order to transplant my life into my new city.  We took my little Honda Civic, packed it as full as we could without completely boxing Lucy into a tiny corner in the back seat, and drove from our hometown in Rochester, NY all the way to Seattle.  My mental graph is the same here.  The distance traveled has a perfectly inverse relationship to thoughts about NYC life.

            We took 5 days to make the trip, stopping at as many sights as we could while keeping in mind the separation-anxiety-ridden dog in the car.  It is very difficult to drive from one side of the country to the other without ever leaving the dog alone in the car.  But we did it.  And by the time we reached Seattle, all the negativity that NYC had deposited in me was lifted.

            We started in Rochester, and left with smiles ready to conquer the world.

            Our first stop was my aunt and uncle’s house in Chicago.  My aunt is an animal rescuer and often has a variety of animals in and around her house.  On this particular trip, there were several baby raccoons in a large cage in the backyard, all named by my cousin after Harry Potter characters.  This was an exciting part of the trip for Lucy.  She got to jump at the caged and squawking birds in the house, making them lose a few feathers.  She got to play with the 3 (or 4?) dogs that lived there.  For me, I was still thinking about leaving a life behind.  I was excited for the future, but worried about the past.

            Our first official sight-seeing stop was Badlands National Park.  This was a good pit stop because Lucy was allowed throughout the park.  The beautiful views made my worries about leaving the only coast I’d known fade just a little.

            Next was Wall Drug.  This is a very overrated little tourist town in the middle of nowhere.  I in no way understand people who put “Wall Drug” bumper stickers on their cars.  I don’t get it.  This stop was particularly challenging with Lucy.  We took our wanderings in shifts…one person wandering through the stores and shops while the other waited in the car with Lucy.  Not super fun.  However, I bought a few early Christmas presents here, which helped to ease my fears of leaving my family behind.

            Next was Mount Rushmore.  Here, we could not go inside the gates because dogs were not allowed.  We stopped on the side of the road and gazed for a bit.  I was amazed at how small and far away they seemed up there.  I was similarly amazed by how small NYC was becoming in my mind.

            We also saw from a distance the in-progress mountain carving that will some day in the far off future be the Crazy Horse War Memorial.  Life is a work in progress, as it seems the Crazy Horse War Memorial will forever be. 

            As we traveled through the central portion of the US, we spent a few nights in cheap dog-friendly hotels found courtesy of AAA guidebooks.

            Devil’s Tower was our last big sight-seeing stop.  Although we didn’t hike any of the trails, we got pretty close to the base and took some pretty awesome pictures.  At this point in the trip, Seattle seemed to be looming just as close.

            In the boring parts of the trip, there were many of these pictures.

            And these pictures.  Luckily, this is what Lucy did the VAST majority of the trip.

            For our last leg of the trip, we took a detour off I90 to stay for a night in the middle of Wyoming at Sierra’s aunt’s summer house.  Pictures cannot even begin to show the beauty that is back-country Wyoming.  I am dying to go back.  And when I was there, I wasn’t thinking about being anywhere else.

            Lucy even loved it in Wyoming, but mainly because she got to swim—one of her most favorite activities.

            And finally, at the end of it all, we drove late into the night, stopping at a small motel in La Grande, Oregon (I only remember this name because it was such a small and funny little place).  We woke up the next morning and drove the last leg into Seattle.

            As we came down from the mountains on I90 (the same road we left on in New York, and the same road we took the majority of the way), thoughts of New York were gone.  Worries about leaving had abated.  It suddenly sunk in that I was home.  In a new place.   On a new coast.  In what seemed like a new world.  And I couldn’t wait to get started.

DISCLAIMER: I have nothing against cats, small dogs, or landlords...I simply find discrimination intolerable

            I just had a temporary mini meltdown.  It started after my landlord sent me an email informing me of a few dates and times for people coming to view my apartment.  In 25 days, I will be moving.  I gave my landlord my one month’s notice just before New Year’s, informing her that Lucy and I are going to try to upgrade our living style by February 1^st.  More windows, maybe more space?  Enough room for Lucy to wag her tail without it banging into something?  The idea has sounded great in theory for a couple months now, so I decided to bite the bullet and go for it.

            The mini meltdown occurred momentarily after receiving the email when it suddenly occurred to me that I am moving in 25 days.  And I have no idea where I’m moving to.  Suddenly that uneasy feeling I talked about a few posts ago exploded into anxiety.  I scoured today’s craigslist listings, called several places, and emailed a few.  It wasn’t until about 30 minutes later when I stepped away from my computer that I was finally able to calm down, refocus, and tame my beating heart.  I reassured myself that in a large city like Seattle, one usually can’t find an apartment until 15 days prior to a moving date.  I got used to this idea in New York.  I reminded myself that all of my moves have been up in the air like this—the only difference here is that in the past I had a one year lease ending that signaled finding a new place.  In this case, where I live on a month to month basis, I ended the lease.  There is no practical difference here, I think it’s just more nerve-wracking because I made the choice to move instead of my pre-determined lease.  I brought this upon myself—it was not forced upon me.

            Moving is stressful.  Moving is even more stressful when you have a large dog to think about and a fairly limited budget.  As dog-friendly as Seattle may be, most landlords are not so dog-friendly.  Especially large-dog-friendly.  I’ve been keeping an eye on craigslist ever since I decided to move, and I’ve seen some great apartments.  Every time I see a good heading and click on the link, the first thing I do is scour the words for the dreaded “no pets” clause, or “cat’s only,” or even worse “small dogs ok.”  I almost always find one of these statements, but the last one pisses me off the most.  When a landlord decrees that small dogs are ok, I can tell they are not dog owners.  The size of a small dog is very disproportionate to the size of its energy.  Do they think that a poorly trained, little yappy bit of a dog is going to do less damage to their apartment or make any less noise than a large, properly trained and mature dog?  It infuriates me.

            No, I am not a landlord.  I cannot step into the shoes of a landlord and understand all their worries.  I have no point of reference for this.  If I reach into the depths of my mind, I can pull out some sympathy for the landlord who doesn’t want pets.  It’s certainly easier not to have to deal with them.  You never know what you’re going to get, and some people are simply horrible pet owners.  I get this.  But to specify that certain pets are acceptable above others, it makes me incredibly angry.  How would having a dog like Lucy around be worse than a male cat that sprays everything in sight and claws the carpets to death?  Or a mini dog that yaps at every person that passes on the street?

            If landlords are going to accept pets, I think there should be some sort of screening process.  Meet my dog.  Talk to my current landlord.  Talk to my former roommates.  But don’t flat out tell me that my pet is not accepted because she is not a cat and weighs over 25 lbs!  This is discrimination, I tell you.  It should be unlawful.  Landlords cannot openly discriminate against the people they rent to, so why should they be able to discriminate against the pets? 

            Perhaps these are just the anxiety-ridden ramblings of a woman in the midst of a change, but it’s the principal of the thing.  Moving is hard enough…why make it harder on people who love their pets?  After all, who would ever want to say no to a face like this?

The only constant is change

If I had to come up with a theme for this story, it would be change.  This is the story of how I changed my life, and how it continues to change.  It’s such a funny idea.  Change is everywhere and is happening all the time.  It is all around us, occurring at a million different rates.  If there is one thing in life that is constant and reliable, it is change.  But when change happens, our emotions escalate.  We become ecstatic, overcome, heartbroken, amazed, devastated.  Change is never easy and it is never simple, but it is always there.

I am a different person today than I was yesterday, and I will be a different person tomorrow too.  Every moment I am changing and learning something new about myself and the world around me.  Someone once told me that all of the cells in our body regenerate themselves every 7 years.  I don’t know if this is true, but I like the idea.  Every 7 years, you are a completely different you.  But the change happens so slowly, so minutely, that you don’t notice it until all of sudden you’re different.  I didn’t wake up one day, snap my fingers, and become a runner.  It was a slow, long change that took place over time.  And one day I looked back on things and thought to myself, “When did I become a runner?”

Since I moved to Seattle, I have changed in many ways.  I’m happier, more outgoing, more comfortable in uncomfortable situations.  The person that left New York City in August of 2008 is not the same person I am today.  Much of that person is still inside me, but there are bits and pieces that have changed a great deal.  And it is those bits and pieces that have made all the difference. 

When Lucy and I packed up and left New York, I rented a U-Haul trailer and attached it to a trailer hitch I had installed on my car just for that purpose.  My mom, a woman who loves doing puzzles, came to help me pack up and puzzled all of my life into that tiny trailer.  We managed to fit a couch, a mattress, a desk, a table, and a ton of boxes in it.  I don’t think there was an inch of room to spare.  Then we drove my little Honda Civic across New York State back to my parents, crossing our fingers that the engine didn’t overheat in the August sun while struggling to pull like the Little Engine That Could.

Leaving NYC was harder than I thought it would be.  New York City is the city of dreams.  People who have never been there imagine that it is this place where miracles happen and the world is different.  This is somewhat true, but obviously an idealized version of the city.  However, I had become accustomed to being a New Yorker.  I liked watching movies or TV shows like Law and Order and being able to pick out exactly where certain shots were filmed.  I loved picking apart impossible settings—an actor coming out of a subway station in Chelsea and suddenly finding herself on the Upper East Side by 5^th Ave.  I got a kick out of it.  I felt special living in New York.

It was those little things that were hard to say goodbye to.  I loved the nuances and hidden pieces of beauty you could find throughout the city.  Subway doors look like this:  

Once, I was riding the L train out of Brooklyn into Manhattan and noticed that one of the lower black stickers that reads “Do not lean on door” had been very perfectly replaced by an identical sticker that read “Do not fall in love.”  Unless you were looking closely and actually reading the words that nobody bothers to read, you would never have noticed it.  In New York City, you have to look at the details to find the poetry in the world.

This year for my holiday trip back to the East Coast, I decided to fly into NYC and spend a few days reminiscing about the life I once led.  It was the first time I had stepped foot in the city since I said goodbye to it 3 ½ years ago.  I’m not sure what I expected from this visit.  But I wanted to go…I wanted to feel and see and touch the change I had experienced over the past few years.  Only by going back to the beginning, to the root of the story, do you really see all the changes that have manifested themselves on the journey.

I think I wanted it all to be different.  I wanted to go back to Brooklyn, to visit the places I’d spent my “entering real life” years and have it all be different.  As if by me leaving, this entire city would redirect its course.  But a lot was the same.  The dog park was still there, and even though it had new benches and new dogs, it was still the same.  I visited a few old apartment buildings.  I’m sure their insides were filled with new souls floating through life, but their shells had not changed.  My favorite neighborhood bagel store, with its unobtrusively subtle name still stood with its ever-changing, often politically-inspired murals.

New dogs enjoying the same old dog park.

The converted burlap factory where me and 2 roommates built the walls of the empty loft we rented.  Someone else in now enjoying the fruits of our labor.

My first NYC apartment, looking more dilapidated than ever.  The Thai restaurant underneath still going strong.

Best bagels ever--huge and gooey and overloaded with cream cheese.

            I think I also wanted it all to be the same.  I wanted to go back to the city, visit the old haunts, and feel that time had stopped moving after I left.  But a lot was very different.  The Williamsburg waterfront has been consumed by large condos and even a boardwalk.  A little city of convenience stores has built up around these condos, along a street that used to be filled with dilapidated, empty factories.  They’ve even started relining many streets throughout the city to include bike lanes.  This was unheard of a few years ago.

2 off these were in the process of being built when I moved, the rest weren't there.  The boardwalk didn't exist...to get to the water, you had to sneak through the fence of an old factory.

This road used to be deserted.  Even the sidewalk is new.

            The result of my walk down memory lane, through this living, breathing organism of a city was somewhat anticlimactic.  I expected to feel different, to be touched by some unnamable feeling.  But in the end, it all felt normal.  I fell right back into that weird borderline state of feeling at home in a city that one can never feel at home in.  On my last night there, as I was leaving dinner with my dad and brother, I commented that I felt as though I could be walking back to the subway, hopping on a train to go back to my apartment.  As if I didn’t live on a completely different coast now, in a completely different life.  As if nothing had changed.  It was deceiving and disconcerting that my body and mind could fall so easily back into old habits.  I guess you just can’t leave 6 years of life behind you so easily.

            Since leaving NYC with my mom at my side, Lucy cramped in the back seat, and my little Honda loaded down by the weight of my life, things have changed.  I am glad for the changes that have happened, but I am oddly comforted by the feeling that some things haven’t changed.  Somewhere inside me, there is a place where NYC will always live.  If I had known that 3 ½ years ago, I would have hated the idea.  But I like it now.  Even though life is constantly changing, somewhere in your soul is a place where all the old things reside.  All the old feelings, places, people, disappointments, hopes, and dreams are still there.  You just have to remember to go back and find them every now and then.

I heart running

            I love to run.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that I love the act of running.  Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I do.  But there are certainly days when I feel like crap.  Just 3 miles can be torturous, and the thought of even toughing it up one hill is too much to handle.  Running is a challenge. 

But there’s obviously something about running that makes it great.  There wouldn’t be so many people out there running if there wasn’t something about this thing that keeps us going.  I’ve mentioned before the battle of a race, the amazing feeling of fighting through the negative thoughts and finishing.  But I don’t run a race every day.  In fact, in the 3 years that I’ve been running, I’ve only completed 5 major (half or full marathon distance) races.  There are so many other reasons why I love to run. 

There are moments during a long run where time stops moving.  You hit that runner’s high and you feel like you could just keep going forever.  The miles float away under your feet and the world seems to come to a standstill because you are running, and that’s the only thing that is happening right now.  All you feel is the rhythm of your feet hitting the earth over and over.  Your body is so in tune with itself that the running seems effortless.  Breathing is rhythmic, your heart beats strongly in your chest…you may as well be sitting on your couch because things just seem that easy.

You may have heard the phrase “running is cheaper than therapy,” or perhaps you’ve seen it on a bumper sticker.  As cheesy as it sounds, it is completely true.  Running is how I release my stress and tension.  I often have difficulty turning my brain off after teaching.  Only running can truly flip the switch.  On days I come home and head straight for the couch, I can’t seem to relax.  My back is tense, my hands clench slightly, and I can’t take my mind off the events of day.  When I run, everything releases.  Physically and mentally.  The tension of the day disappears and stressful thoughts are extinguished—only to be rekindled with the blaring of my morning alarm.  But for those few evening hours after a run, I can focus on making a good meal, writing a blog, reading a book, watching some Hulu, or enjoying time with friends.

I love to run because of this:

Because just one second ago she was snoring, deep in puppy dreams.  She managed to open her eyes just that far after the surprising flash of the first picture, then 30 seconds later they had slowly closed and the snoring had recommenced.

I also love running because it is my time.  I have made the choice to run.  I can run wherever I want, however far I’d like to go, and for however long I chose to.  For my first year of running, it was a solo act.  Just me and Lucy tackling the streets and trails as best we could.  With my headphones in my ears, I am in my own bubble, my own world, and all I have to think about is me.  I often run with friends now, but this is still my time.  I choose to share my time with friends who choose to share their time with me.  I still enjoy my solo runs with Lucy, but I find I need them less than I used to and often prefer company during a run.  Regardless of who I am with (or without), running is the one part of my life where I am selfishly doing something just for me.  And I am totally OK with that.

I love to run because I love to eat.  I love food.  All kinds of food—I’m not very picky (minus a few certain meats).  Running allows me to eat.  A lot.  Which makes both me and my tummy very happy.  After a Saturday morning long run, I feel no pangs of guilt devouring a huge plate of Eggs Florentine piled high with hollandaise sauce next to a mound of oily hash browns doused in ketchup and hot sauce.  The night before a run, I have no qualms about shoveling a gigantic bowl of pasta down my throat then sopping up the leftover sauce with an extra piece of bread.  Food is good, and running lets me enjoy it guilt-free.

The list of reasons why I love to run is endless—I haven’t even mentioned the health benefits, or the impact running has had on my social life.  But there is one reason why I love running that far surpasses the others.  I’ve mentioned before that I love to feel comfortable.  I like my routine.  And I often get myself stuck in my routines.  When things aren’t always going well for me, I turn to my routines for comfort.  I begin to go through the motions of my day so that I can turn my brain off completely.  I can go into auto-pilot, no thought or decision-making required.

When get stuck in a comfortable rut like this, I don’t feel things.  For many reasons throughout my life, I’ve become very practiced at letting things roll off my shoulders.  This is often beneficial.  In social situations, I describe it as being “laid back” and “easy going.”  When I’m teaching, I call it “patience.”  But at other times, I’ve gotten so good at letting things not “bother” me that often I think I’ve let it go too far.  It doesn’t bother me, because it doesn’t affect me.  I don’t feel the emotion.  I’m numb.  But when I run…I feel.  I feel my feet hit the sidewalk.  I feel my lungs struggle for air.  I feel my muscles strain as I push up a hill.  I feel tired.  I feel exhilarated.  I feel.

The more often I run, the harder I push myself, the higher the hill, the more I feel.  And to feel is to live.  After all, when you boil things down, what more are we than our feelings and emotions?  These things shape the choices we make, the way we live our lives, the people we become.  Without feeling, what are we but a mass of flesh and bones?  So at the end of things, I love to run because I love to feel.  And I love to feel because I love to live. 

Need to distract yourself? Run!

            I’ve been feeling really uneasy lately and haven’t been able to figure out why.  My bills are paid, no one’s mad at me, I don’t have any projects outstanding that need completion or commitments being neglected.  This uneasy feeling has been bothering me for over a week, and today I think I finally figured it out.

            It’s the waiting.  I hate waiting.  For anything.  For everything.  I hate waiting in line.  I hate waiting for people who are late.  I hate waiting for races to start when you’re ready to run.  I especially hate waiting after I make big decisions, or for that matter even little ones.  I want to follow through immediately.   I don’t want to wait to make the change.  I recently decided to upgrade my near-windowless apartment to something sunnier and perhaps larger.  Now I’m in this uneasy waiting time.  With the holidays coming up, I can’t make a move right away and I also have to play this awkward time balance game of trying to find a place and giving my landlord one month’s notice at the opportune moment.  I’ve found a few apartments that seem to have great potential, but I’m waiting to get an appointment to see them.  I think my recent uneasiness stems from this waiting.  I want to find an apartment, make the move, and be relaxing in my new sunny apartment right now (well…the sunny part has to wait until the sun chooses to grace Seattle with its presence—until then I’ll settle for a view of the rain).

            When I was a lifeguard during high school and college, there was a part of the certification process that requires you to tread water for one minute.  Being a swimmer, this part of the test was never difficult for me.  I could easily tread water for way longer than that.  But I hated performing this requirement.  When you tread water, you expend energy to do the simple task of staying in the same spot.  You kick your legs and wave your arms for the mere purpose of not going anywhere.  When I put forth energy, I want to go somewhere, do something, be productive.  To me, waiting feels like treading water.  All this mental energy, uneasiness, annoyance, and even anger results in merely getting you to the same place you already are.  It’s incredibly frustrating.

            When I got back to NYC from my trip to Seattle with Sierra, I was stuck in a 4 month waiting period.  This was difficult to say the least.  I wanted to get started with my new life in my new city.  But I had to wait.  I still had 2 ½ months of school left with my first graders, and then I had to spend 6 weeks student teaching in a self-contained special ed summer school class to finish up my masters degree (yes, I had to student teach again after 2 years of teaching already).

I miss these ladies.

             I had to figure out a way to distract myself from this waiting.  So I spent a lot of time with my friends, who I would soon miss dearly.  Lucy and I spent a lot of time reading in the park, taking advantage of the good weather.  I also tried to take full advantage of the last few months I had in New York City and rekindle my love for it—I didn't want to leave with a bad taste in my mouth.

Lucy is very good at relaxing in the park.

                   I also ran.  A lot.  As soon as I got back from Seattle, I was back on the streets and back at the cemetery.  I started out slow, but it was easier for me to slide back into things than I had thought.  I had to re-convince Lucy that running did not mean beeping, which took a week or so.  After she was comfortable again, it was hard to hold myself back.  About 2-3 weeks after my trip, I did something that a few months previous I never would have thought imaginable.  I ran a mile.  I had been slowly increasing my running time and decreasing my walking time each day.  I was up to five minutes running and 30 seconds walking when one day I decided that I would stop walking.  And we know I don’t like waiting, so once I made the decision, I did it.

            I ran around the entire cemetery.  Without stopping.  It felt incredible.  And once I achieved that goal, once I felt that feeling of accomplishment, I didn’t want to stop.  The next day, I did it again.  And again.  The next week, I added a few blocks.  I went further than just the cemetery.  And the week after that, I went even further.  Week by week, I added more and more distance.  It got to the point that I had to strategically plan my runs so that I wouldn’t run too far into a not-so-good part of the city.  I’d do loops and weird zigzags to avoid the borders of sketchy neighborhoods.  And if I stumbled a little too far, at least I had Lucy there with me.

The determinedness that running brought to my life was something new for me.  I was a pretty good swimmer growing up.  From age 5 until the end of high school, swimming is what I did.  In elementary school, I was on multiple teams.  I’d practice before school, after school, in the summer.  It was a huge part of my life.  But I never felt determined about swimming.  I remember at swim meets, sometimes I’d swim a race and I’d win it, but I’d get out of the water and my coach and my mother would look at me baffled.  “You’re supposed to be tired when you finish a race,” they’d say.  “You’re supposed to be out of breath!”  I didn’t get it…I won the race.  Wasn’t that enough?  I had no idea what if felt like to really push myself.

During this 4 month waiting period, I pushed myself harder than I ever had before.  Every day I wanted to go farther.  I wanted to be able to come home and say “Today I ran more than I ever have before.”  I felt amazing.  I lost another 10 lbs in those 4 months, so by the time I made it to Seattle I had trimmed off a total of 20 lbs.  I felt healthy, productive, and attractive for the first time in a long time.

All this running helped my awful waiting time go faster.  I had something else to think about.  Every day I had a new goal to conquer, a new reason to feel good about myself.  The running seemed to be helping Lucy too.  She was tired when we got home, the same kind of tired she used to be after running herself ragged at the dog park.  By the time I was ready to pack up my car and wave goodbye to NYC for good, Lucy and I were running about 4 miles a day.  I had somehow managed to make my waiting productive.  I may have physically been in the same place those 4 months, but in my mind and in my body I was most certainly not treading water.  I was going somewhere.

If you don't have an HLM, I feel bad for you

            Good friends are hard to find.  It’s a phrase we’ve all heard before, but it rings true.  Everyone has friends.  Lots of people even have close friends.  But not everyone has that one truly good friend that has always been there for you and will always be there for you.  No questions asked.  You don’t have to predict the future or guess, you know this friend will be there.  A term has arisen of late to describe this kind of friend: HLM, or Hetero Life Mate.  I think this term perfectly describes this kind of friend.

            Having an HLM is a lot like what I’d imagine a strong marriage to be.  An HLM is someone who truly and deeply knows you.  They know your strengths and weakness and have been there with you for your triumphs and pitfalls.  Sometimes your friendship is amazingly strong and great, and sometimes things aren’t so good.  But no matter what, life goes on and this person remains an integral part of it.  And, most importantly I believe, an HLM has been there through all the changes.  In life, things change.  People change.  Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse…but what’s great about an HLM is that they’ve seen you change.  They’ve watched you change.  They’ve let you change.  They probably even helped you change.  And they’re still here on the other side of things.  And you’ve done the same for them.  And probably will again in the future.  An HLM is the rock that steadies you, the hand that pushes you forward, and the body block that stops you from going too far.

            I can’t imagine what my life would have become without my HLM.  Sierra and I met when we were 14.  Innocent young high schoolers with our whole lives ahead of us.  We endured high school together, through its roller coaster of ups and downs.  Although we went to different colleges, we both wound up in NYC.  After my first semester of college when I realized I hated my school, I spent my weekends (remember in college when “weekends” were Thursday night through Sunday?) at her college, sleeping in her dorm room.  Did you know that two 5’10” girls could comfortably share a twin bed, as long as you slept head to toe?

            When Sierra moved out to Seattle, it was kind of like a separation.  We weren’t divorced, but we lived far away from each other and didn’t talk as often as we should have.  And when we did talk, I was usually on a slightly inebriated long walk on deserted NYC streets from the subway station to my apartment at 4 am—because fortunately it was only 1 am in Seattle and my HLM never left me alone on those streets when I needed her.

            So when I went out to visit Seattle in April 2008, 4 months before my planned move, it was like a reunion for Sierra and I.  We’d had 2 years of separation and we needed each other around again.  By this point in time, my injured Achilles tendon was feeling much better and I was itching to try running again.  I’d been pretty good about my portion controlling and had already lost about 10 lbs since the unfortunate hiking picture I showed you a few posts back.  After getting over my injury, I was doing my best to enjoy my last few months in the city that I loved and hated all at once.  I had a month of what was termed “March Madness” with my friends Lauren and Ashley, which consisted of getting out of our apartments, showing ourselves off, and boosting our energies.  With my new slightly slimmer figure, I felt amazing.  I was learning to separate my difficult and trying work day from my home life so that I could actually enjoy a real social life.  And I knew I had so much to look forward to.

 Life was good, and that April when Sierra played host to me in Seattle, she made pretty damn sure that I knew life could be even better.  Just when you feel like you are on top of the world, only an HLM can make you believe you haven’t even come close to seeing the top yet.  Here follows a photo montage of the week that made the next 4 months seem as though they couldn’t go by fast enough.

To start off the week, Sierra took me on my first walk around Greenlake.  She knew all about my new active lifestyle and wanted to show me just how active Seattle could be.  I basically live at this lake now and have run around it more times than I could even hope to quantify:

After that, we visited Chateau Ste Michelle because wine is awesome.  We even hopped over to Red Hook brewery for a meal after.  Because micro-brewed beer is awesome too:

We made friends with a peacock.  Who wouldn’t want to make friends with a peacock?:

We got dirty in the mud at Discovery Park.  This ended up being somewhat ironic, because the apartment we had together for my first 2 years here was in Magnolia, the same neighborhood:

We took lots of pictures of ourselves that look a lot like this one with different backgrounds:

We conquered a few hundred stairs coming up from the beach at Discovery and then stood in awkward poses of pride at the top:

We hung out at a few bars with people that would soon become very very good friends of mine.

We went to a Mariner’s game, which resulted in a night that looks like this in my memories.

And there was a high school sleep-over type dance party.  Because who wouldn’t want to end an amazing trip with an amazing friend with an amazing dance party?

Through all of life's inevitable changes, it's nice to know that there is someone who has been there for the last 14 years and will continue to be there for many more to come.  Thanks HLM, you're a lifesaver. Seriously.