Things That Piss Us Off Thursday: Volume Three

June 9, 2011

It's time for another round. In fact, this round is ridiculously overdue. So, without hesitation, I bring you:

Things That Piss Us Off Thursday!

You know the drill. Leave a comment outlining a thing (or six) that really craps on your carpet. Remember, I'm in charge and I can delete any comments that I feel like deleting, so HA!

Okay, here I go....

1. The fact that Melissa's blog will NEVER FREAKING LET ME LEAVE A COMMENT! So Melissa, congrats on the Vegas wedding, the last picture is the best (because that second one looks like your head is floating...in a beautiful way), and for real, put some jeans on.

2. I'm not rich.

3. There's not a high-end deli, a Thai restaurant, or even a drive-thru in the my office.

4. I'm out of eye-liner.

5. Suddenly, my husband is a hopelessly devoted Bruins fan, and he MUST NOT MISS A GAME. Maybe he can name three players, maybe.

6. People who chat for way too damn long and can't take the social cues that the conversation needs to wind down.

7. Packed meetings, in un-air-conditioned school gyms, when it's 90 degrees outside.

And you?

What Now?

June 2, 2011

I think I'm tired of running. Either that or I'm just wandering around like a lost, little lamb. It's pretty much the same thing I do after every big race I finish--or don't finish, I guess.

I'm just so inclined to find another marathon to run. A fall marathon, or a summer marathon, or an I-don't-care-what-season-it-is-just-give-me-another-marathon marathon. Maybe I need to accept the fact that I'm a marathon runner.

But here's the thing, I'm so much better at the short distances. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that with the exception of one half-marathon, I've either won my age group, or placed in the overall top three of every shorter race I've run since Maggie's been born.

Wait. Before you get impressed, please remember that I live in Maine, where everyone's chunky, very few people venture out of their recliners, and our winter lasts for 9 months out of the year. This isn't exactly a running Mecca, and actually, the competition is usually wearing summer sandals or Ugg boots. But still, when you're a trophy ho like me, a win is a win is a win is a win.

So these races are a little less than fierce, but hey, they're a good time and it never feels bad to have some success. But it's not just that, they're so much more manageable in every single way:

• The training is 1,000,000% less time consuming.
• There's pretty much no travel time to get to a little 5k.
• Jared doesn't have to wrangle the kids for 4 hours while he tries to see me at 6 different spots along the route.
• The entry fee is usually $15 instead of $893.
• If you fall on your face and fail, you can try again next week.

So, for the first time in years, I think I've maybe convinced myself to stick with the shorter, faster stuff for a while. But more importantly, I've decided to focus on other people for a while. I'm just so damn sick of myself. So sick of me.

I'm coaching a beginner's 5k training group this summer, and it's shaping up to be an awesome group of women--about 10 so far. And let me just say that if you're local, you should totally think about joining. Mostly because I'm fun, and also because I will personally guarantee that we have the dopest t-shirts in all of Central Maine (as long as you think lime green and jogging smiley faces are the dopest).

Then I'm running the Disney Half Marathon in January with my most awesome friend, Megan. She hates running more than any human being I've every known, and this will be her first, and she says I'll probably have to carry on my shoulders for the last 5 miles. So blam, there's another act of selfless service.

I have so many heaven points, that it's almost starting to get unmanageable.

So I guess I have a plan. I'll run some shorter things for me, and help some other people get started.

Either that, or I'll sign up for another marathon. Because I'm an idiot.

Onward and Upward: Details of a DNF

May 31, 2011

Before this weekend, I always wondered what race officials do when a runner decides they can't finish the race. Welp, I now consider myself an insider on the whole process, which involves a lot of walkie-talkieing...and a bus.

It's true. It happened. I DNF'd the Vermont City Marathon this year. Fifth marathon, first DNF, but honestly, I've accepted it and I'm completely fine.

If you're one of my Daily Mile* friends, you know that I whined, complained, and wretched about my stomach for the entire week before the race. Basically, I came down with a stomach bug last Sunday and it held strong through the whole week--I even had to leave work early on Thursday because after my nineteenth trip to the bathroom, I started to feel a little embarrassed.

On Friday morning, when we were getting ready to leave for Vermont, I knew I wouldn't be able to brave the car ride in my natural state, so I swallowed a cocktail of stomach meds and it seemed to do the trick. I had no appetite, but I had no accidents either, so I considered it a win.

When I woke up on Saturday, I still felt 'off.' My stomach was churning, and I just didn't want to eat. When I got to the expo to pick up my number, a happy Ben & Jerry's employee tried to hand me a free sample of their newest flavor. Usually, I'd put on a variety of disguises--you know, whatever trash bags, scarves, and childrens' hats I could find on the floor of my car--and hit up the sample guy as many times as I possibly could. But this time, when I wanted to tell the Ben & Jerry's guy to _____ off, I knew I had a problem.

When I stepped up to the line on Sunday morning, I knew in my heart that the race would be a crap shoot. I could have the race of my life, or I could make it three miles, but either way, I wanted to try.

It poured at the starting line, so before the gun even went off, I was soaked and feeling a lot like Maggie:

My pacer went out a little bit fast , so I hung with him until mile five, and then decided to back off and stay closer to my pace. I ran happy until mile ten, and then, all of the sudden, I just kind of started to wilt. By the time I got to the half-marathon mark, I was slogging along. At that point, I decided I'd give myself three more miles to try and bounce back. If I couldn't, I'd run to the medical tent and call it a day.

Well, I never bounced back.

I got slower, and slower, and slower until finally, I was being passed by people dressed up like Christmas trees and tubs of Stoneyfield Yogurt--and to be perfectly honest, it felt like they were zooming right by.

I spotted the medical tent just after mile twenty, and felt a huge sense of relief as I veered in.

I borrowed the medic's cell phone and called my Dad. I said something like, "Hey Dad. I'm at mile twenty. I need the world's best pep talk, or else I'm getting a ride back to the start." He opted to forgo the pep talk and wait for me near the aquarium downtown.

After I hung up the phone, I told the medic that I was done for the day. Then I asked, "So...what happens now?" Since I wasn't any kind of emergency case, I didn't know what they'd do.

He walkie-talkied to someone, told me to wait across the street, and that a bus would come and pick me up.
I sat down on the curb, and one by one, people started lining up next to me. There was the guy from Maine who just felt like crap, there was the guy from Massachusetts with the bum knee, and there was some lady from somewhere who kept screaming, "I'M NOT A QUITTER! I'M NOT A QUITTER!"

I turned to the two guys and said, "Um, if she's not a quitter, then she should probably get off of this quitter bus." They whole heartedly agreed.

The quitter bus pulled up to the curb, and much to our surprise, this wasn't a van, or an SUV, or even a short bus--this was a full sized school bus. And let me just say that I've never been so happy to see a full sized school bus in my entire life.

We rode around Burlington, picking up relay runners here and there. One relay runner hopped on, sat down behind me and was beaming with pride. He'd run a five mile leg, and never in his life had he run farther than four. He told me that he could have kept on going and going and going. He had white hair, glasses, and must have been close to Medicare age. This guy completely made my day. Those are the kind of races that all runners live for.

The bus dropped us near the start, and I walked with the guy from Massachusetts until we found our families. I walked up to mine, we hugged and laughed. Then I looked at James, shrugged and said, "Well, I made it twenty miles!"

"Yeah, but you didn't make it the whole way. Here's your sign, Mom."

Okay, that stung. And that six year old comment was probably 89% of the reason I cried for a minute in the car. But James doesn't know any better--he still doesn't understand why I'm not winning these things.

So there, that's my DNF story. It wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined. I'm proud of myself for making it twenty miles with a stomach bug, and I'm proud of myself for knowing my limits. One of these days I know my stars will line right up on race morning.

But in the mean time, I made myself this sticker:

Onward and upward!

*If you're not, you should be! Just tell me that you're a blog friend so I don't delete you in one of my semi-annual deleting sprees.

A Spicy Mix of People

May 24, 2011

What do you get when you take a Mormon, a Jehovah's Witness, a psychic, and mix 'em all together?

A whole lot of blog material--that's what you get. Please, allow me to explain....

Last week, I walked into my office, and much to my surprise, there was a woman sitting in the office next to mine. I hadn't heard that anyone was renting the space, so I went right over to introduce myself.

"Hi," I said. "I'm Amy. I work next door doing very important things for very important people making very large amounts of money."

Okay, fine. Maybe I've switched the details around a little bit, to protect the innocent...and make it more exciting, but that doesn't matter. The woman was friendly and warm and very pretty. Her office was completely bare, except for one upholstered chair and two lawn chairs.

"Hi," she shyly responded. "I'm Stacy. They haven't painted the walls yet, and I'm waiting until they do to  move my things in."

"What do you do, Stacy?"

"I do spiritual readings," she replied, just as un-self-consciously as some other person might say, "I'm going grocery shopping."

In my head I was thinking, NO SHIZ! YOU'RE A PSYCHIC! I'm scared of you! I think you're cool! I should probably stop going on facebook at work, because you'll totally know! THIS IS INSANE!

But with my voice I heard myself calmly saying, "Spiritual Readings. Fantastic. Very wonderful."

And then we parted ways.

And then I immediately moved my work station to the other side of my office, up against the shared wall.

And then I strained to listen to every word of every spiritual reading she gave--but not too hard, because that would be disrespectful. (p.s. some people really need attorneys, not psychics)

And then I moved it back, because she'd totally know I was snooping.

Then I tossed up a quick blog post about the psychic over my lunchtime.

Then I took it down, because she'd totally know what I wrote.

And then, I finally settled for doing my own damn work, with the door open, watching the spiritual readees come and go and come and go. Occasionally I got to play along, letting them know that no, they didn't need to check in with me before they met with Stacy.

In my mind, my office life was about explode with a healthy dose of f to the u to the n. Or, at the very least, it would be at a smidge more spicy than it had been when I'd break up my days by farting in various vacant cubicles.

The next morning, I came in to work, and I was so early that I was only person in the building. A few minutes later, I heard footsteps coming down the hall, and before I knew it, someone cracked my door about four inches, slinked through the opening, and was standing in my office with a frowny-nostril-flarey kind of thing happening.

It was my friend from down the hall, and her eyes were the size and the shape of quarters.

She pulled up a chair, sat down, took a quick breath and said, "I don't know if you know this already, but I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses..."

"No way," I interrupted! "I'm Mormon! You can knock on my door, then I can knock on your door, then you can knock on my door, then I can knock on your door, then you can knock on my door, then I can knock on your door! Why didn't I know this sooner???"

She scrunched down in her chair and whispered, "Have you met our new neighbor?"

I nodded.

"Well," she went on, making her eyes even bigger, "as far as I'm concerned, that woman is possessed by demons."

I had no idea how to comfort my friend, and all I could think to say was, "Her sneakers were very white."

Well I don't know?! What was I supposed to say?! As far as I'm concerned, I think peanut butter is possessed by demons since I a) can't stop eating it, and b) almost accidentally put it in James's snack bag every day, even though c) it's just about as dangerous as a loaded gun to some of his classmates. Evil, evil stuff I say.

Any way you slice this thing, I'm not about to get in the middle of it.

Does the psychic creep me out? Absolutely. She induces heebie jeebies every time we cross paths. Not because of the devil stuff, more because I'm worried that she knows I think she's chunky, even though she's not chunky, but I'm worried she can detect that I'm thinking it, so I think it just to test her out and then I regret it in case she's really magical and ends up thinking that I think she's flabby even though she's not. See? Creepy.

And the Jehovah's Witness? No creeps there, none whatsoever. She can hand me her pamphlet, and I can hand her my pamphlet, and she can hand me her pamphlet, and I can hand her my pamphlet, and she can hand me her pamphlet, and I can hand her my pamphlet and, so on and so forth.

So. Tell me. Who works next door to you?

I've Changed.

May 18, 2011

I've changed.

Last night, I was standing in the bathroom, mulling over a question that all American women occasionally (or obsessively) ponder throughout their lives...

If I could magically change one part of my body what would it be?

Fifteen years ago, or maybe even five years ago, I would have had a list a mile long: thinner thighs, a firmer butt, silkier hair, a clearer complexion, a super flat stomach, and so on and so forth. But not last night.

Last night, the answer came to me like a flash of lightening. If I could magically change one thing about my body, I would...beyond the shadow of a doubt...heal this damn freaking hemorrhoid that's been plaguing my existence for the entire last decade.

That's it. That's all.

That hemorrhoid is quite literally the only think I'd change about my body. Hitting thirty has either provided me with exceptionally solid self esteem, launched me into an unfixable slump, or both.

My hair's frizzy? So what! My stretch marks make my stomach look like a road map of Boston? Who cares?! It feels like I'm pooping out shards of glass every time I hit the pot? OH PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!

Now Jared on the other hand, has had the same, unwavering answer for the entirety of his adult life. If he could change one thing about his body, he'd give himself a super penis. Fair enough.
 
James, hearing this conversation through the vent hole in his bedroom floor piped in and told us that if he could change one thing about his body, he'd have, "six heads on the top, four legs on the bottom, and six eyes tossed all over the place." Not surprising in the least.
 
What would you change?