Note to Myself, Really

Let's see, about four times per year for the last twenty years...that would make this approximately my eightieth attempt to begin a walking program. They say eightieth time is the charm, right? But I've got a good somewhat solid (with the exception of that one week) month of walking under my belt now, and I think I'm over the initial start-up hump.

I began my walking program in September by rising at 5:30 and marching downtown in the dark, and I still do that if I can't squeeze in my walk after I drop the kids off at school. As long as I'm getting to bed fairly early, I like starting out super-early while the rest of the neighborhood is still tucked in. Sure, I stumble down the block bleary-eyed at first, but who really cares how you look at 5:30a.m.?

And all this early morning business has helped me realize a great nugget of exercise wisdom. Thou Shalt Make Time for Exercise First Thing or Thou Shall Certainly Not Exercise. My mind will get in the way and come up with all sorts of good reasons and excuses why exercise would be best accomplished tomorrow.

Another benefit? I don't have that nagging "oh I should exercise today" guilt. It's already checked off my list. Done! One less thing to feel crappy about!

And yet another benefit? Healthier eating choices all day long. Why undo that excellent morning walk by eating junk? It's just not worth it. I don't want to feel sluggish and tired, I want to feel energetic and vivacious.

Okay, one more benefit, and possibly the hugest: better mental health all day long. I have read time and time again that exercise gives you a mental boost similar to taking prozac (only cheaper and healthier) but I guess I never really stayed at any of those 79 other walking programs long enough to begin to reap the mental health rewards. It's true. When I exercise, I can count on not feeling down in the dumps. When I don't, it's pretty much a guarantee.

Wait, wait, I've gotta mention my awesome website find that helps keep me motivated. It's called MapMyWalk.com and I find it to be a very cool tool. They've got a google maps interface that allows you to quickly and easily make a map of the route you have walked, letting you know how many miles you have walked. You can even enter your start and stop times and weight to determine how many calories you've burned. And the training log keeps records of all this for you. I love it...it thrills me to see my calendar page filling up with walks and exercise logs.

M-I-C K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

We've got a mouse in the kitchen. Aside from completely freaking me out, this is a real shame because the little guy is putting a crimp in my baking addiction. I saw him dart out from under the fridge late yesterday afternoon, and now any little noise or movement has me shrieking and heading for higher ground. I'm quite ashamed of myself, really. I'm trying to remind myself that it's just a teeny mouse, and it's not going to crawl up my pantleg (is it???) or anything. Kevin is away on business - why is he always away on business when we get a mouse? - so my dear neighbor Kerry set some traps for me. God bless all the trap-setting neighbors, every one of them.

(Eight-year-old Rachel saw it quite differently. She went huffing past me, looking like she had been crying. I asked her what was wrong, and she said "I'm very mad at you! How could you want to kill a little creature that is alive?")

I've got a pantry full of interesting ingredients, and I really want to be in that kitchen, kneading up some delicious bread. The aforementioned baking addiction seems to be bread-specific, with the occasional pizza crust thrown in for good measure. I'm really not a cookies/cakes/pies kind of girl. I'm all about the breads, both quick and not quick. Pumpkin bread makes the house smell amazing. Oatmeal bread is delish sliced and toasted for breakfast. I've even been experimenting with high gluten bread flour in those pizza crusts, and along with a super-hot oven, I think I'm close to unlocking the secrets of a good homemade pizza. And with an amazing pizza parlor four doors down, the homemade version must be quite good to pass around here.

Now if we could just catch that mouse before Rachel gets home from school, I could get busy in the kitchen. Hmmm, would it be too crazy of me to just drag the big stepladder into the kitchen and work up on it? Maybe I'll try that.

Just Relax, Girl

Do people who are not mothers ever feel overcome by guilt?

In my nonscientific study (really, just spending a little time thinking about it...no study actually took place in any way), it seems that lots of mothers carry around a huge backpack filled to the brim with guilt. At least I do. I'm not talking about a little Dora the Explorer kindergarten bag, I mean a full-on weekend trek into the backwoods pack.

I'm pretty sure that men (or at least my husband) don't have such enormous guilt problems. Whenever I mention to him the crushing feeling of guilt, usually accompanied by tears or an attempt to choke them back, he gives me that little "Oh, aren't you cute? Slightly pitiful, but cute." smile that tells me he really has no idea. And believe me, this is a good thing! If we were both carrying around gigantic loads full of guilty feelings it would not be pretty.

The crazy thing is that all of a sudden, one day I realized something wasn't right. I was lugging around this enormous load, weighing me down to the point that I could barely breathe. The only thing I can figure out is that when you give birth, they secretly sneak the backpack over your shoulders since you're already so utterly blindsided by the entire process, so you don't even realize it's there. Left unchecked, this thing will weigh you down in no time.

I've been struggling lately to figure out how to lighten this guilt burden. Clearly, it is not good for me in any way. It is not helping me to be a better person. And definitely not a better mother. Where does it come from? Seems like fear is definitely a factor...fear that I'm not doing a good enough job, that I'm ruining my kids.

So I've been trying to be gentle with myself. To talk through the feelings with myself as the negative ones happen. To put less pressure on myself, and to remind myself that, mostly, I've been doing the best that I know how. Sometimes just sitting and breathing, even breathing without the added enhancement of nicotine, plain old breathing, helps.

She Does My Heart Good

My dear, darling, precious and wonderful little sister called me today, oh, around one-ish, and invited me to go get a coffee with her. I was this close to saying, "No, sorry, that sounds great but I can't." When I realized, wonder of wonders, I actually could.

All the usual reasons just did not hold true. The kids? At school. No money? $3 in quarters. Too much work? No project due today. No time? Look at that...an entire hour available.

She picked me up, we went to Starbucks, we had a wonderful if very overpriced beverage, out in the fabulously fresh Lancaster county air on an amazing pre-autumn afternoon. And we conversed, and did not even once make fun of any family members. (Not that we would ever do that. We do not do that.)

Now I'm thinking about how I almost missed an opportunity to have this lovely time with Karen. Why am I so quick to say, Nope...can't do it? Sure, lots of times I genuinely can't do fun things that I would like to, but plenty of times I can. And don't. I think I get stuck in the rut of my daily routine and that of my family, and just don't make time for fun.

My tendency upon this realization is to completely banish all schedules and routines and make room for nothing but fun, the complete opposite of where I am now. But I'm gradually becoming aware of this pendulum-swing quality about myself. (And I should by now, being nearly middle-aged at 35 and all.) The key seems to be moderation. That and really taking the time to listen to myself, and figure out what it is that I really want.

I really want more coffee visits with my sis!

Martin Family Gathering

Last evening, the Martin clan gathered for a family picnic at my Aunt Dorcas's house in Manheim. The Martin's are my mom's family. She's got four sisters and two brothers (one still living), plus all of their children and grandchildren, which makes for a rather large circle of lawn chairs out in the yard.

It was nice to see everyone, especially Grandma, the recent newlywed, age 87 and as lovely and smart and agile as when she held me on her lap to read to me when I was five. (Although she is still one to nod off pretty quick, just like in the middle of those stories when I was five. "Um, Grandma? Grandma? Excuse me? We were reading?") Grandpa passed away several years ago, and Grandma has kept herself up pretty well over the years - she's just a teeny little thing - so I would imagine the potential suitors started lining up pretty quickly. She married a very kind man named Clarence, and now Grandma Martin (she'll always be Grandma Martin to me) is officially Grandma Stoner. (Which is really quite funny when you think of illegal drug references and my little Mennonite grandma.)

We love to laugh when we all get together, and last night was no exception. We've had our share of pain and loss. (Which, by the way, is how we pronounce Aunt Lois's name, incidentally. Not "Low-iss" which I believe is the normal way. She's "Aunt Loss" to us and always has been. I understand that she likes the family members whose paths cross with hers out in the business world to say it properly. That must be hard to remember.)Yes, we've had pain and loss. In addition to losing Grandpa several years back, my Mom's oldest sister Nancy lost her husband way back in the mid-seventies when her kids, Randy and Leanne, were little. My own Dad died in the mid-eighties when my brother Robin and sister Karen and I were just kids, and Aunt Dorcas's husband Ken, the oldest Martin sibling, died about ten years ago when their daughter Kim was just a girl. This is really only about the half of it...just the deaths part of the pain. But the real point here is that because we've cried together, we can really, really laugh together, too! I think there is a direct correlation.

One of the comedic highlights of the evening came from Aunt Carolyn. Her husband, Uncle Danny, was not in attendance. They have no kids - it's just the two of them, and I think because of this they are very comfortable about doing their own thing. So Uncle Danny was on a hunting trip. "In Iowa," is what she said when the other uncles wanted to know where he went hunting, and what for. "Mule deer?" was her uncertain response. The details got sketchier and sketchier, until Uncle Lynn put two and two together and realized that Uncle Danny was not in Iowa at all, but in Colorado. We all found it quite amusing that Aunt Carolyn really had no clue at all what state her husband was in! Apparently I am keeping my husband on much, much too tight of a leash, because I need to know not only the state he's in, but also the zip code.

Hmmm, maybe I should reconsider becoming a morning person?

I shout out to the world my joy about becoming an early riser, and in less than 24 hours, the world shouts back at me..."Crystal, you may want to think about this." It seems that a study has just come out linking early risers and heart problems.

Here is the link.

Gee, I wonder if the fact that many, many early risers are geriatric could have anything to do with the heart problems thing?

I could go off on a rant about all of these studies that give us conflicting advice - Getting up early is bad! Sleeping in late is bad! Chocolate is good! Chocolate is not good! - but I have to hope that some advancement is taking place somewhere on some level. Right?

On Becoming a Morning Person

I've got to admit that I have always sort of disliked morning people. They tend to be so smug, so virtuous, rattling off all the things they've managed to accomplish before I've even had a chance to hit the snooze button. So what? Maybe when I'm up late at night, I'm getting lots of things checked off my to-do list. Did you ever think of that? Is a swiffered floor more perfectly swiffered at 6am than at 11pm?

But I've started to realize a few things lately.

Number One: I'm actually not getting all those things checked off my to-do list after 10pm. The probability that my time is being spent scrubbing toilets is pretty low.

Number Two: I am getting too old for this late night stuff. I need sleep, and plenty of it.

Number Three: I actually like early mornings! Who knew? I like being the first one up and around when the house is quiet (although I'll probably change my tune in January when it's pitch dark outside and the house is freezing cold).

Number Four: Did I mention the house being quiet? I love this about early mornings. Even though the girls go off to school, Kevin and I are both working from home these days, so the only time I get to enjoy the peacefulness is pre-7am.

I still don't like the "Morning Person" moniker. It sounds like someone who rises super-early to eat a bran muffin, power-walk around the neighborhood, sweep off the front porch before any coffee timers have started within a six block radius. But I do like the way I feel, like I'm starting to pull myself together a little more and more each day.