Run Sarah Run

I am a runner I love to run I love to feel the pavement on my feet, or the treadmill rubber. I love to run up hills and down hills and around corners and through people's backyards (kidding). I love to run. I love to run inside or outside, on streets or on trails. Doesn't matter. I get the elusive runner's high. I get tingly and euphoric after a run. I love to sweat and feel my legs burn, but I can only run about 6 miles in one stretch. I run every once in awhile with my neighbor down the street, and to put us both in the "runner" category is silly when you compare us side by side. I am probably more of a slow jogger compared to him, but for whatever reason he humors me. Apparently 6 miles is his freakin warm-up run. Seriously he slows to what I am sure is a painfully slow 9 minute mile for me and does his hour warm-up till he can get rid of me and do his actual run! Show off. I feel like I am going to have a heart attack after about 5 minutes in and then once I make it past that mark I am ok to go... as Mr Exercise does one armed push-ups waiting for me to regain normal breathing patterns. I am convinced that the reason I am only able to run 6 miles is more psychological than anything else. I have always ran 6 miles, never less never more everyday for the past 3 years. So maybe if I started to tell myself that I am going to run say 8 miles a day then my brain wouldn't automatically shut my feet off at the 6 mile mark? Hmmmm? According to Todd a.k.a. Mr Exercise, he has always ran long runs for as long as he can remember and thinks that I just need to push myself past the 6 mile marker and have more will power to go further. Fuck him. Who asked him anyway? The thing I hate ahem I mean admire about him is that he can run fast and long... I mean like marathon long and actually get a medal fast, not the "Nice try you actually got off your fat ass and came out and made it to the finish line" award the "Wow you ran 26 freakin miles in under 4 hours"medals. Bastard! I am glad to have someone who can run faster than me though since if I ran by myself there would be no one there to yell at me and call me names when I want to stop after the first block. I look up to him and am grateful that he has the patience to run with me and to listen to me babble along about everything. Even though he asked me today when I started to talk about my life "Don't you have a blog for that?" Nice huh? He won't win any personality awards but I love his calves and fast legs...in a purely platonic way of course. His legs are who my legs want to be like when they grow up . I want to buy expensive shoes, have a trophy case, and get excited over my race t-shirts.I want to run a marathon one day before I die. I think I will wait till I get to the older age bracket though, then at least the expectations go down. : )

There Is Nothing To Fear but Fear Itself

Ole FDR had it right, but try explaining that to a screaming 5 year old in the middle of the night...yeah not so easy. She didn't enjoy my philosophy lesson either, the passage that says “Nothing is terrible in things; except fear itself”. I was pretty proud of myself that I remembered that one from my wonderful Philosophy 110 teacher, and I thought I had her there for a moment she stopped crying looked at me and started screaming again. Alright so maybe reason doesn't always work. She doesn't give a shit that her dreams are just pretend, just figments of our subconscious. She wants someone to hug her, kiss her and tell her that it will be alright. That I am there and that she knows she is safe. Because to her that dream was as good as real in her little five years of life world. Damn, I wish ,even though I think I have someone that would say those things to me if I suddenly started having bad dreams, that I could believe that again. Soph settled down, I rubbed her back and all was forgotten.

I grew up on Barker 1711 to be exact, on the Peoria side not the West Peoria side, I loved that house everything about it. Which when my mom went to sell the house back 10 years ago didn't even get the "for sale" sign in the yard before the house was sold to some scum lord who crams about 8 Bradley kids in there for $400 a month. When he bought the house for next to nothing...but that's a different soap box to stand on. : )

The things I loved the most were the things that scared me the most of all. We had this big built in china cabinet, that a babysitter told me once that if I stuck my hand in there far enough I could touch dead people. Or in my bedroom I was on the top bunk looking directly at the watermark on the ceiling that looked like a wolf's head...or the beautiful walk-in closets that I was petrified to hang my clothes in the way back for fear of zombies, or boogy men, or some equally scary thing. My fears didn't end at my home, at the swimming pool I thought the light covers in the pool were really covers to shark cages, that my parents, when I would hear them fighting I was terrified that if they got divorced how would I decide on where to take my kids to Christmas. lol Yeah I was a little OCD even back in the day.

I remember thinking that once I got older that my fears would go away. That adults had all the answers and once I got to be "old" like you know 20, I wouldn't be scared of the closets or not having the hall light on at night. I would be an adult and brave and strong. You think you are immortal then so I think some of my fear got replaced by stupidity and that nothing can happen to you cause your young and on your own and invincible. Then when I had babies I think that is when I saw things differently as an adult and a whole new batch of fears cropped up. Will I be a good mom, will I have money for their college, will Target have the brand of formula I need at 10 o'clock at night.

I like to lovingly refer to my children as little ticking time bombs that remind us as parents how old we are getting (uplifting I know) so as my kids got older my fears about what would happen if something happened to me intensified. I needed someone to reassure me, constantly that I was alright. The feeling of not being able to control getting older, and possibly, someday, if they don't invent a magic stay young forever pill, that I am going to get old and one day *gulp* die, was awful. I hated it. Someone who had lists upon lists, whose week was planned out down to the minute at times in those early years of marriage and pregnancies and babies. It was overwhelming when those thoughts got out of control and I felt like Sophie last night screaming in the night for someone to come and hug me and tell me I was safe. As an adult I got to learn from that scary experience, I got the tools to identify my fears and how to nip it in the proverbial bud before they got out of control. Now granted I couldn't always use those tools on my kids and their bad dreams but I became a better parent. And I know and have accepted fear as a good thing in my life to remind me that no one has total control and to learn how to let go and live.