Spring, 2003

In keeping with what has become my usual style of life management, all previous plans you may have seen posted to this site have been thrown out the window in favor of no plan at all. Or, more accurately, a plan that is shifting daily.

The fall went nearly as planned. I didn't begin work on the short story collection I was so fired up about. Instead, I joined NaNoWriMo in November and spent a month trying (and failing) to write the rough draft of a novel in 30 days. It was exhilarating (the writing fast part) and awful (the stuff that was written fast), and a great experience. I regret that my life will not likely be conducive to such an effort in the coming November, but it's probably just as well. (The link to my first draft, which contains way too many scenes about food, still works if you feel you need proof that a novel is not meant to be written in 30 days.) I also worked outside of my condominium building for the first time in three years, taking a short-term position staffing a window treatment and carpet display in the country's first ever Costco Home Store that opened in December. That was interesting, because it involved learning something new, and dangerous, because just as I was beginning to believe I wanted to make a go of being a writer no matter what it took, I was shoved into the world of consumption and started to think about all the things I didn't have and might like to have.

In January I took the trip I'd planned to Raleigh, North Carolina to visit my parents and my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew, and that's where the plans quickly blew apart. My six week stay was extended once so that I could continue to babysit my nephew until he could get into the daycare program his parents had chosen. Then it was extended a second time so I could interview for a job I'd applied for on a lark. By this time, it was nearly the end of March and Hans agreed that maybe we were meant to be in Raleigh, so he packed up the apartment, gave notice to the condo board, spent a couple months visiting his family in Southern California and drove out to meet me in mid-June.

To summarize: we now live in Wake Forest, North Carolina; we have a six-month-old American Hairless Rat Terrier named Kaija who shares our lives and who is easy on our allergies but has odd, scary allergies of her own; writing for both of us is on hold while we search for work that will be fulfilling while also providing a paycheck; and as a result we're rethinking all of our long-term goals and plans and attempting, yet again, to define for ourselves what we want to be when we grow up.

It's difficult to explain why I'm so happy here when so many things are undecided and unknown. The best I've been able to do is to say that my body feels at home here. It's as though my molecules vibrate at the same frequency as the molecules in the environment around me. Or maybe it's just that there's something in the way the sky looks or the way the air feels that makes me feel I know this place. Or maybe I'm just nuts. The humidity, combined with high heat, is something of a shock, but the people are nice, the landscape is green, and there is little in the way of city here. There are adjustments to be made, but in the long run I am confident this was a good decision.

I've even seen my pairs of pennies here--two pennies within inches of each other, one heads up, one heads down, which I continue to interpret as the universe telling me I choose my own luck--and in the perpetual balancing act in which I engage with the universe, I gained proximity to my family and a home where I can feel comfortable, but instantly lost my computer. My IMac made it safely across country with me, hummed happily in the bedroom of my parents house, but then made a horrible noise and instantly died the moment it was first turned on in the new townhouse Hans and I rented for ourselves. The service reps who've looked at it installed a new logic board, with no benefit, and say they've never seen anything like it. It's simply dead and the consecutive attempts at repair would cost me as much as purchasing a new computer would. So the IMac on which I wrote my first book-length manuscript is now gone, and I have no idea when I will be able to afford to replace it. That doesn't bode well for the writing, but, as usual, I'm sure it will all work out somehow.

Happy Summer!

Monday, December 2, 2002

I finished the Seattle Half-Marathon Run yesterday with a time of 3:46:47. While there were several half-marathon walkers who finished faster than I did, I am pleased that I managed to finish at all. When I began training for the 2001 Danskin my feet couldn't tolerate even five miles of walking. To finish 13.1 miles is a huge milestone for me. With a time like mine, and the fact that I walked about 1/4 mile of each of the 13 miles, some could argue that I should have signed up for the half-marathon walk. In my mind, however, if I intended to do any running whatsoever, I needed to sign up for the run. The walk should have been reserved for people who intended only to walk. (Not all the walkers seemed to agree, however, and many of them ran down hills and the last mile into the stadium at the finish.)

My reason for training for the 1/2 marathon was to get more accustomed to running. In the triathlon, running is the sport I find the most agonizing, and the least fun. I thought if I could finish a 13.1 mile race, the 3.1 mile runs at the ends of my sprint tri's would be easier, both physically and mentally. In this respect, I think I succeeded. Not only did I run farther yesterday than I have ever run before, but I "raced" for more than an hour longer than I have ever raced. My mind stayed in the game (with a little bit of positive self-talk required), no matter what was going on with my body, and that kind of experience can only help me going into the future.

What I didn't accomplish was increasing my speed. My endurance obviously went through the roof, considering where I started from, but the speed did not. My pace was several seconds longer than 17 minutes per mile, slower than last year's Danskin by 1 minute and slower than this year's Danskin by 2 minutes. In order to increase my speed, two things have to happen: I have to lose more weight, and I need to practice fartleks or sprints. The weight loss is going to be my primary focus in December, January, and February, and when I resume tri training in the spring, I will focus on improving my running speed.

As for the actual race, it was a little scary. It started before sunrise and there were more than 5,000 participants in the half-marathon run. I tried to line up near the back, but people just kept coming. The woman next to me said that I needn't worry about it, that we would all just kind of walk forward until we crossed the start line. After that, she said I should stay toward the center of the road, concentrate on running in a straight line, and let the faster people behind me run past on the outside. This strategy seemed to work and hundreds of people streamed past me! We started from the Experience Music Project at the Seattle Center and followed 5th street toward 1-90--the same route the Big Ride took leaving Seattle in 1998. It was cool to see 5,000 people filling the street in front of me, but not as cool as seeing 700 bikes.

I stayed on a fifteen-minute-mile pace through the first two miles, which carried me onto I-90 just as the sun broke through the clouds. It was a fabulous morning, in the mid- to high-30s and I stayed plenty warm. Just before the place where the 1/2 marathon route diverged from the marathon route, the 1/2 marathon walkers, who had started fifteen minutes behind me, began catching up with me. The rest of the race was very difficult, because I was surrounded by walkers, many of whom walked faster than I ran, and I saw very few other runners. It didn't take me long to realize, however, that when I stopped to walk, I lost ground with the "official" walkers who just breezed right by. The only way I was going to maintain my position in the pack was by running.

I got to run down the Day Street hill that I have to cycle up in the Danskin, and then run north along Lake Washington. I was relieved that I didn't have to swim in this race--no drowning this time around!--and the water was just gorgeous. Somewhere around mile six I seemed to forget that I was running. I was in a groove mentally and physically, nothing hurt, I had no thought of stopping to walk, and all I was aware of was that I was moving forward. It was fantastic. Unfortunately, it didn't last. Soon after that, the hills started, and my body protested. I had to force myself to run, and I did a lot more walking than I had hoped to.

I leap-frogged with several walkers, most of whom seemed to be walking in groups or at least with one other friend, and occasionally traded comments on the race. It was a fun, friendly, and supportive crowd, as I have come to expect such race crowds to be.

One pair of walkers that I leap-frogged repeatedly, caught me a mile and a half from the finish, and said, "We're almost there!"

"Yeah, but you're fifteen minutes ahead of me. I'm supposed to be running, can't you tell?"

They found this funny and we leap-frogged the rest of the way to the Memorial Stadium, back at the Seattle Center, and ran across the finish line together. My favorite part of the whole race was running across the stadium. I wasn't choked up the way I usually am at the Danskin finish (I got choked up somewhere early in the race and realized quickly that crying in this race probably meant death, as I immediately ran out of breath, and abruptly decided there was no room for sentimentality), and I suddenly found power in my legs and sprinted the hundred yards to the finish mat. It was very cool.

Thirty seconds later, relief and amazement that I had survived. Thirty seconds later still, pain. Lots of pain. I tried to stretch out some while I looked for Hans, then realized that I was having a severe asthma attack and needed to walk, but couldn't move fast enough to be effective. Julie, one of the swimmers on the team I train with on Sundays, found me and helped me fish my inhaler out of my jersey. Today, I feel fine as long as I don't attempt to move. My joints hurt; my muscles are sore; getting off couches, beds, toilet seats, and chairs is a slow, agonizing process; and I walk, like a duck, in a jerky, halting, probably comic, line across the floor. My lungs are still bad. The attack was deep and I have doubled up on all my meds. I had to stop every ten feet trying to walk to the car at the end of the race to catch my breath, and was amazed that the race designers actually expected me to climb stairs to get out of the stadium. My back muscles were tightly constricted for several hours yesterday, but they have loosened finally, and now I am merely coughing, rattling, and wheezing. Not pretty, but also no longer scary.

I can't say whether I will continue to run races. Hans thinks I should continue to run the half-marathon every year, but doesn't think I should attempt to graduate to a full marathon any time soon. I think that continuing to run long distances is only feasible if I lose a significant amount of weight. Otherwise the stress I'm putting on my body probably counteracts any of the benefits I might receive.

I don't know yet any of my stats beyond my finish time, and that I finished 4,665th overall, 221st in the women's race, and 54th in my age group. I don't know what these rankings mean because I do not know how many total racers, women racers, or 30-34 year-old racers there were. When I know, I'll post this information, too, so we can all have a good laugh.

Wednesday, November 27, 2002

Several quick notes:

I am indeed going to "run" the half-marathon this Sunday. I bought one of those awful rain ponchos (emergency orange!) and an emergency blanket just in case it rains and is miserable. The last couple of mornings have been sunny, however, so there is a chance of good weather. I'm clinging to that hope.

I have been able to verify that the free energy supplements that will be supplied at the race, POWERade and PowerGel, are both gluten-free, so that's one less thing I have to worry about. (I also verified that Gatorade and Gu are gluten-free, so endurance sports are still on my agenda.)

I realized the other day how lucky I am that things didn't work out between me and some of the guys I dated. Hans and I have had our difficulties, but I am so lucky that we've stuck it out. So many of the other guys I dated would have put me in boxes altogether too small, and I don't think I would like the person I'd be today if we'd stayed together. I am really lucky that Hans "gets it" about all the right things (even though it sometimes takes lots of talking before we realize we're on the same page). He's not likely to stop being a feminist or start believing that corporate America has the inalienable right to bulldoze over the rights of nature, poor people, women, etc., etc., etc., any time in the future. Very important.

The NaNoWriMo stuff isn't going quite as well as I'd hoped, but it has gotten me to write regularly, and I am more than 150 pages into a story that twenty-seven days ago was just a one-line idea. I am not likely to finish the 50,000 words in the next three days, but I have made a promise to myself that I will finish them by Christmas. (I'm 30,596 words in now.) I'd like to have a complete manuscript to shop by the spring. Maybe I'll take the manuscript completion course I've been considering at Hugo House to make sure that I give this manuscript the best chance I can to actually become a book.

I'm still holding out hope for Your Mileage May Vary. Still no response from the two agents on whose desks it currently rests. I have promised myself one more go-around with agents (in the event that both of these turn me down), sending out query packages to about ten more of them, and then I'm going to start sending out query packages to small publishers. It's difficult to sustain focus and energy on a project that I've been working on so long. I need something to happen with it soon.

Thursday, November 14, 2002

I just pitched a show idea to Oprah! It was tons of fun! It's on celiac disease and I realized as I was writing the pitch, that I know enough about CD now that I can pitch it to magazines, too. So, keep your fingers crossed that I get a call!

Last week I pitched Woman's World a Big Ride story. No word yet, but it can take months to hear back. I'm just happy to be putting things out there. Each query is like a little wish I'm sending out into the world. One day, one of them is going to come back to me with a "yes" and lead to a byline and a check. I still need to query Self, Women's Health and Fitness, and maybe Health. Tons to do, tons to do.

I've done nothing on NaNoWriMo since Sunday and then only about 900 words after several days of nothing. But, I finished Mary's paper and I remembered to go to my job interview this morning, and now that the Oprah query is done, I can write some more novel stuff.

By the way, yesterday's pizza is better today!

Wednesday, November 13, 2002

I just had my first pizza since my Celiac diagnosis! I had to make it myself, but it worked. It actually looked like the best pizza I've ever made, but the taste left just a little something to be desired. Still, for a first gluten-free attempt at baking of any kind, it was a HUGE success. The biggest obstacle to overcome is getting the pizza sauce right. The one I made did not taste like pizza sauce. And the crust tasted like biscuits, but that couldn't possibly be because I tried to adapt a gluten-free biscuit mix I made last week. Still, it made a great thick crust that held together well, and when the Chicago Pizza at Pizza Hut commercial came on, I got to be happy that I was eating pizza, too.

This was the fourth time I went to the store to buy the ingredients for a specific recipe. It was the only time I actually came home with anything, however. The other three times, I got to the store and couldn't trust that the ingredients I needed were truly gluten-free and so came home empty-handed.

Small steps forward. Yay!

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Merry Christmas!

My amazing, wonderful, supportive husband gave me my Christmas present this morning!

I went to bed last night about midnight after working on editing Mary's dissertation. At 2:00 Hans got up. At 9:00, he couldn't stand it any longer and came to wake me. (Yes, I can easily sleep nine hours, and even longer on occasion.) The interesting thing was that after he rousted me, he didn't leave. He just kind of hung around in the doorway waiting for me to get dressed, saying things like, "It sure feels a lot like Christmas."

When I was up and dressed, he led me to my computer and said that the high school girl who comes up on a google search of my name had already beat me to the domain name kristinegoad.com. He continued by saying that she even looked a lot like me. Then he typed in the address, and a page came up with the picture of me running out of the water at the Danskin! He bought me my domain name for ten years and paid for a year's hosting of a business card site through Verio. Apparently he was up all night calling tech support to make sure that the page looked the way he wanted it in time for him to give it to me. It was really a perfect gift, and it means a lot to me because it was his way of saying he thinks I'm on the verge of a career and he wanted me to have the site in place when that finally happens. And he was so cute, bouncing around all excited, talking about Christmas! I am a very lucky girl to be living with this man!!

Tuesday, November 5, 2002

What an amazing day! I only wrote one sentence on the novel today because I needed to spend the day researching magazines to send pieces of Your Mileage May Vary to. (I need "clips" from magazines to help convince editors, and maybe even agents, that there's a market for my voice and my story.) I spent four hours at the library today acquainting myself with their resources. The Literary Market Place yielded the names of two agents I still might try as well as several websites to check out regarding writers workshops. Writers Market 2003 offered some good advice on writing for online magazines. And The American Directory of Writers' Guidelines (2nd Edition) turned out to be a goldmine of information, 1,300 freelance opportunities waiting to be pounced on. So I came home totally stoked--I found a market that is perfect, even though it is also somewhat cheesy, for a My Story short version of YMMV. That query will be written tomorrow. I also splurged on a haircut--my first in six months--which totally helped with the whole self-image thing, then VOTED, and went to see Sweet Home Alabama with Hans at the Edmonds Theatre. I came out of it feeling really good (the whole point after all), and had a renewed vision for an old story that I think I'm finally mature enough to write. So my next project, after I totally revise this novel (which I think is acquiring the working title, Continuum or Continuity, I don't know yet), is going to be a screenplay based on that wedding story I was playing around with back in '96. It will be much cooler now, that I've done the whole wedding thing and come out the other side. Hans went to bed early and I stayed up, supposedly to write, but instead I get sucked into an episode of Charmed and then an episode of Spin City (both reruns, but new to me). Before you totally berate me for wasting an hour and a half of prime writing time, however, you should know that as I was turning off the t.v., I caught sight of the 5x7 photo I ordered of myself from the 2002 Danskin triathlon, and the perfect story idea hit me, AND I even know who to send it to, thanks to my library research today.

So, what I've been trying to say is that I feel creative, productive, energized, capable and hopeful today. Somewhere in the last six months, my vision of myself changed from "aspiring writer" to "emerging writer." And somewhere in the last three weeks, my vision of myself has changed from "emerging writer" to simply "writer." I think Bookfest, where I made contacts and introduced myself as a writer with a completed manuscript available, and joining the Seattle Writergrrls internet list has totally altered my own perception of who I am. And, as a result, I feel totally inspired and like I'm finally on the right track after being on the wrong track for a reallllly long time. So, please, save your berating about my low productivity level until Sunday. If I haven't caught back up by then, feel free to send me your insults and admonishings.
Love.

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

I just had to wait for it. I knew the depression would kick in, it just came a few days late this year! Yesterday was absolutely horrible. I woke up with a terrible headache that went away after two Advil and a shower. The sun was out (momentarily) in the morning, so I went to work on my research about Celiac Disease so that I can send off some story ideas. I actually felt somewhat motivated once the headache went away, but it didn't last. I got caught up in a 95 site webring on Celiac, the sun went away and the temperature dropped drastically, and my concentration went right out the window.

To make things worse, I was supposed to be reading for "facts" that I could use to give support to my queries, but instead I got hung up finding discrepancies between websites--one site would claim annatto was safe, another would say it wasn't; one site would say buckwheat was safe, another would say it wasn't. It's enough to make you cry. Seriously. Cry.

Then I made dinner for both Hans and me for the first time since we adopted the gluten-free lifestyle. Hans has also eliminated dairy/casein and salicylates from his diet and has a three-page list of forbidden food hanging on the refrigerator. We are using stickers to label food that Hans can't eat, but there was no sticker on the pepper mill, and before I remembered he couldn't eat pepper, I had already added it to the entree and was about to add it to the side dish. There's just too much to keep in my head, and I think we're going to have to go back to each of us cooking for ourselves.

On top of it, I'm missing Brendan and wishing I was with my parents in North Carolina while they switch over to the gluten-free diet, too.

I feel better today--the sun is out and very bright!--and I'm not particularly worried about this depression. For one thing, I think it's justifiable considering the things going on in my life, and therefore not just chemical. (Although I have been having small bouts of mania lately interspersed with the depression, and that hasn't happened in years. I'm thinking this is my body adjusting to the new diet?) Hopefully working on the novel will help keep me motivated and working through the winter.

I'm heading to the library this afternoon to do some research on women's magazines that might be interested in YMMV excerpts. I need to get serious about attempting to market those; it will help with finding a publisher.

Sunday, October 27, 2002

Daylight savings ended today, and I'm trying my darnedest to be depressed. Historically, this has been one of the most depressing days of the year. And today it's dark (big shock) and very cold and a really good day for hibernating. I've been playing with a little bit of depression since Candy, Al, and Brendan left, but nothing too serious. In fact, there's been a lot in the last week to counteract any depression. I've been gluten-free for fourteen days and have lost six pounds--my scale hasn't registered a weight this low since the fall of 1998! (I'm reacting a little funny to the diet still, though, and may need to go back to eating simpler foods until I figure out why.) Also on the plus side, I received a letter from a third agent who asked to see the next three chapters of Your Mileage May Vary, so those were mailed out on Monday. (Still no word from either of the other agents who are currently looking at it.) On Friday I managed to run 9 miles and I was as surprised as anybody that I had it in me! Theoretically, that means I should be able to add one mile per week right up to the half-marathon and be able to finish the "race" on December 1. And to top it all off, as I was getting out of the pool after team practice today, the head coach, Ed, pulled me aside to tell me how great my stroke is looking. He said he doesn't even recognize it in comparison to where I started last February, and that it's progressed so far he's now able to talk about the finer points of my stroke--namely, he wants me to dig six inches deeper when my hand enters the water. I needed that encouragment so much today. I've been avoiding the pool for the last two weeks, despite my desire to start practicing flip turns again, and needed something to jump start my enthusiasm. I did butterfly today for just two laps and was really surprised that the rhythm came back. One of these days, I just might be a good swimmer.

I didn't get anywhere this week with any of my queries or article research, nor did I write anything creative. But I did a little bit of research for my novel yesterday, and feel like I might have enough experience to write this story, even though it feels a little intimidating. I'm looking forward to it now that I've sat with the idea of it for a week. It will be nice to be able to tell agents, if any of them ever call again, that I'm working on a novel since that's what they'll be wanting to hear. I have to get the house cleaned today so that I can be more focused and "professional" starting tomorrow. I know it's possible....

Monday, October 21, 2002

I've been on the gluten-free diet for a week now and have lost four pounds! That's more weight than I lost all summer in spite of the triathlon training. The juice fast turned out to be a good idea, because it really did help me readjust my expectations of food. Now chocolate seems too rich--bet you never thought you'd hear me say that! Hans has ordered several hundred dollars worth of gluten-free food to be delivered this week from online retailers, since we had to throw away ninety-nine percent of what used to be in our kitchen. Until then, I'm surviving on baked potatoes, Gorilla Munch cereal with EdenSoy Blend milk substitute, and PB&J sandwiches made with Ener-G tapioca bread. It's not exciting, but it works. I even made it through Bookfest weekend surrounded by people eating Mexican food, gourmet sausages, and big cookies without having a meltdown. I'm surprised at how well I'm coping, actually. I've never changed my eating habits so drastically or so easily before. Usually I'd be pulling out my hair by now. Maybe it's the knowledge that there is no going off this diet and no cheating allowed. Since that's the case, maybe I've just decided not to torture myself about it, and make the best of it.

I met a woman at Bookfest from Seattle who has written and published COOKING GLUTEN-FREE, a cookbook filled with recipes submitted by world-class chefs. I also met a few writers who belong to various writers' organizations in Seattle and around Washington who might be helpful as I continue submitting my manuscript and begin writing other things. The panel discussions and readings were not as exciting this year as they have been in the past, but it was definitely worth the time. I did get one fantastic idea for a poem while listening to Simon Ortiz speak, and I need to get to work on that.

My sister and her family are now on their way to North Carolina to live, so I won't get to babysit my nephew any more. I am going to miss being surprised by him as he changes each week, and I'm going to miss my sister who has accounted for the majority of my social interaction in the years since I moved from Edmonds to Seattle. It means that I am now free to write every day, however, and no longer have excuses for letting whole days go by without progress either in writing or marketing.

Aside from the poem idea, I need to finish an essay I'm writing for an anthology competition on "bike love" and I have a notebook full of short story ideas that I generated in North Carolina. I've become obsessed with the whole Celiac Disease thing, however, and have decided that since I'm doing so much research any way, I may as well write about that, too. So my next serious project is going to be to develop a series of queries relating to Celiac and to hopefully write several short pieces about it. On the back burner is a query about Post Event Depression and how to handle the depression that might follow the completion of your first marathon or your Avon Three Day Walk, etc.

As if I didn't have enough on my plate, in what my husband has dubbed a "manic" moment this morning I signed up for NaNoWriMo 2002, National Novel Writing Month. Beginning at 12:00 a.m. on November 1, each participant begins writing a novel with the goal of completing 50,000 words by midnight on November 30! Last year 5,000 people started and 700 people actually crossed the 50,000 word mark by the deadline. What's the point? To write lots of really crappy prose really fast while finding great little surprises in dialogue, character development, or plot twists as you go along. In short, to see what happens. One of last year's "winners" actually revised his novel to the point that he was able to sell it and it will be published in 2003. This is indeed a crazy idea, especially for someone as insanely busy and disorganized as I seem to be currently, but I think it will be fun. I have no idea what my novel will be about, since before this morning I had no intention of going for anything in long form again for a LOOOOONG while, but that adds to the fun. I'm playing with the idea of putting a link to the crappy novel in progress on this website for anyone who wants to read along.

In the meantime, I'm still playing with the idea of running the Seattle Half-Marathon. This, too, is a crazy idea for someone who hates running pretty intensely most days and who has gone several weeks without increasing her mileage. But we'll see, maybe I'll surprise myself and pull it all off!

Sunday, October 13, 2002

It's been way too long since I last posted here, and so much has happened, it will be difficult to catch up!

First of all, the agent whom I wrote about who asked to read the first 100 pages of Your Mileage May Vary eventually rejected the project, saying that she believed it would be too difficult for her to market. I received this news while I was on vacation in North Carolina, and was hesitant to send out more queries to agents even after I returned home because I feared more rejection.

On October 1, however, I finally got out submissions to nine additional agents. On October 4, I received my first phone call from an agent who said she thought the project sounded exciting and who asked to read the first 75 pages and a chapter-by-chapter outline. I spent three days working on the outline, attempting to write a two-sentence summary of each of the book's 49 chapters, and mailed off the new materials the following Monday (the 7th). I have been living off her kind words of encouragement ever since! The next day I received an immediate rejection from another agency, but, yesterday, I received a letter from an agent who wants to see the entire manuscript!

It's terrifying to finally be here getting some positive feedback, because it means I've jumped successfully through some of the initial hoops, but there's always the chance that the execution of the project won't excite these interested agents as much as the idea of it did. It's also rewarding, because at the very least it shows growth on my part as a writer--I've been able to conceive of a project that will interest certain people and have written a query letter and supporting materials that conveys what that project is.

So the manuscript will go out in its entirety for the first time when the post office reopens on Tuesday, and the waiting game continues.

While I was in North Carolina visiting my parents, I went with them to John Hopkins University where my dad is a patient in the neurology department. We learned that Dad definitely doesn't have MS, and that he definitely does have Celiac Disease, which is an intolerance to gluten. The neurologist believes that more is going on with Dad than just the Celiac, however, and is testing for muscle disease this week.

Celiac Disease is scary enough by itself. It is a genetic disease that may not present symptoms until after a person has undergone surgery, infection, pregnancy, or some other kind of stress. In a nutshell, the gluten in wheat, barley, rye, and other grains destroys villi, small "hairs" in the small intestine that the body uses to absorb nutrition from ingested food. The result is malnutrition, which can lead to other very serious diseases as well. With Dad, the diagnosis came as a result of a spinal tap that showed anomalies. For most people, the initial diagnosis comes from a blood test, although the doctor has to be looking for Celiac Disease in order for it to be detected. Then, the patient usually undergoes a biopsy of the small intestine so that a doctor can verify the damage to the villi. After confirmed diagnosis, the only treatment is lifelong abstinence from ingestion of gluten. Unfortunately, this is even more difficult than it sounds because gluten is everywhere--in caramel color, in mono- and di-glycerides, in preservatives--and is not easily detected in American food labels. To make things more difficult, the risk of cross-contamination is high. Gluten in even the smallest quanitites destroys villi, even if no symptoms are experienced. Food prepared in a kitchen in which wheat flour was used for baking hours earlier could easily be contaminated. Contamination can also occur from gluten-free bread being heated in a toaster that previously heated "regular" bread or from dipping a knife that has touched gluten-containing bread into a jar of mustard and then spreading that mustard (with a clean knife) onto gluten-free bread. Essentially, it means never eating out again, at least not without a great deal of preparation on the part of the chef and without at least some worry of contamination.

Because the disease is genetic, and because I was diagnosed with a spastic colon when I was seventeen and spastic colon is sometimes a misdiagnosis for Celiac, I had my allergist test me for the disease last week. It turns out I have it, too, although Dad is obviously suffering much more greatly with it. I have opted to forego the small intestine biopsy, with my allergist's blessing, and to simply start the gluten-free lifestyle right away. Hans, who was diagnosed with several food allergies when he was a child, has already been eating a restricted diet and has decided to switch to gluten-free with me. The two of us started a three day juice fast today to help get our "systems" cleaned out and to help me readjust my palate. I think my next step is to find a physician to help me determine whether I have any severe vitamin deficiencies and to help me monitor my progress. It's too bad that Dad and I don't live on the same coast, because I'm sure it would be helpful for him to have a new diet buddy, too.

Tuesday, August 20, 2002

I finished my second Danskin sprint triathlon on Sunday (my third sprint tri) and had a great time! (I mean, I had FUN!) I took eight minutes off my total time, swam great, and RAN! the run course with a smile! on my face!! It was really amazing. I was a little disappointed in my bike performance as I had no climbing power and dropped from last year's 17 mph pace to 15.2 mph which cost me about three minutes. It seemed like the bike course was more crowded this year, too, probably due to the increase in wave size from 100 to 150 women. Still, I took 11+ minutes off my swim (23:54) and 2 minutes off my run. I also ran the chute from the water to the transition area, though I mostly walked inside the transition area itself. My first transition was a few seconds faster than last year and my T2 was a few seconds slower. My overall time was 2:11:something.

The most important difference was in my mental state, though. I was excited before the race, rather than nervous, and my stomach fared better as a result. The sun came out before the start of the 7:00 a.m. race, which further buoyed my spirits, and I didn't mind when it clouded over. I had a pre-race plan this year, and I actually followed it! I used the porta-potties three times, watched the elites, the two waves of cancer survivors, and Nancy's wave start, then said good-bye to Hans. I downed a vanilla Clif Shot with water at the refreshments table, then got in the water at the warm-up area. I'm SO glad I did. I got to get used to the water temperature and assure myself I could breathe out under water and that my stroke was strong. When a couple of the waves went out, I practiced swimming alongside them toward the first surfboard. I stayed in the water until the last possible moment, then jumped in the back line of wave 21 just in time to see Vicki's wave, #20, get in the water.

I participated in a few of Sally Edward's cheers, then focused on doing relaxation breathing. When our wave started, I even remembered to start my stop watch! This year they increased the wave size from 100 women to 150 and changed the swim course from a U-shape to a triangle with the first buoy at 150m, the second buoy at 550m (a swim of 400m between buoys), leaving a 250m swim to the finish. It was cool because the whole course was easily visible from the spectators' viewing area. When we took off, the pack pretty well stayed bunched together all the way to the first buoy. I started very strong, but inhaled water once when I lifted my head to look around. One of the women behind me to the right was freaked out by all the bodies and kept saying, "This isn't good! This isn't good!" I kind of appreciated the presence of the other women and was glad for once not to be dropped. It was a little annoying, though, to be stuck behind breast strokers and not be able to go anywhere. Next year, I think I'll start farther forward.

When we got around the first buoy, things thinned a bit. I seemed to be swimming midway between the line of surfboards on the inside and the line of kayaks on the outside. I considered panicking and attempting to swim farther to the inside to be nearer the "rescuers," but chose instead to stay where I was and put my head down. I was swimming within ten feet of two women, one a little ahead of me and to my left, another further off to my right and also in front. I decided to hold my position between them and to mentally swim from board to board during this long leg of the swim.

I had no more problems with swallowing water, passed a couple of boards with women clinging to the ends, and kept the two women I was swimming with in sight.

Before I knew it, I was nearing the second buoy! I tried to keep my head down as I swam to it, made an inside turn around it, hoping it wouldn't spin and hit me in the back the way it had the woman in front of me, and started on the last leg. I did a couple breast strokes to catch my breath and realized I'd lost sight of the woman who had been on my left. The woman on my right, however, was now directly in front of me about ten feet ahead and I decided to follow her home.

My brain wanted to pour on the power and race to the finish. My body, however, was gasping for air. I tried to blow out and glide long on my right side, but still swam breast stroke every so often to catch my breath.

Then, I was there! I passed the woman I'd been following (I hadn't been drafting--I felt too guilty doing that to a woman who was serving as my beacon), and swam until I was in knee-deep water. I checked my watch, was pleased, and ran up the chute to the transition.

I heard my sister and brother-in-law, Candy and Al, calling me just as I reached my bike. I turned and waved, then waved again just before I grabbed my bike and headed in the opposite direction.

I ran my bike to the start line, but my actual start was kind of slow. There were a lot of bikes on Lake Washington Blvd., and I wasn't ready yet to jump out in the fast lane and start passing. It didn't help that just the day before, while I was at packet pick-up, my rear tube had exploded in the sun. When I checked it out, I realized there was a two inch slice in the tread of my back tire. I ended up having to buy two new tires and have them installed before dropping my bike off at the transition area. The new tread felt slippery and made me even more unsure.

I passed only a few women on my way to Day Street, then geared down to make the hill. It was indeed divided by cones with bikes moving in both directions on the narrow access road. I was being cautious and didn't feel safe passing the two women walking their bikes in front of me. So I got off to walk the second half, too.

I had no power for climbing and so leapfrogged with several women throughout the entire course, me flying past them at 23 mph and the flats and descents, then crawling up the hills at 8 mph as they all passed me again. Humiliating....

The turnaround was good, I took it slow and wide and was surprised when two women passed on the inside. I was even more surprised as I re-entered Day Street, falling into the tight single-file line descending the hill, to see a woman go flying past on the inside with no vocal warning!

I took it easy returning to the transition, falling into line and spinning rather than cranking. I was out of breath and walked the bike to my transition area, then walked through the run start as I used my asthma inhaler.

As usual, I wasn't excited about the run, although it was an easier beginning than last year. When I realized I was going to need a mental motivator, I started counting the orange cones dividing the two running lanes. When I had passed twenty-two of them, I knew I was going to be okay. I told myself repeatedly that pain was only temporary and that I could run the entire course. I carried my own water (and Clif Shot, though I decided not to bother with it) and drank frequently, squirting my neck occasionally. When I reached the turnaround, I was actually smiling and able to run right past the subsequent water stop. I had lost feeling in the toes of my right foot, but just kept running. My breathing and pace were regular, and seeing the Genessee hill this year was cause for excitement rather than dread. I stopped to walk the top portion of the hill, then resumed running immediately as the road flattened out.

There was a woman at 50th offering me all kinds of praise and telling me I had a good pace. My stride had lengthened slightly after the two-mile mark, and I tried to keep the power going. I laid it on (the best I could!) as I turned into the Parks and Recreation parking lot, and tried to race to the finish line. I ran all the way across both timing sensors, then was given a red ribbon with a red-rimmed finisher's medal.

I choked back a few tears as the finish line came into view and people were packed along it yelling. The people at the end were packed even tighter and it took me a minute to find Hans waving at me.

I felt SO amazing when it was over! I still felt strong and happy and proud of myself. I had been acknowledging my accomplishments throughout the race and knew how far I'd come since last year's races. When Candy and Al finally found me--they'd been waiting at the entrance to the finish chute, but hadn't seen me run past--they told me I looked good and Candy said I'd done great and that I didn't even look that red!

It meant a lot to me to hear her say that and to have her and Al (and a sleeping Brendan) there for me with Hans. Candy said she'd do the Disney World race with me next year, and I have Kathy Strader Schamberger considering the Chicagoland race. Hans wants me to race Seattle as an elite next year, which at this point is an amazing stretch!, but it would be a lot of fun to race three Danskins next year. These three races alone would satisfy my USAT requirements to get a national ranking. (Do I really need THAT in my life?!)

When the race was over, I was still feeling high and energized, so I showered and we went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner without bothering to take a nap first. I had a double BBQ bacon cheeseburger with onion straws on top! It totally satisfied the craving I'd been having for a week.

Then we went to see the movie Blue Crush. What a great chicks in sports flick!!! I had a great time and got even more inspired. I even dreamed about surfing all night long!

After the movie, we went back to the Cheesecake Factory and got take-home dessert: an apple dumpling for Hans and a slice of Sticky Chewy Chocolate Pecan Cheesecake for me. We stopped at Trader Joe's so Hans could get some Soy Delicious to top his, then we ate dessert and watched the movie About Adam at home.

I'm still feeling psyched, high, inspired, and energized from the race. Yesterday I emailed Mary Meyer, my swim and tri coach, to thank her for all her help and to ask for her continued support in keeping me motivated this fall and winter. She offered me an unlimited fall pass to carry me through December, and I took her up on it. She also pointed out that she offers coached run sessions on Saturdays for the same prices as the swim clinics. Last night, I dreamed about triathlons and adventure racing.

Click here to visit Mary Meyer's Life Fitness and Personal Success/Life Coaching site!

This is the year that the weight is going to come off--AND STAY OFF--and the year that I am going to become a MONSTER competitor! My motto for next season is FIT, FAST, AND FEARLESS!! It's going to happen. I'm on my way already. This year I raced Danskin four pounds lighter and eight minutes faster. Imagine what could happen were I forty pounds lighter, or fifty, or sixty, or seventy-four! Plus, if I race Seattle as an elite next year, Hans will pay for my post-race massage!

Life is good. Life is very, very good.

Thursday, August 15, 2002

The Danskin is this Sunday! I'm a little excited and a lot nervous. There have been moments recently when I thought I might be able to take significant amounts of time off my race, and then I was very excited. Now I'm being a little more cautious, and am making no predictions about my times. My goals this year are to swim without stopping, bike my butt off, and run without stopping. I've added new skills to my race "toolbox," as well as a few new skills to my mental toolbox. I know my body is trained. During the race I need to keep in mind that the barriers I'm facing are mental. Last year I proved I can finish a sprint triathlon, this year I'd like to prove I can race one.

Friday, August 2, 2002

The summer, as is always the case, is flying by! June was spent indoors finishing the manuscript, July was spent outdoors training for the one triathlon I am going to complete this year (on August 18), and August it seems is going to be a month of transition and travel. I still haven't carved out a new writing schedule now that Your Mileage May Vary is complete and under consideration. It's hard to know where to put my energy next, and much easier to whittle away the hours reading email from all the environmental groups I ignored earlier in the summer.

The training for the Danskin Sprint Triathlon is going better than anticipated, given the late start this year, and I'm actually looking forward to the race. This year I know that the majority of the barriers I will face will be mental. My body is ready, and it's kind of exciting to think that I will be battling my own brain come race day. (I'll let you know which one of us wins!) Hans will be among the spectators, and I know from experience that will help motivate me.

And one of these days, I'm going to write a new poem or short story or essay that I'll be able to post because, yes, I do know this site is getting stale. I'm working on a piece about how my bike changed my life for a competition sponsored by Breakaway Books, and if you can stand one more essay about how great cycling is, maybe I'll post that in the next couple weeks.

Finally, I will be traveling to North Carolina at the end of the month to visit my parents in their new house and to see where my sister's family will be moving to come winter. So, for a couple more weeks, I'll be at the lake or the pool or out on the trail, then I'll be buried in Barbara Kingsolver's book, Prodigal Summer, while I bask in the North Carolina sunshine.

Figuring my life out will just have to wait a few more weeks!

Thursday, July 25, 2002

I received my first "yes" from an agent today! I received a letter, addressed to ME (not Dear Author) in an official agency envelope (not in my SASE) requesting the first 100 pages of my manuscript, with the addition, "Of course, if these read as well as we anticipate, we will ask for the entire manuscript." Yay!! A New York agent, based on the first 8 pages of my manuscript, a 500 word synopsis, a short bio, and a cover letter, wants to read at least the beginning of my book! (She referred to it as a "book" in her letter, too, not as a manuscript!) This was the little nugget of hope I have been waiting for! Hans thinks I'm being a little melodramatic since I only waited 3 weeks (but they were AGONIZING weeks), but so far I've been rejected by 6 of 11 agents I have queried, and after the rejection I received yesterday I had begun to despair of this manuscript going anywhere except to a print-on-demand publisher. So I have a little crumb to hold onto for a little longer.

I ripped open the little envelope right at the mailbox--ignoring the large envelope stuffed in the box that was clearly a rejection--and started crying immediately. I printed off the pages and another cover letter, and amazingly had exactly the right number of pieces of 25% cotton linen on which to print what was requested. It's now in the hands of USPS and the waiting begins again. I went from depressed (before the letter) to giddy (immediately following receipt of the letter) to nauseated (while printing the submission) to nervous (while mailing the submission) to numb, which is where I am right about now. The agency advertises itself as very accessible, hands-on, and creative in their approach to submissions. They publish 75% non-fiction and have 60 clients, 20% of which are first time authors, and say they have an excellent sales history with first-timers. KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED!!

Okay, I can let you get back to your life now. I have to keep reminding myself that it's not ALL REALLY about me....

Monday, July 15, 2002

After six drafts, the manuscript is finally on Zoi's and Welmoed's desks, and there are queries in 6 agents' offices. I have been turned down so far by two additional agents, including my first choice. The first rejection hurt, the second one just kind of rolled off my back. I'm coming to terms with the fact that this might be a long process. The feedback I've received so far has been encouraging, however, and that is satisfying. I can stick with this as long as need be.

I want to spend this week finishing up the organization of my physical space and doing a little more research on agencies, but in general taking a break from both marketing and writing. This weekend we are going camping with my sister and her family. Then next week I want to start my new daily schedule which will include poetry in the early morning, writing either fiction or nonfiction in the late morning and early afternoon, and marketing or research in the late afternoon. The problem arises, however, when you take into account my training schedule, which for next week, is a cycling supercompensation week in which I want to get 4 days of 50 mile rides in. The riding will have to occur during the day, so some of the writing will have to be put off for the evening or for the following week.

The training has been going fairly well considering the late start, and I'm excited about the Danskin. I've done mini-tri's the last two Saturdays, one on my own and one with the Mary Meyer clinic, and I've felt amazing afterward. The run is likely to be the most challenging this year. Knowing I finished the course last year, and knowing that it's the same course this year, is a huge comfort and I expect my times to be faster as a result. I'm hoping for the largest time cut to be in the water, then hopefully on the run, with just a few minutes being shaved off the bike and transition times. Nothing is certain until race day, though.

Yesterday I reread the leather journal I've been keeping since January. I was struck by what a different place my mind has been in during the last two months compared with the earlier part of the year. Last fall and winter felt desperate, this spring and summer have been about nothing but hope. The sunshine makes such a difference, as do the physical exercise and knowing that a project I've been working on in one form or another for five years is coming to a conclusion. It's exciting to be in a place where I get to start almost completely from scratch in redesigning my life. Now that the book is done, I can write anything! How amazing is that? Or I can get any job I want, if I decide that's what needs to happen. I'm at the end of something wonderful and the beginning of something possibly even better!

Tuesday, July 9, 2002

It's July, and Your Mileage May Vary is done! After a month of working nights and weekends and every available minute, the manuscript--sixth draft--is finally finished. (Zoi and Welmoed are currently in the process of reading it, and there may be some editing still to be done when I receive their comments, but that's still to be determined.) I have queries on two agents' desks and spent all of yesterday trying to summarize the 430 page manuscript (Hans cut 60 pages) in 500 words, so that I can send out a query, synopsis, and sample chapter to additional agents this week. My goal is to query five agents a week until I reach 20, then wait two weeks to see if I get any results, then start in again if I need to. It has been an exhilarating and terrifying week as the first submissions hit the mail. I don't really recommend this lifestyle to anyone who can avoid it.

Hans took only two weeks to finish his first screenplay (since 1996), plus a week while he and I went back and forth editing it, and we are now in the process of marketing that to agents, too. He wants to start his second one tomorrow.

I hate that I have been indoors tied to my Mac for so long, and am looking forward to doing some intensive tri training in the next month and a half. The amazing thing is that I seem to be starting this year's serious training at about the same level that I ended last year's. I'm hoping that means I can shave a few minutes off my race times next month, but at this point, I'm going to be happy just to finish.

Thursday, June 6, 2002

So many changes! The sun is mostly out here in the Pacific Northwest now, an amazing thing to anyone who lives here. It's easier to get outside, and my social life has definitely benefitted. For the last month, Hans and I have been going out several times a week, engaging in poetry festivals and readings, plays, independent films, music of every conceivable kind, ballet, and screenwriters' salons. It has been truly amazing.

I had an opportunity to hear the poet Li-Young Lee speak and read, and he is my new god. I have always appreciated his poetry, but hearing it in his voice, which is soft and more measured than any other poet's I've ever heard, and hearing him speak about his worldview, made me a true believer. (Of course, he would be uncomfortable to learn any of this--he doesn't wish to be worshipped and he's probably one of the most humble people I've ever met. He admitted that his mother, classically trained in China, doesn't view what he writes as poetry, so he refers to his works as "little things" he's written.) I also got an opportunity to see The Business of Fancydancing, a new movie by Sherman Alexie and I highly recommend it to anyone who has an opportunity to see it. I loved hearing Barry Lopez, a nature writer with such sharp observations that I had to leave the auditorium in tears after his speech, and I hated hearing one of the Pulitzer Prize winning poets who came to Seattle long enough to remind me why so many people don't enjoy poetry. It's always good to remind yourself what you don't want to be, I suppose.

In addition, due to a restructuring at Hans's place of business, Hans no longer has a place of business and instead will be spending the summer writing screenplays here at home. So we are now two writers, unemployed except as the caretakers of the building where we live. It's what we've always wanted, and, therefore, a little bit scary and a lot exciting.

I am now in the fourth set of revisions on Your Mileage May Vary. I am making a big push this month to do nothing but write. I will be swimming on my own at the pool three mornings a week and walking/running four to six nights a week with Hans, but the rest of the time I will be doing whatever I can to make this book the best I know how. (Oh, okay--I am also giving myself permission to see Fast Runner, an independent film, on Thursday night and to attend the screenwriters' salon staging Sherman Alexie's screenplay adaptation of Indian Killer. But that's it. Writing, writing, writing. Oh, and a Summer Nights at the Pier concert with Lyle Lovett. But that's really it.) With any luck the manuscript will be with an editor or agent by the end of the summer. (Yes, please, wish me luck!)

Wednesday, June 5, 2002

The end of the book might actually be just around the corner! I stayed up until 3:00 this morning finishing the fourth draft of Your Mileage May Vary so that Hans could finally read this monster I've been creating over the past three years. I know, I've said I was going to let him read it before, but I always chickened out and decided it wasn't ready. I'm not sure it was ready this time, either, but I was to the point where I needed someone to say, "yes, this is worth continued effort," or "this is crap--scrap it and move on." I didn't really expect Hans to say it was crap, but I didn't know what to expect.

He's about half-way through the 480 pages with which I presented him, and his response, though limited until he's read the entire manuscript, has been entirely positive. He thinks it's ready to start sending around, at least to Zoi and Welmoed (get ready ladies!) so that I can get a feel for how well I captured the spirit of the Ride.

It's weird. I wanted him to say the book was good, but every time he does, I have a hard time believing him. Maybe it's that I worked so hard getting into a frame of mind where I wouldn't be shattered if he didn't like it that I'm so numb I can't even enjoy that he does like it.

In any event, I ordered a hundred dollars worth of paper and deskjet ink today so that I can start the marketing process. There is likely to be one more set of revisions after I get Hans's comments, then maybe another after I hear from Zoi and Welmoed, provided they're still willing to play, and then the "May I send you my book?" letters start going out to agents and publishers. I got a little ahead of the game last winter and found a list of agents I want to approach once I'm sure the first 30 pages are solid. Now that I'm actually to the place where I might be ready to start putting the book out there, it's kind of a relief to know that I have a plan.

I'm still a little nervous about the idea that I spent three years writing this and it may not find a publisher. There is a very real possibility that no one wants to read the story of a woman who went on a cross-country bike trip and didn't pedal all the way across. But the thing I keep coming back to is that it doesn't matter. If I could have written a book about anything else, I would have. I needed to write this, if only to be able to figure out what happened the summer of '98 and move on. Plus, the experience of writing it has been invaluable. I guess you don't know whether you can write a book until you've written one. So it's all good. Remember that. It's all good....

Thursday, March 21, 2002

I survived another Seattle winter!

Today I took the last pill in my six-month supply of St. John's Wort. While I definitely had fewer urgent impulses to run away--and I only thought my life was completely out of control about once a month instead of daily or weekly, I can't tell whether it was the pills, the increasing temporal distance from September 11, or the knowledge that spring and more daylight hours were on their way that helped. I'm considering not purchasing any more and seeing what happens. Daylight Savings is just around the corner and that little added light at the end of my day may be all I need to feel more cheerful and balanced.

In April, Hans and I are off on our first week-long vacation together since 1994, and we're praying for lots of sunshine and warmer weather. I promise to update my photo page as soon as we return.

As for the other pages here, I know they're getting stale. The truth is, I have no new poetry, Your Mileage May Vary is coming along very slowly and I haven't found any new chapters that stand alone well, I'm burned out on politics including environmental and womens' issues (with Bush in office, I get five emails a day asking me to take action on some issue or other, and frankly, my senators--who both stand on the right side of every vote about which I contact them--are getting tired of hearing from me), I don't have time to read, and I haven't seen any standout movies lately (although, I can safely say that Mulholland Drive was a crime against well-intentioned moviegoers everywhere), so I simply have nothing new to contribute here. Hopefully some time at the ocean will help change that.

Monday, March 18, 2002

Manuscript rejections are such an odd thing. You send out a group of poems or a short story, and so many months go by that you forget that you have anything out there. Then one day an envelope with your own handwriting arrives in your mailbox. It's thick. Your stomach flip flops. You know without opening it that someone--who exactly?--didn't care for whatever you submitted. Still, there's a small amount of hope. Maybe they liked one of your poems and enclosed a letter of congratulations and information on when that poem will appear in their prestigious pages along with the returned poems they won't be publishing. But no, you open the letter to find the slip of paper saying that your submission wasn't as "monstrous as [their] monster issue demanded." In this case, someone, whose signature you can't read, softened the blow with a handwritten, "Thanks again and good luck," at the bottom, but then you have to wonder if she wrote that on everyone's or only the ones she really was sorry to reject. Suffice it to say my sestina, recently renamed "Hope for Monsters," won't be appearing in the pages of River Styx any time soon. Which really isn't a crushing blow, since I'd forgotten I sent it to them in the first place, but still learning that fact wasn't the nicest interruption to my day.



It seems like a lot has happened in the last month, even though most of it has only happened in my head. Yesterday was Day 30 of the the Power 90 In-Home Boot Camp video program. I've lost five pounds and seven inches, despite my waning interest and skipping the workout 3 days last week. I am definitely getting stronger, but I can truthfully say that I absolutely HATE the aerobics workout. The power yoga stuff is easy now as is the kickboxing, but when it comes to the calisthenics and x-work, I'm not seeing a great deal of progress. My heart rate still shoots up, I can't breathe, and my calves cramp. It's not pretty. I've also been overdoing a little with the lunges and squats--both sides of both knees are now weak and sore. I haven't injured either one yet, but I'm worried it wouldn't be difficult to do.



I had hoped to add in some runs, swims, and bike sessions but haven't been able to be very consistent. It takes a lot of planning, not to mention a lot of motivation. With the Power 90 stuff, revising the book, babysitting Brendan 2-3 days a week and trying to keep up with my condo duties, it was overwhelming. Something had to give. So, I've decided to go easier on myself with the tri training. If I can stick with the Power 90 workouts, I think they will do the trick in getting some of this weight off, and that has to be my first objective right now. I'll still do some sprint tri's this summer, but I may have to give up on the Olympic distance races--at least Blue Lake which happens the first weekend in June--until next summer.



The new eating plan went really well for two weeks, then PMS hit and the cravings came back and pizza and ice cream reappeared in my freezer. I am a creature of habit and when I'm stressed and hungry, I tend to go for what I know will make me happy fast. So I'm starting again, trying to convince myself that I will feel so much better if I just eat better. I wish I were Oprah and could afford to have someone do all of my food shopping and cooking for me....



The book manuscript is the one really bright spot in my life. I signed up for a memoir writing workshop through Barnes and Noble University, and while I didn't buy any of the 4! textbooks, the class did a really great job of reminding me of all the literary devices and elements I need to be focusing on during my revision process. Suddenly, it all makes so much sense and I am excited about the project again. Right now I'm working on the emotional arc of the story and making sure that the themes weave through at somewhat regular intervals and don't just get abandoned. Then there's going to be a dialogue/character revision; a scene/summary revision to make sure that I am spending story time on the right things; a description revision--boy, is this needed! "beautiful," "gorgeous," and "wonderful" cannot be used to describe every place and every day...; and finally an "I of Experience" vs. "I of Reflection" revision to make sure I'm balancing "what if feels like to be me" with "why any of this matters." Then, of course, comes the line by line edit that hopefully tightens it all up and makes it beautiful, gorgeous, and wonderful ;)



There is one other little twist, however. Hans has been bitten again by the creativity bug (it's about time!) and is attempting to work out a part-time, weekends only schedule at work so that he can write during the week. He will assume the condo duties and beginning in June I will have Brendan only one day per week. The only downside is that I will have to get a job. We're thinking that as long as we have the condo to live in, both of us working part-time should bring in enough money to replace Hans' full-time salary and give both of us an opportunity to write. This freaked me out for much of last week. I know how badly I juggle multiple projects and the thought of finding and adding a 15-25 hour/week job into the mix made me terrified the book would never be finished. Then I realized how inefficiently I've been using my time anyway, especially since September. It's only right that Hans have an opportunity to write, too, and maybe having to get a job will make me appreciate the time I do get to spend writing. So, as always, my life is in flux. But that's a good thing. Right?

Friday, February 22, 2002

Since my last post I have been back to Michigan for Dad's emergency surgery--he came out of it well and is home recovering, but still scaring us occasionally when his body does things we don't expect. I've also turned another year older and lived to tell the tale. This birthday was difficult--for two weeks leading up to it, I wallowed in the "I'm 33 and what do I have to show for my life?" craziness to which I'm prone, but by the actual day, I had pretty well relaxed and decided that 33 was going to be a great year.



And, after a short-lived throat infection, I have begun training in earnest for the upcoming triathlon season. Last year I did the workouts, but allowed myself to eat whatever I wanted. My body tightened up considerably, but I did not lose a great deal of weight. (And what I did lose came back as soon as the fall depression hit me.) So this year, I have dedicated myself to becoming a strict vegan and counting calories and fat grams in addition to the workouts. I'm never going to be the athlete I want to be unless I get this weight off and keep it off. Unfortunately, getting it off is not going to be a simple matter.



I'm on the seventh day of a new workout program called Power 90 In-Home Boot Camp. Yes, I bought it off an infomercial on a particularly wallow-ful day early this month, but I don't regret it. The workouts (2 levels of weight work, 2 levels of cardio, 2 levels of abs) are challenging but quick, and I like the "no-brainer" aspect of just having to put in a DVD and push play. I needed something to get me off the couch and motivate me to workout every day. So far, this seems to be doing the trick. It's a 90 day program during which you workout 6 days a week, alternating cardio/abs and strength training. It's obviously not going to help me train directly for the tri's, since training is sport specific, but it will help me burn calories, strengthen muscles that could certainly benefit from the work, and give me an aerobic workout. Next week I plan to add in three 3-5 mile walks and three bike workouts, as well as doing abs six days a week instead of three. I swim with the team this Sunday for only the second time due to my traveling and the Queen Anne pool closure, then hope to add in three-four swims per week in March once the pool reopens. That will pretty much bring me up to my full training schedule through season. For now, I'm just taking it a piece at a time and seeing what I can do.



After an absence of almost three months, I finally returned to working on Your Mileage May Vary. The weekend after Thanksgiving I gave up on reading the second draft of the manuscript because it seemed every page sucked. The whole project seemed hopeless and I left about sixty pages unread. I read those pages last week, then went through the manuscript making the changes I had marked up in November. It seems more manageable now, and I am optimistic that it will indeed find a final form that is readable and hopefully also truthful and entertaining. I could still use some support in editing and revising since I have never tackled such a large project before, but I will keep working at it until I feel there's nothing left for me to do on my own.

Sunday, January 20, 2002

Things slipped again there for awhile--the holidays with my family were wonderful, but then the depression hit hard after the new year began. Today, though, I'm walking on clouds.

I got up the guts (in large part thanks to Hans) to go today to workout with an adult swim team and have a video swim analysis of my stroke done. I was scared to go since it's been sixteen years since I've worked with a swim coach and I don't have the fondest memories of even THAT experience. I was worried, as always, that it was going to be a group of super-fit men and women who wouldn't have time for me slowing them down, and that, despite my confidence in my new stroke technique, I would embarrass myself. Afterall, I've never been particularly fast and Friday was my first day back in the pool since the Escape from the Rock tri four months ago.

Turns out, as always, that the team members were very friendly and encouraging--and of varying experience levels and abilities. I swam in the slow lane with about six other women, and made it through the workout which was a combination of drills and swimming. I especially enjoyed the drills, as I learned that my hands were crossing over in front and that my elbows weren't as high as I thought they were. The coach who was guiding our lane said that my stroke improved considerably just over the course of the one hour session.

Afterward, I had my swim stroke taped and the head coach got a chance to tell me what he thought. He said he was "pleasantly surprised" and that I had a great foundation for my stroke and a great kick that I should use more often. He also said that I was lacking power, my head was too high, and that I was still swimming flat despite all of my efforts last year to learn to swim on my side with a long recovery. I knew I was lacking power. That was extremely obvious in my open water races. And, hopefully, the swimming flat thing is just the result of having been out of the water for four months. I'll receive the video in two or three weeks along with the coaches' evaluations and suggestions. In any event, I was invited to come back and swim with the team every Sunday and I intend to take them up on that.

From the conversations I overheard, it appears as though most of the regular team members are triathletes and that there will be opportunities to participate in open water swims and triathlon clinics as the season draws nearer.

I'm psyched. This is an opportunity to take my training and racing to a new level in a safe and friendly environment. It has also been a MUCH needed kick in the pants. I've been in the water every day for three days running and have plans to swim again tomorrow. Now it's time to air up the bike tires and buy a new pair of running shoes. It's on!

Thursday, December 6, 2001

I'm back. Not just on this site, but in my life. The black cloud that has filled my head for the past several weeks seems to be slowly dissipating, and there is hope and even a little excitement again. I worked out this morning for the first time in a very long time which served several purposes, including making me feel in control of my life for accomplishing something I haven't been able to accomplish recently, and filling my brain with all those chemicals that make me feel like my life is going to be okay.

Giving myself this week off from manuscript revisions probably helped me relax. Without the stress of that, I have had very few things to worry about and the time to spread those few things out so that I only have to tackle one or two a day. I'm not saying I'm fully rebounded, since I have been experiencing manic episodes for the first time since the 1980s, but I'm hopeful that I'll be operating on a higher level in my life in the near future.

I signed up for a couple online classes at Barnes and Noble University: one to help me manage stress and clutter, one to help me work on How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci--a book I started working with after the Big Ride, but, despite the amazing amount of energy I find it gives me, have completed only the first several exercises--and one called Imagine which is supposed to help participants imagine a better America and how they can help shape it. On some level they are distractions from writing, but at this point they just may be necessary distractions. This month I have been in need of something to spark my imagination and give me something new to think about, hopefully these classes will do it. They are free, afterall, and just having the opportunity to converse with Michael Gelb over the internet is an interesting and rare opportunity. Stress relief has to come from somewhere.

I completed the first lesson in the Leonardo class this morning, and it forced me to go find my journal. I have a journal that I started in the fall of '99 to answer the questions the book asks and to ask more of my own. The journal has a physically detectable energy about it. Just holding onto it made me happy. I also made my first entry in it since November 5, 1999. Long overdue.

I also purchased Caroline Myss's new audio tape of morning and evening guided meditations. All of my attempts at meditation in the past have failed, largely I think because I lack the discipline to sit down to it, but also because I have a difficult time determining whether I'm doing it "right." My meditations, or trances, at Reclaiming Camp two summers ago were fabulous, but they were all guided. The tape won't arrive for another week or so, but once it does, I've committed to spending thirty minutes with it twice a day for six weeks to see if it can help me relax and cheer up. I've always thought meditation would be part of a perfect schedule, now's my chance to try it out.

Thursday, November 29, 2001

Just for fun, I searched on Sherlock for my name to see if I still lived on the internet. It used to be that when I typed in my name, four listings came up: one that mentioned me in connection with the Big Ride, one that mentioned me as Air Cargo's conference coordinator, one that was about a Kristine Goad who's still in high school somewhere, and one that was about a band whose song "Kristine" goads listeners. Today, however, I found that this site came up. Months ago I had applied to be listed in a search engine, but the rules were pretty strict, and I never got any kind of confirmation that my site had been accepted. But, there it is. Kind of scary, but kind of cool.

I also searched on Your Mileage May Vary just for kicks, and learned that it's a common warning attached to Unix freeware. It's a programmer's way of telling other people that she tried to make her program portable, but that she makes no guarantees about how it will behave on someone else's system. Interesting.

I'm not very verbal today.

I'm not very anything today.

Later...

I'm having problems with depression again. Ever since the week of September 11, I've been using St. John's Wort. While it has kept me from having true panic attacks and feeling like I needed to flee, it hasn't helped with the milder, chronic symptoms of lethargy, mood swings, and anxiety. Some days, I'm great. Yesterday, for example. Last week Hans and I spent Thanksgiving with my aunt and uncle, but I still wanted to cook dinner for me and Hans, so Hans would have leftovers and a wider variety of foods he could tolerate with his allergies. So yesterday I cooked from 8:30 until 3:00 and had a wonderful day. No stress, no sighing, no worries. The food turned out great, which had multiple good effects including pleasing me, pleasing Hans, and fulfilling my needs for comfort, creativity and caregiving. After dinner I took care of my chores around the complex, then Hans and I watched DVDs all night. It was quite blissful.

Today, however, I can't motivate myself to do anything. It's 3:30 and I am just starting my first load of laundry, have eaten only two bowls of chocolate pudding today, haven't showered or worked out, and haven't finished reading the second draft of my book or worked at all on the Christmas cards I'm making. Somehow I frittered away the day reading the manual for my new cell phone (an early Christmas present from Hans) and playing on the internet. I'm cranky and anti-social and just wish I could stick my head under the pillow, ignore the doorbell and the phone, and sleep 'til Saturday.

It's not just the non-motivated thing, though. There's a physical "things are yucky" feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I cry at the drop of a hat. Part of this, I know, still goes back to the shock of September 11. Despite my conscious efforts to not be paranoid and afraid, and despite my non-mainstream views on American foreign policy, I'm still carrying a great deal of emotion where the terrorist attacks are concerned. I'm still not watching the news, or any television regarding 9/11 or "America's New War," but the immediacy of the event hasn't faded. I know that much of America is feeling the same way. It's estimated that ninety percent of people who have been diagnosed with depression in the past have suffered a relapse in the last two months.

Part of it, too, is the holidays and missing the days when my family and friends all lived within driving distance of each other and made time to get together. My sister and her family managed to get to Virginia to be with my parents for Thanksgiving, and I found that weekend to be particularly lonely.

But, as far as me on the depressed scale goes, I'm doing much better than I was in the fall of 1999, or in 1996 when I was with Air Cargo, or in 1991 when I was with PIRG, and tons better than in 1986-1988. I'm still getting the necessary things done: I'm up and ready for Brendan when he arrives, ready to deal with the condo complex construction workers who are STILL here every day at 7:30, getting the bulk of the caretaking duties taken care of daily, keeping the apartment clean, sleeping on a regular schedule. The Christmas cards are designed and under construction, my Christmas shopping is finished, and things with me and Hans are good. I've only had a couple panic attacks, and none of those since I've been taking the St. John's Wort. But I'm not operating at peak level, even when we consider what peak level is for me. Lots of hours get lost, I'm a total couch potato again, I'm only making it to my allergist once a week for shots rather than twice, and the book still causes me a great deal of anxiety and I only work on it sporadically.

The worst part is that when I become depressed I become whatever it is I'm afraid of becoming. If I'm afraid I'll never be a successful writer, I stop writing. If I'm afraid everyone thinks I'm some greasy, white-trash apartment manager, then I stop taking care of my appearance and my work around the complex suffers, or at least I perceive that it does because no one ever says anything negative. (They never say anything positive, either, which makes me think that if they aren't talking TO me they must be talking ABOUT me, and that can't be good.)

Andrew Solomon just won the 2001 National Book Award for Nonfiction for his book, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. While I haven't yet read the book, I have seen him discuss it on C-SPAN 2 since I live on Book TV on weekends when I'm depressed and can't face my own writing. I knew that depression was a physical illness detectable on brain scans as large areas of inactivity. I didn't know that you actually suffer brain cell death in those areas of inactivity, resulting in what Mr. Solomon refers to as brain lesions. In the hour that I watched him discuss his work, he also reiterated something I already know but try to forget, that depression as yet is treatable but not curable, and that many people need to be in treatment year-round.

I have had good overall results from therapy in the past, although the sessions, and the following hours, are usually quite painful. This is my first experience with St. John's Wort, however, and I have never tried synthetic drugs for depression. I always feared that I wouldn't be myself on drugs, and that I wouldn't be able to write. I am beginning to fear now, however, that perhaps I can't write well without them.

I know what I can accomplish when I am feeling upbeat and in control. Would on-going treatment, along with letting go of my fears of medication and my notion that therapy is only a crutch that should be used short-term to help me through the worst times, help me feel in control more often? Maybe it's time to stop whining and find out.

Monday, November 19, 2001

I am desperate for a diversion! I've been writing for the past eleven hours with only a short break to talk to my dad on the phone and vacuum the building's common areas. Language is no longer my friend! (So what am I doing over here writing my first post in two months??)

The morning started out well. I submitted two poems, one of them the monster sestina to a monster theme issue of River Styx. I spent an hour fretting over the last tercet, which has bothered me since I first wrote it, and finally decided that "dark" just isn't the right sound for the end of the poem. It's too quiet, so I tried to harden it a little by changing the last phrase from "light or dark" to "in light and dark"--hopefully the "and" slows the tongue down enough that "dark" gets its full measure of breath. Too, I'm still a little unsatisfied with the length of the lines in the last tercet--they make me look like an amateur who can't manage her syllable count, especially since they are the longest of the poem and occur in the only place where two of the key words are used per line instead of one. But I sent it off finally, deciding it was time to see what someone else in the world thought of my efforts to write formal poetry. It was exciting. I haven't put anything out since this time last year, and it was definitely time.

Afterward, I spent about an hour perusing some of the literary journal websites recommended in this month's Poets & Writers Magazine. There is some good stuff out there! I stumbled across poems by people I'd never heard of who were doing the most wonderful things with sound and rhythm, not to mention image! It was absolutely inspiring. And a little sobering. I need to get back to work on poems soon. I have an idea for a September 11 poem that may turn out to be too sappy to write and an idea for an aubade, which is a poem written for your lover to describe the dawn and a form which I've never before attempted.

Finally, I got back to work on the book. I am deep in the first set of revisions, focusing mainly at this point on character development and continuity. There were some big questions that needed to be resolved regarding some of my co-adventurers, and I avoided answering them for a long time. I finally jumped in and started tackling them two weeks ago, however, and am mostly pleased with the results.

My brain can only handle jumping through the narrative to follow one character's arc so many times before it short circuits, though. I short circuited about an hour ago, and fear that it might have had a negative impact on Phil, who I am sure is a much more interesting character than I have yet drawn him.

When I finished the first draft of the book (for the second time, because I soon realized that the first ending I wrote was not the true ending) and read it from beginning to end, the first day I thought it was good. By the second day's worth of reading, however, I was convinced it was bad. And by the third day, when I finished reading, I again thought it was pretty good.

Since then, my opinion has been that it's been steadily improving. This is probably a necessary delusion, however, because if I worked on this every day and didn't think it were getting better, what would keep me working? I won't know for sure until I get a second reading, which I'm trying to hold off until I've finished touching up some of the fringe characters, some of whom don't even appear in the first draft simply because I didn't have enough contact with them.

Right this moment, my head is swimming so badly that I am convinced the whole book must stink. Especially after reading the gorgeous language in those other people's poems this morning. Yeah, yeah, a memoir isn't poetry, but I would love it if my memoir could be the next best thing to poetry. I'm afraid, however, that my memoir writing voice is not poetic. Hopefully, it's not nauseating either. (It just might be!)

I'm starting to feel the money crunch, too. Hans, rightfully so, is getting anxious to get busy with his own creative pursuits. I need to get this book put together and sent out into the world so that either it can bring me an income or I can pursue other things that will. I need to be supporting myself soon--no later than July--so that we can renegotiate our deal and Hans can give up some of the burden of supporting both of us and concentrate on feeding his soul, too.

Which two hours ago, I thought writing did. Feed your soul, I mean. Even when the writing sucks and you want to get up and do anything else to escape, there is some part of you that is enriched by the struggle. Days when I get only thirty minutes of computer time with the book are still better than days when I don't get any time at all. Just those few minutes make me feel like I'm part of something bigger than me, something exciting. I may never be able to produce on paper what I can imagine in my mind, but I am enthralled with the pursuit of that feat. How long can you live on the belief that someday you'll be good? Maybe forever.

For a taste of some of that magical language, check out "Pears" by Eve Nicholas at Borderlands.

Or "Gypsy" by Larry Janowski, poetry award winner at Literal-Latte.

Monday, September 10, 2001

I finished my second sprint triathlon yesterday. It was every bit as weird an experience as my first. While I was fairly confident that I COULD finish, I found I didn't really seem to care WHETHER I finished. My body never really felt strong. The bike leg sucked!! The race promoters said the course was only eleven miles, but I swear it was longer. My computer had logged thirteen miles and my body agreed. The course was over part of the same portion of the I-90 bridge, but I swear it was all uphill in both directions and that there was a headwind no matter which way I turned. I passed a few people and actually left them quite far behind, but I certainly did not shine.

The run sucked big time, too. It was an out-and-back course--run up this big hill, then down the other side; then, turn around and run up and down the hill again! My body did not want to run and my brain was not in any mood to force the issue. I ended up doing fartleks, running to one telephone pole, then walking to the next, etc. to keep me motivated. Bad news....

For the good news, the swim went somewhat better. It was a sunny morning and I warmed-up in the lake prior to the beginning of the race. It gave me a chance to acclimate to the water temperature, practice blowing out under water and keeping a balanced stroke. Plus, it gave me an opportunity to talk to some of the other racers and relax a little. It was a self-seated (or is that self-ceded? self-seeded?) start, meaning if you thought you were fast, you started in one of the early waves, and if you knew you'd be dragging ass you started nearer the end. I was in the second to last wave with four other camp Danskin women I knew. I got into the water relaxed and, amazingly, my body did what it was supposed to!

Until my mind decided it didn't care to cooperate. Unlike the Danskin's water course, which really was lined with surfboards and lifeguards, these boards were few and far between. I stopped very briefly at the first one, because my brain began to tell me I'd never last if I didn't, then again at the second. The second lifeguard offered me her flotation device, which I gladly accepted. As she pointed out, I could tow it behind me, then push it in front of me or lay over it if I got totally scared or wasted. Was it an unfair advantage? Probably. Did I care? Not at the time. I stopped, needlessly really, to push it in front of me a couple of times, but felt too guilty--with everyone else around me struggling just as much if not more with no floaties--and silly to do it for long. So mostly it trailed behind me and gave me comfort by its mere presence. Occasionally, though, it presented its own problems when one of my legs would get tangled in the rope or it would float into one of the other swimmers, making me feel even guiltier. I ended up swimming in a group of men, some of whom were breast stroking and backstroking in conjunction with their crawl stroke. We didn't talk, we just all gasped and splashed and did whatever it took to get out of the water. If I could have swum the first two thirds as well as I swam the last third it would have been an awesome race. As it was, I finished the swim six minutes faster than my Danskin time--I had the presence of mind to start my own stopwatch at the start and to glance at it as I was stumbling up the beach.

Vicki and her three kids were waiting to cheer me on along the 250 yard run from the beach to the transition area. It was great to see her, especially since I had no other supporters there. She yelled and her kids cheered and I plowed past them, wondering what the hell I was doing out here on a race course again.

As I entered the transition area, it occured to me that I should begin writing my own list of helpful hints for beginning triathletes. The first hint could be: Don't worry about being able to find your bike in the transition area--if you're the last one out of the water, yours will be the only one left! In all honesty, there were a few other bikes still racked, but not many.

I still have no idea what my times were. I know my first transition was long--I didn't care. My computer said I'd been on the bike for an hour! And when I crossed the finish line, my watch said I'd been on the course for two hours and nine minutes. The results should be posted soon to the timing company's website, though I'm a little scared to know. The promoters ran out of finishers medals, too, so I was handed a little stuffed animal and told the medal would be mailed to me. Not cool. But Vicki and the kids were cheering for me and hugged me after I finished. If she hadn't been there, I might have just sat down and cried. It had been a tough race physically and mentally and the adrenaline wanted a release somewhere.

The important thing, though, is that I did it. I pushed past all the little voices in my head who offered repeatedly to let me stop, and I did it. And, I felt much better after the conclusion of this race than I had after the Danskin. At the Danskin, my brain was mush, my body hurt everywhere, and I really needed Hans's help to make decisions and get back to the car. This time, my brain was fine, and my body was relieved to be finished but in no pain. I used my asthma inhaler immediately after, then tested my lung function with my peak flow meter, then cooled down by walking the mile and a half back to my car. I even had enough brain and body power to attend Owen and Carrie's wedding reception that afternoon, although a little more brain power might have helped me find them quicker!

Despite my efforts to ward it off, however, I still had an asthma attack. It took an hour to settle in, but soon my lower lungs were tight, I was wheezing badly, and coughing non-stop. It's mostly subsided now, though I'm having an allergic reaction to something, but it still concerns me because I know there must be a way for me to compete without destroying my lungs every time. I'm taking it easy again this week, planning only a casual bike ride with Vicki, Nancy, Scott, Gail, and hopefully Stacie on the Burke Gilman Wednesday night. Then next week I shift gears. I want to focus on strength training, stretching, running, and weight loss for the next three months before switching back to tri training. I need to strengthen my core, stretch out my hips, retrain my leg muscles so I stop walking and running like a duck, learn to enjoy running, and get some real weight off. Next year, I want to be too lean to qualify for the Athena class (women 150 pounds or greater) and strong enough to finish an Olympic distance race and several sprints.

With the fall approaching, I also need to get serious about the writing again. I have finally figured out the book's ending, I just have to get down to the business of actually getting there. Shifting gears is never easy for me, but with any luck, the first draft will be finished and had one complete edit by the time Hans returns home at the end of September from his trip to visit his family in California. Bookfest is coming up next month which will be a great motivator, and Hugo House is doing an intensive weekend on maps and their meanings in relation to our bodies, minds, and world with two of my favorite poets reading (Naomi Shihab Nye and Sherman Alexie) and a writing workshop with a memoirist whom I might actually shell out the seventy-five bucks to spend two hours with. I should join that writers group I keep meaning to hook up with, too....

Monday, August 20, 2001

On August 19, 2001 I finished my first sprint distance triathlon in 2:19:36! I did the Danskin Women's Triathlon in Seattle, and as with all sporting events in which I have participated to date, it was BIG. There were 4,500 participants making it the largest single triathlon event in world history!

I met my goal of completing the 12 mile bike portion at a pace of 17 miles per hour. I also met my goal of completing the run in fifty minutes, finishing in 49 minutes and forty-three seconds!

The swim, however, did not go as well. I had hoped to finish in twenty-two minutes or less. I had a panic response to the cold water, though, and found myself unable to blow out under water and unwilling to swim the entire half mile doing breast stroke. Luckily, there was a swim angel not far away and she helped me gain control of my breathing until I could swim surfboard to surfboard on my own. I did exactly that, doing crawl stroke from board to board, then gasping for breath and watching my white swim-capped wave swim further and further away while from behind the pink capped wave swarmed over and around me until they, too, had passed, followed soon after by a blue capped wave. When I finally reached the halfway point, marked by a huge, orange, inflated rubber buoy, I had finally acclimated to the water and calmed down enough that I stopped at only one board on the way back to shore. For awhile, I had serious doubts that I would ever make it to dry land, especially when I swallowed water and choked and coughed and seriously thought I might die! The swim was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life, not to mention one of the scariest. Yet, thirty-five minutes after I entered the water, I emerged and entered the chute back to the transition area.

The bike was my only true moment of glory as I yelled "Passing on your left!" a lot more frequently than I heard it. I saw twenty-four miles an hour once and 100 rpms and cranked as hard as I could, knowing that it was my only chance to shine. I was still nervous, however, for most of the first half because I didn't know what lay ahead and whether I'd be able to maintain my pace for the entire distance. Plus, I had choked so often on lake water that I couldn't swallow water on the bike without choking also. The turnaround point was a huge relief, and I found that I handled the climbs, the u-turns, and passing quite well, making the second half the only time in the entire triathlon when I could truthfully say I was having fun.

The run was, as I expected, a nightmare. The sun had finally come out and it was hot. At one point my breakfast and the lake water I'd swallowed resurfaced and I got to feel embarrassed throwing up in a piddly, little sprint tri! Not far down the road, however, another woman darted across my path to the grass for the same reason. I alternated running and walking for the first half, again, not sure how much effort I could expend early and still expect to finish. When I reached the turnaround, I switched to running until I absolutely had to stop and walk, then switched back as soon as I felt able. Even so, walkers were passing me even when I was running! Everyone was very nice, however, and many people would smile and say something encouraging as they went by. The crowds were fantastic, too, with people I didn't even know yelling out my number and cheering for me. At one point, someone was blaring some inspiring song--I can't even remember which one!--and I began to cry until I made myself stop because I couldn't breathe as it was!

I can't even label all the emotions that passed through me as I crossed the finish line. The thoughts going through my head, however, included, "Thank God that's over!" and "I'm never doing that again!" The one, small, hopeful thing in all the clamor at the end was the timeclock which read 3:44:something. I knew I could take at least 1:24:00 off that as my wave started an hour and twenty-four minutes after the race began. A few minutes later I would figure out that meant that I had done the race in two hours and twenty minutes and suddenly the thoughts in my head switched to "Wow! I might do that again!"

I received my finisher's medal and Hans and my aunt and uncle were there to greet me. I also got to see my training partners and some of the women I'd met at camp. Several hours later, after the asthma attack I had from failing to cool down had subsided and I'd had a shower and a long nap, I began to feel as though I had truly accomplished something and that it wouldn't be so bad to try it again. Hans was also quite excited about my performance and is now happily and actively helping me plan my next year's worth of events and my training strategies. Having him in my corner on this means more than I can say.

I will get my chance to try again in three weeks when I race the Escape from the Rock triathlon on Mercer Island. It will be much smaller (1,000 participants) but co-ed. My transition times are bound to be shorter as I won't have quite so far to run and I'm going to be smarter about the swim and about cooling down.

I have decided that it's unrealistic to expect to do a marathon anytime soon, but haven't yet made up my mind whether or not to pursue the half-marathon in Seattle in November.

Regardless, I am now a triathlete and, more importantly, I am excited about my future in sport!

Click Here to See Race Photo

Thursday, August 16, 2001

I just did my last workout before the race, and I feel fantastic!! I really feel the strongest I've felt since I began training. My body hasn't changed a whole lot in appearance (except my delts which are even more sloped than usual), but it's changed an awful lot in performance. Sunday is going to be a blast! I've finally made all of my decisions about clothing and race strategy, and I have no fear left for the open water portion. I'm a little nervous about the number of other women on the bike course, but I'm pretty good at playing it safe when necessary. I just have to pray for no flats!!

Sunday, August 12, 2001

Well, as of today I am officially "trained" for my Danskin race! I go into taper now, with Monday being a rest day, Tuesday being an easy open water swim and 5K walk, and Wednesday an easy open water swim and easy bike. Then the rest of the days are for relaxing! I want to practice transitions in the living room and I will probably do a few miles on the bike and get in a few yards in the water at the race site on Saturday (if the crowds make this possible), but essentially, if my body can't do it today, it just can't do it.

I'm still deciding what to wear--I'm not sure I need a second bra top afterall (way too binding) if I wear the belly bra, and I'm considering swimming in my Speedo, then pulling on a pair of shorts and the belly bra for the rest of the race. I know, we're only talking about a few seconds difference no matter what I wear, but I want to be comfortable and do what's easiest and it's a little difficult to determine what that means.

I know what to focus on during the swim (relaxed breathing with long, even glides between strokes, and speed only after rounding the second buoy) and run (breathing out 3 beats, breathing in 2 beats, walking every other minute), but it occured to me this morning that the bike is going to be difficult. First of all, how do you keep yourself motivated to race the entire distance? I'm worried I'm going to want to coast or look around or get bored. Second, what do I focus on? Do I try to keep myself between 160 and 170 beats per minute on my heart rate monitor? Do I just worry about spinning and trying to set a cadence of 90 rpms? Do I decide that all that really matters is mph and set a goal and try to maintain that? Again, the difference between all of these is probably small, but I want to make a decision and test it out during the race to see if it's a useful strategy or whether I need to pick a different tactic for the Escape from the Rock triathlon in September. I want to learn to race, not just go out there and make it up as I go along.

Despite all the questions, I am quite excited. The weather has been fantastic and with any luck the race photos I post here will be of me and my friends bathed in sunlight!! (It's hard to think of doing all of this on a gray day or in the rain!) By this time next week, I will have a finisher's medal and Hans will be treating me to dinner at Coronitas. And, most important, I'll be able to say I'm a triathlete. (Then I'll work for another year on getting the body to back it up!)

Wednesday, August 8, 2001

Well, I think I have scared myself so many different ways in open water that the 1/2 mile race next Sunday will actually be a piece of cake. I freaked myself out pretty good last night, finally deciding to get in the water with the Seattle Triathlon Club at Seward Park. The literature that encouraged me to join the group and pay my dues promised kayak support for the open water swims. In reality, there was one kayak and 100 swimmers strung out for a solid half-mile in water that was anything but glassy. The other athletes were very friendly and supportive, however, and there were a lot of us who were new.

As I stood on the shore looking out at the first buoy, supposedly one-eighth of a mile from shore, for thirty minutes before we got in the water, I convinced myself that the distance was doable. And, if it had been stretched along the shore rather than straight out from shore, I might have been right.

The swim, however, required us to swim toward the center of the lake and the waves were coming straight for us. I let the group of fast/one mile swimmers go first, then got into the water with a group that was going to do a half-mile, stopping and regrouping at the quarter-mile buoy before heading on. I got in quick, mostly because the rocks were too painful to stand on, then began kicking away from shore, sure that as I got more comfortable I'd be able to put my face in the water and crawl.

The problem was I never got comfortable. In fact, as the waves kept coming and I kept getting further from shore, I became increasingly uncomfortable until the point when a wave hit me square in the face. I swallowed a large gulp of water and suddenly realized I was an equal distance from the shore and the buoy. I choked and began to panic and the words, "I can't do this! I can't do this!" began to escape from my mouth in between gasps for air.

There were three women near me and every one of them began to talk to me. It helped and I continued my breast stroke out toward the buoy with them close by. Five minutes later, a woman a few yards ahead of us began calling for help. Five swimmers were at her side immediately. They called to the woman leading our swim. She had a rescue can attached to her waist, and swam out to the scared woman. A few moments later the woman was being escorted back to shore by one of the men who'd been swimming with us. A few moments later still, I had reached the group of swimmers massing at the first buoy.

It wasn't a difficult decision to turn back rather than continue on. I had somehow stopped panicking and was slowly gaining control of my breathing. I paddled around the buoy and started back toward shore. This was a mixed blessing. Now I could see land, but there weren't many people between me and that land if I got in trouble. Most of the women in my group had continued on. One of the women who'd been swimming at the back with me when I choked, however, turned around, too, and we slowly breast-stroked and back-stroked our way to shore.

Jen was standing on shore, having arrived too late to enter the water with us, waving like a crazy woman. I wasn't sure it was her, however, until she finally called my name. She had recognized my cap, a fairly easy feat probably since it was one of the few heading back toward shore and it never disappeared below the water!

She was proud of me as I exited, and on some level I knew I should be, too, but mostly I was pissed. It had taken me twenty-two minutes to breast-stroke a quarter mile--the exact amount of time I want to swim a half-mile in the actual race. I had calmed down enough to put my face in the water during the breast stroke a few times on the swim toward shore, but by that time I was too scared to attempt crawl, worried that if I got too comfortable something terrible would happen and I'd be choking and gasping again.

When it was all over, however, I realized that I had just finished a quarter mile open water swim for the first time in water where I could see neither the bottom nor a lifeguard. The race course will be lined with surfboards, kayaks, and swim angels. I think that just knowing they're there will be all I'll need to be able to relax and do the swim the way I've been preparing for the past seven months to do it--with good crawl form.

I even signed up for a second triathlon this season--the Escape from the Rock on Mercer Island. It's only a few weeks after Danskin and the bike is a mile shorter and the run is .6 of a mile shorter. It seemed silly to put myself through all this and not use the skills again. Over the course of the winter, I may get all panicky about open water swimming again. This way, I'll have two experiences under my belt before I shift my training to emphasize running--in preparation for the Seattle Half-Marathon in November--then cycling--in preparation for the Chilly Hilly bike ride in February.

The only real unknown quantity at this point is the number of people. I will be swimming in a wave of 100 women, though I intend to swim at the right side and near the back of the pack so I'll have less chance of being swum over or kicked in the face. If I can manage to break my own water somewhere, I think I'll be fine. (Don't ask me why I think this....)

Otherwise, last Wednesday I finished the portion of the book that covers the Big Ride itself--and I finished it three years to the day that the actual ride ended. It made me quite sad for awhile, but I went for a ride with the women from Camp Danskin and felt better by the time I returned home. Now I probably have two or three more chapters to finish to bring the book up to the Danskin Tri conclusion, then a series of edits. I'm hoping to have a "finished" product by the end of October to mail to agents in November.

Friday, July 20, 2001

I finished the course of Prednisone and I'm well on my way through the course of antibiotics. My lung function has almost returned to normal and my energy level is SLOWLY increasing. Mercury finally started moving forward again yesterday and today marks another new moon in my areas of career and health. Finally, some progress! According to my astrology report, I have about two weeks to push through a major project. I interpret this to mean that I have to get the rough draft done before August, which is my goal, anyway. My only plans for the weekend are to write, so we'll see where I end up Monday night.

As for the triathlon, things are going very slowly. I went for a bike ride Wednesday night, then spent most of yesterday sleeping to recover. Not good. I'm going to swim tonight in the pool and just try to take it easy. So much for making this a high volume week. I am still planning on doing Tri-Tuesday next week, however, and at least tackling the open water swim portion. If things go well, I'll stay and bike, and maybe even attempt part of the run course. It would be nice to do a two-hour triathlon for practice at least once before the race.

Hans and I had a strange conversation that ended on a rather adversarial note earlier this week. He was upset with me for trying to make long-range fitness goals when in his mind I'm not even close to achieving my short-term fitness goals. He accused me of not being half-way prepared for the triathlon. To me, that's a ludicrous statement. I am convinced that I will finish the race--it's only a matter of how well and how fast I will finish. So any additional "preparation" I do will only serve to make me faster. He also claims that he has seen no evidence that I am attempting to become less erratic in my attempts to train and write. I think in his mind I am still a perpetual failure, much as I was when I was preparing for the Big Ride. If my progress isn't linear and easy to follow, he sees none at all. It seems apparent, too, that while I see myself as mostly successful, he sees me as mostly unsuccessful. It seems I have married my own worst critic. I was hoping that would change, but apparently not.

He did make one good comment, however. I added my training log to the website so that I would feel accountable to other people to keep working out. Presumably, if there were long periods of inactivity, my friends would call me on it. Hans interpreted the addition of the log, however, as a "Hey, look at me!" rather than a "Hey, hold me to this!" He contends that if I don't also list on the log what my goals and intentions are, no one reading it will have any idea whether or not I am successfully following my plan. So, from now on, whenever I skip a workout that I planned to do, I will list that in the log along with the workouts that I actually complete. Maybe then it will be a more balanced picture of my progress.

Monday, July 16, 2001

After a week of Prednisone I am breathing better, but now I have a lung infection and am starting a course of antibiotics. The fun never stops!

I joined the Seattle Triathlon Club last week. It was a big step for me. I've been worried that it was going to just be a bunch of male jocks who wouldn't have time for an overweight woman slowing them down. But the President of the club is a woman, and she assures me that the club membership is fifty percent female and that ninety percent of the women came as a result of doing their first Danskin. They hold monthly information meetings through the winter and schedule workouts throughout the year. Most important is Tri-Tuesdays, a summer workout that includes an open water swim, bike, and run every Tuesday night at Seward Park. I had hoped to go for my first open water swim with them tomorrow night, but with the lung infection I'm not sure it's a good idea, especially without a wetsuit. I may have to wait one more week.

I am planning to do a bike ride Wednesday night, however, with two of the women I met at camp. I'm not sure how well matched we are physically, but it will be fun to get out on the trail with friends for a change. I miss having someone to ride with.

My health last week knocked me out of a full week of training. I'm going to try to come back this week with a high volume of hours but only a few intense workouts. Then, to stay on track with the volume, intensity, recovery cycle (I was supposed to do two full cycles before the race with each phase lasting one week), next week I will combine intensity and recovery, doing at least one intense workout in each sport in the first half of the week, then taking three days off altogether at the end. After that it will be back to a volume week and the countdown to the race.

It's getting hard to sleep. I keep visualizing myself swimming the course and it becomes something of an obsession. By the time I finally give up and drift off, it's after 1:00, and I'm exhausted in the morning. The visualization has helped some, though. I've thought of a few things that I think will improve my performance, and there is no longer any panic at the thought of doing the race. Instead, I am much more focused on getting into the water and beginning the swim in a nice, controlled manner, then slowly dialing up the speed after I round the second buoy. I can see it happening in my mind, and I'm getting anxious to get back into open water.

As for the writing, I took last week off from that, too, but went into a marathon session on Saturday. I'm in Sandusky, Ohio--our second to last off day of the journey--and enjoying the day at Cedar Point. (Oh, if it were only true!) Today, I hope to write through the rest of Ohio and into Pennsylvania, crossing the 100,000 word mark along the way. The rough draft of this book WILL be finished this month!

Later...

I PASSED THE 100,000 WORD MARK AND PAGE 350 TODAY!!

How amazing to think I could write one hundred thousand words on anything. I remember when writing 500 word essays was a challenge in Mrs. Newnum's ninth grade English class. (Exactly how self-absorbed DO you have to be to write 100,000 words about a bike trip you took three years ago???) Just thought I'd take a few minutes out and celebrate. If I knew how to add one of those silly little flashing icons, like a smiley face that gets bigger and bigger or a little person turning somersaults, I'd add one here. Maybe it's best that I lack this particular knowledge....

Tuesday, July 10, 2001

I don't know whether to be pissed or disappointed. The allergy attack has now become a full-blown asthma attack, and I'm redlining at fifty-percent of my lungs' peak flow. I considered going to the hospital in the middle of the night, but waited and made an appointment to see my doctor this afternoon instead. Waiting will save me about $550 since my last trip to the emergency room cost $600 after my insurance paid the rest.

This just really bums me out. I spent three days trying to do something good for myself only to come home and not be able to work out for a week because I can't breathe. The whole cycle is getting tiresome. I even felt so bad this morning that I promised Hans, and myself, that I would go back to being vegan for the next six weeks until the race to reduce the effects of dairy on my lungs. Next week, when I'm feeling better, I'm sure I will regret making such a promise, but today I am desperate.

Monday, July 9, 2001

I DID IT!!!

I swam in open water over my head and lived to tell the story! While I can't really say I've obliterated my fear of open water, I can confidently say that I will finish the swim portion of the Danskin triathlon next month. How I will finish and how fast I finish, however, remain to be seen and they have nothing to do with my swimming ability.

Because I am brand-new to multi-sport racing, learning a new swimming style, still only an intermediate level cyclist, and a novice runner, I chose to do the skills track at camp, rather than the training track which was designed for people who feel relatively confident in their skill level but who want to get faster. My track was supposed to practice swimming in a pool, with only a brief period of swimming in open water on Sunday morning when we did mini-triathlons to practice transitions. Lucky for me, the pool we had reserved was closed for renovations and we had to go to the lake to swim.

It was an incredible experience. As soon as the cold water hit my shoulders and face, I began to hyperventilate. And I didn't stop. Finally, Sharon, one of the campers from the training track who has finished five Danskins, came over and instructed me to float on my back for thirty breaths, then roll to my stomach for a count of five, and roll back onto my back. She stood next to me as I did what she said and my breathing eventually slowed. The panic subsided enough so that I could roll onto my stomach and back, and I thought I was cured.

Until I tried to swim away from shore with my face in the water. I suddenly realized that I was incapable of blowing out under water--a skill I had learned in second grade--and, therefore, when I came up to breathe, I couldn't. It was horrible. Now I was in water deeper than I could touch bottom and jerking my face out of the water in panic again. I was swimming next to a line of floating lane markers and grabbed on. The swim coach, Sue Dills, swimmer extraordinaire and the third fastest woman in the world in her age group, called for me to swim back to her. Which I did. Beautifully. When I finally stood up, her surprise was evident. "You have a great stroke!" I only laughed. Apparently I could swim just fine toward shore but not away from it!

After repeating all the skills I learned in my beginner's swim class oh so many years ago--bobbing and blowing bubbles and the dead man's float--and several more panic-filled attempts to swim away from shore, I finally got tired of being scared and decided to go for it. This time, I was successful! My stroke, which really came together last week after taking a week off completely from swimming, was there and ready. I was able to blow out and take long, slow glides on my side, sight off the buoy and return to shore. I was amazed and elated. When Sue was finally able to critique my stroke, all she could say was, "You look like a long distance swimmer! You have great glide."

Eventually my group moved outside the roped off swimming area to practice sighting on buoys--which in this case were coaches treading water--and landmarks. This meant I no longer had a line of floating markers to grab onto if I panicked, and yet I was fine. In fact, I learned that I swim in a relatively straight line and can sight off other swimmers successfully enough that I don't need to interrupt my stroke with a Tarzan stroke to look for landmarks very often. I still threw in some face-out-of-the-water-breast-stroke when I needed to get my bearings, but overall was impressed with my progress.

After several successful swims, the adrenaline finally caught up to me, and all I wanted to do was stand on the shore and cry. Instead, I thanked Sharon and Sue for their help and understanding, and Jazz, the coach who organized camp and one of the "buoys" cheering for me, for making the whole weekend worthwhile with just this one hour at the lake.

The rest of the camp was great, too. I had read enough that I knew most of the information on training plans, nutrition, visualization, and heart zone training, and had experience enough with bike fit and the new style of swimming that the lectures were mostly review. I learned a lot about running, however, including that I do just about everything wrong. And I had a fabulous time with Estelle Grey, the elite transcontinental racing cyclist who built my bike. We did work on tight cornering and riding a straight line while looking over your shoulder, and she rode a downhill with me to improve my confidence with high speed. Jazz also watched my pedal stroke and reminded me to point my heels out further so that I put less strain on my knees.

What surprises me the most is that while I have had mostly male friends most of my life, I have gone to camps the past two summers where I was surrounded almost exclusively by women and had a great time. It was so much fun to be working out with other women, and while I probably should have been embarrassed by my initial response to open water, I wasn't. It was such a supportive environment and everyone was perfectly happy to let you start at whatever level you found yourself. Plus, the coaches, all elite, record-setting female athletes, treated us as though we were every bit as awesome as they were. How wonderful to be surrounded by people who have more confidence in you than you have in yourself!

I had my typical allergy response to Eastern Washington--I swear something over there wants me dead--and functioned the whole weekend on seventy percent of my normal lung capacity, but came home energized and excited. The race is six weeks away and I actually believe now that it will be fun. And, when I go back to camp next year, I will be so transformed no one will even recognize me!

Monday, July 2, 2001

Wow, July already! The summer season in Seattle properly begins this week and already I fear I'm not making the most of it. It's beautiful here today, but as it's a work day, I'm stuck inside. (I am not, however, working yet despite the fact that it is now well past eleven....)

I leave for Triathlon Camp on Friday at noon, and I think the butterflies are beginning already. I always get nervous before setting off to meet a new group of people and engage in activities I haven't necessarily tried before, but apparently I get some kind of rush out of it because I keep putting myself in these situations. It's going to be a busy week--and the rough draft of the book is not likely to be finished despite marathon writing sessions. (Page 331 and counting...) I'm going to try to squeeze in a few workouts and I need to clean and lube my bike, but beyond that my "training" time might be devoted to visualizing me completing open water swims safely, without need of rescue or albuterol inhalation, and without panicking at some point when I realize I can't see anything or touch anything and have to rely solely on my own strength and sense of self-preservation to bring myself to a place where I can touch something again.

I didn't practice riding tunnels and bridges, my pre-ride phobias, before the Big Ride, and yet I handled them all just fine. You get to the point where it's like, well, I can either ride across this bridge spanning the Mississippi River, or live forever in Winona, Minnesota. Now, Winona is a beautiful place, and yet I chose to ride. I'm assuming that when 59 other women run down the beach and plunge into the reservoir on Sunday, I'll do the same and be just fine. If not, it'll probably make a funny story later, and you know, I live for funny stories.

I learned over the weekend that this year the Danskin is providing a photographer to take your photo in each of the three legs of the race. That little piece of information eliminated any thoughts of wearing only a sport bra and cycling shorts, and I spent the weekend frantically shopping the internet and women's athletic catalogs for a reasonable alternative in a "real woman's" size. You know, there really are few alternatives for women my size and it's disheartening. How are we supposed to feel strong and sleek and awesome if the clothes we are forced to wear make us feel sloppy and embarrased? How are we supposed to get stronger, sleeker, and slimmer if we're afraid to leave the house?? I finally settled on my least padded pair of cycling shorts and a full belly coverage racer-back sport bra which promises to provide full support and full coverage for the modest woman of size. It's supposed to be delivered Friday morning before I leave for camp--now I can only pray it arrives and delivers on all its promises!

But enough of my tirades and worries for the day. To work!

P.S.

I just realized that I never said whether or not I got the job at the writers' house. By my lack of cartwheels in this space several weeks ago, you've probably already figured out that "they decided to offer the job to someone else." Blah, blah, blah. I let it upset me for about an hour, then forced myself to go to the track--where I had my first ever run/walk session where the running didn't injure my knees!--and decided it was for the best. I just had to reimmerse myself in the original plan--I am a writer. My job is to write. If I want a support group, I can go to Hugo House and hang out with other writers without needing to be on the payroll. I am a writer. Now, I will FINALLY go write something!!

Monday, June 11, 2001

This entry's for Zoi who softened her complaint that I don't update this site often enough by referring to me as her favorite writer....

It's too bad I've designated this website as the one explicative-free zone in my life because I've got a string of 'em I'd love to use right now! Today I had to unclog the garbage chute because someone on the third floor had a party Saturday night then stuffed their too-big liquor boxes in the too-small chute and--surprise, surprise--they got stuck between floors. Of course they didn't bother to tell me they'd done this, and the four floors above them continued dumping their garbage into the chute. I was up to my knees in garbage before I cleared the chute enough to figure out what was clogging it. Of course while the majority of my anger was aimed at the tenants who created the problem, there was still plenty left over for the residents who failed to securely close the garbage bags they dumped and who put (now broken) glass in their garbage bags, despite highly visible signs asking everyone to walk their glass to the dumpster so that in an instance like this, I don't have to worry about bleeding to death before I get the chute clear.

When I confronted the tenant about the mess he'd made of the chute, he denied it first, then blamed it on his maid! What arrogance. (This from the same man who, when the manager of the building across the street repeatedly found uncrushed boxes in his dumpster with this man's name and address still clearly marked, blamed me and Hans for carrying them across the street to dispose of them.) People make me crazy.

Then, to top it off, it's been raining more heavily than usual and an hour and a half after my "on duty" hours ended, the man across the hall toddled over to tell me that the carport over his car was flooded due to a clogged drain. Then, he continued by telling me that I, a mere woman whose man was not yet home from work, couldn't do anything about it. (THEN WHY'D YOU BOTHER ME???) So I got out the twelve foot ladder and the squeegie-on-a-pole and spent an hour standing in the rain, on a ladder ten feet above the concrete, swishing a foot-wide piece of plastic back and forth in six inches of water. I found that if I ran it back and forth quick enough and parallel to the edge I could get a wave to splash over in each direction which turned out to be fairly efficient. Occasionally I got a little wild, however, and one of the waves actually crashed over my head. But I moved the water, probably hundreds of gallons of it, without killing myself and without the aid of a man. I also managed to clean out the drain without having to climb up onto the roof of the carport, so hopefully I won't get to have that much fun again for a long while.

The thing that got me through today was the recurring thought that I had interviewed for a real job that might actually use some of my skills and that would surround me with people under the age of seventy. It's a part-time position with the local writers' house and it would get me away from this place and its annoying messes at least a couple days a week. I'm praying hard that I get it. In my mind it has become the only thing that will keep me sane enough to continue this job as property manager for another year.

The interview went well, I think. I'll know for sure on Thursday. I made at least one comment that I regret (trying to be funny--when will I ever learn?) and forgot to give them the sheet of references I had typed up. I was also a little freaked out because I actually got to see the applicant who interviewed before me and the applicant after me. It's so much easier to interview for a job if the other applicants are only intangible ghosts! Keep your fingers crossed that my retirement from "jobs" that pay me in real dollars and require me to keep a regular schedule will come to an end in two days....

Monday, April 2, 2001

There's nothing like running at a track after fifteen years as a confirmed walker to make you feel like the fat girl with a heart murmur in Mr. Paradise's elementary school gym class again. Yesterday I spent an hour trying on a dozen pairs of running shoes until the saleswoman and I agreed we had the best fit. Last night I spent twice that long reading about "how" to run, since my every movement has to be processed cognitively before my rather ungifted body will respond, and getting excited at the prospect of learning a new sport.

After walking several times a week for the past two months, I had hoped to begin with a thirty minute routine of running for two minutes alternating with walking for four minutes. Instead, I found myself only able to run for one minute at a time, which wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't had an audience. On a rainy Monday at noon there was actually an adult soccer game going on in the center field. The ball kept flying out of bounds at me, which in true fat girl fashion I attempted to ignore rather than risk the further humiliation over my poor retrieval and/or throwing skills, and I became more embarrassed with every lap.

Add to that the fact that my "good" knee hurt in three places after only half of the workout and that both arches cramped up and it was an extremely encouraging day. All that was missing was a red-headed, failed high school football coach yelling at me from the sidelines until his face was as red as mine. Ah the good old days....

Thursday, March 29, 2001

Our political situation is becoming more desperate every day. In just two months in office, Shrub has made it clear that he intends to restrict women's right to choose, not only here in the U.S. but around the globe by implementing an international gag rule for all foreign health agencies operating with the support of U.S. funds; he has broken his campaign promise to reduce carbon emissions from power plants; and this week he walked away from the Kyoto Protocol, the only international treaty working to diminish the effects of global warming. During his campaign for the presidency, Shrub agreed to uphold the agreement which was signed by the U.S. in 1997.

Understandably, the European Union and other signers of the Protocol are outraged by the U.S. withdrawal from the agreement, especially in light of the fact that the U.S. produces an astonishing 20% of the world's carbon dioxide, the primary component in greenhouse gas. The Greens in European Parliament are calling for a consumer boycott of U.S. oil companies, such as Exxon, Texaco, and Chevron. Others are suggesting that disputes over trans-Atlantic trade may be held up. While most world leaders are hoping to reason with Shrub, many are considering these and other sanctions against the U.S.

I know that it is the U.S. citizens who will suffer from such sanctions, but at the same time I urge all foreign countries to take a hard line on this issue. It is obvious that Shrub has not learned yet that he is a servant of the people of the United States of America and charged with the responsibility to work in the best interests of all of us. And as the leader of one of the richest, and most polluting, countries in the world, Shrub has the obligation to future generations to lead by example. If we here at home cannot teach him this, perhaps foreign countries can. Putting the screws to his buddies in U.S. Big Oil might be the fastest way to wake this man up.

To Learn More or Take Action Against Global Warming, click here!

Wednesday, March 21, 2001

It's Spring! I have survived another winter and no amount of arguing that it was one of the mildest winters ever on record will convince me that this is any less of an accomplishment. I must celebrate!

I have decided to assume the title "Artist" to describe myself after much urging from my friend Owen and from a counselor who was helping me transition from waitress/beach ranger status to writer. Both of them argue that while calling myself a writer helps give me confidence in my writing, it is not a broad enough term to describe who I am or my life philosophy.

So, today it is Spring, I am an Artist, and I am Happy!

Later...

Ok, I love my bike and I love me on my bike--it's Seattle's streets that I hate! I got out for a couple hours on the Burke Gilman Trail today and remembered why I was so quick to declare my love for cycling after the conclusion of the GTE Big Ride in '98. What a joy!

You can tell when someone on a bike is in the right mindset--they're smiling. Almost everyone was smiling, except for some of the young Joe Cools who are just to cool to smile and too hot to acknowledge the presence of other not-so-hot riders. So I smiled and said hello to the nice people and made faces behind the backs of the rude Joe Cools--because I could, and because it was fun.

The universe, however, does not want me to race bikes. On Day 2 of the Big Ride I crashed and busted my cycling computer so for the rest of the summer I had no idea how fast or far I was going. I interpreted this as the universe's way of saying that statistics and time and speed don't matter when you're on a bike. Today, my heartrate monitor--the only training device I'm currently using since I still haven't replaced the broken cycling computer--quit working about 30 minutes into the ride! Apparently, someone wanted me to just have a good time and not worry about training effectiveness. So, I went along for the ride and let me tell you, it was worth it!

(Oh, and the monitor's working again--I think it may have gotten some kind of interference when I cycled past UW's power facility.)

Tuesday, March 20, 2001

I took the bike for a walk today. It was getting itchy to get out, so I introduced it to Queen Anne's hills and generally felt stupid in my tights and bright neon yellow jersey walking the old Rodriquez Stellar down the sidewalk while normal people walked their dogs. I have ridden three days a week on my indoor trainer for the past month, but I was totally unprepared for how much harder it was going to be to actually get the thing moving on the road! My arms hurt from bracing going down hills and my forearms and hands hurt from braking. I now know the way to cycle surface streets to get to the Burke Gilman Trail but I don't know that I'll be able to survive getting there and back any time soon.

After I humiliated myself with an hour of biking/walking, I went to the pool and did an hour of skill drills. I learned something very cool: in multi-sport, all in one day you can hate yourself on the bike and still manage to love yourself in the water.