You Sure Can Write, Baby

I got my first rejection letter when I was probably no more than 10 years old. It was from “Cricket” children’s magazine (do they still publish it? I wonder), to which I was encouraged to submit my story “Adventures on Crane Island” by a neighbor lady who had taken an interest in me and my writing. 

A sucker for flattery (even at that young age), I was deluded into thinking this smashed-together recitation of various events that happened on a trip to the San Juan Islands with a friend and her parents, was good enough for publication. As the rejection suggests and upon re-reading this, my earliest piece of creative non-fiction, while recently clearing out our childhood home, I can assure you - it was not.

I’ve had a few more rejections letters since then, but I’ve also had some poems that were published, mostly in high school and college journals but hey, they still count (I think). 

And, the rejection letters are part of being a writer, the important thing is to make the attempts! I haven’t attempted any submissions in a very long time, and only now am I finally thinking of what it might take to get published, as I make what feels like the big step of taking an online memoir writing class. 

This is my first writing class since graduate school many many moons ago, and it feels so incredible to once again be part of a small group of like-minded lovers of language, reading and critiquing each others work. 

We meet 6 weeks of Monday evenings for about 3 hours and tonight during our 3rd class my submission is up! I’m equal parts terrified and delighted. My piece is from here of course, and it’s basically all 3 parts of “The Day the Music Died” - this labor of love blog finally getting some much needed feedback, and of course I had to start with the story of the biggest and worst thing that ever happened to me. I’m too close to all the material on this blog, so if I have any hope of turning it into something that could possibly be published I really really need the critique.

As a child declaring (to whomever may have actually been listening and interested), what I wanted to be when I grew up, it was the usual creative and impractical aspirations: an actress, a dancer, a singer, and a writer. 

Only one of these dreams has stood the test of time, is actually still possible and has any substance to back it up (although my rendition of the song “Maybe” from Annie had a lot of fans on the playground, at one time, so if we’d had “American Idol” back then, who knows what might have been).

So, here goes nothing! And since I know that rejection letters are part of the process, I can only hope that I have more of them in my future. But maybe, just not too many.

You Sure Can Read, Baby

One of my most vivid and favorite childhood memories is of Mom loading us all up in the car and taking us to the Seattle Public Library. Most vivid probably, at least in part, because it happened so frequently, maybe every two weeks or once every month. Favorite because I can’t remember a time before I absolutely loved to read.

Our closest location was the Henry Branch library, just off Broadway on Capitol Hill where we grew up. It has since been replaced by a much bigger and fancier structure (and renamed the Capitol Hill Library, as this article informed me), but to me it remains that small two story building with the funny bridge/ramp up to the 2nd floor from street level, that to a child’s eye always seemed like it should have been over water, but it never was.

Mom brought a big cardboard box to bring back all the books and I recall having limits placed on how many I could check out at one time. And then there would be the summer reading challenge, where the library encouraged kids to read more (yeah, like I needed that!) by giving them a fun way to track the books they read. 

My favorite one (or the only one I specifically remember) was a large placemat with outline of a roller coaster and every book you read you got a colorful coaster car sticker until you built the whole train. I’m not sure but I may have built two whole trains!

Because this old photo, sneakily taken by my Dad I think, is pretty representative of how I was most summers of my youth; whether we were on a family camping trip (as in this photo), at the Oregon coast with relatives from Portland, or just hanging out at Madison Beach, I always had a book (or three) with me.

(I’m pretty sure here I was reading Christine by Stephen King.)

My reading program this grownup summer has consisted of more books than I can really post about (or possibly even remember), but recently I’ve done a lot of non-fiction with no particular theme other than they are all interesting to me. Unless you count the two anti-fat bias/body positivity books which is a topic my sister sort of got me into, and I didn’t even know how much I needed to read those books but I did.

The David Copperfield I only picked up because I recently read the new Barbara Kingsolver Demon Copperhead, which she loosely based on the Dickens classic, and I realized I had never read it. (Or maybe I did, but forgot, with so many books read over the years, who really knows?)

Sad to say though it’s slow-going, I still haven’t finished it and I’m 50/50 chance going to give up because life is LITERALLY too short, to read books you don’t enjoy! So there you go Moby Dick, I spent 20 pages on you but I just couldn’t, so that one too will be consigned to my personal heap of “just not interesting enough to get through.”

I’ve actually sort of realized, since I hit the big 5-0 that I am probably not going to have enough time to read all the books I want to before I die. Which makes me sort of sad…but also CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! There’s technically still at least a month of summer left. 

🤩

We Were So Young Then

Her voice was a wonder, and these lyrics…still so powerful! I hope she is at peace but I will miss this artist; her music inextricably tied up in the time I first heard it and listened to it most.

Troy ~ Sinead O’Conner

I'll remember it

And Dublin in a rainstorm
And sitting in the long grass in summer
Keeping warm
I'll remember it
Every restless night
We were so young then 
We thought that everything
We could possibly do were the right
Then we moved
Stolen from our very eyes 
And I wondered where you went to
Tell me when did the light die
You will rise
You'll return
The phoenix from the flame
You will learn 
You will rise
You'll return
Being what you are
There is no other Troy
For you to burn

And I never meant to hurt you
I swear I didn't mean 
Those things I said
I never meant to do that to you
Next time I'll keep my hands to myself instead
Oh, does she love you
What do you want to do?
Does she need you like I do?
Do you love her?
Is she good for you?
Does she hold you like I do?

Do you want me?
Should I leave?
I know you're always telling me 
That you love me
Just sometimes I wonder 
If I should believe
Oh, I love you
God, I love you
I'd kill a dragon for you
I'll die
But I will rise 
And I will return
The Phoenix from the flame
I have learned
I will rise
And you'll see me return
Being what I am
There is no other Troy
For me to burn 

And you should've left the light on
You should've left the light on
Then I wouldn't have tried
And you'd never have known
And I wouldn't have pulled you tighter
No I wouldn't have pulled you close
I wouldn't have screamed
No I can't let you go
And the door wasn't closed
No I wouldn't have pulled you to me
No I wouldn't have kissed your face
You wouldn't have begged me to hold you 
If we hadn't been there in the first place
Oh but I know you wanted me to be there oh oh
Every look that you threw told me so
But you should've left the light on
You should've left the light on
And the flames burned away
But you're still spitting fire
Make no difference what you say
You're still a liar
You're still a liar
You're still a liar

Pondering Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico, 

My heart’s devotion - 

Let it sink back in the ocean.

Always the hurricanes blowing,

Always the population growing,

And the money owing,

And the sunlight streaming,

And the natives steaming.

I like the island Manhattan - 

(I know you do!)

Smoke on your pipe

And put that in!

~ Anita, in the film “West Side Story”

Truthfully, I think I liked Puerto Rico more than Panama, although to be fair, I haven’t been to Panama in almost 10 years. But one of our last visits to Panama was in the month of May, and I remember it felt SO hot, and you know my tolerance for heat has to be fairly high, given how long we’ve lived in and loved Florida. 

PR in July felt way less hot, or maybe there were just better ocean breezes, since it’s an island versus Panama being an isthmus (which is actually a really hard word to spell and say, another point in PR’s favor vs Panama). 

🤣

My friend moving to Panama soon as her husband is ready to retire told me PR has too many hurricanes and is too expensive (milk is like $8 a gallon she said! My response was well, we don’t buy milk), but after this first visit and how much we liked it, I think it’s a pretty strong contender for our dream of living as ex-pats somewhere in the future. Except, not sure if you’re really an ex-pat since it’s a US territory? Obviously, I have more research to do, something my husband’s really good at, and I’m admittedly much less so.

But my overall impression, from one day walking around Old San Juan and two days driving to other towns on the island, is that it seems very livable and would be very do-able to move there someday, maybe. 

It did strike me as so strange though, to feel like you’re in another country and then see familiar things like the highway speed limit in miles and US post offices, not to mention all the usual chain stores and restaurants. Apparently the distances on maps are done in kilometers but the speed limit signs are in miles, which is confusing, but I suppose you get used to it.

Either way, I loved getting to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary by exploring a brand-new place together and pondering the idea of someday moving there; I also had a great time taking photos of the iguanas at the ages-old fort we visited, and all the sweet street cats. 

The Marriage Song

 The book of love is long and boring

And written very long ago

It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes

And things we're all too young to know

But I

I love it when you give me things

And you

You ought to give me wedding rings

The Book of Love ~ Peter Gabriel

I will never forget how we bought our wedding bands before I even had an engagement ring. But then, David and I bought a house together even before we were engaged to be married, so I guess we’ve always done things a bit backwards. 

I don’t remember the exact month or even how far ahead of our wedding we bought them, but I can clearly picture the antique jewelry store we went to in the cute little town of Cedarburg (a northern suburb of Milwaukee). We found two perfect white gold bands that weren’t identical but very close; so perfect they didn’t even need to be resized as I recall. 

They came in two identical pink fuzzy boxes that I can also picture perfectly, and I clearly recall how we were so excited we took them out and tried wearing our new-to-you wedding rings the whole drive home. 

This is a really sweet memory that I think about as we celebrate 20 years of marriage this Wednesday the 5th of July.

In the 27 years we’ve been together (the 7 before marriage definitely count, we both are adamant about that!) we’ve had long stretches of peace and fulfillment. And then, we’ve also had seemingly “ages of combat” (see old post and poem that speak to that).

If either one of us had been just a tiny bit more laid back or less emotionally high-maintenance, I think it could have been different. But there it is. 

George Orwell said “At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.” And maybe the same can be said about a long marriage, and for our marriage after this amount of time, and all we’ve been through together. Perhaps the good and the bad of it is exactly what we deserve.

In cynical moments I think that a marriage of any length is nothing but a progressive sense of disappointment in this person who has pledged their life to yours, and you to them. For he has definitely disappointed me and I know I’ve disappointed him. 

But how could it be otherwise over such a great span of time, and when we are such flawed humans?

Maybe I just have the most flawed marriage ever? Or perhaps these feelings are quite common but I’m the only one stupid enough to admit to them! The struggle of any long-term relationship is real and I can’t tell you how often I have thought of just giving up. 

Yet I can honestly say, at least for today, the struggle has been worth it. I do deeply love this man; it’s of course cliched, but not untrue, to say that he’s my very best friend. The one who knows me the best, has seen me at my worst, and still likes and loves me. 

We’ve both been so very many different people since we first met each other, back in the Spring of 1996; all these different versions of ourselves within this one relationship, it sometimes amazes me to think about it. 

One thing that has always helped us is we’re extremely good at making each other laugh! If we couldn’t laugh together, we probably never would have made it this far. And sometimes we have those thoughtful philosophizing conversations (this way of looking at life with which we first connected and started this journey), that make me feel the beautiful world is still full of mysteries and magic.

When we’re our best selves, like this, we are flowers and pink, fuzzy heart-shaped boxes for each other. The trick, I think, is to be our best selves more often, and forgive each other, and ourselves, when inevitably we fall short. 

A photo of us that I love from last summer on our way to Milwaukee to celebrate the impending birth of our first grandchild.

(One Human’s) Experience of Time

So this has been my 

life, so far and my experience 

of time: a heaping on 

of sorrows, accumulation 

of loss, an ocean 

of a concept but also only a 

mental construct, a kind of 

con: that false 29th day 

February phantom limb, and 

weeks and months stringing out 

before you like beads on a string 

to the horizon until they are gone.

Elastically expanding 

one moment -  those longest 

days of school before 

summer vacation - then snapping 

back to brief, creating that 

wound in your heart when 

you have to leave him.

At 37 you think you still have plenty 

of it, you think it’s still on your side. 

At 47 you feel it slip-sliding away, 

as more hairs become gray and you can 

no longer keep those plump and shiny 

cheeks, your face turning to desiccated old

apple doll, no matter how much collagen and 

water you drink or regimented 7-8 hours of sleep.

Before you know it, you’ve missed 

that glorious Goldilocks moment - somewhere 

between 25 and 40 - when you are no longer 

“too young” but not yet “too old” - “No one told 

you when to run/you missed the starting gun” 

~ Pink Floyd somehow knew all about it

I feel it burning away, a little bit more 

every single day, until all is lost 

in the burning.

21 best songs about time

Are You There God? It’s Me, Michele.

Approaching our 20th wedding anniversary this July, I am dealing with some challenges in my marriage. I am still grieving the loss of my mother, a long and largely heartbreaking process, that ended with her death a little over a year ago. I’m trying to make myself do what I know how to do (and I’ve done a thousand times before but it’s never easy): to lose the excess weight I gained back since last June’s figure competition. 

And with my sights on a not-too-distant milestone of 30 years in this corporate IT career I’ve had a love/hate relationship with since 1998, I’m trying to figure out how I could switch careers before/by then, or maybe just get out, take some small job to bridge the time till Medicare kicks in at 65. (Because isn’t 30 years of doing anything quite enough?!?)

I need God (the God of my understanding) for all of this. 

Specifically, I need to avail myself of that resource, by talking to Him/Her/Them/It and asking for Help. According to one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, “Help” is one of the 3 main ways we pray to God, the others being “Thanks” and  “Wow” as I wrote a bit about when I first discovered her book by that name, years ago.

And I sort of feel all 3 at once, about my sobriety. Last month I celebrated 8 years and I feel pretty solid with that as the foundation of my life. I just need to figure out what I want the next chapter to look like. OR I can talk to God and let that power greater than myself show me the way.

But I can also talk to and lean on my friends, which I just did a whole lot of during my most recent Seattle visit. We also took a Saturday afternoon and went to see the movie “based on the Judy Blume book loved by millions” - here’s the Trailer if you haven’t seen it yet. 

This is not the book cover I recall from my childhood of course, but an updated version - just picked up from the library today, a day after I got back into town and I can’t wait to reread it!

So sort of ironic and beautiful to watch this movie with these women I’ve known since we were children, here on the other end of our fertility spectrum.

Before traveling for this trip I quickly caught up on all things Judy Blume, watching the fabulous documentary on Amazon Prime and reading her most recent book - 

NOT the greatest timing to read this book right before flying, because it centers on 3 horrific plane crashes that happened in her hometown of Elizabeth, NJ back in the 1950s. Fortunately though, I’m a pretty seasoned traveler and it didn’t cause me any extra air-travel anxiety. 

Besides, I know (now) that God’s got me, and ultimately all things will be well. That sense of calm and acceptance that I sometimes achieve, has got to be one of the very greatest gifts of recovery. And I will never be done being amazed and grateful, for all of it.

Return to Withlacoochee Forest (And Lake Minneola)

The only thing I love more than doing a brand-new race, is returning a second time to experience it again. Especially for these out-of-town races which tend to be even more of an adventure.

So I’m happy to report that I’ve completed essentially a repeat of what I did last year, getting hotels and doing the Lake Minneola Half Marathon last weekend in the lovely town of Clermont, and this weekend doing the Croom Fools Run on the trails of beautiful Withlacoochee State Forest. 

This year I did the shortest distance for the Croom, the roughly 16 mile loop just once and what a relief to not have to do it a second time like last year! Even so, I definitely faced a few moments of despair out there today; that specific hopelessness that only endurance runners can know, where you’re already so tired and you still have so many more miles to go. 

It took me about 3 hours and 45 minutes, longer than I had hoped, but fortunately I had just enough time to get back to my hotel and cleanup before checkout (last year, doing the 50k, I had to checkout before the race, since I knew I’d be out there for untold hours). I feel like I may dream tonight about those hours of slip-slide running on the sandy trails, tripping over roots and nearly falling, and praying for the next aid station to appear.

It was much warmer this year than last year, for both races. The Lake Minneloa course was the same scenic route, along the lakeshore for much of it. Like last year, I found some runners to chat with, to make the miles go by faster. This year I met Lisa and Kim, learned about their work, their families and their 10 year running friendship, which made me miss my running buddy all the more. My time came in at just under two and a half hours, much slower than last year where I was just over a 10 minute mile, but still faster than the Shamrock race, so that made me happy.

Another difference this year is that I took my husband to the half marathon - and quickly realized that it’s actually not that fun to have a travel partner unless they are doing the race with you. I thanked him for accompanying me but then told he me was off the hook for the remaining race this weekend! We still had a nice dinner at a tiki bar/restaurant on the lake but I was pretty preoccupied with pre-race stuff like getting enough hydration and getting back to the hotel before too late, to ensure I could get enough sleep.

So, I don’t know that I’ll do either race again next year for a 3rd time, but I’m super glad that I was able to do them both again this year, despite not feeling in the greatest running shape. The bad news is that my right Achilles tendon is so sore it’s like touching a live wire and my left hip is still hurting. The good news? No more long distance runs until the Clearwater rock’n roll half marathon the first weekend in October! I am looking forward to the rest, it feels like it comes not a moment too soon.

Heavy on my heart too, is the thought that when I did these races last year my mom was still alive. But that topic - the ongoing process of grieving this loss - is for the next blog post.

Good For Her Age

Even while I’ve been bemoaning my slow-down and physical ailments, three really wonderful things still happened in this vicinity, so I had to share.

That last race that nearly killed me? I got 2nd place in my age group! (Partly because it was such a small race and partly because well, let’s face it, I’m old. But I was told I really don’t have to mention either of those things.)

What does one win for getting 2nd in her age group, you may wonder? Well, I don’t know because of course, not realizing I had placed, I didn’t stick around after the race for the awards ceremony. But all is not lost! 

Because I actually also won 3rd place (again in my age group) in the Florida Road Races “Starfish Race Series” (their medals have the cutest little running starfish), by doing 4 out of the 5 races this organization puts on, and getting a certain amount of points based on how I placed in those races. 

The email that alerted me to this wonderful result of me running a 15k down at Fort De Soto last Fall (featured at the end of my Sept blog post), the Holiday Halfathon in December, the St. Petersburg Distance Classic in Feb and then this most recent race at the beginning of this month, stated there will be a season ending party and awards presentation mid-April. My hope is that if I show up for that I may also be able to belatedly claim any award I may have gotten from the Shamrock Race. 

I’m expecting the prize to be another t-shirt or medal so nothing terribly exciting but I think I would probably go to the party even if there was no award, because it is a really sweet race series and I want to support the organization. So I will report back on that in April!

And if all that weren’t enough consolation and reward for carrying on in the face of my recent struggles, I also won 3rd place (in my gender) in the Orange Theory Fitness Transformation Challenge that I was participating in for 8 weeks running from mid-January until early March. 

I didn’t think I was doing that well, because I wasn’t very disciplined with my food (nothing compared to what I did last spring for my one and only bikini/fitness competition, that was completely brutal!) and when I weighed myself the scale really wasn’t going down, but then the InBody scan taken at the beginning versus the one taken at the end, showed my body composition had really changed, by losing almost 4% body fat and gaining almost 4 pounds of muscle over the course of those 8 weeks. The prize for coming in 3rd place is a $50 gift card, haza! 

So, the journey continues but I found this all really really encouraging just when I needed it. I face another half marathon race this weekend and the weekend after that my season ending trail race, where I’ll do just one 16 mile loop on the trail where I did two 16 mile loops last year to complete my one and only ultra-marathon. My goal right now is to just run*jog*walk as pain free as possible, enjoying every minute that I can. 

If there’s anything these 3 recent events prove, it’s to not get discouraged because you just never know what’s possible! And, like me, you might be doing better than you think.

2023 Racing Season, So Far

 “Well I don’t know, but I’ve been told/You never slow down, you never grow old.” ~ Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

I hate to admit this, even to myself, but I’m finding it harder and harder to do these half marathons. And yet I’ve already done 4 of them this racing season, which is more than I have done in some entire years in the past. I’m a Gemini so I’ve always been a mess of contradictions like that!

Before this most recent race, the medal and the reward eating afterwards - 

I still love doing these races, but I’ve gotten so dang slow it’s like I hit a wall right after turning 50 and after getting my PR last year in New Orleans; it’s all right there in black and white, impossible to deny or contradict.

 

This last half marathon (not showing yet on Athlinks.com) was my slowest yet at 2 hours 34 minutes and there were demoralized moments in that hot sun, with legs feeling like lead and my lower back and left hip hurting so much, I was afraid maybe I wasn’t going to make it. They’d find my sweat-soaked body on the trail in Fort De Soto and that would be it.

😁

And I’m starting to feel a little like a woman who can’t leave an abusive relationship, but I am doing some things to help myself: I got X-ray and MRI done on my lower back and left hip last week, I see my new spine doctor tomorrow to review those reports. 

The prior MRI on my neck that I feared would lead the doctor to tell me I had to quit running such long distances, only led to a probable diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome and me wearing stabilizing splints at night to stop my hands from going numb while sleeping (ANOTHER troublesome thing to come on only after turning 50 WTF).

I have a couple weeks with no races but then I have another half on March 25th and then a 25k/16 mile trail run on April 1st (half of my 50k ultra marathon I did last year). Then break for the summer and October is the Clearwater Rock ‘n Roll half marathon that was rescheduled from last year, due to Hurricane Ian. 

I am equal parts looking forward to and dreading all future races but I hope to have myself sorted out at least by the Fall, if not by these next ones. And if I can just resist signing up for other races I normally do in November until I know I will be fit to run them, that will be one minor victory. Meanwhile I guess I just have to feel good about still being able to do this type of long distance running. 

And grateful - above all grateful! During the toughest parts of any race (or training run, for that matter), I pray “Thank you God for allowing my body to do this” and “Please God help me get through this” - and so far, it’s working. I may not be fast, and I may not ever be as fast again as I was about a year ago on that beautiful day in New Orleans, but I remain an endurance runner - so all I have to do is endure.