JustRunJustLiveJustBe

Today, I made seven nervous jokes in five minutes. You know the kind, where you joke about your hair or your shoes or burping or gas or something just to take the attention off whatever the subject is? Well, today the subject was me and the fact that I am freaking out a little.

In case I’d neglected to be blatant to the point of sheer annoyance, let me now cross that line without looking back: I HAVE A MARATHON IN LESS THAN TWO WEEKS. I also have a major event to help coordinate, I have a plane to catch, I have Christmas cards to write, I have binders to organize, I have shopping to do, I have three projects due at work by the end of next week, and I have a knee that, according to my articulate doctor, is “living on borrowed time.” No, it doesn’t hurt and it’s not going to fall off or anything but my doctor says we need to address it A.S.A.P. after the marathon. Ugh.

Never having been known for my quiet suffering or rock-like strength, I apparently have not been hiding it well. I came a little unglued when the hostess set my glass of water on the table at lunch today and when I promptly said “Thank you” she said “yeah, whatever.” So I said “Excuse me?” and she ignored me. So then we had to leave the restaurant because I’m certain that, no matter how you’ve trained, they won’t let you out of jail to participate in a marathon if you’re charged with Murder One. My poor, innocent lunch companions were kind enough to humor me but I am sure they won’t put up with much more.

I’m not sure why I do this to myself. I’m not sure why I freak out internally (alright and a little externally) at these busy times. They are mostly my doing, I know, but you’d think I’d learn to just chill out a little. You’d think I’d learn to not worry. But no, I worry.

I worry about being late. I worry about forgetting something. I worry about not getting the right gift. I worry that I don’t have time to read blogs. I worry that this makes me seem like a jerk. I worry about my parents. I worry about my dog. I worry about my money. I worry about my inability to refuse Christmas cookies. I worry about life changing. I worry about life never changing. I worry about the weather. I worry about my legs not wanting to carry me 26.2 miles. I worry I’m not seeing my friends enough. I worry and I worry. I freak out, and get temperamental. I break out from the stress. I get tired. And then, I worry some more.

And I don’t know why I worry so much about me. For someone that is calm and collected in a crisis, I sure know how to turn things over in my head at warp speed. Your dog fell off the porch and broke his leg? No problem. Stabilize it, put him in the car and go to the vet. That, I’m all kinds of together about. But with me, I’m totally illogical. I think about how I need to do laundry and pack and send those Christmas cards and, for gosh sake, stop eating so much and then I freak out and start dragging people out of restaurants because I may be stressed but if nothing else, I will demand decent customer service!

Some days I wonder how I have rational thought at all.

It is absolutely official: I have no sense of direction. I may think I do, because I can read maps and I can follow directions, but the sense of direction? The remembering where I’ve been? The “oh, this looks familiar?” None of that works in my head.

Today, while on a ten mile in the North Carolina woods, I was feeling pretty good. Going from 6,000 feet to sea level will make you all high on oxygen. My brother-in-law was good enough to come with me on the first 2.5 miles and then left me to my own devices for another 2.5 and then, mistakenly as we all know now, assumed I could follow the exact same trail back to the car. The EXACT SAME TRAIL. Well, you know, all them there fire roads just look a heck of a lot alike. (Do you like my new vernacular? It’s something I’ve picked up, just for fun.) So, instead of fire road #6, I turned down fire road #5 ( which I would find out later; the roads were not marked) and then proceeded to get lost and go in one, giant, never-ending, oh-my-god-this-is-my-very-own-Blair-Witch-Project circle.

Eventually, I came across one person. One. In two hours. He was a man in his forties, dressed in camouflage, sitting on a stump eating lunch, next to a chainsaw. Yes, I know how that sounds. But, one person in two hours, you take your chances. Thankfully, the good man had a map and was willing to show me my way out. No, as you probably guessed, I wasn’t far. “I always go out with a compass,” he said. Yeah, good idea. But probably a better one for me is to always go out on a leash.

A couple years ago, when my sister moved away for the first time and I was visiting her in her new Kentucky home, we attempted to cook our first solo Thanksgiving dinner. Yes, we had each other but my expertise was green bean casserole, her’s mashed potatoes and neither of us had done anything but eat turkey before that day- never pulled out the insides, never greased it up, never even basted. We had to do it, though. We had to pretend life was the same and things hadn’t changed, that we could still eat turkey and act like we lived in the bubble of our little family, a bubble that had been stretched over a thousand miles.

What we lacked in experience, we made up for in research and planning, though. Thank heaven and earth for that, because when I called my sister three days before and told her to take the turkey out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator, she asked me “why?” with a seriousness in her voice that had me imagining us eating our turkey for breakfast the following Friday. Later, she would be just as panicked for me as she said she needed a meat thermometer and I asked “why?” How we staved off e-coli that year, I’ll never know.

Talking to her the other night, I knew that we’d never have a frozen turkey at her house, again. In addition to me, she’s hosting another eight or so people at her house with the possibility of more. She’s not worried a bit and plans to cook all day without, and I quote, “missing any of the football or beer.” (We are definitely related.) I’m so proud of her for everything she’s done and how far she’s come. She continues to grow and amaze me with the choices she makes and the approach she uses in life. As an older sister, I don’t know what makes me more proud: the fact that she can do it all or the fact that she believes she can.

Happy Thanksgiving, sister. I love you and I’ll see you soon.

Coworker 1: When I travel, I have to worry about what my husband wants to do. Sometimes it gets really irritating. And we always have to discuss how the money’s being spent.

Coworker 2: Well, I don’t have to worry about what my husband wants to do, but I have the kids and they take all the money anyway, so we don’t get to do much.

Me: …

Coworker 1: You, you don’t have to worry about either, do you?

Me: No, I don’t.

Coworker 2: You get to do everything you want without worrying about your husband, your kids or money. What is that like?

Me: It’s pretty great, I guess.

Coworker 1: You need to travel even more than you already do. Take advantage.

Me: I agree.

Coworker 1: Yeah, now, while you don’t have to worry about any of the three!

Coworker 2: Yeah, now, while you have the dream trip trifecta!

I have been way, super busy this last week. I am surprised I have eaten, even. Ha, well that was almost funny because me forgetting to eat would be like Britney Spears forgetting to appear in front of a camera with gum in her mouth. It just would. not. happen. EVER.

Always finding time to waste, though, I’ve been momentarily distracted (read: consumed several minutes, maybe more) by this little internet psychic: 20 Questions.

Have you tried it? Are you not in pure SHOCK and AWE when it guesses what you’re thinking? So far, I have beat it only once when my object was “candle” and it asked me “Is this object round?” and since I have several square and oblong candles, I said “no.” It asked me if the object was tall and I said “yes” because candles can be tall but not in the 20 Question world, apparently. It is like when I asked my mom if I could try substituting Splenda for sugar in her cake recipe and she said “not if you still want to call it cake.” In her world, it is not “just like sugar.” At the end, 20 Questions told me I was wrong and that no, candles are round and short only and I lied and cheated to win. Still, I am in shock and awe.

This morning when the alarm went off, I thought it was Saturday. Not because it felt like Saturday but because I heard a different voice on the radio than I’m normally used to waking up to. It’s quite inconvenient for a radio d.j. to take vacation, really. It’s also a little scary that I’ve become so used to a certain voice in the morning, the voice of someone I don’t even know. The lesson in this: ask for one of those nifty iHome alarm clocks for Christmas. But we won’t go there today and talk about the voiceless house, oh no, because there are other things to talk about.

Like knees. My little knee has been upset a little all week- I know, I didn’t even whine and cry about it. Much. Just be glad I don’t know your phone number, or you would probably be ready to cut the thing off for me by now. It’s decided to swell up and was at it’s worst point yesterday. The weird thing about it is, unlike a couple weeks ago, there’s no pain. I ran on Wednesday with no pain but I couldn’t help but feel as though I was being “bad” because, oh my heck, the swelling! Today it appears as though it’s going back to normal, which only leads me to believe that the knee issue is work related. Lesson learned: offices cause me injury, I am certain. If I had the option to go and move all day, I would likely have no knee problems and also, a better caboose. But alas, I can’t stop buying cute baby clothes (for my nephew) and the dog has become accustomed to food so, I have to sit in this chair.

Other than knees, life is looking quite bright right now. It has everything, okay 99%, to do with my upcoming trip. I am flying, on Thanksgiving nonetheless, East to see my nephew (and, oh yeah, his parents) and duh, of course it’s all I can think about. Hence the fact that, I kid you not, I have an entire suitcase of unwrapped Christmas presents already packed. That little kid is a drooling, screaming gift magnet.

Sometimes, it’s really tough to be away from him. But it’s also incredibly beneficial. Rather than the comfort in having family just up the street like my childhood, our family is now forced to make every moment count. It’s not something we grew up doing and it’s not something I think our society is accustomed to. We have to learn to deduce what’s really important and what really matters to us. Because we’re far away and because my brother-in-law’s career will continue on that path, we have learned to adapt. I’m thankful to have been stretched in this capacity. I’m thankful to know that distance does not make relationships impossible and that it can, in fact, make them better.

Looking back ten or even five years, I had such a different perspective on adult family life. A life where people separate and generations make more generations. I thought then that it was not my life. I thought that families that came together, gathered around a fire and laughed on holidays were only in LL Bean catalogs. They were there because they had to be, because it looked good. Now, I know different. I know that my family comes together, gathers around whatever they can and laughs (usually about ourselves and how we’re utterly shocked that we turned out even half-way normal at all) because we want to.

At the risk of sounding completely ridiculous, nothing feels better than that. Nothing feels better than knowing that the person I am, the person I’m still striving to be, knows that she has finally come far enough to appreciate her place in the world and in her family, equally.

Lesson learned: Be thankful.

Yesterday, I was sent on a search. I needed to find gold rope. Not just any gold rope, but rope appropriate for the occasion. Appropriate for stringing up just so, for coordinating with the other colors, for looking “nice but not too nice.”

I was sent on this search by my friend, the one with whom I’m attempting to create things. Was the gold rope necessary? Not really. But it is what came from her imagination and I had a spare hour so I searched.

Wandering through the craft store, it all just started to become a little bit much. Not only was I not able to find gold rope, I wasn’t sure I cared. I’m known for taking things on. Projects, people, animals, you name it, I will take it. I will take it and do it well and not rest until it’s done. None of that, however, means I’m passionate about it. Passion, for me, is not a command. It’s not run by a switch that turns on and off when I need it. It’s more of a spontaneous fashion type of passion (excuse the rhyme, I stole it from Barry). When I’ve got it, I’ve got it and, by all means, I need to take advantage of it.

This gold rope wasn’t doing it for me. And more so, all that comes with the gold rope. I’m creating the creations, I’m working on the work but something just isn’t making me gung-ho on this whole deal. My friend assures me that I’m doing fine but I’m not. I don’t have that gold rope passion that she has. And it struck me right there in the store: I need to stop this madness.

No longer purposeful in my search, I ended up on an isle filled with hundreds of Christmas ornaments. I stood in that isle, looked around, took a deep breath and said a little prayer.

Right there, surrounded by the mass-produced signs of the season, I was calm. I was calm and I knew what I had to do.

Later in the evening, I talked with my friend. I told her I wasn’t feeling this. I am working over forty hours a week, trying to meet writing deadlines, sitting on two different boards and training for a marathon. My energy is spread too thin to do the job I think I need to do, which is nothing less than perfection. I told her I’d rather be out extra cash and happy than trying to sell and stressed out with one another.

Being the great person she is, she understood, which is more refreshing than I can describe. She’s busy too, spread very thin, so I was afraid. In the past, I’ve had worse reactions. The reactions that say “no, I’m not mad” but what’s really underlying is “ I am going to be mad for six months and probably not talk to you for at least half that.” Thank heaven and earth I am past those days, those relationships. I had no reason to be afraid this time.

Now, instead, I have permission, from both my friend and myself, to take a back seat for a while. We’re still going to create things together and we’re still going to meet our selling commitments but now, I don’t have to worry. I may or may not be as productive. I may or may not make as much money. But I will still have my sanity and I will still have my friend, and I will not feel the need to aimlessly wander through Christmas décor searching for answers. Answers that, I know, are already in me.