So Bre, in all her coolness, allowed me to pretty much tag myself with this looks like a meme but has all the emotion and feel of an interview, type thing.

She asks me five questions, I answer. You’ll see more details at the end. It should also be noted that I worked twelve hours yesterday, ran five miles and then ate a ginormous dinner and had some homemade rum (stories and/or photos to come later but as a preview, there is a reason that stuff is sometimes called FIRE WATER). I have also not had enough sleep.

Anyway.

1. What do you wish everyone else knew about runners?
That we come in all shapes, sizes and abilities, that we don’t mind stinking and that running is a part of who we are as much as our legs themselves. Also, a marathon is 26.2 miles. All marathons*.

2. Has having your nephew visit made your biological clock start to tick?
You know, I thought it might but then my sister turned into some kind of Colorado socialite where she’d go live it up like a rock star having high tea and going to see chick flicks and those nights I spent up babysitting pretty much made my eggs stop, go into a holding pattern and take a breather. They’re on a chaise lounge somewhere, sitting still and waiting another five or so years, I think. Nonetheless, I would go to the moon and back for that kid, no question.

3. What is your shopping kryptonite - that is … what can you never quite resist?
Good travel deals, just about everything in the running store, flip flops and chai tea. I don’t know as any of that “counts” as shopping but my bank account probably thinks so.

4. Are you crafty/handy around the house? If so… how?
When I bought my place and moved in, I did a lot of work on it. I spent two months painting, flooring, hanging window coverings and putting $&%! together. I thought it was fun, then I got over it. Now, I’d probably either hire someone or just live with things the way they are. However, I can fix a toilet like nobodies business which probably has a lot more to do with genetics than actual skill.

5. What has blogging done for you?
Probably more than I can say. Which is a cheesy, cop out of an answer but it’s true. There are so many things I’ve learned from this entire process, I don’t know where to begin. On any given day, I rarely know what’s going to come out here and yet, I always have something. I think I just have a lot of words in me. I don’t think I’ll ever be totally convinced they actually belong anywhere. And probably more than that, I like reading the words of others. Even if this blog ended, I’d still be wholeheartedly addicted to everyone else’s.

Thanks, Bre. You rock.

And now, here’s the rest of the deal, if you’re so inclined to play along:

• Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me!”
• I will respond by e-mailing you five questions. I get to pick them, and you have to answer them all. (Don’t forget to leave me your email.)
• You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
• You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
• When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

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*Unless it’s an ultra marathon, in which case it’s more than 26.2 miles.

Scene: A suburban UPS store.

Me: Dropping off a return box of shoes from Zappos. (Do you not adore them?!)

Girl at counter: Bopping her head along to the radio.

Man across room: Tall, built, dressed in jeans and a black leather jacket. You would not want to meet him in a dark alley.

“Hi,” says the girl behind the counter.

“Hi,” I say, “I just have this return package.”

“Okay! Cool!” She’s very peppy. “Hey, do you know who this is on the radio?” she asks me and tall, built, leather man.

I do know who it is. It’s George Michael, and the song is Faith.

“It’s George Michael,” I tell her.

“Oh yeah, I was thinking Michael Bolton!”

“Oh, definitely not,” I say.

The hugely tall and now nearly frightening man in leather crosses the room toward me, bends a little closer to talk to me and says “Ma’am, not meaning anything by this, but you were really quick to answer that question.”

“I know,” I say, “it’s my curse. Bad, huh?”

“No,” he says, “bad would be if you walked out of here letting this girl think it was Michael Bolton.”

I love people.

I think I’ve commented on a handful of your blogs that I just don’t know what to say. I’ve commented to myself, a hundred times, as to whether or not I should say anything at all. I suppose I still haven’t reached a conclusion. While I’m not one who can ignore feelings, who can pretend like her heart doesn’t feel as though it weighs two hundred pounds, I also don’t want to be disrespectful. In my mind, I don’t want to make this tragedy my tragedy.

But it is. It’s ours. It’s the news we wake up to in the morning and the tears we sleep with at night. It’s the shattering of our realities, of our comfort and safe places. And whether now or down the road, it is a part of the way we see life.

In the Spring of 1999, I was sitting in a college classroom when news of the Columbine High School Tragedy came in. It was a Philosophy course, which seemed more ironic then than it does now. The classroom I was in, immersed in higher learning and the smell of old linoleum, was merely an hour’s drive from the high school where twelve students and one teacher were killed that day. We turned on the television in the classroom, and watched the news. When class was over, no one moved. Our professor, doing her best counselor impression, asked us if we wanted to talk about it. Thirty-seven students sat in that classroom with nothing to say.

In the hours and days that would follow, it became clear: safety was relative. And that’s not something a college student worries about. We spent days in class and nights in groups, the worries there but so very disconnected, generally, from anything life-altering. From anything evil. Eight years later, I still remember that feeling of a changed reality. And still, I cannot begin to imagine what the Virginia Tech students, faculty, and their families are feeling today.

This morning, while attempting to get myself back into the land of higher learning, I had a meeting at a local college with a department dean. It was, of course, scheduled a week ago but I know better than to think I wasn’t there for a reason today. So there on a bench, outside a building in which I received most of my undergraduate education, in the drizzling rain and fog, I said a prayer. A lot of prayers.

Over the weekend, yet another relationship split has been in the news. Prince William and Kate Middleton’s break up has been a top story on several news websites. And of course, following any high-profile break up, there’s loads upon loads of speculation as to “what went wrong.”

London tabloids, often leading the pack in “reporting” celebrity splits, wasted no time jumping on the assumption train. It was pressure from the Queen, one says. Another says it was Prince Charles who urged William to break off the relationship if he could not “commit to marriage.” Yet another says the fate of the relationship was neither influenced by family nor the two people actually in the relationship but rather, a royal summit.

None of these, in their ever scandalous tabloid nature of course, are suggesting that maybe they just broke up. Maybe it just didn’t work. And when there’s any suggestion of Kate, at the age of twenty-five, deciding that she didn’t want the lifestyle of a princess, well that’s just squashed immediately. Not that I claim to know anything more than I’m reading in the news (which equals basically nothing) but if that might be the reason, well I can certainly relate to that.

Just before I began this blog, I had made a decision to no longer be in a relationship that, though no crowns were being placed on any heads, certainly felt high-profile at times. I dated a man who was a very kind, intelligent person who also happened to already be married. To his career, that is. He was a physician, a surgeon in fact. Anyone who has ever been married, dated or otherwise in any relationship with a doctor knows this: It is not a job; it’s a lifestyle and a calling. It is first, last and best. I saw this from the beginning and it’s not at all something I ever held against him. In fact, I admired it about him. Up until we met, I had never witnessed anything like it. I never knew someone could dedicate their entire life to a career of helping people like he did.

In the time we dated, which I’ve heard since was a “record breaking” duration for most doctors in their residency, there were numerous instances in which I felt our relationship was under intense scrutiny. Looking back now, I can see it was mostly because, well, he was a catch. In addition to being in his residency, having graduated at the top of his class and giving his spare time to research and international medical outreach programs, he was also very popular. No one had to tell me this, it was one of the reasons I was attracted to him in the first place. He was friendly, and before I had any inkling as to what his work was, I was impressed at how easy to get along with he was. This, of course, translated into all of his life. People liked him and therefore, were very critical of who else did, too.

Any event we attended, any time we’d run into anyone somewhere in town, it was a little like a test. A pop quiz, really. When you go to a baseball game, in your shorts and tank top, the last thing you’re really planning for is to run into five nurses looking you up and down like you have arms growing where your ears should be. I was assured by my boyfriend that this wasn’t an issue but when it happens enough times, it stays on your mind.

There was also the issue of time. While I don’t claim to be the most available person in terms of time, dating this man was sort of like what I’d imagine scheduling the launching of a space shuttle would be.

6:04 – meet for dinner (not 6:00 because, well, the only thing that starts on time is surgery)
6:04:42- wait while cell phone is answered
6:05- order dinner to go, emergency call
6:06- say “bye and see ya later”
10:00- finally eat dinner, reheated
10:00:25- boyfriend passes out because he’s worked eighteen of the last twenty-four hours

The time we were able to spend together was, at best, erratic. This also made life challenging when it came time for those stages in a relationship where you meet each other’s friends and, when you meet the parents. In the end, it resulted in me meeting a few of his friends, which also happened to be fellow residents, (because yes, that part of hospital life really is like Grey’s Anatomy) and him meeting about as many of mine. We never did meet one another’s parents, either (and this had little if anything to do with my hesitation to bring people home). Yes, it was strange.

That wasn’t really what any of it came down to, though. The demanding schedule, the exhaustion, the scrutiny, those things can be overcome, I think. The real contributing factor, the one it took me months to be able to accept, is that it just wasn’t the right relationship. Toward the end, which also happened to be toward the end of his residency, I started talking about taking a trip together. He started talking about getting married and moving across the country. At first, I thought we were just on different pages. I thought if I’d give it time, I’d be ready. For the move, a marriage, a lifetime with this man. But I wasn’t, I never got there.

Eventually, we had to break up. Taking a step back and looking at our relationship, there were loose ends all over the place. There were parts of our lives, personalities, likes and dislikes, and life goals that just didn’t match up; that weren’t going to match up. Love was, as wonderful as it could be, not enough. It too would have faded. So we (yes, shockingly, WE) made the decision to break it off. To this day it remains one of the hardest yet least regrettable things I’ve had to do and I think that’s partially because things looked so right to everyone else; which I’d use to fool myself into thinking it was right for me, too. The question of “why did you break up?” could not have been answered by the standard replies. It just was.

That’s why it’s so odd to me that we’re fascinated by break ups in the media. Heaven forbid people in their twenties (or any age, for that matter) decide that things just aren’t going to work and they need to go their separate ways rather than spend any more time on something that’s not right. Maybe that’s what William and Kate think, too. I don’t know, of course, but let me assure you, it’s likely not nearly as interesting or scandalous a process as the tabloids might have us believe.

UPDATE: I meant to add this before now but this “Believe” exercise thing is, apparently, something well known on NPR. I don’t know who came up with it or how it came about, but I think it’s awesome.
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Well first she did it, and I thought “wow, I cannot attempt that.” Then, she did it and I thought “dang, this isn’t going to be easy.” Then, she did it too and I thought “this is just too much.”

But, like most things I do, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure about it and yet, I did it anyway. After all, I am, if nothing else, a believer.

I believe that it’s okay to like stuff. I believe we are too hard on ourselves for wanting to consume what’s out there. The issue isn’t spending or buying, it’s control.

I believe happiness is a choice. Every thing, every day. Digging through crap will result in finding a pony.

I believe in the little things, like holding a door and saying “good morning.”

I believe life is very, very short but too long a journey to travel alone.

I believe our bodies are a gift, and we should make every effort to learn to love and treat them as such. I believe we are built to break a sweat.

I believe in kindness, and empathy.

I believe in the power of family, babies and puppies.

I believe you can find peace on the sea, at the top of a mountain or on your living room sofa.

I believe we were created, because I believe there are things that science just cannot explain.

I believe there is absolutely no replacement for education.

I believe music should move you, even if it’s just dancing in the car.

I believe you should approach every situation as if those involved have the best intentions. You will sometimes be disappointed.

I believe, when all else fails, you should laugh.

I believe the ocean has the capability to cure.

I believe shoes should not hurt your feet. This is probably also why I have forty-two pairs of flip flops (a.k.a. “thongs” for my Aussie friends).

I believe in Fall football, drinks with friends, and Sunday afternoon walks.

I believe you can make friends anywhere. I believe I have.

I believe a group, whether your soccer team or your entire nation, must believe in itself to succeed.

I believe we have a responsibility to our planet. I believe most of us don’t take this seriously.

I believe in questioning “the way we have always done it.”

I believe some things are worth the calories.

I believe in travel and broadening your horizons.

I believe harmless superstitions are healthy.

I believe in working hard, and playing hard.

I believe, even with all this, I’m really only on the cusp of knowing all I will truly believe in this life.

I have a friend who is picking up his life, quitting his job (with a company he started) and moving across the country. To me, that’s massive change. But he says he just wants to be happy. He knows it’s a risk, but something stronger than fear of that risk is driving him.

I know some other people, apparently not happy in their lives, who decided to go outside their marriages to find happiness. They claim they’ve found it, even though there are consequences. Honestly, I don’t even think they know the extent of the consequences yet.

I consider myself lucky. I believe happiness, or even the act of looking for it, is largely a choice. I believe even with the bad days and the hard times in life, you can still find a way to be happy. I believe that even with mountains of debt, life-threatening illness or great loss, there is still a chance for happiness. I have seen people do it- it is entirely possible. I’m not sure we’re all cut out for that though, half the time I’m not sure I am. But that doesn’t stop me from trying.

I suppose that’s the basis of the two situations I mentioned. When moving your entire life for a shot at happiness is less frightening than staying where you are, and being unhappy, the choice seems easy. With the second situation, though, I can’t agree. Because the other thing I believe about happiness? It cannot come at the expense of others. Once your choices begin to affect the life of someone else and their shot at happiness, it becomes wrong. And selfish.

I’m always amazed, though, the extent to which people will go to find a place where they consider themselves happy. Blinded by the thought of love, or change, or the ever-elusive “newness” of it all, I wonder if they’re really conscious of any reality at all? I know our happiness comes in different packages, but are we sometimes fooled by the thought?

How do you find your happiness? How do you know that it’s real? How do you know that it’s right?

How do you know it’s Spring in Colorado? It snows. And it’s freezing on Easter. It was a wet, heavy snow. More like rain that just decided to be colder, and more spiteful. Like a scorned- dare I say- woman getting her one last gesture in revenge before she was finally chased out by the new love. It was cold and uncomfortable. The sort of cold that, when coming out of the movie theatre late Friday night and having to scrape windows, made me think seriously of moving to the desert. I even dreamed about it that night, hearing over and over in my mind “it’s a dry heat.”

Nonetheless, it is Springtime. There are certain signs everywhere and though it was cold and likely will be again later this week, I know I’m not the only one who’s impatiently waiting for warmer days. And I’d be lying, a little, if I said I didn’t at least like this weather to an extent.

Spring weather is very unique in Colorado. And though I hate, hate, hate to be cold, the erratic nature of this transition in seasons fits me. It changes it’s mind, seemingly on a whim (though always carefully calculated behind the scenes) and when everyone thinks it’s become boring and predictable, it throws something new into the mix. Though, I assure you, if I were weather, I’d never throw in snow. It’d be more like sunshine. And beach chairs. I digress.

I suppose this is why the desert will have to wait. I’m somewhat accustomed to this changing of seasons. It’s timing and it’s ability to surprise from one day to the next is comforting in a way. It’s weather that reminds you to soak up the moments, it reminds you of how to live. It’s weather that makes you draw every breath a little deeper, to let those mental pictures of smiles on faces and shadows on the ground sink in a little longer. It’s the kind of weather that makes you sit on the porch in the late afternoon, hoping to absorb a little sun in anticipation of upcoming getaways. It’s the kind of weather that makes you snuggle up one evening only to run through the grass barefoot and toss a ball around the next day.

Most of all, it has promise. Promise of newness, of warmth and of more. Promise of summer bar-b-ques, outdoor concerts and patio lunches. And really, in my mind, even if I have to endure some window scraping, there’s still nothing better than knowing the best, what I love and look forward to most, is yet to be.