catheroominations

1. Driving down 101 in the sun
2. Wine tasting while everyone else is at work
3. Matte’s reaction to where we are going for his birthday weekend
4. Hot tubbing under the stars
5. Tranquility for Two at Sycamore Springs

1. Fridays
2. Spending an evening with friends, remembering one we have lost
3. Working from home and getting lots done
4. Paperbackswap.com (Even better than BookMooch! Thanks, Tobie!)
5. Adding more foods to my diet of Saltine crackers and Diet 7UP (I’ve had stomach issues the past two days – ick!)

Yesterday I joined nearly 20,000 women (and a few men) in running the 2008 Nike Women’s Half Marathon in San Francisco. Of the three half marathons I have done this year, this one has got to be my favorite. It was also the hardest, the most rewarding, and the most emotional.

keep reading Run Like a Girl

ad·dic·tion (É™-dÄ­k’shÉ™n) n. Compulsive physiological and psychological need for a habit-forming substance.

For as long as I can remember, I have had a problem with food. I have an insatiable sweet tooth. I grew up on Cookie Crisp, Trix, Apple Jacks and Fruit Loops and normally ate two bowls full every morning. Dessert was a regular part of the dinner ritual. My school lunches always had cookies, or Snack Pack puddings. I didn’t like to eat fruit and only ate it when I had to. The same with vegetables. If I ate toast, I’d load it with butter and sprinkle a mix of sugar and cinnamon on top. I loved ice cream sundaes and would fill the bowl with whipped cream and chocolate sauce. I once had a babysitter who taught me to jazz up Oreo cookies by squirting Redi-Whip on them. Yum! When I was old enough to go to a school where I could buy what I wanted, I opted for peanut chews and chocolate shakes as my lunch. Even now, if I were to see a peanut chew, I would have trouble not taking a bite, or possibly eating the whole thing.

I grew up chubby and inactive. I thought I was ugly and fat. But rather than make changes to my bad habits, I took solace in more food.

keep reading Learning to say no. Again.

This week I had planned to spend some girl time with my good friend MB in Napa. She’s here from Lexington, KY and meeting some of her gal pals for a week of wine tasting, pampering and possibly some piercing or permanent inking in honor of a milestone birthday.

Unfortunately, I had to cancel because I was asked to take my boss’ place at a training course this week. In Mexico. I quickly renewed my passport, picked an awesome hotel with fantastic photo opportunities, and was learning things like one should never say “Yo soy caliente,” unless one means “hot” in the Paris Hilton sense and not the “I am sweating my face off” sense. And then aye caramba, just days after I told MB I couldn’t make it to Napa, my plans changed. Mexico was out, because my services were requested in North Carolina to help with a documentation emergency. I’m just a tech writer. I don’t feel important enough or smart enough to fly out here and help (the depth of my self-esteem knows no bounds). When this trip was presented to me (read: when I was told I was going to work in NC), it was suggested that I come Every. Single Week. That’s right. Fly out every Monday and home every Friday. But that’s not feasible for several reasons, so I’m here this week and next and then we’ll see where we go from there.

This morning, I awoke at 3:45 AM. (That 3:45 was in all caps, by the way, because I was yelling it.) Three forty-five in the morning is not morning. It’s still night. But I got up and was at SFO in plenty of time for my early morning flight. I felt like a zombie. I was there, but not really there and I didn’t remember how I got there. So, when I saw someone I thought I knew, I wasn’t surprised I couldn’t remember his name. Also, turns out, I didn’t know him, exactly. It was Adam from Myth Busters and he was standing near me at the security check point. He is much taller than I thought. Also, he’s kinda hot, in a geeky way. Señor Savage es caliente.

So here I sit in a Residence Inn, while Matte gets DirecTV installed at our house, clears out our apartment, bolts bookcases to the walls for earthquake safety, gets the fence repaired that the fumigators busted into slats, waits for AT&T to set up our phones, and generally gets us moved in to our house. I would much rather be there, helping him, (and watching the cats slide all over the hardwood floors) but I sort of need this job to help pay that mortgage we just signed up for for the next 30 years.

Inside the tunnels, the stone tunnels, are the trains
And inside the trains, the steel trains, are the bags of skin
And inside the thin skin are the blood and the bones
And inside the blood and the bones are the dreams
It really is that simple, it really is that fragile
I am one such dream inside the blood and the bones and the bags and the
trains and the tunnels
There’s a dream sitting next to me
There’s a dream across from me
Fragile

We all know that one day
The tunnels will crumble and the trains will stop
And the blood and the bags and the bones will be gone
And in between now and then something will happen to all the dreams
I don’t know what will happen to the other dreams

But I know what will happen to me
Sure as rain, I know, sure as winter

I’ll breathe and grieve and struggle and strive and love, love
And if I’m lucky once, just once, the dream will drop to the floor like a vase
and shatter in shards of silence
Where I will see, I will see in the pattern of the pieces, I will
See something

This will, this will happen
But now the train with all its fragile cargo rolls on.

– Peter Mulvey

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