the run
We took the ferry over with a crowd of other runners, all in orange shirts. The sky was mostly slate grey. The breeze coming off the water was cool. Once on the island it started to rain. Greg and I just wandered around for a while but when the rain began falling in earnest we found a big maple tree to stand under until it let up some. It smells so wonderful on that island compared to the city, lake wind fresh.
They say that there were 12,000 runners and I can believe that, it felt like we were a part of a great orange snake slithering around the island. I enjoyed the run very much. The rain stopped just before the start and there was live music playing every few kilometers along the route and it was all park land, lots of trees, nice smelling grasses, and the north side of the island gives you a lovely view of the city and on the south side it is open lake. I lost Greg right off the bat and didn’t see him again until the end. For the first seven kilometers I felt great but at that point runners around me were picking up the pace and I figured I should to, which was a mistake for me because by the eight kilometer I wanted to stop. I didn’t, although I slowed right down. I thought once I saw the finish line I could push myself into a faster pace but I had nothing left. Oh well. I finished and that is the main thing but my time was over an hour –1 hour, 3 minutes and 8 seconds. Greg, I think, said his was 56 mins and something which is great considering he went for a jog maybe six times (if that) to get ready for it.
After the run, we hung around on the island for a short while and then went home. It was a fun weekend. Saturday morning we went to a driving range and hit a bucket of balls, lazed around the house and back yard in the afternoon and in the evening Monica and I went to see the movie Madagascar and had such a great laugh together over the Lemurs.
four more days
The summer when I was twelve, I was playing in this overgrown field with friends and a few of my sisters. If I can remember right we were kicking off our flip flops, seeing how far they would go and then running barefoot through this long grass to retrieve them. As I was running I stepped on what I first thought was a very sharp rock but what turned out to be the bottom half of a beer bottle and it cut deeply into the inside of my foot. I had to get several stitches and for the longest time it wouldn’t heal. It was getting to a point that I was scared to put any weight on that foot because if I pulled at all on that area, simply by taking a step it would open and start bleeding again. Eventually of course it did heal but it left me with a foot with a little portion out of it, right where the arch is. Actually this did me well when the movie "Jaws" came around when, while hanging out in someone’s back porch, we were reliving several of the scenes including the “who had the biggest scar” scene, I was half proud to pull off my sock and show them my small shark (beer bottle) bite.
Anyway, this foot never ever gave me any trouble until now. Dare I say thirty years later and I always been a walker – if I can hoof it I will, only taking transit when it is absolutely necessary. And I have been jogging off and on for years but I guess because I am doing a little bit more running now for some reason it isn’t agreeing with this foot… it’s blistered and hard all around the old scar. I’m going to have to find some way to wrap it on run day so it doesn’t bother me.
I just got back from a great jog minus the bothersome foot. Purple Lilac and crimson leave dogwoods are all a blossom. But as hard as I try I doubt I will be able to run this 10km under an hour. Unless I am actually running more than 10km now? I use mapquest to figure out the kms I run but the route they give me from one destination to the other is not quite the route I take. I run through as much of the residential areas that I can and the mapquest route is pretty much as the crow flies so I wonder if I can add .5km for the zig zagging I do? and also I have traffic lights to contend with and a few hills. The Island that this race is taking place on is pretty flat. Sooooo, maybe? that is my goal anyway – under an hour. Four days to go. I am going to jog five kms on Friday and that is all I am going to do for this run. It is up to the Gods now if they want to grant me extra speed. Greg and I picked up our run packages and they give you a ferry ticket, a little timing chip for the laces of your sneakers and a t-shirt. It's all quite exciting.
new journal
Erin bought me a journal and a bookmarker for mother’s day. There is a picture of a pug on both. I put the bookmarker immediately to work. It is presently sitting happily between pages 546 and 547 of a paperback. Its purple tassel hanging majestically over the front cover. The journal, however, sits still untouched reminding me how little I have been writing. So, tomorrow I have decided to throw it in my backpack, take my bike and go off somewhere to some yet unvisited park or place in the city and find a spot to write. The first thing that catches my attention I will write about it.. a person, a tree, a quarrel, a patch of crab grass, an abandoned shopping cart. I think maybe every Wednesday I will do this, make a little adventure out of it. If i like how it turns out i will put it on my blog. Maybe I will call it my Wednesday journal and hopefully I can get going again.
like colours 
some sun
I finally got a hold of this week, which is pretty pathetic considering it is Thursday. Now I have two days to catch up on everything I neglected. Although I did get a lot of yard work done and I am finally seeing a moss green fuzz where I planted new grass seed and I removed a lot of dandelions. I’m going to buy tomatoes this weekend. My mother and father in law are coming up in June so I would love to have this place ship shape. They have two daughter- in-laws. One is out of this world efficient and then there is me. They just spent some time visiting the first one and really I don’t know what I can do to make this visit as pleasant for them. Note to self…just don’t panic. All said I am looking forward to their visit.
Then there is that race next Sunday. I went for a jog yesterday down by the water. It is beautiful down there but so many people. I didn’t have a route and didn’t know the distances so I just fell in stride behind this couple, who looked like they must jog 10 km on a regular basis. They didn’t know I was following because with each stride I was getting further and further behind but I could still see them in the distance so I kept to their route. They took me behind the marina where I have never been before and it was so lovely. Lots of ducks in the water and one lone cormorant flying above. The water was very blue and quiet, with a line of beautiful boats stretched across it, reflection and all. It was about then that I lost the couple and started running around in circles – I ended up jogging across a huge parking lot and back onto some familiar terrain and then home. I am pretty confident I will finish the race but now I am hoping I can do it in a time that isn’t too embarrassing. I am going to use Greg as my goal. I won’t be able to keep up with him but I am hoping to keep him in my sights and near enough that I can give a little push at the end to close the gap a little. (Sounds like I’m talking about the derby?)
Housework, jogging and reading, seems like all I do these days, that and hang out with the girls when they are not at school or with friends. However, I have been thinking all the time lately on how to jumpstart my life again and I'm making a promise to myself to get out of this rut once and for all and get myself on the right path.
what to do
I dreamt about dead caribou. They were lying all over a beach and I was stepping around them trying not to touch their cold, wet fur and bloated bodies. Their tongues were blue and hanging out of their mouths and they all had very shiny black hoofs, as if someone applied boot polish to them. It was a warm morning and the flies were hovering everywhere, some landing on the yellowy white of the caribou’s eyes. I couldn’t get off the beach because it was an inlet with rocky cliffs surrounding it. I was feeling very remorseful and felt very trapped. Then I woke up to the sound of Monica’s alarm clock playing the theme song to Love Story (which can be a little grating but she likes it) and the cat coming up the hallway meowing and I felt like oh no, there won’t be enough coffee in the world to jumpstart this day for me. Monday and the week stretches out in front of me and I’m feeling very disconnected. I don’t know why? The weekend was really nice. Greg and I got some running in. We went out to supper last night with friends and the girls had friends in and out the entire weekend, making the house a little chaotic but loud and alive. But last night it took me forever to fall asleep – I felt all this anxiety and really my life is so quiet that I don’t have much to be anxious about. It drives me when I can’t put a finger on what is bothering me. I think it is my lack of smarts. I’m always thinking if I was just a little smarter maybe I wouldn't be so intimated by everything. I know a person should be happy with who they are and not wish to be someone they’re not and I know I'm not an intellect. However, it does bother me.
And even if I can’t have the smarts that would still be O.K. if I could just be happy toiling at something, at anything, just getting up every morning knowing my purpose and doing it. But I don’t know what that could possibly be?
There is this guy who works at the grocery store, who always walks with this air of importance and he should because he has a worthwhile and busy job gathering the carts from around the parking lot and bringing them to the front of the store. It is a physical and necessary job for the store and he is out there no matter how cold or hot, slamming cart into cart and then wheeling them back to the store in one long train. He likes his job. You can tell in his stance and his purposeful walk that he takes a lot of pride in what he does. I actually look for him when I go there just to see some one who is busy at a job they feel good about. He almost became a short story but i got majorly stuck after the third paragraph. Anyway, there is a huge part of me that wants a job like that. Just to keep busy, just to be tired at the end of the day knowing I put a full day in and did my job well, not feeling I was second-rate at a job involving higher learning.
So right now I have no idea where this post is going. Be smart or push carts? I’m starting to think those dead caribou represent my brain cells.
trillium
I’m going slightly mad
It’s freezing. I was half expecting my daffodils to show up at the back door last evening - asking to come in. I don’t know why I’m blogging this morning, I really have nothing to say and it isn’t like I don’t have a few other things to do.
So here’s a little Queen
When the outside temperature rises
And the meaning is oh so clear
One thousand and one yellow daffodils
Begin to dance in front of you - oh dear
Are they trying to tell you something
You’re missing that one final screw
You’re simply not in the pink my dear
To be honest you haven’t got a clue
tulip
Embedded moons
That sounds nice – it is what the scientist believe are hidden in the gaps in the rings of Saturn. The Cassini found one new moon so far.
Well, it is like a mini moon considering it is only 7 km wide. (I believe?) But if it could sustain life somehow than it’s the prefect moon for me – I wouldn’t mind having my own moon. I would build my house on the equator and make daily trips to the poles. I wonder what my view would be like? Would it look like a billion tiny icy stars ripping constantly overhead? How would Saturn look behind all those icy particles of ring?
18 days to go before the run. All signed up. I can’t believe I am doing this - I don’t handle crowds well at all. My neighbour is all mad at me because my crazy ground cover, which I tried to dig up as best I could, has spread beneath the fence and onto her property. She was cursing a blue streak at me from behind the fence. I just love her. Another reason I need my own moon.
sunday
So I should wish these pansies [poems] to be taken as thoughts rather than anything else; casual thoughts that are true while they are true and irrelevant when the mood and circumstance changes. I would like them to be as fleeting as pansies, which wilt so soon, and are so fascinating with their varied faces, while they last. And flowers, to my thinking, are not merely pretty-pretty. They have in their fragrance an earthiness of the humus and the corruptive earth from which they spring. And pansies, in their streaked faces, have a look of many things beside heartsease.
D.H. Lawrence
March 1929
Several knots and a burial
Greg took the girls off to see if they can trade in Monica’s old snowboard for a skateboard for her. I am not 100% sure I want her to have a skateboard – but what can you do?
This same daughter, yesterday morning, wanted braids. As I was trying to get the comb through her thick locks, I came to the realization of just how inept I am at this mothering gig. I don’t know how I missed the fact that she hadn’t been combing her hair for what must have been the last few weeks or so. My power of observation is minimal at best. As I was trying to gently tug at this huge nest of knotted hair, I had to sigh and apologize to her for my lack of effort and for failing to notice once again the little things. The only excuse I have is that she wears this knitted cap with her hair in a ponytail and I was thinking she looked rather smart, unaware that she had abandoned the brush entirely.
Anyway, after about fifteen minutes, I gave her the braids she wanted although they still hid many knots and I asked her why she wanted her hair in this style? Her answer was that she wanted to be like the singer in the new Black Eye Peas video and she stood up, held the tips of her braids and started singing, “don’t phunk with my heart.”
After they went to school, I found the silence a little too much and so I left dishes, some bookkeeping and what not and went for a long jog. Yesterday was the first truly nice day in about two weeks and although there was a lot of traffic, and construction at almost every corner, I was enjoying my jog. Most of my music selections were sort of blending in nicely with the construction sounds. At one point this cardinal flew low over the road, carrying this long dangling earthworm. As he turned upwards just in front of me, his belly and his wings flashed pink, the colour of canned salmon. The image was loud but still very silent. (if that makes any sense) - Yesterday my sister was buried and I didn’t go home for it. A frozen ground separated her funeral and her burial by five months. I was never planning on going back for it but I never quite planned on the silence of yesterday to be that overwhelming because of it. It wasn’t quite melancholy I was feeling, maybe just feeling a little off kilter not being there. The day here was of cardinals and men with yellow hard hats tearing up bits of road, and new leaves on trees and I was having a hard time putting it together with a burial 1600 kms away. It was only when I was rounding the corner onto my street that Robert Smith helped me out a little when Pictures of You started playing.
I was suddenly remembering a lot of little things about her that I had forgotten. Some of it made me smile and I felt (feel) very fortunate to have had her in my life. A lot of who I am, I contribute to her. As I slowed to a walk I found myself looking up into the trees with all that new growth and feeling for the first time that this winter, hopefullly, is finally over.
mellow yellow
getting nervous
May and it’s cold this morning. I am sitting here procrastinating about my jog. I’ll go although I do feel a little off. I am up to six km but it’s tough. I have been out more often than Greg but he still finds it easier than me. The count down is on. 27 days to go before the run. I am already nervous. Mostly just thinking about the crowd that will be there. This event is quite well advertised throughout the city so I can only imagine that there will be a throng of runners. The only other time I did anything remotely like this was last summer, back east. It was a five km and I think the turnout was like 30-35 runners and that had me all freaked out. I couldn’t find my pace, my breathing was all wrong - So, in the midst of a thousand I should be pretty much done before I start. The thing is - are we truly committed? Well, the fact that we didn’t yet sign up for it maybe tells us something. I told myself if my run goes well this morning and I don’t need to stop at all, I’ll sign up when I get back. I’m signing Greg up too – regardless if he is ready – because heck, I am not doing this alone.
Sunday
