June Ends and July Begins

Disgustingly hot and humid days have set in, and I grouse about them before and after each run and walk, but they've been so beautiful too.  A neighbor's Hollyhocks are blooming, all in shades of pink and white, and I dodge the bumblebees zipping around them as I return to the apartment every day.  One blissful 72° afternoon found me in the kitchen baking pumpkin-dark chocolate chip-chia seed muffins after catching a few minutes of nutritionist Joy Bauer's program on PBS that reminded me to eat more pumpkin, but other than the muffins and Saturday's made-late-at-night pie, it's been a no-bake summer so far.  

It's becoming a no-sit-still summer too, between the walks and the runs.  I'm plodding on with my return to the "Couch to 5K" learn-to-run plan and began Week 3 (of 9) this afternoon:  I can now comfortably run three minutes straight.  :)  By the end of next week, I'll have completed Week 4, which means. . .five minutes straight, and Week 5 ends with a 2-mile (or twenty-minute) run.  Progress, then!  I stopped mid-Week 5 in 2010, so the most I learned to run without stopping was eight minutes.  Even during the five-or-so 5k races and two half marathons I finished years ago, I couldn't run longer than eight minutes without stopping to walk before running again, so my being determined to do this thing properly this time, and to take my time with it, and to honor the learning process and the races and myself in this way has been a huge shift in perspective.  I like that it's hard.  I like that there's an ongoing learning involved in this.  I like that it makes me appreciate my body and good health all the more.  I like that it doesn't really come naturally to me but that there's something about it that has brought me back to it time after time since high school.  Running has always appealed to me so much, but I've never stuck with it.  The day I completed that first eight-minute run of Week 5 in 2010, I sent my parents a letter that mentioned it.  "Eight minutes straight!  I'm finally a runner!"  But then I didn't finish the last four weeks of the program.  Who knows.  It is one of the "Val, Val, Val" things that bothers me most, my slacking-off and not pushing myself with this, and I'm determined to become disciplined--or maybe, now, to remain disciplined--about this.  The challenge is good for me in so many ways, and dragging myself out into the humidity every other day for these runs is making this summer both so hard and so rich.  

On August Walks

 

 

 

I've been walking in the late afternoon and early evening when shadows are long.  Heading out first thing in the morning feels so much better but is too hard to coordinate with my work schedule, so I instead slather myself in SPF 100 sunscreen and hope for low-humidity hours between 2-6 pm. And no matter how disgustingly slick from sunscreen and sweat I am each time I arrive back at the apartment, the walks themselves are always therapeutic.  They are precious minutes of thinking, of praying--Grandma once shared the poem "Out in the Fields with God" with me, and it comes to mind during my walks--of telling people how pretty their dogs are as they bound past me, of admiring gardens and shadows and rock walls and faster-moving and better-looking bodies, of encouraging children as they wobble along on bikes as their parents jog along behind them, of breathing deeply, of being grateful for my health (because no matter how much slower or older I am than the Super! Toned! Twenty-Somethings! I am healthy enough to walk, period, and that's worth saying "Thank You" for), of wishing Mom were here with me so I could show her this sweet cottage of a home I'm hoping to get a good picture of without being spotted and shooed away by its owner; of remembering that between the tremors and other Lyme issues, Mom couldn't walk at this pace or for this long anymore anyway--and so then I just carry on a conversation with her in my head as I walk, the way I carry on with Papa and Grandma and Sommer and other loved ones I have to be content to hold in my heart since hand-in-hand is no longer an option, and the entire walk feels that much more like a prayer.  It's the Ivy that makes this house so sweet.  It's the dome shape that does it for me, Vally.  I love the Ivy, though.  Aunt Laurie had those beautiful bay windows, remember?  Yes.  I loved that house.  Love, love, love.  One of my college professors once told me that he thinks one of the keys to life is to be passionately in love with something every day of your life--a person, an idea, a cause, a flower, the moon, the ocean, a poem, a book, a movie, just something.  There is wisdom in that.  My younger brother and I would play a game of my invention on even car trips when we were kids:  We would have to come up with something--at least one thing--we liked about each house or yard we passed.  There we would sit, half-turned in the backseat of my parents' car, straining to take in the sights of fast enough to find that hurry!-just-one-thing! before it would pass from view.  Oh, yes, this is a Val game, for sure!  But I play it even now when I'm a few years shy of forty, and I hear us wildly laughing as little kids again as I find myself shouting out "That snowball bush!  That rock wall!  The way the sunlight's hitting that chair on their front porch!  That DOG!!!" in my head as I walk each afternoon.  And this week I think of dear Robin Williams and some of my own lowest lows, having struggled with depression for two-thirds of my life now, and I say prayers for him too as I huff and puff up the heights of hills and stairs.  Each return to the apartment sees me marking my mileage onto a calendar in the bathroom and awarding myself a pink "Thank You!" sticker for that day's walk.  "Who exactly are you thanking with these stickers?  Most people would do gold stars," Mike teased me the other night as I proudly slapped a new one into place.  But the "Thank You!" stickers suit me, and I enjoy seeing the strips of them I keep on the desk for this post-walk ritual.  I am thanking God, of course, and I am thanking myself for making the effort.  I am thanking neighbors who plant pretty flowers for no reason other than to add a little more beauty to life.  I am thanking animals and birds for existing.  I am thanking the children for being children--and their parents for giving them good childhood memories.  I am thanking my own parents and brothers and grandparents and friends for being there, period, and for all the love.  Oh, love!  Love, love, love!  I come back to it and come back for it and come back with it, over and over, day in and day out, and that is my biggest "Thank You!" of all.  

I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that...I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden. ~ A. Crowley

We had a day of near-70-degree weather this past week and now another couple inches of snow is on the ground. I am more than ready for spring. Especially because I had to leave my sweet little garden behind when I moved last fall, I am eager to see vivid colors outside again. Today is blindingly bright here, which is a wonderful change of pace, with the sunshine making all the snow sparkle, and I'll bundle up this afternoon in the many winter layers I am so tired of wearing and go for a long walk, but I am longing to see my beloved Daffodils sprouting up in yards all over town, to notice Forsythias and countless trees when they first start to turn their spring yellow-green, to smell heavenly Lilac bushes again, to watch Roses' blooms uncoil, and to feel cool grass under my bare feet again. I had a crying jag Thursday afternoon after spotting bulbs' shoots sprouting up in a neighbor's backyard on my walk home from work. I wanted so badly to be living in her tiny little house--one of the only tiny houses in the neighborhood, as all the rest are 3-or-more-floor Victorians converted into apartments--and making plans for that little yard. I wanted her soon-blooming flowers and her trees and her small back porch and her lawn chair and her bird houses. . . . I am happy here and Life is good in so many ways, but I miss my garden and I ache for the dream home I have wanted for so long.

My mom sent me a little "fun money" tucked into a letter yesterday and I will use a bit of it today to treat myself to a flower and a gardening magazine. And between chores today, I will daydream about my little pink and white cottage garden that I miss so much, and I will work on my visions for my next one--even if "bloom[ing] where [I'm] planted" in this case finds me beautifying my fire escape.

♥