Before stepping foot off my bed every morning I do this series of stretches. It takes about 5 minutes which doesn't seem long but it is when you're ready to just get out of bed and take care of the morning's business.
The stretches involve calf, hip, and leg stretches mostly to get ready for the ankle, feet and toe stretches. If I don't perform this ritual I will not be able to walk on the bottoms of my feet and I don't know how to walk on the tops of my feet.
Plantar Faciitis....dreaded, dreaded plantar faciitis (as opposed to plantar fascism with is another dread altogether about which auto correct seems to feel passionate)
Because the dread has caused some pretty strained calves after running I had to take a rest from running for a week and ease back in. At the track this morning I was barely doing a jog to take it slow and then picked it up in the second mile. Just as I was thinking I was feeling pretty good a tall, lean, running goddess slowed enough to remove her ear piece and inform me that running on my toes is going to get me injured; particularly with plantar faciitis. She told me to run heel-toe.
I had a couple response choices: be offended because I already know everything and ignore her, be embarrassed and look around to see if anyone else was around to witness my humiliation, or thank her and adjust my footfall to see what happens.
I chose option 3. Turns out it slowed me down tremendously. Turns out I could feel muscles being challenged. Turns out my calves felt nothing...meaning no ache. I kept with it.
While I was toe-heeling the last mile I was thinking about how much I was glad to have another runner take a break from their solace to help me. I was thinking how God placed someone in my day to help. About a month ago when I was stalled with my calf-attack I prayed "Please God, don't take running away from me..."
I wanted to talk to her about running.
So when I turned the last 1/4 mile marker she happened to be parked right there and I said "thank you." Jackie walked over and asked me if I stretched after running and then we sat down in the grass and stretched and talked running for another half hour.
I'm glad I didn't choose to be offended or embarrassed. I'm glad I didn't pretend we didn't have an exchange. I'm really glad to have made a new friend : )
Friday, May 31, 2013
Thursday, May 30, 2013
of Ownership
We almost lost our home last year; the last 3 years, actually.
The 7 years previous we lived here I lived in my grandparent's house. This house. The house we would have lost if not for the perseverance and persistence of my husband.
I feel like this house became my house, our house, two weeks ago when a good, patient and kind friend helped me with the gardening. Unconnected, unemotional and with a keen sense of organized and orderly garden she asked, "So what are you going to do with that azalea?" She meant this one:
The azalea planted by my grandmother that sat among 3 other azaleas which are now gone because they choked from neglect, blocking the statue of Mary that she placed there. My friend was helping me plant some of her garden "extras" in that space.
Nothing. I'm not planning to do anything with my grandmother's azalea. On the other side of the Mary garden is the overgrown, under-maintained lilac tree...well, should be a lilac bush but it's a tree at this point. My friend pointed out it needed to be pruned. She googled how to prune it properly, gave me directions and we set forth to the next massacre....er, I mean, garden inspection. " It's so sad", I would comment.
After she agreed with my husband that the overgrown, mostly non-blooming rhododendrons in the front should be hacked I sadly shrugged and relented.
"Ok, what's with the emotional connection to the foliage?"
Well, it's just that it's my grandmother's house and I almost lost it. The walls are still primered, the third floor banister still doesn't have spindles. The third floor is still not "finished." All the foliage was planted, cultivated, pruned, cared for by her. Not me. I stink at that stuff. I've been so preoccupied with mothering in an unattainable perfect way that I have neglected the house...and have turned my sight from the landscape because of my lack of experience and mostly my fear of trying anything.
My friend, knowingly or unknowingly, counseled me that this is my landscape and to prune some of the overgrown "stuff" and even to replace some of it was .....something or other.....I'm sure it was something about honoring my grandmother....because at that statement, "this is your house" was all my brain heard. I wanted to weep. Yes, weep...I'm not trying to be melodramatic, I really had to control it.
After 10 years of residing in Mom-Mom's and Pop-Pop's house and after 3 years of battle with the bank to keep the house that was my father's home after my grandparents died, it's finally mine. It's ours. It's my husband's and my home and the place where the kids will always know their home to be.
So I hacked the hell out of the lilac tree yesterday.
The 7 years previous we lived here I lived in my grandparent's house. This house. The house we would have lost if not for the perseverance and persistence of my husband.
I feel like this house became my house, our house, two weeks ago when a good, patient and kind friend helped me with the gardening. Unconnected, unemotional and with a keen sense of organized and orderly garden she asked, "So what are you going to do with that azalea?" She meant this one:
The azalea planted by my grandmother that sat among 3 other azaleas which are now gone because they choked from neglect, blocking the statue of Mary that she placed there. My friend was helping me plant some of her garden "extras" in that space.
Nothing. I'm not planning to do anything with my grandmother's azalea. On the other side of the Mary garden is the overgrown, under-maintained lilac tree...well, should be a lilac bush but it's a tree at this point. My friend pointed out it needed to be pruned. She googled how to prune it properly, gave me directions and we set forth to the next massacre....er, I mean, garden inspection. " It's so sad", I would comment.
After she agreed with my husband that the overgrown, mostly non-blooming rhododendrons in the front should be hacked I sadly shrugged and relented.
"Ok, what's with the emotional connection to the foliage?"
Well, it's just that it's my grandmother's house and I almost lost it. The walls are still primered, the third floor banister still doesn't have spindles. The third floor is still not "finished." All the foliage was planted, cultivated, pruned, cared for by her. Not me. I stink at that stuff. I've been so preoccupied with mothering in an unattainable perfect way that I have neglected the house...and have turned my sight from the landscape because of my lack of experience and mostly my fear of trying anything.
My friend, knowingly or unknowingly, counseled me that this is my landscape and to prune some of the overgrown "stuff" and even to replace some of it was .....something or other.....I'm sure it was something about honoring my grandmother....because at that statement, "this is your house" was all my brain heard. I wanted to weep. Yes, weep...I'm not trying to be melodramatic, I really had to control it.
After 10 years of residing in Mom-Mom's and Pop-Pop's house and after 3 years of battle with the bank to keep the house that was my father's home after my grandparents died, it's finally mine. It's ours. It's my husband's and my home and the place where the kids will always know their home to be.
So I hacked the hell out of the lilac tree yesterday.
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