And I Brought with Me an Apple, the Beach, and a Comfy Chair...

The deployment countdown has officially begun once more for us. These times are different for every couple, but so far, I have likened the experience to what I imagine preparing for and running an ultra marathon across the Sahara Desert would be like. It seems that regardless of the amazing characters who always come out of the woodwork to be with you on your journey, it is still one that you ultimately take solo, for the same reason that you can never quite explain to other people the exact feeling and sequence of scenes from a dream upon waking.

In my visualization of the Marathon des Sables, I am reminded of the childhood ABC/memory game (usually played on long road trips) that begins with, “I went to the moon, and I brought with me…” You then list items in alphabetical order, going around the circle of players having to list each item until you get to “Z”. If one of the players forgets a letter/item, they are automatically disqualified. My one skill in life is that I can memorize pretty much anything I put my mind to, so I generally always kicked ass at this game and would beg my brothers to play it with me when we were kids. Brother #1 was always a worthy competitor because he too, possesses this skill. Brother #2 was horrible at this game due to his complete and total A.D.D., but he made up for it by assigning goofy words to the letters in an always dramatic display of making us laugh so hard we peed our pants. I digress. Actually, not really because those two are an enormous support crew using those very same talents, during deployments.

Many competitors don’t actually finish the Marathon des Sables. Even the most prepared runners get heat stroke and run out of endorphins as their skin is peeled from their bones by the heat and sand and wind. Maybe they run out of food. Maybe their logical brains break free from the chains and rebel against what it is they are actually doing? And for those who do finish, what a feeling that must be, to know you are capable mentally and physically of getting through something like that.

Part of me thinks, “thank goodness this is not the first time, and at least I know what I will bring with me the third time around.” Yet another part of me thinks, “maybe I would be better off in my naive state of first time preparation.” Not only that, but my usual list from A-Z of things I would take with me on my Marathon des Sables/Deployment has been dramatically revised due to being pregnant. “W” can no longer be for Wine, and “R” does not stand for Running. I am seasoned enough to know that regardless of what equipment I have, I can expect to lose the skin on my feet and a few toenails along the way. It grows back. I know that regardless of the feeling of blechiness, it is also a time of pride, productivity, discovery, appreciation, humility, and hopefully, of growth. I know that you are an absolute, time-wasting, unappreciative fool during this time if you do not commit to making each moment count to its fullest.

The moral of the story here is that regardless of the situation, “A” will always, always, always stand for Apple :)

Racing Vicariously: My Second Virgin Voyage

Erin and I enjoying the CA coast in 2007

The evolution of a runner is a beautiful thing. My friend Erin (former wild college BFF and skinny dipping partner) has come full-circle in her running. A mother to 4 beautiful children and former prima ballerina, she has become a seasoned and dedicated runner. This is her story. Enjoy, and be inspired! 

My Second Virgin Voyage

By high school, Becca and most of my other friends were runners, but I dared not run. I was a dancer, and my dance instructors schooled us on how running ruins your knees and ankles and dancers should never do it. I didn't have time for it anyway, but I always had this romantic notion of what a run might feel like: a good, long run with the wind in my hair, feeling complete freedom and vitality. Alas, I was only a bystander of this notion.

Sometimes all you need is a change of scenery to go from bystander to participant. In college, I moved from Washington to California, and while I was down south, took to running on the beach. I quickly developed confidence in my running. Despite my years of dance training, I found running came easy, Of course I was 22, and many things come easier when you are 22. At some point, my California friends dared me to enter the Catalina Island Triathlon. I was a poor college student and had just spent $65 on registration, so I was going to do the darn thing even if it killed me. Plagued by fears of drowning in the harbor and riding a bike that was the size of a small car, I trained hard, every day.

Catalina Island Triathlon

That was my first and last finish line for 11 years. Not that I didn't love it, I did! (Okay the swim was intense! If you've ever done a tri you know what I mean.) Crossing that line was the best high I had ever had up until then. Life, once again, carried me to a new (though familiar) change of scenery. A week after the triathlon, I had my first date with the man I would marry 7 months later and have four children with. My California boy decided Washington was a better state to raise our family, so back we moved, to my home state, where everyone and their mother do tri's. The popularity of triathlon in our new little town caused the sport to lose it’s allure for me, but when someone mentioned this crazy race called the Ragnar Relay Series (Northwest Passage), it sounded just wild enough for me to join in (Ragnar was a wild man).

In preparation for the upcoming 30-hour long relay, I decided I'd better at least start with the Duvall Days 10K, which also happens to be one of the hardest in Washington State. The route goes right past my house, so I've been watching these runners every year for the past 4 years. I've envied them, cried for them (yes, I get emotional over races), and cheered them on from my driveway. In 11 years and after having 4 children, I've only been running again since the end of March, training on those insane hills twice a week and running a total of four times a week. I started very slowly. 15 minutes a day for the first 3 weeks, up 5 minutes at a time. My body fought me for the first 2 months. Lifting my legs was SO hard. I had absolutely no muscle to speak of. I only had fear. Fear is a friend to me when I run. In my triathlon I feared that I might drown or come in last. In this 10K, again I thought I might come in last. Athletes run this race, there are only a very few casual runners that take on these hills. I debated and tried to talk myself out of it so many times: I had an ankle injury that I was trying to run through; My husband had to work on race day; I didn't try very hard to find a sitter...and then my parents offered and there went that excuse.

The Second Virgin Voyage is complete

The race was harder than I even imagined. The route was different then I thought it would be. I thought I knew the exact hills that I'd be running up, but they tricked me. They wound us through town which added extra hills to the race. They had us double back at the local highschool then cut down through the center of the hills, and just when I thought I was almost there they threw in a left turn which took me up (yes you guessed it) another hill. I was already sprinting the last 2 miles to make up for my slowness in the first 3 miles of hills. After running down Main Street and through the park, I had to run over the starting line and another 100 yards to the finish line! I was never so happy to see a finish line. I was elated, I was crying inside. I felt so extremely proud of how I ran that race.

After that run, I feel like I can take on my assigned legs of Ragnar. Excitement has replaced the fear, and as much as I hated the Duvall Days 10K, I can't wait to do it again next year. Who knows, maybe the husband and children will be there to cheer me on. Maybe I'll run it a little faster and a little better.

Bottom line: I have caught the running bug and don't intend to recover from it

Student of a New Wilderness

This piece is acrylic, pencil, and gouache on wood and is the beautiful artwork of ghostpatrol

One of my favorite memories and visual images to this day is from my early college years when I was hiking every morning up in the north Cascades, gathering data for my undergrad thesis on the foraging ecology of dark-eyed juncos. Then, as now, I didn’t like waiting around for people to get up early to go with me just so I would have a safety buddy. Then, as now, my stubbornness was mistaken for fearlessness and often precluded the part of my brain reserved for safety, red flags, and the like. My first thought upon waking was that all of the beauty of the world happens in these immediate moments after sunrise. Of this, I have long been convinced. It was a calm morning, but in the mountains, the weather can change in an instant, and you had better be prepared for the worst of it. The coffee in my thermos sloshed around in my backpack as I hurried to the clearing where I always found the little birds snatching spiders as big as they were from under the bark of rotting wood. It was a good spot to watch and wait. But within what seemed like seconds, the winds picked up. Seconds later, trees were bending and cracking. I high-tailed it out of there, down the slope, to my car, the same car I still drive, 14 years later. A tree fell within inches of my head on the way down. I drove home, thankful to be alive and happy that I at least got some data.

Life is a great teacher of appreciation and of not taking things for granted, in whatever wilderness you find yourself living in. Our bodies, comprised of a network of cells in this ever-fluctuating state of living and dying, are the forgetful students, needing endless repetition. Our minds are the wilderness through which we must learn to navigate. As I wake up fairly rested each morning and head out for my long morning beach walks, I feel like I should be burning what this feels like into my brain. I predict that it should be interesting, perhaps even entertaining (in a funny but not funny haha kind of way), when I am up all night with my youngling in the not-so-distant future. This anticipated wilderness where day and night merge into one shade of gray and somehow functioning conversation built of riddles and dream sequences where you open your mouth but have no voice, awaits. But, I know it is here I will find the greatest love, the most inspiring beauty, and the most significant data. It is in this new wilderness that the data gathered by me will not be the most important.  

Seeking the Perfect Chemistry

What do other people look for in a coach? Throughout life, we all seek different types of coaches, whether it is for sports, for life, for our careers, for our spirituality, or for our health.

In this case, it is for the birth of my child. I first learned what a doula was a few years back from a co-worker, but before that, I had never heard of one. “doula” is actually a Greek word that means “a woman caregiver of another woman” (Brott and Ash 2001). A modern-day doula is basically a certified birth coach who has had to take classes and undergo training, a coach. Pregnant women in other cultures have been using doulas during childbirth for hundreds of years. In the 1980’s, a man named Dr. Marshall Klaus pretty much popularized the doula concept in the United States. My husband and I became interested in the idea of having a Doula for this baby for a lot of reasons, even before we knew he would be deployed during the birth, but the main reason is the statistics:

• The presence of a doula can decrease labor time by 25%

• The presence of a doula can decrease the need for need pain medication by 47%

• The presence of a doula can decrease the need for forceps deliver by 35 to 82%

• The presence of a doula can decrease the need for a Cesarean section by 34 to 67%

• The presence of a doula can decrease the chance of giving birth to a baby that is unresponsive

Choosing a doula is a lot like dating. I looked into the Doulas of North America website to get more information on what kind of training and certifications different doulas held. The group of midwives I receive my prenatal care from are huge fans as well and had some good things to say about working with doula-mom teams in the delivery room. I initially spoke with a woman who I thought was going to be perfect. She seemed to have a moderate amount of experience, was a mom herself, and had an impressive resume of also being a raw foods consultant/nutritionist and a prenatal massage therapist. She was also a homeopathic medicine student, which appealed to me and responded right away to my email with a return email and a phone call. We spoke at length on the phone, and my impression of her was that she was extremely high energy and very eager. The first gut instinct was that this kind of scared me off a bit. I was imagining the grouchy-in-pain version of myself or the pre-marathon-focused version of myself and how they would get along with the aggressively peppy cheerleader/surfer girl on the other end of the line. Wow, I thought, I should stop being so judgmental and just meet her. I am sure she would be a great coach, and maybe her high energy would actually be a great balance during this time? She cancelled our first date 2 hours before we were supposed to meet due to the fact that her child had to change schools, and she just found out about it the previous night. I can’t say that sat well with me. The first indication of flaky and drama. I realize, of course, that life gets in the way, but this is not a free service. This is going to be someone that my stubborn as a mule self will need to respect and listen to without my husband or probably my mom present (the only 2 people who I actually seem to respect and listen to when I am freaking out). Nope…not going to work.

The second candidate immediately phoned back, saying she was at a birth, and proceeded to list 3 of her next available dates and times to meet. She struck me as organized, professional, and experienced. She had me at hello. I got great vibes from her over the phone, and when we met, she told me that she had done several births at the military hospital where I will be delivering and loved the staff and resources there. She laid out her plan of what her services would and would not cover. We spoke for 2 hours, and at no time did I feel hesitant or like I needed to hold back. We had great chemistry, and when you know, you know…just like dating. A plus for this doula is that she was a massage therapist for 20 years prior to becoming a full-time childbirth educator, lactation specialist, and birth/post-partum doula, with over 100 births attended and a million certifications under her belt. At no time did she tell me she could “be my best friend”, but she did paint a picture of the methods we could use in training to help the chances of having a natural birth experience. Good coach.

If the chemistry is right, both the coach and the athlete will work hard to acheive the win and work as a team. In this case, I think "the win" is just going to be following through with a plan to minimize potential stress to my baby and to myself, rolling with whatever happens. Not really being a "roll with it" type, this would be a major win :) Go Team!

First Days of Summer

The first Memorial Day weekend BAH and I have ever had together was spent in the celebratory midst of family and friends and delicious food. We said what we hope is a temporary goodbye to two of our very dear friends as they make their way back to Virginia. My husband and I are not very good at goodbyes, and this was the first time that we both said goodbye as a couple to people who have really made their way into our hearts. Physical proximity will never take the place of Skype or Facebook or the telephone, and it has been a real and rare treat to have had it with them for this chunk of life and to have shared the kind of belly-busting laughter that echoes inside you for all time. We also welcomed the new with a baptism for our other friends’ baby girl. You would think that after so many years of BAH and I always being the only non-Catholic heathens of most of our friends, we would have learned all of the prayers and the kneeling and the rituals. Alas, we have to believe that just showing up and mouthing The Lord’s Prayer is good for now. It was precious to see all of the little babies in their sweet little white poufy gowns. It is coming down to the wire for Brother #1 and the Curly Blonde, who are expecting their son (Nephew #3) to make his appearance in about 4 weeks. The Curly Blonde and I enjoyed virgin pina coladas while the husbands drank beer and Brother #1 made these delicious burgers with jalapenos in them. He grinds his own local, free-range meat, so I figured that if I was going to eat a few bites of meat, it would be a good way to go. I really haven’t had cravings for meat, though I am told I will. Part of me still doesn’t think my body is fully ready to digest it just yet, though it was very tasty.

I started running and doing some other exercises in the pool, which is actually a lot of fun and something I did to rehab from Plantar fasciitis a while back. It is a great and safe workout, even though it seems weird because you don’t feel yourself sweating. As summer approaches in San Diego, I always appreciate having water nearby. Aside from getting back on a regular workout routine, this week I am meeting my doula in person. She seems very high-energy, straightforward, and experienced from what I have gathered over the phone and in her bio. I think she will be a good coach-type of person for me and hopefully for the youngling, who my husband has named Megatron, not because Megatron is the evil Transformer, but because he is the gun. The horrible part of it is, he’s got me saying it now. But don’t you worry, we are fit to be parents :) And Megatron, I am sorry you ate nothing but yogurt and pinapple for 3 months...

Megatron