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Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

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Archives for August 2013

Beautiful

August 28, 2013 by Kathryn

Today, as we’re leaving the soccer field, he asks if he can play at the skate park on the way home. He asks this most days after soccer practice and I always say no. Sometimes we’re in a rush to get somewhere. Usually we’re hungry, and generally there are a slew of tweenish and teenish boys and their female hangers-on doing cool tricks, smoking, and proving that they’re hardcore by dropping f-bombs as frequently as possible.

*Disclaimer – I am sure there are other lovely young people at the park skating, humming Taylor Swift songs, and saying things like “gosh” and “shucks,” and shunning all legal addictive substances, but they just don’t pick up as loudly on my Parental Freakout Meter. I’m sure YOUR kid, if he were hanging out at the skate park, is the Taylor Swiftiest and I’m not accusing you of raising a ruffian. I am accusing the other parents… who are not you. Please don’t email me about this, Citizens of My Town, USA.*

So, Magoo asks why he can’t hang out there and I say that it’s because there are bigger kids smoking and swearing and it’s not a great environment for him. And then he starts asking questions about smoking and addiction and cancer and all things cigarette-related that I’ve ever told him to scare him from ever ever putting a burning bundle of who-knows-what into his mouth and inhaling.

And then he says, “Can, you know, like, beautiful people smoke?” He’s sort of hemming and hawing. “Like, you know, beaut… Like if there was a beautiful…” Here he sort of trails off, gathering his thoughts and starts again.

“Monday at the fair I saw a woman who looked just like you and she was smoking and I was confused because I didn’t think that people who looked like you could smoke.”

I was quiet, trying not to choke up. So, when my eight-year-old boy thinks of what a beautiful woman looks like, he pictures me? I’ve heard stories where old men talked about their beautiful angel mothers and I think it’s sweet but I always thought they had to be old and looking back in retrospect to see their mother that way.

I’m not the hottest chick on the block. Rarely do random men flirt with or even really give me the time of day. I think what’s beautiful to Magoo and what’s beautiful to me about this story is that he knows I love him and that there’s a light in my eyes for him and that I’m trying to be the best that I can be most of the time. Beauty to Magoo is an effort towards goodness and that makes me so proud.

Of course I could not mention this to him. I had to ignore the accidental compliment, act cool, and tell him that, yes, beautiful people can smoke, but that over time it tends to make them less beautiful and more enslaved to addiction and disease.

And then I walked with an extra bounce in my step the rest of the night. That’s what beautiful people do, when they are not busy smoking.

Filed Under: Around Town, Aspirations

I Tried so Bad!

August 10, 2013 by Kathryn

Lately the kids in our family add “so bad” to the end of any sentence to mean they are really serious about what they’re saying. Examples:

Cousin Ellie while swimming – “Kick so bad, mom. Kick so BAD!”

Wanda – “OH MOM! I’m excited so BAD!”

*First off, I want to say, if you have a fear of spandex, skip this post and come back and read tomorrow. I promise not to post so many pictures of myself in uber tight clothing probably ever.*

So today, I tried so bad! I completed the sprint triathlon. It started with going to bed early last night, only to be awoken by a crazy loud thunderstorm. Stephanie, my training partner, said she got up during the storm and checked today’s weather report, nervous about the swim. I convinced myself that it was just a dream and went back to sleep, a sleep in which I apparently twisted my arm in half and pinned it beneath my body, because when I woke up, I had pain shooting up and down my arm, radiating from the elbow every time I put pressure on my arm to do things like lift a cup, or cut my eggs with a fork.

On a normal day, I would have skipped working out and iced the arm, but today was TRI-DAY! So committed was I to this triathlon, that I asked myself the question, “If I were an 1800s pioneer woman, crossing the plains with ox and wagon, would I keep going with this level of pain, or would I tell them to leave me behind to be eaten by American dingos?” The answer was not dingos, so I knew I had to “tri.” Ah, that pun never gets old. Ever.

We got there bright and early and put out all our gear. I thought it was a good sign that my number was the cornerstone of the standard multiplication table. Then some nice massage therapist guy rubbed my arm and told me to try warming up and stretching. I told him I had been warming up and stretching by walking around laughing at all the thick-necked guys very showishly warming up and stretching. He almost laughed and I started doing tri stretches and waving my arms around like The Phelps. I only almost threw up as I realized that this WAS HAPPENING.

One of my favorite parts of the day has to be when I was taking one last break in the ladies’ room before the race. I’d had a feeling all morning that I’d forgotten something, and when I dropped my drawers, I almost had a heart attack. I wasn’t wearing any underwear! Now you’re not supposed to wear underwear in a tri-suit, but I don’t usually walk around in a tri-suit. You’re welcome. And I was caught off guard. Like, I started a mini-hyperventilation. How could I forget UNDERWEAR!? Oh. I breathed in and out and moved on.

When the swim started, I had planned to hang back and wait before jumping in, but was overcome with excitement and ended up diving into the melee, feet, arms and bodies all up in my face. Pretty soon we all got sorted out and I finished my ¼ mile swim in my fastest time ever! This included the swim and the run up to the transition area, an area that always reminds me of child birth, but only because of the name.

They say that transition is the “fourth discipline”, but I think the real fourth discipline is the massive nap I took when I got home. I did it so well. I even took off my tri-medal to maximize sleeping potential.

The bike was good, but hard. The fastest I’ve ever ridden 14 miles is an hour and six minutes. My goal for the tri was an hour and I made it in 59:17. Yay! I will not tell you what place that puts me in amongst the other competitors because what place that puts me in is – AWESOME! I did a stinking triathlon.

tri9

tri2

Dan and the kids cheered me on at all the water stations and the finish line and I couldn’t help but run faster when I heard them. At one point, I ran by them as they cheered, took pictures and called my name. I pointed to each one in turn and yelled, “I’m passing you… and you… and you.” They were the only people I passed on the run. But it felt good to pwn them so hard. They were just sitting there, like they didn’t even know it was a race.

tri7

A few seconds after I passed by, after I made eye contact with and berated each one of them, Wanda yelled, “Was that mom?!”

It was.

The only time I cried was during the run. I was really struggling to get going. You’re on a bike going a million miles an hour and then you try to run and it feels like you’re in a hamster weel with boneless legs. It’s the oddest feeling. Also, I had not one ounce of energy left. So I started out running, until I had cleared most of the spectators, and then I switched to a busy mom mall walk pace.

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Runner after runner passed me, some of them doing the Olympic distance, which is twice as far as the sprint I was attempting. They were like muscly, sweaty gazelles and I was like… not that. I only had to run a 5K to finish this thing and I was walking fast but slower… and a bit slower. Then the awesomeness started. Runner after runner, most of them male and much more fit than me, started saying encouraging things as they passed me.

“You’ve got this.”

“Looking good.”

“Keep going.”

“You’re doing great.”

“Finish this.”

They said these things quietly and continued on their run, but I just had this swelling behind my eyes, overcome with the goodness of people. If I were a hardcore athlete, would I take the time to tell the mom mall-walking her way to the finish line that she was good enough, that I understood she was doing something really hard and needed encouragement? I hope so. But I know these guys did and it made me cry and it made me walk faster and eventually run.

tri4

The whole last half kilometer, I chanted in my head over and over again, “Walk in the shape of a run. Walk in the shape of a run. You can do this. It’s just walking in the shape of a run.”

tri6

And I did do it.

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And I beat every time goal I set for myself.

tri5

Over the past two years, I’ve lost 50 lbs. Over the past two months, I’ve gone from a 20 minute ¼ mile swim to a 10 minute. Over the past day, I have become a triathlete.

tri8

And like the woman at the check-in table said, “This is your first triathlon? That’s exciting because whatever time you get will be your new personal best.”

You know what? She was right!

tri1

Filed Under: Aspirations

Feats of Strength – an Attempt at a Productive Third-life Crisis

August 9, 2013 by Kathryn

I am 34… I think. I don’t have that many fingers and toes so it’s hard to accurately calculate but I’m pretty sure I’m a lot months younger than Dan, who is 35, so I will say I’m 34. Let’s just call it “early 30’s.”

The way I figger, given that I plan to live to at least a hundred years of age, that means I’m about a third of the way through my life and nowhere near a third of the way through the mental list of things I want to accomplish in my life. If you throw my increasing age and possible decrepitness into the mix, I think it would behoove me to do as many of the things on said intangible list before my fortieth birthday as possible. You know? While I can still chew my own food.

This list has been on my mind and I thought it was time I wrote it down, considering I am planning to check off one of the largest items tomorrow morning.

I am competing in a triathlon. Competing is a harsh word. I am going to complete triumphantly a sprint triathlon without injuring myself or any other person.

I’ve been training for months with my friend Stephanie, who is faster than me at swimming, faster than me at running, and who became faster than me at biking when she discovered that shifting gears actually makes a difference. Dang the do-gooder spin class friend who explained this to her!

My original goal for the tri was to finish in something better than last place. Then we looked at the finishing times for last year and my new goal is to finish the tri unscathed. We shall see.

Below is a partial list of other Feats of Strength, Skill, and Whimsy I hope to pull off in the next five and a half years:

1. Fake sky dive (I promised Dan I would never truly sky dive so this will have to suffice unless he dies before me and then the promise is void. I will wait at least one week from his funeral before suiting up and jumping out of a plane.)
2. Sing and play guitar in front of someone other than my own family members
3. Publish a book
4. Digitize and organize our family photos and videos
5. Direct a documentary film and enter it in a festival, hosted by Not My Mom
6. Complete a thorough study of the Bible with supporting documents and commentaries.
7. Scuba dive at night (happening later this summer)
8. Ride in a hot air balloon
9. Drive a car over 120 miles per hour
10. Build a piece of furniture
11. Visit Europe with Dan
12. Design and sew an article of clothing for myself without a pattern
13. Hike (at least partially) Mount Rainier
14. Visit every library in King County
15. Hike to the peak of Mount Timpanogos
16. Do an amazing act of service, something I’ll never forget
17. Teach my kids to flush the toilet

Filed Under: Aspirations

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