“Try your best. Invest yourself in everything you do. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. But do you wanna know a secret? Some of my greatest successes in life have started with half-hearted attempts. True story.” [read more at HowDoesShe.com]
About Me
If Anne Studied Electrical Engineering in Fifth Grade
My daughter Laylee – with an “e” – is mighty flowery in her language and I love to read it. She was asked to write a paragraph about her reaction to her experience studying electricity. To my pallet, it tastes a bit like Anne Shirley with just a pinch of Dickens. It goes like this:
My reactions to this electricity unit had no imperious direction. In fact, they were quite decidedly mixed. At first I was panting with eagerness to begin. That feeling continued in our hands-on activities, more excitement welling up til I nearly burst. Unfortunately, my enjoyment diminished slightly when we sat down to informational videos and reading logs, only to be replenished at the next experiment. I think the assignment with the most controversial moods was the electric house, as you might’ve suspected. Again, I started out thrilled with such a weighty project, only to feel that weight a burden instead of a boon; a huge amount of stress. As I proceeded, straining to complete my wiring in the space of a day, I alternated between surprise, triumph, and despair as my lights flickered and died, then wavered back to life. With all this, I’m not really sure of my reaction to it, but I learned a lot and either way am glad we did it.
When she says the electrical work took “the space of a day”, she is serious, like a WHOLE day and her mood ranged from excitement to boredom to full-on meltdown. I’m not sure if she stopped for lunch. She went solid from morning until night.
The house turned out cool. She wired a four room doll house with lights, but instead of using conventional lighting, she chose to light the house with paper flames to look like it had been set on fire. My little verbose pyromaniac. Like mother, like daughter.
Singing Telegram
Wanda was sick. She’d been hacking up a lung for days and I’d kept her home from school and other activities. One morning she woke up coughing nigh unto death and barfed all over her bed. It was a lovely way to wake up.
Laylee shakes my arm.
“Mom.”
“Mom.”
“Hey Mom. Wanda barfed.”
It isn’t stomach flu, just a coughing fit and what she chuffs up is a glob of Tylenol and other globs of other things that, frankly I’m glad are no longer in her lungs.
She is fine the rest of the day. I give her a bottle of watered-down Gatorade, call it “sick soda” and plunk her in front of the TV. She barely coughs at all and her fever becomes non-existent.
The thing is, I have Christmas packages to mail and I’m running out of time. So, that afternoon, I tell her to grab her sick soda, pack up the car and head to the post office.
First thing she does – show every person in the line her sick soda, explain why it is called sick soda and that she only gets to drink it when she’s REALLY REALLY ill. Everyone steps back a half step as she makes her rounds gleefully.
“Come here, Wanda. No one needs to hear about that.”
“But I’m really, really super sick,” she says as I casually clamp my hand over her mouth, drawing her into a tight hug-like hold.
She stays quiet just long enough for us to get to the front of the line, the center of attention, before she begins singing a freestyle composition.
“I am so sick, so so so sick. When I woke up this morning, I barfed and barfed and barfed and barfed and—“
I am a deer in headlights, a criminal in one of those giant floodlights, a mom with a four-year-old with a super adorable, super big mouth.
Everyone is staring and not in a commiserating sort of way. Their looks are more along the lines of, What kind of mother brings her daughter full of Ebola virus to the post office on one of the busiest days of the year?
This kind.
I give a nervous laugh. “Wanda, they don’t need to know all the details.”
The looks get even more disgruntled. “So now you’re going to stop her from sharing her truth?” they seem to say and I don’t blame them. This all looks very bad for me.
I’ve got 4 packages up on the counter. Wanda’s song continues.
“And I barfed and I barfed so bad that I barfed up my Tylenol and I barfed up all my green stuff…”
“She’s really not that sick,” I say to the room. “It’s not the stomach flu. She just coughed so hard she threw up a little.”
The words sound astoundingly unhelpful as they fall from my mouth. Um. Shut up.
I decide that the best course of action is to get the packages mailed and get out of there as soon as possible with as little eye contact as possible.
“And after I barfed and barfed and barfed, I was so sick and so SICK! So my mom said, ‘Let’s go to the post office!’”
That’s exactly how it was. Whenever one of my kids is sick, I think, She is so sick! I know! I should take her to the post office! And I hope she performs a song about it.
The song lasted until the last package was stamped and tossed in the bin and I sheepishly grabbed Wanda’s hand and hurried her out of the building.
I was already laughing as I got to the car. I was the only one, but I hope that as they got home and did not come down with The Plague of Green Goo and Barfed Tylenol Doom, they wondered for just a second if maybe I wasn’t the worst mother ever. Maybe Wanda just had mad lyrical skills.
Managing Great Expectations
If there’s something good about to happen to my family, chances are solid, like, around 95%, that my kids know nothing about it. They’re going along in their daily lives and BAM! Disneyland or KAPOW! Ice cream sundaes. I try to always catch them off guard. Always. Why all the secrecy?
Do I love surprises?
Yes.
Do I also not want to see the looks on my kids’ faces if I tell them something seriously rad is gonna go down and then, after weeks of anticipation, Disneyland runs out of batteries or all the ice cream goes on strike?
Yes.
So I keep their expectations low and then shock them with awesomeness. But, I’ve run into a problem with this line of thinking. I’ve noticed recently that I’ve started to set low expectations for life, for the world, for the people I love.
Too often I find myself assuming the worst, stressing out because I’m sure something bad is going to happen and then feeling mild relief when the ceiling doesn’t cave in.
This is a sucky way to live.
So, I’ve decided to start managing my expectations a different way. I want to see what will happen if I expect everything to be amazing.
I gave this a try recently and it was one of the best days I’ve had in a long time.
It was a crazy day. The kids left for school at 8am and we ran from school to activity to activity, not getting them back home until after what sane people would consider bedtime.
Our bathroom fan had been broken for a few weeks and “It’s past time to fix it,” said the mildew. I bought a fan over a week earlier, looked up instructions on YouTube, investigated the attic, and then gave up, sure the job would be a nightmare. I have a huge fear of attics. They have rats. And itchy insulation. And spiders. And dark mysterious corners. And the possibility of crashing through the sheetrock if you take one wrong step.
But if I was in a new training mode to expect everything to go well, to expect great things, then why not go for it?
I decided that I would install the fan triumphantly and it would be my greatest YouTube School of HandyWomanry coup. I gathered all the necessary tools, got Wanda set up playing in the room below the opening, hauled some huge boards up the ladder to give me a more stable work surface, and flipped the circuit breakers.
And then I dropped the ceiling panel on the ground and broke off a big chunk. I persisted. I expected to be successful. And then I found that the people who installed the original fans were idiots and that the joists in my attic were too small and the fan hole was in the wrong place and the wiring was crazy and there was no humanly possible way for me to do the repair.
So I left all the tools in the attic, vacuumed the chunks of drywall and insulation from the floor, washed the cobwebs and insulation from my hair and body and closed up shop for the day. But, we were one hour and a ton of information closer to fixing the problem, and I didn’t stress about it, and I was so proud of myself for trying, only possible because I expected the best and went through with a plan.
Then I needed to kill an hour while Laylee was at ballet so I took the kids to Costco, as usual, but I decided beforehand that we were going to have the most fun ever. And guess what? We did.
That night we planned to attend a church meeting that I wasn’t jazzed about, so I decided to get jazzed about it, to assume it would be fun and informational and a great experience for me and the kids. And guess what? It was pretty awesome.
Previously, I had no real interest in the subject matter, but they made it come alive in an engaging way. Old men singing campfire songs and people launching rockets and riding a zipline in the conference center where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings. Need I say more?
I would rather spend my entire life expecting to be delighted, only to be disappointed every once in a while, than live in a constant state of impending doom, only to be periodically surprised by goodness.
My goodness to doom ratio needs to grow much higher than it currently is. I think it takes practice, but it’s a fun skill to spend time cultivating.
Magoo says, “Mom?”
I think, “I wonder what amazing thing he’s going to tell me. Let me prepare to soak up his cuteness,” instead of my usual, “What’s wrong NOW?!”
Dan says, “I have something to tell you when I get home.”
I think, “Oooo. I love surprises,” instead of, “Did he lose his job, or did he get laid off? Where will live? How long will the Macaroni supplies hold?”
What do you expect from your life?
I spend about 95% of my life anticipating what will happen, expecting things to happen, and maybe 3% having things actually happen. 2% of my life is spent sleeping. So, if I am expecting sadness and doom, then I will be spending about 95% of my life living in a place of fear and anxiety and 3% or less experiencing joy. I say 3% or less because maybe a fraction of one percent of the things that happen in my life are actually doom-filled things. Most of my experiences are really good.
But, if I decide to expect joy, friendship, love, and fun, then I’ll spend the majority of my life dwelling in that place. And, oops, every once in a while unexpected doom will descend and I’ll deal with it.
Zombie Apocalypse on the horizon? Surprise me. I’ll store munitions and jello just in case, but I’ll assume I’ll never have to use them and, in the meantime, I’ll be looking for fluffy bunnies and marshmallow peeps to come moaning down the street. They’re much more fun to contemplate.
I Know! You Can Borrow My Car
My parents taught me to be kind, loving, honest, selfless and… auto maintenance. That’s why this particular story is so embarrassing to me.
For the Thanksgiving/Christmas season, my mom and dad are in town, about 45 minutes away from here. My dad is working as the main attraction and my mom is here to be with her lover and working in a supporting role on set.
For my mom, it’s hourly part time holiday work. For my dad, it’s a job share with another man who looks a lot like him. I think of them as high-end models. My dad works mornings and the other man works evenings. My mom flew out here with the intention of working the same hours as my dad.
But another one of my dad’s jolly doppelgangers, working an hour and a half north of here, got sick. So my dad’s job share partner took over all the hours at my dad’s mall and my dad is currently spending his days up near the Canadian border bringing joy to children and their confused parents. “Why is Christmas so early this year?”
That leaves my mom living in a hotel with no vehicle during the day and a day job to which she no longer has a ride.
Perfect solution. She could borrow one of our cars. Dan takes the bus to work every day and it just sits there. Soccer season is over. It was all perfect. So, on Sunday night, after much persuasion, I convinced her to take Dan’s car, my first car, a car that has over 100,000 miles on it but has served us well.
As she was about to leave, Dan said, “You should check the oil. It might be low.”
Apparently “low” means there is approximately zero oil in the engine and the smear that remains at the bottom is black as tar or midnight or super old oil. So, I got in my van and followed her to the gas station to put some oil in the car, oil she insisted on paying for.
On the way there, I noticed that the left brake light was burnt out. Awesome.
“Mom. It also looks like the left brake light is burnt out, although I don’t know how a person is supposed to know that kind of thing unless she is driving behind herself or gets pulled over.” I start talking really fast at this point. “I hope you don’t get pulled over, but I think it’s still safe to drive and do you think that you could go replace the bulb tomorrow and maybe get the oil changed? I’ll pay you back and I’m really sorry.”
She was super gracious about it. “You’re lending me your car. It’s the least I can do. Blah blah. Nice mom stuff. Blah blah.” And all I could think was, My dad is gonna know of this and he will not outwardly judge me, but a little part inside of him will sigh and he will think, “Nothing’s changed since high school when she would run my car into cement posts and forget to put gas in the tank because apparently cars can run on school spirit and teenage infatuation.”
Then we went to put the oil in, two quarts to get it reasonably full, and I noticed that the power steering fluid was low.
“So, ahem, tomorrow after work when you get the oil changed and the brake light fixed, can you also please make sure they check the power steering fluid? I think it will be fine for the rest of your drive tonight in the dark on unfamiliar highways. Hope you don’t get a ticket for this! KayThanksBye.”
AAAHHHHH! A kind gesture is so much more kind if it doesn’t come with a massive to-do list that says, “Remember when you taught me how to be responsible and care for my belongings? Oops. I accidentally… the whole car.”
Drops of Awesome – The Book – Coming Soonish
I’m thrilled, in that YayButOhWOWIHaveTonsOfWorkToDo sort of way, to announce that I just signed on with California-based publisher Familius to create a book based on the ideas in my blog post, Drops of Awesome. I cannot think of a better partner for this project. They are amazing!
Here’s me signing the digital contract with the help of my closest advisors minus one because he’s manning the camera. And when I say “manning”? Yow! You’ll have to take my word for it.
The post, based on inspiration that has helped me change my entire outlook on life, resonated with a bucket-load of people around the world and your stories and kind words have really informed the direction I’ve decided to go with the project. There were a ton of options and I considered each one over the past year and tried writing a couple of them.
Christopher Robbins of Familius first contacted me back in January, interested in having me write for their website and possibly pursue a book project. Familius is a new publisher with its sole mission being to help families be happy. I loved the idea and it jives with what I aim for here on DaringYoungMom.com, but I wasn’t sure about the project. Drops of Awesome has a lot of religious significance for me personally, and their company does not cater to a religious audience. They believe that all families are important and that there are universal practices that can help make all people happier. I believe this too, but I just didn’t know how to separate Drops of Awesome from its religious underpinnings or if I even wanted to.
So we exchanged a few emails and when he told me that they were branching out into children’s fiction, I sent him pages from my completed YA Novel Dark Bird and my Middle Grade work in progress.
Six months passed.
I continued being Awesome. A bit. Drop by drop.
I spoke about Drops of Awesome at women’s events large and small in Oregon and Washington and had a blast doing it, meeting new people and hearing their stories. Interestingly, I heard from agnostics and atheists in person and online who were just as enthused about incorporating Drops of Awesome into their lives as any of the Christians who’d read it.
I worked on a Drops of Awesome book in its various forms and started to feel stuck. The religious version of the book was not going well. I sounded like a bit of a wind-bag, honestly. It’s a small idea and I was trying too hard.
Then, out of nowhere, Christopher from Familius emailed to set up a phone conversation about my fiction. As we discussed the work I’d sent him and I got a better idea of their mission and the work they do, I told him I was open to discussing a Drops of Awesome project. I’d been feeling more and more like it was something I could and should open up to a broader audience.
He suggested that I consider writing it as a journal or gift book.
Hmmm.
We agreed that I’d mull it over and get back to him in two weeks with a proposal. As soon as I started working on Drops of Awesome as a journal, things started flowing. Suddenly, it wasn’t me writing a book, preaching at you. It was me co-authoring a book WITH you. I’d share ideas and then invite you to share your own. Rather than being a book for you to sit down and read passively, it was becoming a well for you to draw from, but also a bucket where you could capture all of your Awesome, a journey of self-discovery for both of us.
Design is really important to me and having a book that looks fresh and feels good to hold, manipulate and write in is crucial. Before we negotiated a contract, we negotiated paper samples. It had to feel right and be writable on-able. It had to fit in your purse.
Most of the ideas behind Drops of Awesome are universal, regardless of your background or beliefs. These concepts resonate with people from every walk of life because we have more in common than we have differences. We all have important missions to fulfill in our lives. We are all uniquely qualified to achieve our highest personal goals. But, we also all fall prey to many of the same destructive thought patterns.
-Many of us obsess over and wish we could change the past, but we can’t.
-Too many of us spend too much time listening to that voice inside our heads telling us we’re not good enough, that our best efforts are failures because the one thing we’re not doing is the only thing that matters.
-We verbally abuse ourselves in ways we would never think about using on others.
If the entire world would adopt an attitude of living in the moment, putting our best foot forward one tiny Drop at a time and then celebrating those efforts, the entire world would change for the better.
So, what I’ve come up with is a concept for a book that will be interactive, playful, and hopefully as life-changing for you as getting to this point has been for me.
The book is set to release in Fall of 2014 and I’m excited to share it with you! In the meantime, I will be blogging here and at Familius.com about the concepts in the book and the progress of the project. I have also created a resource page on this blog for my LDS readers, who want to experience Drops of Awesome through the lens of spiritual belief.
Go forth! Be AWESOME!
What Story Will You Tell the World Before You Leave it?
I’m not dying. Or, more correctly, I’m dying very slowly. I should make it in 60 years or so. But I do think about life and death a lot. My grandma recently passed away and I have a cousin a couple of years older than me who’s battling cancer (AND WILL WIN!).
I think about how precious time is and how much I have to learn and to say and I hope that I get it all said before I turn ninety-five and slump over gracefully in my sea kayak at the exact same time as Dan and our spirits sail off into the great hereafter together.
Some people know they won’t make it to 95. Some won’t make it to 15 or 7. And they know it. That’s why I love the Red Fred Project by Dallas Graham. It’s a collaborative, story-making endeavor to design and publish 50 books created by 50 children with critical illnesses across the 50 states. It is a magical process and they need your help!
You can’t not donate after watching that video. Am I right?
It’s a labor of love to help these precious kids share the stories that are inside of them. The books are beautiful and well-designed and all proceeds from the sale of each book go towards the medical expenses of each child. Here’s more from the website:
“Why are we doing this? Most of these children will not become fire-fighters, doctors, cheerleaders, vets, baristas, teachers, Olympic hopefuls or college students that pal around eating pizza until 2:30 a.m. in their dorm rooms. Due to their illnesses and physical challenges, some of these children will not live long, cannot move as others do, and have unique ways of interacting and operating in the everyday world. But what these children DO HAVE is star-dust material—these children have creative, powerful, inventive minds and spirits. They know incredible things BECAUSE of their life challenges. I want to know how they view the world and help them create an original, one-of-a-kind book, publish it, place it in the child’s hands and say, ‘Way to go! You’ve published a story; you’ve created a book.'”
This Kickstarter project has only TEN days left and has not raised nearly enough money to be funded. If you or anyone you know has even an extra dollar to donate to keep this project going, please consider making a donation. These kids are worth it.
Just Draw a Doggone Dragon
For the first time ever, Magoo has a teacher who is requiring participation in the PTA art competition, Reflections. It’s always been optional for him in the past and when he said he wasn’t interested, I said a quiet prayer of thanks not to have one more thing to mount on styrofoam board and told him that was just fine with me.
Laylee, on the other hand, ALWAYS does reflections. Sometimes she does art, sometimes poetry, and one year she composed a song because, “Hardly anyone does songs, Mom. I decided this was the easiest way to make it to State.” This year, she is using the shotgun approach, entering a piece in pretty much every artistic discipline.
Then there’s Magoo. I asked him what he wants to do and he said, “Make a movie.”
Now, I majored in film in college and still aspire to pick up where I left off and direct documentaries when I grow up, after my kids grow up. However, I was not thrilled with this choice. There are a few reasons for this.
1. The entry is due in four weeks.
2. He has never shot footage of anything other than his own tonsils as he pretends to eat the video camera.
3. He has never used video editing software before.
4. And this is the big one – HE WANTS THE FILM TO BE A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT OUR FAMILY A CAPELLA GROUP.
We love a capella. Our whole family loves it. We have not been able to get enough of Vocal Point since they were on The Sing-Off. (GO COUGS!)
And every time we listen to one of their songs and my sweet, adorable and betimes suspiciously-close-to-tone-deaf children sing along with the various parts, I talk about how one day we will have our own VonThompson Family A Capella group. I’m a little bit serious about this, but mostly kidding and I don’t dwell too much on logistics, like the fact that all the females in our family are altos or four-year-olds, and all the males in our family are Dan and Magoo.
Magoo can do a mean hi-hat sound and his beatbox skills grow stronger every day… but the actual formation of the group at this juncture is premature at best, deranged at worst. Making a documentary about the process, which ends with a video of our family performing an a capella version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller? Where all filming, editing, and planning needs to be done by this person?
Oh, sweet mercy!
The problem is not that it will be bad and he’ll feel rejected when he doesn’t make it to State. The problems is that it will be what it will be and he will make it to state because what other third grader is making a film OF THEIR NON-EXISTENT FAMILY A CAPELLA GROUP for their project when they could do a pencil sketch of a dragon and put their dear mother out of her misery?
And I should be excited about this. I majored in docu-freakin-mentary film production, for the love of Pete’s Humongous Reptile! Alas. I am not.
But when I tried to dissuade him, he shed tears, like actual moisture dripping from his ocular cavities. Now, what can I do? What would Martin Scorsese’s mom have done? I guess I teach him how to storyboard and get Wanda into some emergency voice lessons. She turned four earlier this month. Maybe she could be our soprano.
Beautiful
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.
I Tried so Bad!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
And I did do it.
And I beat every time goal I set for myself.
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.
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!
