Beautiful Blueprints

"We've got to believe in our beautiful impossible blueprints"
 Doris Lessin

Yesterday I spent a few hours at the beach with my favorite 5 year old.  It was the most exhausting fun I have had in a long time.

Digging in the sand,  schooching our butts on the sand in the shallow water until he was feeling brave enough to go deeper, catching him at the bottom of the slide until he determined he didn't need me to catch him.   We laughed, we played and our only goal was to have fun and be silly, making up games as we went. With all his 5 year old astuteness he quickly figured out the breaks we took to go to shore to ch" eck on Grandma were also breaks for me and he began giving me one minute time frames for my breaks.  Thankfully the little monster was not wearing his own watch!

My favorite moment came while we were playing in the sand though.  Usingu our hands to scoop sand into a "castle" and our fingers to drill windows, I asked him how high we should build it.  His solemn response? He looked up briefly at the clouds framed in blue and said "well actually I think we should build it higher than the clouds".

My reaction to his statement rippled through my heart, my mind.  In that moment I was so incredibly grateful he had not yet learned to limit his wishes, his dreams and hadn't started to temper his wants with what others told him couldn't be done.  My reaction was also sadness and regret that somehow as adults we condition ourselves to only wish within the limits we and the world around us have put in place.

A bit later when we were once again playing in the water, I snuck my hand over to his leg, giving it a little nip and then asked in mock horror "Did you feel that shark?" He giggled for a split second and then in complete seriousness put his little hand on my arm and said "Wait you are kidding me right?"  Once I had assured him I was kidding it became a new game where we took turns pretending to be the shark.

I walked away from our day at the beach sandy, tired,, smiling and reminded of how amazing life is when your imigination has not yet been shut down, when sand castles can be dreamt beyond the clouds, when sharks could be in a pool and when your favorite color Skittle being handed to you by a tiny little finger is the best gift of all.

I wonder how different my world, our world, would be if we all kept a little more of this impossible blueprint in our hearts.

Day 1

Well we made it to Glendalough and Wicklow Mountains last night, with a bit of an adventure on the way.  Day 1 starts in a few hours.

Pictures from kerrie

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Never forget to play!

Is it taper week yet?

View from my deck!

Edited with #aviary > http://avry.co/_getAviary_

First 50 mile run of the season!

40 mile mark

Ultrarunning tan lines

My hat is normally black! 

When 20 miles seems worse than 30

It was time.  I had fought it all morning, but I couldn’t put it off any longer.  Lacing my shoes, I wondered why I felt compelled to do this, and why it mattered so much.  I had spent the morning dreading and anticipating the pain of it and it was about to get worse than what I was already feeling.   Freezing temps, blustery winds and more pain?  Muscles already screaming began to chant unkind things to me and every nerve in my entire lower body felt as though it were piano wire stretched too tight.

On top of my physical suffering, the schoolyard bully who has a permanent residence in my head was relentlessly taunting me.   I tried to imagine with no success actually making it through my 20 miler today.

In short, my entire being was under stress.  One definition of stress is the strain or tension from adverse or demanding circumstances.  I can testify that it is magnified in my head as I imagine all the ways I am never going to make it through this run.  Twenty miles is a long way on any day, but after running thirty yesterday it seems improbable at best.  I am filled with the unfair paradox of feeling anticipatory pain, this tension creating more tension.  So my aching body with all of its muscle memory fresh and raw, knows what I am about to do is going to hurt and creates even more muscle tension.  On top of this pain it decreases pain tolerance which seems to be the final straw on this big pile of emotional crud I have been mined wrestling all morning. 

Mind you, this is all continuing to happen as I am trying to bend over to tie my shoes.  I say trying because after yesterday, bending requires a contortion act to avoid  a complete snap and fracture of my hamstring which has been stretched and wound too tight to be fully functional.  I am assured I will never touch my toes again.  It also follows a long morning of contemplating every justifiable excuse in the world to opt out and give myself a pass.  So why was I heading out the door?  Why was I about to inflict more pain on top of already screaming pain?

Yesterday as I headed out I felt energetic and determined although nervous about the task ahead of me.  I start most of my long runs this way though, never quite sure I am capable of making it through a distance that never becomes easy.   It doesn’t matter how many miles I run, I still find myself wondering if I can go do it.  Yesterday as I finally made it back to my start point, having forced myself to the accountability of and out and back route, I double checked my GPS to challenge the mental gymnastics in my head.  Because even though I had been out there for a long time, and covered the distance myself I still wondered if maybe I was fooling myself.  Because thirty miles just seems like more than I am capable of doing. So with the thirty miles verified, why was I so sure I couldn’t handle my run today, 10 miles less than yesterday? Why did it seem so much worse than the longer run? And why did I have to do it the first place?  Who cared really?  

The answer is simple.  I do.  I don’t believe any of our moments are meaningless. The moments in my days, my decisions or even training runs matter.  I believe  most of us ask ourselves in one way or another how much we matter as well as how much we do matters.  I know I may not ever get proof of how much they actually matter, but when I do things I would rather not do, when I shut down the doubting voice in my head, it matters.  When I take action and make decisions from the person I want to be, the person who finds a way, I move one step further from the person I am afraid of being. The person who finds a way out.  Each time I find a way I add meaning to my life and I grow in ways which will only seem important later, never at the moment. When I do the hard things I don’t want to do, when I run even though no one would know or care if I didn’t,  my moments matter in the biggest way possible. They become the threads which form the threads of my future moments. 

And by the way, my run today which I spent the morning dreading?  The one I was certain wasn’t possible based on how sore I was?  It was one of my best ever.  Once I started to move I felt great, my form felt effortless and at the 20 mile mark I had to double check my pace, it was one of my fastest ever.

30 miles on the trail

Spring Double Run Days

Authentically Messy

I am Authentically and Adventurously Messy

by kerriekerkman

So this morning while  running I somehow managed to pocket dail 911.  This was not easy to do since my phone stays pass pin protected for work and security reasons.  This means that in the course of running about 1.5 miles I not only managed to hit the numbers 911 in sequential order, but first my jostling hips somehow bumped the keypad in the exact order needed to push the exact numbers needed to unlock the phone in order to push 9-1-1.  I can’t even imagine what the statistical odds for this are.

As I was shuffling along, trying to generate enough heat to counter the freezing temps I had no idea this littlle statistical symphony was occurring near my hip.  I normally don’t answer my phone while running, but for some reason this morning pulled it out to see who might be calling. What I see is a red screen and emergency signal lit up so I instinctivley answered it, still not realizing that somehow I had managed to prompt this call.  With heavy breathing reminicent of a B rated movie I tapped the screen, which gave me  a young gentleman who identified himself as Brian.  ”We recived an emergency call from you, do you need help? ”  Umm..ok so despite having my share of bad runs some days, I hadn’t seen this coming.   His rating of my intelligence went even further  when I took a long second to process this question and then respond. “Uh no, I am fine I am running.”  

With a practiced lack of judgment in his voice, Brian asked me another question. “Where are you running right now?”  I tell him the general vicinity, thankfully my answer coming a little quicker this time and he then asks me to confirm my name and address.  After I thankfully manage to provide this is a logical and rational way, along with profuse apologies he tells me to have a good run and we end our newly formed friendship. 

 

I triple checked my phone was not in dial mode as I put it away and laughed out loud.  What are the odds?  I can tell you with un-scientific proof that in my life if the odds should seem small and it seems like a one in a million set of odds, it will happen to me.  My life has always been a controlled free fall into chaos and the unbelievable.

 

This mornings chat with Brian obviously was a little blip, a footnote in my otherwise uneventful run.  The craziest part of all is the county which Brian was located in, was not even the county I was running in. So in addition to how improbable the sequence of dialing was, somehow I managed to get a call from a neighboring county!  If someone would have asked me if it were possible for me to somehow inadvertantly hit the exact numbers needed to unlock my phone and then somehow hit only the numbers 9-1-1, and that it would somehow connect to dispatch in a neighboring county, I would have put a lot of money against it.  I reminded myself that possible and probable are sometimes worlds away from real life and to never bet against either of them. 

Beach Running Fun

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I Don't Care

When you learn not to care

"I don’t have to be perfect. All I have to do is show up and enjoy the messy, imperfect and beautiful journey of my life. It’s a trip more wonderful than I could have imagined."—  Kerry Washington

I decided several years ago that I just don’t care.  I don’t care about the holiday baking which takes three full days, the decorating which takes even longer, I don’t care about finding the perfect gift or making sure I get Christmas cards out.    I don’t care if I have a holiday party or if I go to holiday parties and I don’t care to spend weeks finding the  perfect holiday outfit.   

I can’t quite pinpoint the exact moment it happened but at some point the lip service I gave to not caring about perfection, became genuinely real in me.  At some point what I  longed to truly feel and  believe became an actual layer and not one I was just desperately trying to make fit.  Somehow it actually became a part of me.

And with it I said good bye to some things. Gone are the frantic days and weeks of preparation with the constant ball of doom in my belly, which comes with knowing it will never be done or good enough anyway.

So maybe I will miss some things and in a few I might regret not sending those Christmas cards or finding the perfect widget.  Maybe.  It hasn’t happened yet, but it could.   I may wish I had cleaned up a little bit more before the doorbell rang or that I didn’t suddenly notice all the things in my house I still haven’t gotten to since last year. So far I have been ok with this.  I have replaced those crazy rituals with something else, things which have had a much bigger impact on my life.

The things I have decided not to care about, the things I have decided to allow to exist in messy imperfection in my life?  Those things by allowing them to stay just as they are, allow me experiences which can’t be found anywhere with a price tag.

One of my favorite pictures from Christmas last year is one of me rolling around on the floor with Tanner as he opened his presents.  At 13 he didn’t move as fast as he once did, but for 13 years he taught me how to open presents with so much excitement that what was in the package became secondary.  It didn’t matter to him that these were just new food dishes, as he shredded paper frantically uncovering them, he was thrilled with getting to open it!

 This year, my heart felt heavy as I thought of last Christmas when I had all three of my dogs here.  Tanner said good bye this summer and just before Christmas Maggie delivered her puppies as scheduled, which means she won’t be home for another few weeks yet.  Her presents, the toys and treats wait for her return so she can rip into them. 

Christmas Eve, I looked at Ellie feeling so much gratitude for her presence but sadness in missing my Mags and Tanner.  I am quite sure Ellie understands human language, well at least my human language.  Thankfully it has been witnessed  by other people which saves me from being sent for a psych eval. 

Given her incredible ability to sense my emotions and take care of me  I should not have been surprised that she insisted on being within touching distance of me the entire night.  As I curled up on the floor as my family I started to exchange gifts, she positioned herself so her head was near mine, her chin on my shoulder. 

Earlier in the afternoon I had received a text from my brother, my mom wouldn’t be meeting me at church as planned.  She had choked on something and after a scary few minutes was fine, but was tired and resting. She would still make it for our family celebration but was going to take it easy for a bit.  My initial emotion, a combination of gut clenching horror, thinking of the what ifs and sadness that she would not be next to me in church. This  quickly gave way to incredible gratitude for the outcome.  Had the outcome been different,  how much would any of the decorations, gifts, or cooking have mattered? 

So when my mom arrived at my house Christmas Eve, I made sure I wasn’t rushing around doing last minute things.  I helped my brother carry things in and got her settled.  When I was in the middle of doing something and she wanted me to open a gift bag right now, instead of being impatient with her, I opened the bag.  I didn’t get bows on the gift and the darkness hid how I hadn’t gotten around to dusting.  Instead I shared the moments with her, sitting in the glow of the tree lights.

These are the moments I care about, these are the experiences I will look back at and remember.  When I reflect on years past I can’t remember most details.  The ones I spent hours obsessing over.  But I do remember rolling around with Tanner on the floor, helping him open his gifts, and this year I will remember Ellie’s head on my shoulder and sitting with my mom .

My house is trashed, my cookies came from a store package and my gifts barely wrapped.  I didn’t get around to sending Christmas cards and in fact still have a stack of cards I need to open yet.  I don’t care about any of it.  Life is pretty damn good in the moments I have decided I do care about and the ones I will hold in my heart. 

A life changing day!!!

 Yesterday was one of the most incredible days of my life, and given everything I have done to date that is a big statement!  I was the luckiest person in the world to be able to be a part of and with my  little girl as she delivered 8 beautiful and perfect little babies.  She was incredible, she is a natural mommy and although she was focused on her job she let me know she was glad I was there too.  Although I have dreaded the time she will be away from me, and my house is still so quiet without her, seeing her do her job and how incredible she is, helps somewhat!  Congratulations to my little mama!

My Challenge Today: How Can I Be Happy About This?

2:05 am.  This was the time illuminated as I looked at my phone to check the time.  Much too early to get up, yet I had awakened suddenly and fully.  From experience I knew my chances of falling back to sleep were almost non-existent but I tried anyway.  At 2:30 I decided if I were going to lie there wide awake, my monkey mind chattering, then I might as well get up and begin my day.   My brain reminds me that later today, when I have been awake for about twelve hours and still have another 7 or 8 hours to go, I am not going to feel good.  I hear a childish tone through my chatter, resembling an eight year old chanting “ooh you are going to be sorry!”  My natural tendency is to start using all my fingers and toes to count how many hours I have until I can go to bed tonight.  A futile exercise, it does nothing to make me feel any more rested and just reminds me of how tired I am going to be by the time it gets here.

My day is already full and I could have used more sleep, but with a wide awake brain, I decided to ignore the chatter and head downstairs.  Maggie and Ellie are oblivious to what time it actually is, caring about nothing other than I have moved in bed which makes me fair game.  Maggie loves to drape herself across me, bat me in the face and in general behave as though the world has created me just to be her play toy.  As I roll up however they race to the bedroom door and then as they do every morning race me downstairs.  I have learned to let them win to avoid being tripped and trampled in their excitement.  I smile as I open the door and they raced into the yard hell bent for leather.  It struck me that no matter what time it is, and no matter what they greet each day the same.  Despite the scenery never changing, they launch themselves off the deck and race each other to the fence line.  Most mornings one of them will intentionally trip the other, which means a few minutes of wrestling before they run a few circles around the perimeter of the yard.  And with some unspoken signal they will race together simultaneously toward the door, skidding to a stop just shy of hitting it.  With morning potty duties done, it’s time to attack their breakfast ritual with the same doggy prancing and excitement.   Once done with this, they look at me and wait knowing from hundreds of days of ritual that we are about to play which means they are going to work for some treats.  They have yet to figure out this is a training session, staying just as excited about this today as they are every other day.  I look at their happy faces and envy their ability to completely and wholeheartedly live in the moment, just this present moment.  My snarky inner voice also reminds me they get to nap whenever they want today and don’t have to end their day teaching a spin class.  And then I catch myself and remember, neither do I.  You see I will end my day teaching a class, one that requires levels of energy at the highest of levels.  In addition to my lack of sleep, having the flu just a few days ago and an overwhelming To Do list, I need to put myself on stage in spandex no less and create enough energy to give 30 people the best possible workout.  But I don’t have to, I get to.

As I watched them this morning, and caught my snarky inner voice, I thought of a question I have used often with myself and others. “How can I be happy about this?”  Depending on the day, my answer ranges from the complete unprintable to a moment of quiet accompanied by a sigh of acceptance.

So this morning, knowing today is going to be long and there will be tough moments I decided to ground myself from all mental math adding up the hours and instead decide how I could be happy about being out of bed well before 3:00 am.

1.     Ok, so if I start with the obvious, but often little acknowledged, I woke up this morning.  I get another day of this life and although I don’t always remember to start my day consciously thinking about this, it is never guaranteed and I will never get this one again.  It is amazing how this simple truth immediately changes my perspective.

2.    The entire world seems to still be sleeping and as I stand at my dining room window looking out over the field, I am happy I to feel the peace of this moment.  I see the stillness of the world in front of me and feel so grateful to be living here, in my quiet country home and to be in a country where I am free to make my own choices.

3.    I think about the list of priorities and the list of To Do’s I had made last night before going to bed in preparation for today.  I now have extra time to make progress on this list, which had seemed way too big for the day anyway.

4.     I decided to write some cards I had been meaning to for a couple of weeks now, and as I stacked the cards on the counter to go the mailbox I was glad to have gotten to it.  I was also happy to have so many people to write a note to, I am not unaware of how blessed I am in this area.  Eight stamps later I smiled as I thought about how happy I was to have had the time to write out eight cards!

5.     I was able to do all my writing and card writing, bake enough sweet potatoes for the week which makes my dogs happy, get breakfast in the oven, sort my notes from yesterday which was a huge mess, get mail ready to go and banking deposit slips ready, read a few chapters in a book, do a training session with the dogs and pick up the kitchen all before 5:00 am.  I felt happy about the extra space in my day and that I wouldn’t be scrambling to get out of the door on time today. 6.    Although I would have loved to have slept a couple more hours, I reminded myself to be happy that I am able to stop and find what good I can in my lack of sleep.  I work in a field which reminds me regularly that not everyone is in a place emotionally and intellectually to do this.

So as I wrap this up, I think of the moment I am in and remind myself in the big picture, today’s lack of sleep will be a small blip.  I won’t remember it in a couple of weeks or at least won’t feel it. When I look back at my life thirty years from now, losing a couple hours of sleep won’t be a defining factor. What will define me however is how I approach each day and the decision I make about how I will live it.  I think of others in the world who are facing a day today with suffering and pain and loss, or without a home to be in on sleepless nights.  I am grateful and blessed and beyond happy for starting my day at 2:30 am.