A lot of love and a bit of crazy

Summer evenings lately

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

Blog Post: My Superhero Therapy Dog + Pics!

 Life has been a whirlwind since Friday afternoon and the emotional roller coaster with all it's ups and downs has been made more tolerable by my little girl, Maggie. We have spent every day at the hospital and through it all she has been incredible.

I have been so grateful to have a therapy dog these last few days and she makes an amazing difference for my mom every time she is there.  Maggie has worked more hours and consecutive days than ever in her career and has been a trooper!

Today was her fourth day in a row and she stood silently while a 5 year old pulled at her leash, placed his toys on her for a "ride" and she maintained her eye contact with a woman we met in the hallway who saw her and said "I could use some therapy".

She has interacted with countless people always greeting those who want to see her, pet her and get a small measure of comfort from her.

At home she is the brat of my pack, the one who is always getting the other two dogs riled up and crazy.  Yet somehow she knows when she is "working" and the change in her demeanor is amazing!  She stands quietly letting those who need her, cling to her and playfully nudges those who seem to need a laugh.

I am selfishly grateful to have a certified therapy dog to be able to bring her with for my mom, but I am amazed by her ability to change the day of everyone she has met the last few days!

Sunday Funday!

One of my favorite ways to spend time. At home with my loves!

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

Click here to view these pictures larger

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.