Oy! Motherhood.

39 miles ( f )or bust!

wow. okay. this is going to be a long one, so you might want to trit trot off and get yourself a hot cup of tea or coffee or a glass of whatever and get yourself situated before diving in here....

as most of you know, this whole avon walk for breast cancer thing was my friend S's idea. she emailed me back in january to say that she'd signed up to do this nearly 40 mile walk that would take place over the course of two days and she was hoping i'd do it with her. i'd never heard about the walk but thought to myself, "ha! i don't have to do this because i'm breastfeeding an infant and who could possibly ask me to spend the night away from nursing my baby for a walk?!" i replied to her email saying it sounded like something wonderful, but alas, i was breastfeeding. her response came quickly. surely i'd not be breastfeeding in MAY and she was so hoping i'd do it with her. there was no way out. and besides, i'd been dreaming about the time i'd have time to work out more regularly and it just happened to coincide with the time leading up to the Big Walk. i signed up and committed to raise (and did) a minimum of $1800 and do training walks with S. we trained with some diligence--we could have walked in rain and snow but chose not to--and worked our way up to a 20-mile walk. it took us about 7 hours and it was fun and not exhausting and we just knew we'd have an easy time doing the avon walk. we were ready!

a few days before the event i started getting anxious about leaving the kids and J. i'd never been away from my kids on an overnight trip before and...ahem...i actually *am* still breastfeeding. i packed and unpacked and repacked and sweated over the number of pounds my bag weighed because we were only allowed 30 pounds and i knew i'd have to spend some time hauling that shit around. i made lists for J and spent the entire day before we left cleaning the house. because, wooo! isn’t it fun to clean the house and then leave it for everyone to destroy while i’m away!

i met S at the bus station at 3:30 on friday afternoon and we hurtled off to boston to catch a cab and check in for the event. the cab ride alone was enough excitement for me. (and that is scary my friends, because i used to travel the world writing books about it and none of those crazy cab rides bothered me one bit.) after the first half dozen near misses in the cab i began running news headlines in my head. they all had collections of words like, "mother of two" "tragic cab accident" "avon walk" embedded somewhere in them. (alright, alright, i never said i wasn't dramatic.) we made it to the registration spot and out again where we hailed a second cab and were driven to our hotel. we ordered room service, chatted, and headed to bed early because we needed to be up by 4:30am and out to our third cab to the start of the walk by 5:30. there were bags to be dropped off and breakfasts to be eaten and opening ceremonies to be had.

by 7am we were walking.

there was a huge crowd--2600 walkers plus crew members and lookers on. we raised $6.3 million here in boston. the opening ceremonies had inspired us and we began the walk full of energy. the initial pace was faster than our training pace and we knew if we continued that way we'd be dead in a ditch by lunch time. still, we pressed on, walking silently, eavesdropping on conversations behind us, slowing in unison, without a word, to let people pass so we could eavesdrop on a new group. occasionally we commented to each other about what we heard, but for the most part the beginning of that day was spent moving and getting a feel for what we were about to do.

at the first couple of rest stops i called home to find out that J and the baby were sick and J had forgotten to take the boy's picture form (which i'd filled out, signed, attached a check to, and stuck in the boy's baseball cap before i left) to t-ball. very early on i decided i'd be better off not calling so much.

we drank gatorade, had snacks, and became friends with the almighty handy house (or porta potty for the uninitiated). all was well.

we walked.

we walked for four and a half hours before we got to the lunch stop at mile 10 and we couldn't figure out why it was taking us so long. our training walks averaged about 3.5 miles per hour on the longer walks, 4 on the short ones (9 miles and under) and we felt like we were walking faster than usual. we were tired by lunchtime and the remaining 16.2 miles were beginning to feel like a virtual impossibility. we decided to take our time, have a nice (big!) lunch, take our shoes off, assess the potential damage to our feet (S insisted on slathering her feet with vaseline. i hate having lotiony things between my toes—i couldn’t watch), and the handy house doors fwap fwap fwapped to some sort of crazy yet strangely comforting rhythm.

it was right around that time that my right boob suddenly seemed noticeably larger...um... and sore. apparently the girl had been getting more milk than i’d originally assumed and i started to get nervous about impending intense boob pain. S insisted that we go to the medical tent and ask for a breast pump. of course they had one, but it was for a smarter person who’d brought her own. “why didn’t you bring one?!” asked one uppity young woman in a red t-shirt. uh. duh. because i’m s. t. o. o. p. i. d.

right! so off we marched to a pharmacy where i dropped $31 on a crappy manual breast pump. and since i really wasn’t hip to pumping in the handy house we walked next door to whole foods and i sat in a stall on a stool pumping and pumping and pumping. periodically S would come back in and ask how things were going. i’d say things were fine and the pump would squeak, squeak, squeak along. “i’ve got about two ounces,” oh how we later laughed about what the others using the bathroom must have thought.

it was all fun and games until we exited whole foods to find that almost everyone had moved on from the lunch stop. all but the most blistered and damaged folk had left. we were at the back of the pack. the remaining 16.2 miles suddenly seemed insurmountable.

(to be continued....)

swirling whirling mind

there are so many things swirling around in my head these days. it feels like there are too many to make much of a coherent and read-worthy post for the old blog.

the opening of this school is a roller coaster on its best day. i have so many ideas and so much energy to throw at it, but it all hinges on the usual "location, location, location." one of the new, young (did i mention young?) couples with kids at the boy's current school is desperate to help us find the best place--so desperate that they've bid on (and not gotten) one $1 million property and have just bid on a similarly-priced second property. besides being envious of the obvious i am absolutely stunned by their dedication and unfailing support. it is especially noteworthy amid all the chaos and negativity coming out of the boy's current school. of course we expected a fair amount of drama given the fact that we're leaving one school to start a new one just up the road--with two of its teachers. but what's been happening here is hiiiiiiiiigh drama. and there is talk, talk, talk all over town. and it's a small town.

in the middle of everything there's the book. and this week it needed heaps of attention. lots of annoying little mistakes. today the manuscript went back sporting a couple hundred colorful little post-it flags.

and there's The Walk--the training and the preparation for departure. it's this weekend. i'm going to be worried sick about the kids while i'm away. the girl is still nursing first thing in the morning and sometimes at night and i'll be gone two nights. my boob (because of course she only uses one of them!) will go crazy over the weekend. i told S she should consider sleeping on my left side in the tent (did i mention we might have to pitch our own after walking 26+ miles?) because she might be smothered by The Boob as it swells with unused milk. i'm looking forward to the event, but am nerve-wracked about leaving my babies behind. i've never even spent two nights away from the boy.

i have so much to put down here about blogging and how much harder it's becoming to maintain anonymity of late, but i'll save those for another day.

right now it's time for some coffee frozen yo. no junior mints, though.

thanks mom!

okay it's not what you think, it's a bone marrow drive and i'm passing this along to all of you for Deb. so please go read and if you qualify, go sign up to be a bone marrow donor, you might save a life!

huh?

you wouldn't necessarily think that walking could cause delirium, would you? well, 13 miles into our 20 mile walk yesterday things started to get a little giddy. i can't even remember what time it was at that point, but we'd been walking since 7:30(ish)am. we walked and walked and walked and stopped for gatorade and sat on a few benches (we were trying a new theory S had about her knee and resting and whatnot). we even stopped for lunch at a diner whose motto is "eat heavy." we tried not to, but did anyway, and a few blocks into the post-lunch walking i was cramping up. somewhere around that point the giddiness began in earnest.

we stopped for some extra water and powerb@rs (because we were attempting to be the first people in the history of training walks to gain a few pounds) and suddenly everything and everyone was funny. especially us. the way my jacket flopped back and forth behind my legs very nearly caused me to pee and S almost fell off the path several times due to laughter and loss of motor control.

we hooted and hollered our way through the final seven miles, during which time we considered the possibility that fellow walkers might simply think us to be drunk and disorderly. our inhibitions seemed to fall away with every passing mile.

about a quarter of a mile from the end of the walk we took stock of what little sensation remained in our bodies. i told S that my feet were sore, but that mostly i felt pretty good.

and then S told me that her ass felt like it was laughing. i repeat, her ass. felt. like. it. was. laughing.

um, if anyone can explain that, i'm all ears.

squeaky old bRoKen shoe

some of you may remember my squeaky old shoe post from late january. some of you asked me to keep you updated about the squeaky old shoe, and i promise, i would have--if there'd been anything to say.

during the last week of january the emails abruptly stopped. it was curious, the sudden halted communication, but not especially unusual for us. still, i couldn't shake the feeling that this time seemed different from the others. the silence had a genuinely unexpected quality. i worried that something was wrong, that something bad had happened, preventing my squeaky old shoe from fulfilling his promise of a reply to the long letter i'd slipped between the pages of a book i'd sent him. i chalked it up to the drama of motherhood--the constant worrying over potential bad happenings--and decided to quietly let it go. still, thoughts of never really hearing from him again made me sad and occasionally i'd sit down to start an email asking if things were okay. i never sent one.

today i received an email with the subject, "bad news." the first sentence mentioned his sudden disappearance. there was a paragraph break and this sentence followed:

"On the night of February 2nd, I was the victim of a gay bashing...."

tears sprang up and my knees buckled.

his jaws were broken. he suffered facial fractures. his mouth was wired shut for weeks and weeks. he's had surgery and been in therapy. he's been broken. violently, viciously broken.

email suddenly seemed inadequate. my brain couldn't put together a coherent sentence. i wanted to *see* him. i wanted to touch him and search his face for the absolute truth of his feelings. i can't, and that makes me feel helpless.

what animal could do such a thing to this beautiful, harmless person? they caught the miscreant a couple of days later during an altercation with his girlfriend. he was loading a gun.

i can't even think about what might have happened. for now i'm going to sit here with my eyes closed remembering one of the nights he visited me in NYC. he arrived at my apartment door wearing a delicious black (probably cashmere) coat and smelling like a dream. we walked arm in arm down columbus to a nice little mexican restaurant and laughed our heads off.