I just finished a 2.75-mile walk tonight in the dark. I have been going out to walk at night several times a week for the last 6 weeks or so. I have to admit, every time it’s a bit of a head trip and I spend some time during every nighttime walk wondering if I am being refreshingly brave or really stupid. I take a light and often take a dog, but he hides every time he hears another dog bark and is a black-as-night beta, so he’s not exactly protection. Some neighbors blast their property with blinding bright floodlights, and other neighbors’ homes are completely black. Certain streets are almost totally unlit. Sometimes I feel safer in the dark.

I love the night smells: wet grass, sweet dry oats, ripe figs, oak trees, wildfire smoke. And I like walking my with my light off; it’s a kind of faith. After 19 years, I know these neghborhood streets. But there’s one pothole I trip over every time, even though I know I am right on top of it.

The odds are in my favor; I will probably enjoy many more peaceful nighttime walks, either alone or with my silly little dog. I live in a safe place. Surely there are precautions I can take. But that’s not what I am interested in.

I’m interested in the dialogue that’s happening in my head around the idea of safety, where I’m safe and when, and under what conditions. I find myself feeling safer walking in the dark in places where I’m unlikely to encounter anyone else. Other nights the opposite is true, and I gravitate toward the streets with streetlights. And I wonder why that is, and if I’m safer or wiser now that I am older, or if I’ve just got less time/energy for fear now.

At a college campus famous for partying, I marched in Take Back the Night events in the early ’90s, with hundreds of women at my side. Now it’s just me out there, and I feel up to actually doing it. The night is mine.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for four months now. A-hem.

Lucas joined the school’s cross country running team this past fall. He’s in sixth grade and it was his first opportunity to be involved in school sports, and he jumped in with both feet and tons of heart. The team started practicing even before the school year began, and Ian and I watched with wide eyes as he completed two after-school practices each week and ran meets on many Saturdays and a few Wednesdays too. The sixth grade boys turned out in force (I think we had eight from our class), and for many of them it was their first team sport experience. I am so proud of them. They were supportive of each other, encouraging, and really gave it their all.

They trained hard and had a lot of fun too. Practices often involved running more than 3 miles.

They practiced and ran races in 100-degree heat. Races were usually about 1.4 miles or 1.25 miles long.

These are shots from their very first meet at the Lagoon Valley Classic Invitational in Vacaville.

This was a meet that took place at Capital Christian Center school. I love this photo because it illustrates what it’s like to have sixth, seventh, and eighth graders racing at the same time! (Fortunately, they gave medals for the five fastest boys in each grade.) It also illustrates to me how much growth our boys are going to experience in these next three years.

Some of our boys are just born to run; they’re fast and lithe, and they want it bad. But all the Sacramento Waldorf School boys were dedicated and worked hard to improve their times. And they all did through their training.

Lucas came in fifth of all the sixth graders at this Capital Christian race. It was a very proud moment for him.

Over the course of the season, which was about eight weeks long, he improved his mile time by more than two minutes. By the end of the season he was running a mile in under-7-minutes.

This was in the foothills at Foresthill High School for the Wildfire Invitational. The Waves middle school runners were warming up. This course took them a little more than a mile through the forest. It was a beautiful location.

And how’s this for a culminating moment? In the last meet of the season (“The Other Meet”), the runners trekked out over a track through an undeveloped field on the edge of some soccer fields. They ran past a hornet nest, and the insects stung them. Some described seeing runners covered in hornets. All of our boys came back with a sting or two. They kept running and all of them finished the race! So tough! I think I would have flipped out had I been in their shoes.

The middle school runners’ season ended in the middle of October. The Waves high school runners continued to train and run till Thanksgiving. I somehow misunderstood the team schedule and assumed that Lucas would train through November also. When we learned that was not the case, it was a great disappointment for him. He was having the time of his life and getting so good, he just wasn’t ready for the season to end! I am quite sure that he will be on the team next fall.

The Waves high school runners went on to perform very well in statewide competitions. They run faster and farther in their meets. The coach is looking at this big crop of young, middle school runners with excitement, perhaps imagining what they will do when they are older.

We are so proud of Lucas and what he accomplished! We are delighted that his first team sports experience was so completely positive, so affirming and encouraging. We are so grateful to the coaches, the other parents, and to kids on the team for such a wonderful time. And we cannot wait for next year’s season.

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you’ve all had a wonderful holiday. I warn you, this post is going to try to do too much.

Thanksgiving vacation has been all in all pretty great. It started a day early with my grandmother’s funeral services. That first weekend was full and emotionally difficult, but the funeral services eased into an early Thanksgiving family gathering (Ian’s family this time), where people were kind and gentle to me and let me slide on everything because I was sad, and then a party at my home for Tony and our local November birthday girls. My friends made it soooo easy for me to host that party by helping to prepare my house. Once I got over being embarrassed by the neglected state of things, I let go and allowed them to make the place sparkle and shine. When the day of the party came, I just got to sit back and enjoy having my home full of lovely, friendly people. Many, many thanks to Lady K and Jami for making it so perfect.

I got to do two trail runs with Stacy. She is a super running partner for me—very encouraging and she has introduced me to the joys of running on the trails instead of the street. We’re evenly matched, and that means I don’t have to worry about holding her back, and vice verse. Running near the river means we get to see vistas and oak trees, deer trails and sparkling sunshine. This fills my heart as much as the running does.

While they had time off, the kids and I did some normal stuff, like shoe buying and errands. We had lunch with Papa and Uncle Mike one day. I couldn’t help but think I should go and visit my grandmother, but … the time for doing that is done.

We went running at Del Campo high school’s track on the day before Thanksgiving. We were getting ready for The Run to Feed the Hungry the next day. Thanksgiving morning dawned and we four went to East Sacramento to run a 10K. My goal was to run together as a family, keeping to our six-almost-seven-year-old’s pace—run when he could run, walk when he wanted to walk. It kind of worked and kind of didn’t. I kind of got the experience I had hoped for, but … well, let’s say that Ian was right and I was wrong and it is evidently too hard for fast boys to slow down enough to meet mama’s family experience agenda. We’ll chock this up to experience; I don’t actually know if we can do this event together again.

Asher ran 5.5 miles. We walked the rest and I’m so proud of him. He was absolutely determined to run, and lots of people cheered him on all along the course.

Here we are after the race. There were approximately 30,000 people there. The weather was perfect. The mood, festive. The course started and finished at Sacramento State University and looped through lovely East Sacramento. It was nice and flat.

And let me boast a moment by saying that running this 10K was an incredible accomplishment for me, personally. I’ve never been able to run this far in my life. I am slow, but the training I’ve been doing these last two months has paid off.

A big part of why I’m pushing so hard to rewire my brain about exercise is because I see how naturally movement and athletics comes to my family. I see how much joy they derive from using their bodies and I want very much to be a good role model for them. I also want to be physically capable of doing things they like to do. They have inspired me to be better about this aspect of my life.

Anyway, Thanksgiving. We went to my parents’ home for Thanksgiving dinner and enjoyed a few hours with them and my brother and his girlfriend. It was relaxed and easy, and just what I needed.

Sorry, more trail run pics. (Stopping just a sec to take a photo is fun and then I have pretty evidence that I really did it.) Stacy doesn’t seem to mind. We ran yesterday morning I am thrilled to keep going even after meeting our race goal.

We visited with my mother’s side of the family yesterday, too. Her brothers were in town visiting, so we got all five siblings together. Many thanks to my cousin Emily and her husband Mike for hosting. The shape of our family has changed and it was nice to meet all the kids and get them together. It was sweet how well they got along!

Asher and I have been reading a lot about Pilgrims, and the “first Thanksgiving” of 1621, which is entirely mythologized in our American culture. We’ve read about the time when the Wampanoag encountered the colonists at Plymouth, Massachusetts, who were able to settle the area because the former occupants, the Patuxet tribe, had been wiped out by disease. Amazingly, this interest Asher has is completely his—I didn’t choose these topics or books for him. Doubly amazingly is that both books about this time of American history do not give the American myth of the first Thanksgiving.

We’ve also been reading about Vikings, and how archaeologists and historians know what they know about them. Asher seems to have a budding interest in history.

We watched some “Avatar The Last Airbender,” a family autumn staple, and a movie called “Arthur and the Invisibles.” We have snuggled in, cooked and eaten meals together, gone to piano lessons and basketball practice, and the boys have started working on Christmas projects. Ian and I had a date night, Lucas did math homework, and I painted a bit and today I planted irises and tulip bulbs.

See what I mean? Too much in one post, and a full and wonderful week. We are thankful for so much love and abundance in our lives!

I actually asked myself today, “where can I write about all these feelings I have to process them?”  Um … oh yeah! I have a blog.

It’s a full, exciting time and I am finding myself short on spare time. But, when I don’t write, I get kinda weird in the head, so I think it would be good for me to write more. This is a lesson I seem to have to relearn frequently.

I’m back in the saddle with the whole exercise-for-fitness journey, which is my conflicted little hamster wheel. (It had been a long time since I was exercising regularly and I won’t bore anyone with the reasons why.) For the last seven weeks I’ve been going two mornings a week to a workout with a group of moms from our school. I call us the Waves Women, though our group has no official name. One lovely, enthusiastic lady recently became a personal trainer and she offered to whip us into shape in an eight-week program. I caught wind of this group a little late, but joined up. We’ve been exercising in the mornings in the park right next to the Waldorf school. The workouts at first were a little hard for me, but they’ve become much easier. And while I kind of hated it at first, as I have come to know these women better, I really have come to enjoy the whole experience. Because they are awesome. They show up and bellyache and laugh and try and modify and encourage each other. It’s very real and wonderful. (Many thanks to Black Francis for taking the photo above and letting me publish it here.)

So, I would just like to say thank you to Meredith for giving her time and encouragement and energy, and thanks to all these super people for making this experience fun for me. Turns out I like working out with people I know!

I’ve also been doing a lot more walking and running lately. I’ve been walking with several friends semi-regularly and running a couple of times a week—but I had a cold for part of October and that slowed me down a bit. One day I walked 8 miles because I didn’t feel up to running, but walking was just right.

It’s hard to go wrong when you can get out to places like this within just a few minutes. So, anyway … fitness. My motto right now is “Do more.” We’ll see where that takes me, but I can tell that I’m in a better place for it.

This past weekend I acted as the officiant in the wedding of two dear friends. I was honored to be asked to do this work, and I am so happy for them. The whole thing was beautiful and I’m very pleased with how the ceremony turned out. Ian was the Best Man, and that meant that our boys were rather on their own for much of the day’s festivities. They were super good and I’m proud of them. There will probably be photos from the day floating about, but I confess I took none. I was too nervous before the ceremony to even think about getting out my camera or my phone.

Writing and performing this wedding ceremony has had me thinking a lot about love and commitment. About how two people can honor each other through time and changes and growth. How you continue to blend two lives in concert when people have differing needs and wants. I know that it takes work and patience and understanding. I know it takes open dialogue and discussion and that isn’t always pretty stuff. I know marriage includes a lot of unglamorous things that fall into the highly unsexy categories of “Daily Grind,” and “Working the Plan,” and “Roles.” I’m 18 years into my marriage and it’s frequently bewildering but always rewarding. It isn’t a fairytale, however, and no marriage can be—unless we’re talking about the kind of fairytale in which fingers get pricked and sacrifices are made and sometimes the woods are dark and scary.

Anyway, here’s what I know about love: It doesn’t fall from the sky or blossom at your feet without effort. You make it, and make it, and remake it, again and again, every day. You plant the seeds of love in a thousand little actions every day. What I don’t know about love and marriage is a lot longer than this paragraph, I’m sure.

And now, about Halloween. I am feeling like I blew it this year. But I also know I don’t need to feel that way. I know that in the past I’ve set the bar for our Halloween costumes pretty high, and this year—well, the wedding and my work ate up Halloween. We will still go trick-or-treating. We will still see friends and enjoy our spooky night. Our kids will end up wearing something. Lucas has taken point on his assassin costume. He’s relaxed about it, and not worried about it being fantastic. Asher is going as a potion maker, and we have found a couple of items at the thrift store and he’ll carry with him tiny bottles of colored potions. That’s all his idea and I don’t have to control it. Right? Right.

I love Halloween, and I will have other opportunities to go mad about it. Just not this year. And that’s OK.

So, maybe this post is about starting again, about continuing to try, about compromise and doing the good work, and about forgiveness. Maybe.

Ian participated in his third Tough Mudder last weekend on July 13th at Northstar at Tahoe. (He’s been diving into a number of really challenging things lately.) He was in great shape for it and he went through the course really quickly.

It turns out that you really should read the whole packet about boring stuff like parking. We had to park far from Northstar and take a bus in; the trip took 45 minutes and Ian was late for registration and his start time. But, it really doesn’t matter all that much. I waited up the hill a bit, listened to the pep talk (“I do not whine! KIDS whine! … This is a challenge, not a race.”) and the national anthem, and watched the start of the race as the Mudders charged uphill to begin the 10 mile course.

Then I found the lodge, an electrical outlet, and sat with my laptop and worked. I bought a sandwich and a beer. I’ve got loads of terrific pictures from past Tough Mudders, but I don’t really know what to do with them, and so this time I opted not to stand in the sun taking pics of athletes I don’t know—even if they are incredibly beautiful. Besides, I was under a deadline.

Eventually, when I figured Ian might be nearly done, I walked out and watched at the earliest place I was likely to spot him. While I was watching for him, he came up behind me, beer in hand and headband already on. I completely missed seeing him do the final three obstacles, which were the only ones I was even likely to get to see him do. Anyway, he finished in 3 hours and 18 minutes! Far faster than I had guessed.

And then he enjoyed a really good burger and a beer. And we found we had some extra time…

So we rode the chair lift up to see a couple of obstacles on the course, Electric Eel and a wall obstacle that I’ve never seen before. I have to say, it’s kind of fun watching people crawl through mud and cuss when they get shocked.

We were on top of the world on that mountain, with brilliant blue Lake Tahoe in the distance and fabulous views in all directions.

A great day, to be sure. Many thanks to the Bennetts for taking care of our boys while we were gone all day.

Congratulations, my love! I’m very proud of you.

Once again, my dear husband tackled a huge dragon and completed the Tough Mudder in Patterson, California. He trained hard for it and had a great time. Somehow this was a kind of birthday celebration for him. I don’t know. He’s kind of weird. (That is a safety pin in his mouth, not a piercing. He was pinning his number onto his shirt when I snapped the photo above.)

Ian joined our friend Cherylyn and her family’s team, the Jog-or-Naughts. They were all in pink, and Ian gamely donned their color for the event. I was able to follow them from the start and to the first couple of obstacles.

We mistakenly thought it would be relatively flat terrain. Wrong. Tons of climbing through hot, dusty hills.

I soon lost track of Ian and the team because I couldn’t follow. I spent my time eating a hot dog, drinking a beer, and taking photos of hunky hot athletes. That was just fine. The mud spatters on my clothes were worth it. I got some terrific photos.

It was a very hot day, 95 degrees or more. I never really could check because I had no Internet connection. Unlike the previous Tough Mudder he did in Squaw Valley up on Tahoe, in Patterson the water/mud events were actually a little refreshing, and not freezing cold. I sat a very long time by this muddy pond to wait for my Mudders to swim and wade through here and to get this one close-up photo of Ian. I also got a stinky, muddy kiss for my troubles. After hours of waiting while my friends were miles away, climbing hills, slogging through mud, going over and under umpteen yucky, dangerous obstacles, I was very relieved to see them coming down the hill and entering this gross pond, hale and safe.

Here is the last obstacle, named “Electroshock Therapy.” Those are electrified wires hanging down and the Mudders have to run (or fall, slip, crawl, and slide) through them, getting shocks all the while. This was the second obstacle with electricity. Ian had already gotten shocked pretty bad, which he says felt like being kicked in the head.

All six of our Mudders completed the course. What I like about this event is the emphasis on camaraderie and helping one another through it. Our Jog-or-Naughts stuck together and everyone tackled the obstacles that were right for them.

Here is their celebratory beer, which I am told, never tasted so good. I am terribly impressed by all of them! Congratulations, Ian, Cherylyn, Kimberly, Cybil, Susan, and Nina!

Our Sunday began at 4:45 a.m., earlier than we ever rise. We dressed, brushed our teeth, threw our things into the car, and then carefully transferred sleeping boys into the vehicle. We drove almost two hours up highway 80, heading toward Squaw Valley, California, to the Nor Cal Tough Mudder. Seriously, check out the Tough Mudder website here. You won’t be sorry you did.

Ian had been training hard for this event since May, when he decided to join our friends NoNo and Mars in this obstacle course extraordinaire, this crazy endurance “race” to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project, which helps recently returned wounded veterans. Yes, that means our dearest Daddy and darling friends paid for the privilege to test their meddle against 24 seriously gnarly obstacles designed to challenge both body and mind.

Our arrival at Squaw valley was a joyful, exciting time. Hundreds of participants and spectators milled about reasonably, filling out death waivers and promising not to sue. All Mudders recieved registration packets and race numbers, which were written on their foreheads and bodies for easy identification. One wonders whether they expect participants heads to separate from bodies—well, better safe than sorry.

This is team Burndoggle. As you can see, spirits were high before the start. Butterflies? Oh yeah! This is some crazy stuff, folks. We in the support crew, our dear friend Dakini and me and our two children, were there to take photos and give high fives and wishes of good luck. Honestly, I’m overjoyed that I got to be present for this. What a day! What a day!

An amazing, loving, superb couple, our lovely NoNo and Mars! Lets just say they’ve been training for the Tough Mudder for something like 11 years. Yes, they take their fitness seriously.

Daddy was pumped up and jittery, and took some time before the 8:40 start to love up the boys and play with them. Oh yeah! Asher kept looking at Ian like he was more than a little insane. Frankly, I don’t blame him.

The Tough Mudder start line was at the base of a huge mountain. It seemed to say, “Get use to it, Mudders, because mountains are going to be your life for the next several hours!” Some Mudders wore funny costumes. I saw ‘fro wigs and matching tights and tutus and teams of friends all in pink scrubs. The National Anthem played before the 8:40 wave was allowed to start. There was crazy cheering and Asher cried because I was making too much noise. A lot of this day was well outside his comfort zone.

We Burndoggle team supporters knew we wouldn’t be able to witness MOST of the Tough Mudder obstacles. (Here is the course map.) But we were there to pass the day, have a great time, and hope for the opportunity to see our friends kicking ass, so we bought tickets for the cable car to take us up to 8,200 feet above sea level. (Asher didn’t much like this part either, but he bravely did as he was told and stuck very close to me. Especially when it started rocking after passing a pylon. Even my stomach did flip-flops while on this thing.)

Right after we exited this cable car “sky bus” thingy, we emerged at the top of a gorgeous mountain with a vista that stretched all the way to Lake Tahoe in the distance. But that’s not what caught our eye right away. First, we were captivated by the nearby obstacle called Everest—a quarter-pipe against which Mudders threw themselves in the hopes of  scaling it. A group of burly athletes lined the top to help other Mudders over the obstacle. Yes, Mudders, you see work in cooperation. This isn’t a race, per se. It’s more about teamwork and cooperation and facing your fears. These guys at the top were more than happy to haul others up and over the edge. But just jumping high enough to grab one of these body-building helpers’ hands was a huge feat. Most people I watched couldn’t do it. Some did. Mars did it, somehow, when I wasn’t looking. This may be my only regret of the day.

(None of these marvelous people are my people. That’s OK, though. They’re cool!)

What was truly thrilling was the fact that Mars, NoNo, and Ian were there when we arrived, waiting for their chance!  There was something of a traffic jam for the Mudders to get over this thing. I hadn’t really dared to hope that we might catch up with them at any point on the course. This was a dream come true. NoNo waited and watched others make their attempts, strategizing all the while, I think.

Ian weighed the risks carefully.

NoNo and Ian both climbed the 12-foot half-pipe to get over. Tough Mudder isn’t about doing every obstacle perfectly. It’s about making it through. This Everest was only obstacle 3, I think (after the Kiss of Mud and the Death March). We got kisses and then they were off again, running up an even higher mountain to who knows where? … something about crawling through snow, I later found out.

Dakini and the boys and I followed an alpine meadow trail a ways over to two nearby obstacles: the monkey bars and the rope climb. These were monkey bars on steroids, I tell you. About six lanes of Mudders monkeying uphill to a peak and then downhill to the end of the obstacle. Most fell into the muddy water below. Some made it all the way across. Many made it only part way. I really didn’t ever realize how many different monkey bar styles there were before this day!

This might be my favorite photos of the monkey bars because of the tights, of course, but it doesn’t convey the numbers of people crossing at once. Crazy. We waited here quite a while, hoping our friends would arrive after having passed through obstacles that we skipped by coming here. We’ll never really know if they went through this section of the course before we arrived here on foot with a 4-year-old, or after we finally gave up hoping to see them.

Right near here was the rope climb, which I later learned was something of a triumph for Ian. At this point the boys were holding up beautifully, especially since I kept feeding them.

The High Camp views were amazing. Truly spectacular. It’s the kind of place that makes you feel small and yet restores your faith in the world because of it.

Dakini took this great photo of us on top of the world among the mules ears. It was such a gorgeous day!

Squaw Valley hosted the Olympics in 1960. They have an Olympic Museum, which would be interesting to visit sometime, but we weren’t here for that.

Eventually, we rode the cable car back down the mountain and got the gear bags for our warriors. We ended up waiting under some shade at the cargo net obstacle for quite some time. This is a shot that Lucas took, which clearly shows Mudders coming down a (third?) mountain single file to get to the cargo net. We could see them way at the top as tiny specks, and we must have scanned the outlines of hundreds of descending people, looking for our three darlings, all the while shuffling our feet and hoping.

The waiting was hard. Anxious for me. But mostly boring for the boys. I jollied them along as best I could with PBJ sandwiches and pears. Lucas made a little birdie out of a pine cone and bits of wood chips. Asher made a big pile of rocks and then carefully formed the letter A with little sticks. “Mama, look what I made! Is that a A?”

After what felt like a long, nail-biting time, Ian emerged on the top of this obstacle. We had spotted our friends snaking down the mountain, and we were cheering like mad when he reached the top and looked right at us. Moments later, NoNo and Mars were there, too. They were close to the end of this ordeal and spirits were very high!

Daddy ran to us. We cheered and applauded. We got hugs and kisses. I snapped many photos of these gorgeous, dusty Mudders. (A gazillion more are on my Flickr stream.)

Don’t they look wonderful? But alas, even though they had scaled the Berlin Walls, carried logs, swam under walls, jumped off high planks, and braved the Chernobyl Jacuzzi already, they weren’t done yet. Two or three other obstacles still remained ….

Like this balance-beam obstacle called Twinkle Toes. Again, there were many lanes that Mudders could cross. Trouble was, the boards kept wobbling and many people fell into icy-cold water. I’m told the day was punctuated by frequent encounters with icy-cold water.

They approached the last obstacle, Electroshock Therapy—a field of electrically charged wires ready to zap Mudders with 10,000 volts as they pass—at a walk. This is one that messes with your mind, I think.

And then they were done. Their reward? A free beer and some food, a T-shirt, and this nifty orange headband.

Ian was elated, but not quite in his right mind at the finish. Dizzy? Addled? Relieved? Definitely happy!

Team Burndoggle’s time was something like 5 hours and 20 to 40 minutes. I don’t know exactly. I was too excited and busy congratulating them and taking photos to check the time. Whatever. They did it! And then much celebration ensued. The grins were worth a million bucks. There was pizza and more beer.

And our Tough Mudders posed for pics in the most delightful ways.

And my little, impressionable boys got to see Daddy do something amazing and clearly worthwhile, something he worked hella hard for—which is why I dragged them two hours into the Sierras at the crack of dawn and then up and down mountaintops after all.

Congratulations, NoNo and Mars! You rock!

Congratulations, Ian, my love. You are heroic and mighty! I’m so proud of you.

I should be doing a bunch of other things right now. Instead I’m going to talk in this space about fitness, my own fitness, in particular.

I am having more success this year than possibly ever before. Which is why hurting my back last weekend has really thrown me off. See, I’m not not exercising this week because I don’t want to. Well, OK. I’ll turn that around: I’m not exercising this week not because I’m too lazy, or my kid is sick, or there’s no time, but because I can’t. Because I should heal from whatever the hell I did to myself. Because I don’t want to make this mild injury worse.

And, well, this not exercising is kind of driving me nuts. I can actually, honestly say it: I’m missing my exercise this week. I’m feeling really hampered by this mild back pain, this slight impediment to my normal, everyday movements. And I don’t like it. I don’t want to rest.

Those who know me will realize how big that is.

Ian deserves all the credit, except for the fact that those calories I’ve been burning regularly since January 17, 2011 were my calories and I burned them. But Ian helped an awful lot—by coaxing, encouraging, cajoling, rousting, pushing, and loving me into our shared exercise and my fitter, stronger body.

It’s worked. I’ve accomplished 121 workouts since we started seven months ago. I won’t go into all the gritty details. The truth is I hated many of them, especially those that began and ended before 7 a.m. But what I like is the accumulation of them. The collection of workouts. The notches on my bad-ass belt. The sparkly jewels on my custom rainbow-and-unicorn reinforcement star chart that Ian made for me.

My relationship to exercise in general has always been wobbly—often emergency-room wobbly. Exercise has always meant to me asthma, asthma, and more asthma, running around toxic school fields of allergic green death. There have been some small exceptions in my adult life, since asthma maintenance drugs have improved immeasurably over those I took as a child. The crux there is they were always brief exceptions, short forays into the realm of normal people. In high school I enjoyed dancing in musical theater productions quite a lot. In college I walked all over the hills of Santa Barbara, Berkeley, and Saint Andrews in Scotland. During one of my office jobs, Ian and I managed to drag ourselves to the gym with good regularity.

Something always came up, though. Asthma. A massive deadline, or a whole season of them. A nursing baby in arms. Then another. It just got more and more complicated.

K, never mind all that. The point is: I’ve been running. A little. Since about March. A little here, a little there. Almost 2 miles, then almost 2.5. Then 2.7 miles a bunch of times, then that distance without any walking breaks at all.

Last Saturday, I ran 3.8 miles in a row without stopping. And when I was done, I felt fantastic.

So, I’m a runner? Me? Asthma girl? Running is the freakin’ Holy Grail to me because it’s always been so unattainable.

And now I’m benched. Slightly injured. For now. For not much longer, I hope. Because now that I’m on a roll—succeeding at this difficult thing—I really don’t want to lose it all and go back to Square-One Failure. The Harpies are shouting in my ear, “See, you can’t actually be a runner. You’re no athlete. Who do you think you’re kidding?” And I fear I will have to start over. I have fears.

I also have two stars to go before my rainbow is complete.

Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Today is one of those glorious pea-soup foggy days. I told Asher that some cloud up in the sky was curious about people, and came down to visit. “Look, mama, I can’t see the school!”

I have 35 minutes to myself to get my heart pounding and revel in the quiet. Normally I would hear many birds singing and squirrels barking whenever I passed too closely to their trees. Not today. In the hush of the low-lying mist, even the birds seem to whisper, as though they’re in church.

Perhaps the hundreds of squirrels are all still abed, sleeping in. Perhaps today is a day of rest, even though it’s not marked as such on my calendar. Spiderwebs on hedges are so wet with dew, they are sagging.

I pass a neighbor’s yard. Tiny droplets of water sparkle at the end of pine needle sprays. The closest trees are black against the fog, distant ones are erased in mist. The trees are laid bare, arthritic bones are revealed. And yet, they look lacy against the gray-white sky, as though they’ve put on crocheted gloves over their bony fingertips. Some still sport seed pods or random leaves that forgot to fall. Some are already swelling with buds, as if to proclaim to King Winter, “I am not finished! You will not conquer me.”

No dogs bark at me, even at the home where five of them jealously guard their little patch of Fair Oaks. Their fence sign boasts, “I can make it to the gate in 3 minutes. Can you?” I assume they’re all vying for space near the heating vents and fireside indoors.

I walk down a long straight hill, noticing the deep green of a redwood, the rosy blush of a heavenly bamboo bush. Tiny signs of the coming spring are revealed a bit here, a bit there. I have to look closely for them, and they make me smile. There’s a flowering quince! It’s coral buds are getting fat. Some early blooms are opening nearest the base of the twigs, and they’ll bloom upward like that in a kind of wave. I spy rosemary bushes covered in lavender blossoms. But they’re lonely. No bees serenade them yet. One front yard is graced with a thick ruffle of petite, buttery jonquils.

I notice the squish of my feet as I pass some yards, where the messy autumn leaves are being left to rot. Leaf litter is ground into black muck on the pavement. Some leaves are disintegrating into doilies.

A small flock of Canada geese flies low, making two passes and honking. They are clownish phantoms except when directly overhead. Their monochrome blends into the sky.

I trudge up the hill and come close enough that the garish green fence finally reveals itself. It blinks out of the fog as if someone just turned on the electricity. It is the greenest fence I have ever seen. It is, frankly, impossibly green, and moreover, frankly, I adore it. If it had only stayed plain, showing its natural wood tones, it could have graced a traditional Japanese garden. Happily, its goofy coloring is nowhere near so demure. Happily, it shouts hello to me into the quiet morning.

I round the corner, passing the empty playground. Sometimes little ones with parents are here playing. Not today. Even the beehive in the base of the tree is quiet, seemingly deserted. I hope the bees are inside keeping warm.

There’s something rather Victorian about my neighborhood today. Somehow the fog lends these familiar sights a romance, a mystery. I imagine cobblestones and hoop skirts, and the watery glow of London streetlamps. Where is that piper when I need him?

Houses are storytellers, if you bother to notice the tales they share. Some are old-old, falling mournfully into disrepair or melting into their overgrown yards. Some tell you they are rentals; they seem to say they aren’t one-family homes, but rather they entertain a series of lonely guests year after year. Some homes are elderly men and women, who quite clearly and purposefully look after their health. They take their vitamins and their fiber. They are kept up, wearing nice clothes and dapper roofs. Their neatly trimmed trees and bushes tell you they see the manicurist regularly. Few homes around here are new; they glow with youth like the fresh-faced teens of the neighborhood. Some proudly sport both laugh lines and boob jobs at the same time. These have shiny SUVs in their driveways.

It’s all kind of magical. It’s all ordinary. And since I alone am here to witness it, it’s all mine.