Motivation

WHY have I started trying to run?

WHAT convinced me that was a good idea?

WHAT can I possibly sell myself on today to make me a little more happy about going out to do this when I'd rather stay in my pajamas, drink coffee, read a book (because I am WAY behind) and generally NOT run?

Motives. What are my motives?

In no particular order and made up as I go....

1. It's a step closer to the following 30 x 30 goals: Run a 10k, Exercise Regularly, Be Skinny, and Have Sexy Legs
2. I think people who exercise have more self-confidence which is a positive thing, you know, feeling like you can do something that you want to do
3. I want to live a life where I am healthy and able to be involved in my children's lives and not by yelling at them from the couch that has molded to the shape of my would-be generous backside
4. I want to teach my children that they need to treat their bodies with respect and take care of them
5. When my daughter is grown and juggling her adult life I want her to know that she is worth the time it takes to keep her body healthy
6. When my sons are grown and juggling their adult lives I want them to encourage their wives (one respective wife for each, not three for Peanut and two for Pickle) to be healthy and do what they need to do
7. Heart disease, folks. I'd like to not have that.
8. Rage. I think I have some pent-up anger issues and running is an acceptable outlet for that.
9. I enjoy the sense of accomplishment I get from doing something interruption-free
10. I listen to music that I like pumped directly into my ears at a volume loud enough to melt my brain. (I'm sure there's a downside to that like hearing loss, but I'll risk it)
11. I don't think while I run. It's completely here and now. This foot. That foot.  Repeat. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. There's no worrying, there's no thinking, there's no planning ahead. It's a complete break from the stressed out knot of worries that is my brain every other minute of my waking life.
12. Every exercise session that I do I reward myself with a new tune I can download and I like new tunes. 
13. Once I start running long enough to burn calories I will hopefully start to lose weight which will bring me that much closer to being the weight on my driver's license... :)
14. I get wicked headaches where the medical "cure" is to take medicine that makes me sleep for 12 hours at a time, which was inconvenient before children, but almost impossible to do now that I'm the mother and primary caretaker of small children. When I am exercising regularly I get less headaches.
15. I have problems falling asleep and I'm hopeful that exercise will help that as well. (Decreasing my evening caffeine intake would probably help too, but I'm not ready for that...)
16. Brace yourselves, but I think I might actually start to like running....

Awareness

There are a lot of good causes in the world that we should unite behind.

There are wrongs that should be righted,

myths that should dispelled.

truths that should be uncovered

 Today, I'd like to talk about something I think will be near and dear to many of you.

In fact, I would be surprised if each of you didn't find something that speaks to you, that reminds you of a little bit of yourself. 

This is something that we suffer mostly in silence.

When our affliction overpowers us we rage to our spouses

or carefully selected friends

who share our burden momentarily 

until we slump back down 

temporarily soothed

until the next spell comes over us.

I'm talking about

Adoption Onset Email Related Neurosis

How do you know if you're suffering from A.O.E.R.N.?

The easiest way to tell is to ask your husband.

He will know. He will tell you.

Unless your agency closes in fifteen minutes and your "refresh screen" finger is twitching...

If you need a diagnosis and your husband is not immediately available or you suspect he might be afraid to tell you then truth then please continue reading.

If you have four of more of these symptoms you might have

Adoption Onset Email Related Neurosis.

There will be slight variances for everyone and you should consult with someone knowledgeable about this condition if you suspect that you might be suffering from 

Adoption Onset Email Related Neurosis.

• You are a member of your agency's yahoo group plus more than one additional yahoo group related to adoption
• You can summarize five adoption stories including names and agencies just by hearing the name of their blog
• You check your email at least hourly during your agency's business hours
• If you are not near your computer you take your email-capable phone in your pocket and check every email BECAUSE IT COULD BE SOMETHING
• You have ever calculated probabilities based on information you compiled based on someone else's timeline with your agency
• Sometimes you email or call your agency for a random question because maybe when they're talking to you "they'll remember" they had news for you or they "might let something slip" about possible news
• You read more than seven adoption blogs, even if you do not have your own
• You can give an estimated time frame for any eventuality within minutes of hearing itt
• Sometimes you sit and stare at your email inbox while hitting "refresh"
• You have changed your email address to gmail because it refreshes automatically even if you leave the window open while you continue to do other work online, or read blogs
• You are significantly more pleasant before and after your adoption agency opens or closes because you finally feel like you can relax
• Your adoption agency knows your voice
• You flinch, pray, and take a deep breath before opening your email inbox
• Your laptop is constantly open and within eyesight so you know instantly if you have email
• You check your email specifically a little before you agency opens and a little while after they close because maybe someone will come in a little early or stay a little late and send you an email with news, an update, a court date, a picture, anything...

Please remember

this is a curable condition and it will end when you bring your child home

but there is no treatment until then.

Seek the support of your loved ones and friends,

and remember we're all in this together

so if there is a symptom of

Adoption Onset Email Related Neurosis

that I have forgotten please add it to the comments so that we can all suffer in solidarity.

Thuper Thursday 6

 

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1. Thuper Toys of the Week: Little People
Here at Zehlahlum Family we're not huge fans of having toys everywhere and those toys being loud, obnoxious to the eyes and/or ears. We like open-ended play: toy kitchens, cars for pushing around, art stuff, balls, wooden blocks and characterless train sets. We  avoid having the matching toy for every show that comes out except "Cars" because that would surely end my son's life (we did hold out briefly) and hey, (justifying) at least they're still cars so they're kind of open-ended. Anyway, we like the Little People figures and playsets. They make a ton of them from Noah's Ark to the Nativity to the Zoo to the Airport and everything in between. Yes, they're plastic and strangely bright colors, but it's still wholesome fun and everything is interchangeable. Their characters are diverse and if you leave the batteries out your kids will never know that the barn is supposed to have animal sounds. They're well-made and welcome in our home.

2. Thuper Blog Post of the Week: Leah Ann

Leah Ann's family has an amazing adoption story that stretches back over several years now. I encourage to read her blog and get a real sense of her heart for adoption and her sons. I know that her family would continue to appreciate your prayers for their newest son home and for the son that they are faithfully waiting for in Guatemala.

3. Thuper Etsy Item of the Week: Custom Glass Pendant Necklace

I cannot believe how beautiful these are. They're a great price too. They're classy. They're emotionally charged. I cannot wait to have one!! I would have ordered one as soon as I saw them if I could have picked what word I wanted it to say! Her shop has other amazing items as well. Her artwork is phenomenal as well. Go buy something and tell her Jamey sent you. 

4. Thuper Story of the Week: Peanut
Peanut and I have started working through a little reading program. I'm not sure how it's going yet, but I did get a good laugh out of it the other day. He was writing the letters 'm' and 's'. He had written a few of them and looked up at me and with a very proud voice said, 

"Look, Mom! I'm doing S and M!"

5. Thuper Challenge of the Week: Compassion
I know many of you are in the process of adoption and I know that no one likes to be nagged, but I just want to put sponsoring a child out there again. In many cases your $38.00 a month keeps children home with their families and in every case it brings Hope and Healing to a child, to a family, to a community, to a nation, to the world. If you can, sponsor a child. If you can give a one-time gift, do it. If you can pray, then pray. If you can jot it down and stick it up on your fridge that when your adoption is over you're going to sponsor another child, then do that. (That's what I'm doing) Because as long as one child in this world is hungry or hurting then the rest of us have a responsibility to that child.

Adoption Nightmares

I'm on night #2 of adoption nightmares. These have been hardcore nightmares not like my previous adoption dreams. I wake up scared and fighting the urge to jump out of bed and pace around my house burning off frantic energy. But I don't, I lay there awake for awhile reassuring myself that it's not Real. I also try to stop myself from going back to sleep. If I start to drift off I invariably can feel myself sliding back into the nightmare and then there's a mini-battle between the sleeping part of my brain and the awake part of my brain each trying to have their way.

And yes, I'll be detailing the nightmare here so if you don't want to hear it I'd advise you to stop reading now...

Andrew, Little Miss and I are in this huge house. It's like six stories and each floor has all of these different rooms and activities going on. There's a floor that has lots of bedrooms, a floor that is a cafeteria-style restaurant, one that is a club, and one floor full of office-meeting rooms.

Fr some reason, Little Miss is about 8 years old (anyone think I'm worrying about how long it's taking to get her home?), but we're still carrying her on our hips like she's two and talking to her like she's two.

We start in the restaurant level and it's really busy and Little Miss is scared so we're taking turns holding her and getting our food and trying to find somewhere quiet to sit down and eat it, but there's just chaos everywhere. There's this stranger, a man in a leather jacket, who keeps looking at me and Little Miss. He's following us around and being creepy. Everytime I try to point him out to Andrew he disappears. Literally, he disappears as in "POOF!" cloud of smoke and he's gone. We're standing in these crowds of people holding 8 year old Little Miss with other people streaming past us, bumping into us, milling around. It's loud, we can hardly hear each other, and it's hard to find a table in the midst of the people. If you take the crowds and manners of people in an amusement park and put them inside a high school cafeteria that's about what was going on. We were all three stressing out. We finally find somewhere relatively quiet and we're eating. We've all relaxed completely.

A friend sees us and comes over to tell us that Andrew and I have to go upstairs to the meeting-level. It's really important and we have to go immediately. We can't take Little Miss with us. (I don't know WHY we have to go, but it's one of those not optional things. It made sense at the time, I just don't remember). My friend offers to stay in the restaurant with her. Little Miss goes bananas crying, but we have to leave her there and go to some meeting. So we hurry away to the meeting, but then we keep seeing the stranger from before following us. This time he doesn't bother "poofing" away. He just stalks along behind us and eventually goes into the meeting with us.

Then we're in the meeting and it's all of these people standing around and listening to someone at a podium speak. Then Creepy Stranger comes up behind us and says, "I bet I can find your daughter before you can." And "POOF!" he disappears. So Andrew and I go tearing out of the meeting and back down to the cafeteria.

We're running around like crazy people, but we're not together now. We're each trying to find Little Miss. So I see my friend, but she doesn't have Little Miss. She said that Little Miss was tired and wanted to go take a nap and so she was down in one of the bedrooms sleeping. So then I'm downstairs and opening all these doors with beds in them looking for Little Miss, but I can't find her. No one has seen her and no one will help me look for her. I can hear Creepy Stranger calling her name and laughing, but I can't see him and I still don't have Little Miss.

Then all of a sudden I'm in a room with Little Miss, but we're on the club level of the house now and she's screaming. We're still in a bedroom, but it's off of the main room which is where there's all this loud music and people dancing and flashing lights, etc out there, but the room that I'm in is dark.

So then Andrew is there outside the room and he opens the door and gives me a gun. Creepy Stranger is out there, but can't see us (I don't know why). Andrew is going to go hide and when Creepy Stranger tells me to send Little Miss out I'm supposed to open the door and shoot him with my gun that shoots.....GRANOLA BARS! I'm supposed to shoot him with a granola bar gun. And if I miss or he doesn't happen to be stunned by the granola bar bullets then Andrew will shoot him with his real gun.

Even in my dream I realize that this doesn't seem like a good plan, but Andrew is gone and it's just me defending Little Miss with a granola bar gun. Then the Creepy Stranger is screaming at me to come out. He says he'll leave Little Miss alone, but I have to go with him. Andrew is telling me to open the door and that he'll take care of Little Miss. (I'm hoping this is code for shoot him with the granola bar gun and not he's just that ready to get rid of me...) But I can't or won't do it. I start yelling at Andrew to shoot him because I'm not about to open the door. And then someone starts banging on the door and trying to break in, but I can't shoot then because I don't know if it's Creepy Stranger or Andrew and I don't want to shoot my husband with a granola bar gun.

And then the door beaks open and in comes Creepy Stranger and I shoot him with the granola bar gun and then Andrew shoots him with his real gun and I'm covered in Creepy Stranger blood and Little Miss is asleep in the bed in the corner of the room.

And that was how I woke up this morning. I would have gotten out of bed because despite how lame it sounds now I was petrified and freaking out when I woke up, but Peanut was in bed with me and I knew if I got up then he would get up and so I just laid there and kept telling myself I was fine, fine, fine.

Two nights in a row, same dream.

How much more

A few weeks ago Peanut and I had a very bad day. I think anyone who has ever lived with a preschooler has had days like that. Everything is a struggle. Head to head clashing all day. We were both miserable. We both yelled. We both cried. Blech.

At some point I decided enough was enough. The dynamic had to change and I figured that was going to have to start with me and I shouldn't wait for the three year to come around first...

I picked him up and put him in my lap. I'm sure he probably rubbed his snot-covered face all over my shirt because that's the kind of cool that we are. I said something like, "We're having a hard day, huh?" And then what came out of my mouth kind of surprised me.

I said: "Does Mom still love you?"
He said, "No."

Now, "No" is his standard response to any question. He says "no" first and then he starts to listen and process what was actually asked and he'll change his answer. So I don't think the situation was quite as desperate as it sounded, but still, clearly there was some room for improvement.

I said, "Peanut, mommy DOES love you. Always. No matter what."
And he smiled.
I wanted to be sure that I had made my point so I decided a pop quiz was in order.

"Does mommy love you when you're happy?"  He smiled and nodded.
"Does mommy love you when you're sad?" More nodding
"Does mommy love you when you're angry?" Slight delay, but then nodding.
"Does mommy love you when you're yelling and crying?" Smiles and nodding.
"That's right. Mommy loves you all the time. No matter what."

And I kind of thought that would be the end of it. We had gotten rid of the tension for the day. I'd confirmed to his little hurt feelings that no matter what he did I loved him. I thought I'd gotten my parenting gold star of the day.

But that wasn't the end of it. It turns out that I've created a little monster. He REALLY likes to talk about this. It's like a game now. He'll just come up to me randomly and say, "do you love me when I cry?" And I say, "Yes!" He usually tosses me an easy one to start with and then he ups the ante a little bit. "Do you love me when I 'be mean to Pickle'?" And I say, "Yes, I love you when you're mean to Pickle, but remember--always kindness." And he nods. Sometimes he'll wander off then and then come back a minute later and say, "Do you love me when I have a fit?" And I say "I always love you. No matter what."

And I'm pretty sure that my child isn't walking around wounded. I think that this just really speaks to a child's desire, to everyone's desire, to be loved unconditionally. We are a hands-on family. We kiss, hug, snuggle, wrestle, tousle hairAnd we tell him (and Pickle) all the time that we love him (them), but there's something about this game where he gets to pick a situation when he's at his worst and hear that I will love him even then.

We play this "game" a lot in the grocery store. I usually take him by himself and he sits in the cart and we spend an hour just talking to each other. We have a lot of good talks in the grocery store. Sometimes he asks very silly questions, "do you love me when I'm tooting?" Is one that's always sure to have him dissolving into giggles as he asks. Sometimes we're more serious and I'll answer "yes" to one of his questions and then I'll add "And as much as mommy loves you God loves you even more."

His love for this game opened my eyes a little bit. Now I think. If this child who was born to me, always lived with me, had his every need met, has been kissed, hugged, and told that he is loved every day of his life wants to hear this everyday, has this desire to be told again and again and again....

then how much more will my daughter need


to be held, to be kissed, to be told again and again and again

that she is loved no matter what, always?

Someone smack me

No, this is not a court date announcement! The title of that post will be someone pinch me! Very different.

Today I decided I would run a 5k on April 17. 2010. I have a 30 by 30 goal to run a 10k. I realize that for some people (like my husband) this is a non-challenge. So five minutes after I decided that I would run it I decided he was going to have to run with me to keep me moving. When I told him tonight his response was, "Sure. I have to run one on Tuesday so it will be a good warm-up for me." Yes, I'm married to one of those people who thinks that a 5k is a warm up.

Our military base hosts a "Runner's Series" that will have 7 different themed runs. The first one they just announced for April 17, which is apparently Earth Day. I figure it's a good one for me to start with since we were made from dirt and to dirt we will return and Earth Day is a good of a day for me to publicly die as any other...

How much exercise am I doing now? Oh, that would be NONE. I did just buy new running shoes, negative on the starting of exercise though. And now I have a cold. And I have to run tomorrow. Someone smack me!! I do have cute little capri pants and exercise shirt from the last 5k I ran.

Yes, I ran a 5k once before. It was not a particularly good experience. Peanut was about Pickle's age now. We had just started trying to get knocked up again and in fact had, but didn't know it then. It was my first time of exercising regularly and I was proud of myself for doing my training. Race day was cold and wet and miserable. I ran the slowest time out of all my training. But I did it. I ran the whole time. I was happy I finished it, but couldn't help but be disappointed with my time. I had a miscarriage by the next weekend. It was all just jumbled together in my mind. I got pregnant with Pickle the next month and we weren't expecting that quite so soon after a loss (even a very early one) so it was just kind of a strange, strange time.

That said...this time, I think I'll be going into it with appropriately low expectations given a 27 day training schedule...from NO-k to 5-k... :)