Let me tell you 'bout my best friend

There's a home video that is likely preserved on a dvd at my parent's house, something my siblings and I did for our mom several years ago (I watched hours of shaky VHS footage of my baby brother wandering around in mud puddles so I could tell the tech genius which minutes of which tapes to convert), of two little girls sitting at our kitchen table. One is me, and I'm wearing some kind of puffy sweatshirt and a 1980's Red Sox cap, playing noisily with some stuffed animals. 

The other is a curly-haired brunette with huge brown eyes, doing her best to get the attention of my mom, who is behind the camera. Her voice is rising because my mom is just filming us, not interracting. "Hey Amy. Amy. Hey Amy!"

"What, Elizabeth?"

"Guess what. PeeWee HermanandElvis (as if they are one person) is dead! He's dead, because he took too many drugs! And thats why he died."

This is Liz.

My best friend of more than 32 years has always been the one with all the hot, new information (even if it is sometimes not entirely accurate). She's the one who taught me that Play-Doh tastes like salt, that there are not always consequences for tiny, little white lies to your parents about your exact location and activities, and that her mom (a nurse, and thus the authority on everything a girl would want to know) had a condom drawer in the hallway of their house by middle school "just in case anyone needs them". Spoiler alert: I certainly did not need them. But we giggled over it a lot.

Since meeting in preschool, Elizabeth and I grew up together, her with a house full of sisters, Barbie fashions, and a gold vanity in her bedroom, and me with my love of baseball, dirt, and all things not marketed to little girls in the 1990s. 

Liz got me my first job, working as a cashier in her grandmother's video store. Together, we navigated the hilarious, horrifying awkwardness of being teenagers who had to sometimes rent adult DVDs to grown men while we looked them in the eye and told them to have "a nice night". We visited each other at work just to hang out, drink bottles of Mountain Dew and laugh so hard that it was difficult to wait on customers. "Don't pull a 'video store'" is still part of the greater family vernacular. If you don't know what that means, you don't want to.

I was constantly after her in high school to follow the rules. While my mother likely hoped Liz's mom, Debbie, was able to give me the embarrassing answers I needed about sex education, I was the "you better behave" influence on Liz, chastising her for drinking on campus, or skipping a class, or doing any number of normal, teenage rebellion activities. Still, we only got into one fight, and it was about the timing of reservations for Harry Potter movie tickets (oh yeah, I should mention that despite all our differences, we were, and still are, both incurable fantasy nerds. It's nice to have someone you can collect useless Star Wars soda cans with).

In February of 2014, I was preparing to move back to New England after a particularly ill-advised move to central Florida that lasted all of 7 months. Liz volunteered to fly down and drive north with me. Originally, the idea was that she would come for a day or two and then we would leave on our road trip. As time got crunched and the plan evolved, it turned into me picking her up from a gate at the Jacksonville airport, truck packed to the ceiling, and getting immediately on I-95 heading north. Liz never complained about this, and she was in Florida for less than two hours, only to spend the next two days entirely in the car, staring at the interstate with me (well, not entirely. There was also the 45 minutes spent lost in Washington, DC when we needed gas and I also desperately needed donuts).

Today is Liz's 36th birthday (eleven days after mine), and it's also Patriot's Day/Marathon Day in Massachusetts. Eight years ago, on April 15th, two terrorists placed homemade bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon and killed three people, injured hundreds, and paralyzed the entire city and state with fear for several days during a manhunt. I was finishing work in upstate New York when I heard the news. The physical feeling I had was like someone had opened my mouth and poured ice cold water all the way directly to my stomach. I started calling friends and family in Boston, and the texts were coming in that everyone was safe, but I couldn't reach Liz. Boston has Patriot's Day Monday off, and I expected that she and her friends would be drinking beer at a bar near the finish line. I panicked, and her cell phone would either ring forever, or be a constant busy signal. I had to pull my car over, sobbing and screaming and hitting the steering wheel. I finally heard from her family that Liz was safe. She hadn't made it to that part of town by the time the bombs went off, although she was on her way. She came way too close to being right in the middle of it. My wild, carefree best friend now carries stress and anxiety struggles from that day, as I'm sure so many still do.

When I drove from Colorado to Maine to see friends and family last fall during the pandemic, I stopped in Salem, MA, where Liz and her husband, Branden, and their daughter now live. I had only met Emlyn once before, as an infant, but we are now obviously bonded. She talks about me often, after only a short visit, and for Christmas I mailed her a framed photo of me holding her as a baby, because Liz said a picture of me was "probably the only thing she wanted". I think it's hilarious, and I attribute this affection in part to the fact that the poor kid had been in quarantine for 6 months when I stopped by. I said this to another friend, who countered "well, she's Liz's kid, of course she loves you".

This blog post could be 100 pages. I could write an entire book of moments and stories about our 30+ year friendship. Liz just makes everything more fun. Whether it's concocting what we thought would be Harry Potter's "butter beer" (it was hot milk with butterscotch syrup, sugar, honey, and cinnamon... it was inedible), walking through half the city of Boston at 3 am (because I visited her in college and she dragged me to a house party, where we didn't leave until the trains stopped running), or trying on hats at the inexplicably huge costume store at South of the Border on I-95, she has always been the friend who will drop everything to make sure you're having a good time. 

Happy Birthday, Liz. My life would not be the adventure it's been had I not met you over a Play-Doh tasting all those years ago.

Like, fine.

 It’s Wednesday, November 4. Yesterday, if this was a normal election season, in a normal year, in a more normal political climate, we would know who our next President of the United States will be. 

But we don’t know the answer to that yet and we probably won’t know for days, weeks, or months. Instead, Americans across the nation are left with the results of their local and state elections to ponder how these decisions will affect their day to day lives. 

Starting last November, I was a member of a regional campaign for the Colorado House of Representatives. Our candidate was my friend Colin, a local lawyer who works with his wife, an immigration attorney, in our small Colorado tourist town. He’s a democrat. I feel like that doesn’t actually need to be said (if anyone has read anything else I’ve ever written that concerns politics, you could probably guess). 

Over the holidays in 2019, I started helping to plan and organize events for Colin. I was not particularly good at it. This is something I have no qualms about admitting, considering I threw a holiday gathering with very little turn out, something I attribute to my limited knowledge of event coordination (limited = zero). I mean VERY little. Let me clarify: the guest list ultimately amounted to a couple of friends and a couple of guys I’ve slept with (sorry, Mom). We gathered a lot of donated toys to distribute to a local organization, though - many more toys than attendees, I should add. 

I offered to drop the toys off the next time I was near the church where they were headed. I’m a volunteer, after all, so I thought I should do some work. Colin decided to bring them himself, and I came along. When we arrived, the very friendly organizer gave us a full tour of their facilities and chatted with Colin briefly about his campaign. I honestly had no idea what we were still doing there. I didn’t think a church organization in New Castle, Colorado had any interest in what a democrat had to say. 

I helped organize another event, too. This one was (intentionally) attended by even less people, I think. I say intentionally because it was held at an eatery in one of the smaller, more conservative towns of our district, and I used my knowledge of the local clientele from my nearby bartending job to badger a few rancher-types into talking to Colin. I was nervous. I expected them to refuse to listen to him over their coffee and pastries. But they didn’t. I watched him engage in several animated conversations that morning with people that I (and he) knew would definitely vote for him - just as soon as hell froze over. 

We visited local fire stations. I was just waiting for a fireman to tell us he was a tried and true Trump supporter who intended to vote red straight down the ballot, but no one did. Colin had a constructive conversation with an assistant chief (perhaps sweetened by the pastries we delivered), who even agreed to a photo that we were able to later use in online campaign materials. This was going great. We talked excitedly about future campaign events that could come in the Spring. 

That’s right, the Spring of 2020! 

I went from Event Coordinator to Social Media Manager. Nobody was allowed to gather, nor did they really want to, with the risk of Covid 19 looming. Colin recorded one minute videos (ignoring my regular, millennial-style suggestion to “change his angle”) on his phone and we posted them to his internet followers. He continually expressed a message of hope, solidarity, and resilience. Local Republicans began agitating to open businesses and reject mask ordinances. We stayed socially distanced. We posted instead of gathering. Colin made his campaign volunteers our own name tags. I continued to have absolutely zero idea of what I was doing. 

Then we got signs. In the middle of the summer, Colin announced that he had campaign signs and asked me if I had any friends who wanted them. I didn’t. Most of my friends didn’t have yards, or weren’t political enough for a campaign sign, or their landlords said no, or, in the case of my coworker, had a “wife that would kill them”. I took two. I nailed one to the outside of my vinyl patio door, stuck one in the ground in front of my rented condo, and patiently waited for the homeowners association to confiscate them. (They didn’t, by the way. I have no understanding of how HOAs work. At all. But my Colin signs and my other county democrat signs are still out there). 

I started to get excited. I wrote long, impassioned letters to the editor about why Colin was right for our district. He was running on improved mental health services, diversifying our energy industry, increased funding for education, and affordable access to healthcare. In my opinion, none of that is objectionable or arguable. Colin, his wife Erin, and I crafted posts for his campaign page on Facebook, expounding on how he would work for everyone in our district, and listen to all their concerns. Colin signs popped up all over the county. I kept spotting them in unexpected places.  He answered messages. I answered messages. We got back to the community when they asked questions. He was polite, intelligent, likable. He gathered endorsements, donations, and support. 

And trolls. For the first time in my life, I experienced firsthand (by being notified constantly on Facebook) the vitriol that people will spew at their local community members simply because there is a (D) in front of their name. Colin was described as a communist and a socialist. He was accused of being ANTIFA. Of ruining America. He got emails describing just what would happen to the state of Colorado and eventually the whole country is he was elected. One man compared him to a “human fart” (which I found greatly amusing but also had to delete, as we suspected the commenter was drunk). In all honesty, I don’t know how Colin got past this stuff (a conservative who did not like my opinions about another local race called me “stupid” tonight in a public forum and I almost cried). 

But he did, and that’s why he was a good candidate. Colin truly believes he can listen to the concerns of the people who attack him from their keyboards and work to help create policies and changes that will help them. He repeatedly stated in conversations, and debates against his opponent, that he intended to work for ALL the people of our district (which apparently also means the people who think he’s a human fart). 

I haven’t said anything about Colin’s opponent, because there isn’t much to say. As I found myself explaining multiple times throughout the campaign, he is “like, fine.” He’s a genuinely nice man, who inspires no excitement and wants no change. He won the election by telling his constituents that he would double down on preserving our gas, oil, and coal industries. He’s also quite a bit older than both me and Colin (so he likely won’t be around to see the day that all of those things run out in this district, creating an employment void that could cripple the economy in some of our counties). He doesn’t support any variety of statewide healthcare reform and is on board with removing the ACA. Cool, bro. 

So if you’ve read this far then you already know how it turned out. In spite of committing nearly all of his weekends (for several months leading up to the election) to speaking at outdoor events, walking through towns with other county candidates holding campaign signs, and (most exciting for me) amassing more than 500 Facebook followers, Colin didn’t win. The seat went to “like, fine” guy, who will probably spend the next two years doing exactly nothing to explicitly harm or benefit the people of this district. 

It’s not fair, and all over the nation right now, there are people like Colin (and me) thinking the same thing. We worked hard. We CARED. We put in all this effort. He was clearly the more driven, informed, and concerned candidate. In our home county alone, two smart and motivated women lost their races to two Republican men - one who has held his seat for seven terms and prioritizes oil and gas, and another who I know nothing about, other than to say he also strikes me as “like, fine”. 

Colin and his team ran a well crafted, complete, and thoughtful campaign (if I do say so myself). Taking into account the time we are living through, I don’t see how we could have done much better. His wife, myself, and all of our friends are incredibly proud of him for the effort he put forth.

When the presidency (likely) swings the way of Joe Biden in (hopefully) a couple of days, I’ll be very happy. I can not describe how much I want to never have to listen to or worry about the actions of Donald Trump ever again. He’s a dangerous man and has no business being in charge of a board meeting, let alone our country. But Biden being our president isn’t going to fix this issue that seems to have been a problem across multiple states and innumerable races this election cycle. 

If I have learned anything about political campaigning over the last year (besides that I should probably figure out a way to get more people to campaign events - and no, I don’t mean by sleeping with more of them), it’s that you can work your butt off, that people will listen to you, that you can have exciting ideas that will benefit your community - and you can still lose. Sometimes people don’t want change. Sometimes they’re okay with “like, fine”. 

Are you okay with it? 

Disappointment in the time of Corona

This week, my therapist sent two questionnaires to the "online portal" (this is how we do therapy now, apparently. There's a website that keeps a virtual copy of every piece of paper I've signed or clicked a box on since I started seeing her two months ago), and when I opened them, I realized they were the pretty basic "how are you feeling in the last two weeks?" information sheets, the same ones I had filled out before my first appointment. I think they're designed to give her an idea if you are, perhaps, depressed, or worse yet, suicidal.

I am neither of those things, but I suspect my assessment numbers might have been a touch higher this time around.

While our entire country finds itself struggling with a pandemic from which there is no escape (its nation - and world - wide), I find myself with increasing feelings of doom, hopelessness, and sadness. There are memes all over the internet that say "check on your extroverted friends, they're not okay", but I honestly would be surprised if anyone is truly "OK" right now. I've spent some of my ample free time considering this. Why am I so sad, down, and just generally gross-feeling right now (besides the obvious, which is that I was taking one shower every three days last week)? No one I know has been rendered seriously ill from the virus (thankfully), and I myself am relatively unlikely to have severe symptoms. I'm still working, too. Landscape companies can fall under the category of essential services because we provide maintenance to residential homes. I have a job and some income (whatever that may look like in late March in Colorado, where it is sunny and 60 one day and 28 and dumping huge white flakes the next). I don't have a young family, or even a pet, that I feel pressure to provide with food, entertainment, or education.

The best explanation I can come up with is that the last month of my life has been a series of continual, sometimes surprising, disappointments. As one concert or event is cancelled after another, travel to certain areas is discouraged or even prohibited, restaurants begin to close, and even hiking trails and camping areas are shut down (because this is Colorado, and the mass movement of people to outdoor recreation areas for their own sanity is standard practice in March, and doubly so with a pandemic forcing us all out of work and into our homes), I spent most of the last two weeks with a cold, sinking feeling in my core every time I logged onto facebook for news, or a friend sent me another link about something that was being stopped, postponed, closed.

A concert that Jeremy and I had considered attending in Aspen was postponed, alarmingly, along with that band's entire spring tour schedule, due to a confirmed coronavirus case from a tourist who had visited the ski vacation spot in February. Spring training baseball games were cancelled, which initially altered but did not derail my March plans for a trip to Arizona. The ski resort where I bartend was shut down for the rest of the projected 3-week season with no notice on a Saturday night, putting myself and dozens of others unexpectedly out of our seasonal jobs. Then they called off Major League baseball entirely for the first two weeks of the regular season, Americans were asked to please refrain from traveling, and the out of state springtime escape to Arizona was ultimately squashed. The day after we decided to stay home, I received word that all launches for an overnight river rafting trip we had planned for my birthday in early April were being cancelled. I collapsed on my kitchen floor, sobbing. "Everything is awful", I cried. Within days, restaurants and bars were ordered to close their dining areas and resort to take-out or delivery only, resulting in some businesses just locking their doors altogether. I'm quite sure some of them won't survive this.

While I cried on my couch and texted my friends and stressed about how terrible these adjustments would be, the virus numbers continued to climb. Many Americans began being hospitalized. People are dying. Possibly lots of them. I told myself I was being a jerk, that I wasn't allowed to be devastated over a loss of social and recreational activities, because people are dying. But the grief and desperation I feel is real. I don't think saying "buck up, things could be so much worse, let me tell you how" has never worked to make anyone truly feel better, except possibly in certain wartime situations. "Sure, you lost a foot, a leg, and the vision in your right eye, your wife took up with your brother while you were abroad, and there's no job waiting for you back in Minnesota, but hey! Look on the bright side. At least you're alive." I don't think we are there yet.

I know my story isn't unique. Tons of people were laid off with no notice, had to cancel long-awaited travel plans, and have had their social lives interrupted. I fully expect some folks to read this blog and say "so what? She doesn't have it so bad", and I would agree. But belittling each other's distress and sadness isn't going to make anyone feel better, is it? We have to accept that every reason to be disappointed is a valid one. Making others feel guilty for being upset in this trying time is not going to lessen your distress, I promise you.

On Thursday, a "stay at home" order (the kinder, gentler title for a "shelter in place" order, which is what you get when you live in a blue state with a democratic governor who cares about the emotional well-being of his constituents) was issued in Colorado, and Gov. Jared Polis and his administration made a valiant attempt to make it as specific as possible. "Exercise" was listed on the side of acceptable reasons for leaving your home. Coloradans rejoiced. They even included examples such as running, hiking, biking, walking pets. Grocery stores, including WalMart, Target, pharmacies, and various supply-based businesses, such as hardware, would also remain open and accessible. It is all written in the text of the multi-page order.

Why, then, do I feel myself looking over my shoulder when I leave my home? As I mentioned above, I am still able to work, at least for now, which gives me an acceptable reason to be outside during daylight hours. But the chill in the pit of my stomach remains: guilt. Or the perception that I should feel some kind of guilt. Shouldn't I be doing more? Should I be sacrificing my physical health and my exercise goals for the greater good and just stay inside my 400 sq foot apartment instead of going running? Are those people who are using our local hiking trails, myself included, doing more harm? Are razor blades or ice cream an essential reason to take myself to the store? Is an imagined enforcement team going to appear out of nowhere, demand my work papers, ask where I am headed, and deem my intentions trivial, unimportant, or dangerous? Worse, could I be responsible for the death of another human if I walk out my door?

I hope I've explained these feelings well. While I, like many others, can tell myself that I don't have it bad, the truth is that the feeling are the same for us all. Sadness, disappointment, guilt, uncertainty of what we should do. I'm sure feelings of depression are present for some, and creep into my mind at my worst moments. Will we make it through this, and will we want to, when the lifestyle on the other side of coronavirus might be so drastically different from what we have all come to know?

The suggestion that we need to be kind to ourselves is the only uplifting thing I can think of to parrot right now. Beating ourselves up for feeling distress over seemingly "small" things, or worse, letting others beat you up for your feelings of sadness, aren't going to help any of us cope with what's happening. Let's allow ourselves to believe that anything we feel right now is valid, acceptable, and true.

And wash your hands.

Why does America hate women?

I realize the title of this blog post is inflammatory.

I don’t believe our entire country hates women. But given the developments in the race for the democratic presidential nomination, it’s starting to feel that way. In an opinion piece by Michelle Cottle of the New York Times, she notes that gender was considered a bigger barrier to electability than “age, race, ideology, or sexual orientation”. This is a huge statement in a race that included several candidates of color, multiple men in their late seventies, and a married church-goer from South Bend, who also happens to be gay.

When I was spending lots of time thinking out loud about who I thought had the best shot at beating Donald Trump (side note: I can’t believe we even have to say this. A “shot” at beating Trump? Literally any human on the long list of people who threw their name in for the democratic nomination, including a man who ran on the platform of giving everyone free money, and a woman who’s resume lists her as being “Oprah’s Spiritual Adviser”, is more qualified and more capable of running this country than the person who currently sits in the White House), I cynically made lists of the ways the current president, his supporters, and advisers, could rudely attack each opponent.

“Joe Biden is just more of the Obama-era crap”, or “Joe Biden is losing his cognitive abilities”. Trump can claim that Bernie Sanders is a socialist (some of his supporters, such as a man I briefly argued with yesterday, even claim with fervent insistence that Sanders is a communist), or that he’s a crazed old man. I can’t imagine what ol’ DT would have to say about Michael Bloomberg, since they have so many problematic things in common. When it came to who he could attack on a more personal level, I shuddered to think of his future treatment of Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg.

However, this is what occurred to me: the negative things that Trump and the extreme right can say about women can be veiled much easier than the negative things they could say about a homosexual man. Statements such as “she’s too loud” or “she’s too angry” or even the positive context for “nevertheless, she persisted” are things that, on the surface, sound like basic criticisms of a candidate but are actually words that would never be used to describe a male politician. The fact that Elizabeth Warren was once “warned”’and continued to speak is a rallying cry for democrats (and feminists) across the nation, but it’s considered one of her biggest flaws by republicans. While we know that Donald Trump has very few boundaries when it comes to the bigoted insults that fly from his lips, it’s likely that his advisers would stress heavily that, in a campaign against someone like Buttigieg, he should leave the sexual orientation attacks out of it.

“Who do we think America hates more, a woman or a gay man?” I asked, wryly, for the last few weeks. It’s negative. It’s not productive. But this is where we are. I like Mayor Pete just fine, but it should be noted that for all of the far-right’s hatred of anyone who doesn’t fit the heterosexual, traditional-family-unit norm, most Republicans I spoke to in the last weeks seemed more concerned with Elizabeth Warren “flip-flopping”, being “untrustworthy”, being “too angry”. Does this sound familiar? Are these not the same words used in 2016 when Republicans convinced nearly half a nation that Hillary Clinton was a crooked liar (but no one could really say what, exactly, they believed her to be lying about)?

I’m not saying I wouldn’t love to see Mayor Pete as president. He’s great. This has nothing to do with him, except that he represents a group (non-straight men) that I had assumed, up until recently, that the far-right would have more issue with than another group, women. And I have to admit that I probably contribute to the unconscious bias, because I want to vote for someone who can win against Donald Trump, and it worries me that the same tools used against Clinton could be employed again. I do not think Elizabeth Warren is weak. I do not think she would have any problem ripping Trump to shreds with her intelligent, articulate words, as well as her penchant for using actual facts about the things he has done and said. What I do think is that Trump, his supporters, and maybe our society in general, is more comfortable discrediting, insulting, and belittling a woman, and can apparently find many ways to do so that don’t even play on her supposed political shortcomings. If we look back to 2016, we can pinpoint a campaign of mud-slinging, half truths, and false generalizations that managed to ultimately ruin Hillary Clinton’s chances, in spite of her being an experienced, qualified, intellectual candidate. It’s now 2020. This is both puzzling and devastating.

When we look at the fact that America has now had it’s first black president (and for two terms!), as well as several people of color, multiple women, and a gay man as candidates for the democratic nomination, it can make us believe we have come a really long way. It certainly feels like we have. When I cast a vote in the primary this week for Elizabeth Warren, I was still hopeful. While republicans would like to draw every parallel they can between her and Hillary, she is not so many of the things our country claimed to hate about Clinton. Warren is not a former First Lady. She isn’t subject to the social bias that Hillary had to endure because of her husband’s behavior while in office. She is not a former member of a White House administration that a (shocking) number of citizens disliked. And yet, she tanked on Tuesday, even in her home state of Massachusetts.

I’m so tired of hearing that we could easily elect a woman if we could just find the right one. The right one. Never mind that we had a diverse group of females running for the nomination this year. Americans found a way to take exception with each one of them, in spite of many being more qualified than several of the male candidates they ran against. It’s demoralizing to feel that our nation is making leaps and bounds in who we would allow to represent us in terms of skin color, background, or sexual orientation - but not gender.

If not this woman, then which woman? And when?

I’m Gonna Be (500 miles)

New Year’s resolutions are a funny thing.

Does this sound like the opening line of a bad stand-up bit? Don’t worry, my resolution isn’t to try stand-up for the first time. I know I’m funny, but I suspect even my mother would be surprised to hear that I don’t really like speaking or performing in front of people. Unless it’s 11 pm in a dive bar that’s at least a safe 30+ miles from my home, and you hand me a microphone and tell me they have Elton John’s entire musical works available for karaoke.

Resolutions are funny because it’s a social practice in our culture to make them and then hilariously fail at them. The internet is full of a meme for every resolution occasion, most of them related to how we swore this was the year we were gonna eat better, get skinny or get fit, or quit our terrible jobs.

I don’t eat especially well and I’m not particularly skinny or fit (and I still love my jobs), so none of those have worked for me up to this point.

Last year, a friend who Shall Not be Named and I were enjoying a little time-honored millennial fun, which is to say that we were deep-dive stalking one of her boyfriend’s exes on the internet. This girl apparently had run, hiked, and biked a total of 1,000 miles in the year 2018. In true supportive friend fashion, I laughed and suggested that it wasn’t hard and I could probably do it. Then I did the math and realized I probably couldn’t, unless I counted every single bicycle ride to the grocery store or the bar, (which I’m not sure should qualify as exercise anyway, considering the crimes against my health that are regularly committed at both of those places). Instead, I decided it would be possible to track my running for an entire year, and that I was likely to be able to achieve 500 miles pretty easily in the next 365 days.

>Alexa, play the hit 1990’s tune by The Proclaimers<

It didn’t start out promising. In February I only managed 20.05 miles, not even one per day, largely because I had ended things with a guy I was seeing about halfway through the month, and while I managed to hold my shit together for the first part of the week (due to work), Wednesday through Saturday was pretty much a blur of drinking too much and staying up way, way too late to walk home in the snow, stumbling and singing Whitney Houston songs with my sweet neighbor (with whom spending time always makes my heart and my mind feel good, but not so much my head and my stomach the next morning).

I would make it all back in March and April when I started training with a couple of friends for a half marathon, to be run in May. I picked up the pace and ran 50+ miles in March, along with getting back together with the former guy, who started off the spring season by making a very good show of being more supportive of my interests and athletic pursuits. In April, my half-marathon partner and I ran every single one of our training-program prescribed 72+ miles, including ten that I found myself needing to run in Maine while visiting for a friend’s wedding. It was cold and a little icy, but my sister completed every step of it with me, despite not having run that many miles in at least a year.

May started off with the aforementioned 13.1.


                                    

As happens after training for a milestone, May fell off a bit. Due to no required training and the start of my seasonal landscaping job, I managed 30.5 for the rest of the month after the half marathon. What can I say, it’s hard to get up in the morning and run in the dark, just to go to work and carry a 10-15 pound weed eater around for most of the day. It was at about this point that I stopped thinking about the 500 miles and decided I would simply tally up all my miles, every week, for the rest of the year, and see how impressive the number might be. I even picked my pace up again in June, until the last week of the month, when I talked myself into finally joining a CrossFit gym.

Have you ever done CrossFit? Specifically, have you ever STARTED CrossFit from a non-diverse exercise regimen of pushing lawnmowers and moderately paced cardio? I was wrecked. Even the beginner classes had me in pain for days. At my second tutorial class, I was asked to do 4 burpees and 10 squats and my legs were sore for the week after. July and August: attended CrossFit nine times each month. Only ran 60-something miles between the two. My July weekends, on my wall calendar on which I had been keeping track, were glaring, blank holes. Who has the motivation to get up and go to CrossFit, or get up and go for a run, when the sun is out, your boyfriend is in bed with an (inevitable) hangover, and there is fishing to be done?

Due to many other circumstances (see past blog post) as well as all those “inevitable” hangovers, I found myself delightfully, happily single by Labor Day, after which I exercised for a 2019-record nine days in a row. Still sticking with the CrossFit, my runs were shorter and shorter because my legs still barely worked the day after overhead squats, burpees, wall balls and deadlifts. I averaged less than ten a week. I went on a great (and rather lengthy) happy hour first date mid-month that caused me to cancel my planned runs for two days after, and then immediately took an airplane to Chicago for a solo-trip I had booked basically the very moment I became single. I ran five beautiful miles there, three of them at my fastest speed of the year. The thought that I could maybe finish the year with 500+ began to creep back into my consciousness.

                             

Except I started dating someone new. The “let’s just spend time together and see what happens” kind of relationship. The no-expectations, feels-good-to-be-happy dating that I fully believe is the main reason people abandon their exercise regimens and healthy eating plans. That sweet, fun, hilarious period of time in which there is nothing to do except find out all the delightful aspects of the other’s personality - and laugh. I laughed a lot in October, partially due to the fact that he is hilarious, and the other part due to all the bottles of red wine and giggly puffs of weed we were consuming. October: 26.75 miles, my lowest number since February. Running miles were down, happy feelings were up. I’m pretty sure that all the exercise wisdom in the world says that running makes you happy. But have those people ever tried hanging out with a funny guy with a cute dog and raft-guide arm muscles?

Beginning November with the realization that I had less then 100 miles left to reach the goal was an alarming thought. Yes, it was possible. Was it significantly more miles than I had been running since April? Also yes. I ran 17 miles in one week. I ran while I was on a long weekend in Arizona. I committed and the countdown started. I kept a running mental tally as well as my wall calendar updated, and I marched into December knowing I needed to run 16 miles a week to finish. It’s fine, I’m fine, this is fine.

And I was cranking right along, too, running just shy of the required numbers (always a procrastinator), when I went back and added up all my months to this point, only to discover I had done the math wrong (if you knew me as a high school student, this shouldn’t shock any of you) and had significantly less miles left than I had thought. And a good thing, too, since I started coughing, sneezing, and running a fever five days before Christmas with nearly seven miles left to run.

This morning, New Year’s Eve, I woke up, texted my Glenwood Rec Center treadmill running partner, Lizz, and we headed to the gym to finish our miles. She was working towards 100 miles for the year, and I had 2.45 remaining. When I pulled into the parking lot, it was dark. Totally dark. Dark like a gym that is closed, because it was. It was also 1 whole degree outside, so running on the frozen sidewalks was completely out of the question. Undeterred, we paid the daily drop-in fee at a gym down the road and finished our miles before the sun came up.

In my last blog post, I wrote about some things that went wrong this year. I want to say that undertaking this much running changed me, that it gave me clarity, or was the cause of some brilliant, earth-shattering revelation. But honestly, the year as 500 miles of running just proved that it wasn’t all bad. Despite life taking me on an emotional and complicated rollercoaster in 2019, I managed to keep running consistently. I got out of bed and prioritized my health (most of the time), and used the arbitrary goal of proving that I am almost as athletic as my friend’s boyfriend’s ex (or just about any other average person) to keep myself grounded. I put one foot in front of the other for 365 days. I kept a resolution.

Take that, internet meme culture.

Good times, bad times, you know I've had my share

I want to say I've always been an optimist. It's probably not true, because I was 23 once, freshly graduated from an expensive four-year college with a degree that I had no idea how to put to use, and oh, yeah, it was 2008. If I felt then like things were not great, that I was never gonna be able to make enough money to support myself, and that I had no clue where I was going with my life, it was probably all true.

However, by age 30, I considered myself the happiest, most positive person. I successfully navigated a move that took me more than 2,000 miles from the side of the country where I had lived for my entire life, and I immediately found friends, employment, and a lifestyle I could not have even imagined for myself.

For nearly a decade, around the month of November, when folks on social media begin to post memes about how glad they are that the year is ending, and how it was a tough one, I have rolled my eyes. "2010, you took too much from us all", and "2012 wasn't my year", or "2016 was the worst year yet" (ok, maybe that one is actually true, from a national perspective). Just be positive, I would think. Don't spend your time thinking about negative things you can't change! It only leads to feeling down! Focus on the good!

I don't think I'm that person this year.

This may make some of you rejoice. "Thank goodness," you'll think. "Her positivity and zest for life has really been wearing on those of us who would rather just wallow." (For the record, I don't think any of you are true wallowers, but I do think the social media fallacy of the perfect, happy life is alive and well - and I'm totally guilty).

But it's been a tough one. While 2019 has contained a multitude of amazing, beautiful, exciting and joyful moments, it has also contained some of the toughest things I have dealt with in my adult life. I can't say I will look back on 2019 with fondness. In this year, I have found myself more frustrated, confused, and unsure of my own mind and my own decisions than I have been in over a decade.

I started it off with some poor choices. I ignored my instincts to back away from a relationship that did not serve me, and let that person back into my life. This one choice lead to months of putting myself and my needs and feelings second, while a person who sometimes claimed to love me also put me second (at best). I allowed myself to stick with this relationship, even while I was increasingly riddled with anxiety, stress, and feelings of worthlessness on an almost daily basis. I felt that, since both of us had fought to be in this relationship, I needed to just keep making it work. I spewed supportive cliches at my friends about how we all need to ask for what we deserve, while I continually refused to do this for myself.

This all came at what I now realize was great emotional expense. In the last several months of 2019, I have been more scared, sad, self-doubting and stressed (say that five times fast) than ever before. I filed a police report for the first time in my life. I went to court, another first, and had to face someone I thought I had loved while a lawyer told a judge that I felt I was in danger. I had my first panic attacks. I have questioned not only my confidence, but also my ability to make smart, healthy, self-serving decisions.

No one deserves to feel this way, but I acknowledge that my emotions are a product of the decisions I kept making. And we don't always make the best ones for ourselves.  It's probably another cliche that every choice we make leads us to where we are now, although it's actually true. I wish it wasn't. It would be nice to blame anyone but myself, but the truth is I was spouting a line of confidence and assurance while living a reality that was the opposite.

I suppose life is a series of ups and downs, but I've always wanted to only be up. There are several literary quotes out there about needing to have darkness to have light, but I have always pushed away any possibility of darkness and rushed towards the light - the happy, positive things in my daily life always outweigh the bad, or at least the amount of time and attention I spend on the good things vastly outweigh that for the negative.

While reflecting on this year, I can say that I believe this to still be true. When things fell apart, and I finally allowed my anxiety and stress around my situation to show, my friends rallied around me immediately. No one let me sleep at home alone when I was sad or scared. My friends skipped work to make sure I wasn't in court alone. Other friends continue to do daily check-ins about my self esteem, emotions, and self-care habits. For one bad relationship, I have dozens of wonderful ones.

I would like to end this with something like "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", but that's another cliche I'm not sure I buy into. I think what doesn't kill you can make you feel weak, confused, and sad. But time, friendships, and putting yourself first can slowly start to change all that. So while this year wasn't perfect, or even particularly overwhelmingly good, I can't say it was a complete dumpster fire, either.

It has more than a month left, and if you know me, you know that the holiday season can only help. Cheers to the upcoming New Year, friends, and to being honest with yourself, making good choices, personal accountability, and growth.

$4 a day

I was listening to the radio last week (am I the only person who still listens to local radio? This might be a topic for another time) and heard an announcement from our local food bank/food assistance organization, Lift Up, that they were challenging everyone to take the “$4 a Day Challenge”. They described it as a fun and educational way to raise awareness about food insecurity in the United States. It turns out that the national allocation of funds for a recipient of the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is $4.15 per day. Those who depend on SNAP (formerly called food stamps) for all of their food and drink are only eating about $29 worth of food per 7-day week.

I can tell you right now, that while I don’t have the exact numbers for myself, I’m spending a LOT more than that. I probably eat dinner out 3-4 times per week (I can actually hear my ultra budget-conscious mother screaming from nine states away), my boss buys my lunch out every day of the work week, and I probably drink 3 cups of coffee per week that I don’t brew at home. I’m a millennial, with no children and no mortgage. If the avocado toast is there, I’m going to order it.

This is not the way I was raised.

My mother estimates that she spent $100-$150 a week on groceries when I was growing up. Which is probably just below what I spend now. But she was shopping for a family of six (I supposed if I’m being accurate, it was sometimes a family of as few as three, as my sisters and I did spend time with our other parents). Mom had a whole book of penny-pinching tricks (literally, it’s called the Tightwad Gazette, and was written by a woman in Maine named Amy Dacyczyn. If anyone has a copy, please let me know how her tips are holding up 27 years later) and was committed to things like making her own bread (delicious) and mixing gallons of milk 50/50 with powdered milk (not so delicious). Luckily for my mother, my siblings and I had pretty inexpensive taste - I loved plain bologna and wheat bread sandwiches, and Top Ramen, at a whopping $0.11 a pack, was a staple of do-it-yourself kid food. She also cooked dinner at home every single night, managing homemade sauces and salads comprised of vegetables from my stepfather’s large garden. I never felt deprived of anything or food insecure. That said, if not for my mom’s extreme frugality and budgeting, things could have felt a lot tighter in our house.

So, I decided to take on the challenge that Lift Up was proposing. I planned on five days, because I’m a complete food addict and a fan of lazy Saturday brunches, and I wasn’t sure my willpower would hold out over a weekend. On Sunday night, I went to the grocery store and carefully selected $15 worth of food (I figured that saving the extra $5 for incidentals could only make this easier and more realistic). I bought bologna and wheat bread, some apples, a couple of green peppers and carrots, condensed soup, oatmeal, pre-packaged pastas, and one $1 pint of store brand Rocky Road (I refused to live an entire five days without a small shred of edible joy).

It started off okay. I hadn’t had bologna in years, so it was sort of fun to pack my lunches with sandwiches and sliced carrots. I quickly found that I was hungry enough by lunch (I work as a landscaper and my job is quite physical, on top of belonging to a CrossFit gym and running 5-10 miles a week) that I was happy to eat just about anything. This would have been fine, except I also got to watch my coworkers and boss eat short order Mexican food, sandwiches, and pizza. By day two I was physically salivating while watching them eat things that had a much larger flavor palette than bologna on wheat.

For children who live in SNAP households, watching their peers eat a variety of lunch foods while they eat the same things everyday or dine on the lackluster, reduced-cost hot lunch at school is difficult. To make matters worse, lunch payment is a hot political issue all across the country. In June, the Pennsylvania state legislature voted to reinstate “lunch shaming”, which is the practice of either denying lunch, or providing an alternative, lower-cost meal option to children who’s parents have outstanding bills. 12% of families suffer from food insecurity, and households with children are twice as likely to experience a lack of food.

By the third day of my challenge, my eyes were opened to the fact that Americans who have to feed themselves on a SNAP budget don’t get to enjoy food the same way as those of us who have more to spend. While dining out, or even cooking a meal at home (something I do woefully infrequently) is an exciting chance to try new flavors and foods, those who have to eat for $4 a day need to plan to fuel their bodies as best they can. I was not enjoying eating by the middle of the week. I went to a party on Wednesday night and went straight for the fresh veggie tray, unaware until then of how much I was missing fresh tomatoes.

On day four, I started feeling really awful. I had a headache by 1 pm on both Thursday and Friday, which I believe I can attribute to the higher sodium level of my $4 a day diet. In the last few years, many studies have been published that prove the negative effects of processed meats, and I was eating salty bologna every day. Half of low-income American adults and children consume at least two servings of processed meats every week. Those who use SNAP benefits to feed their families eat 39% fewer whole grains and 46% more red meat. They consume more processed foods overall than those who do not receive food assistance. Part of the reasons for this is that processed, salty foods are inexpensive and often non-perishable. People utilizing their local food bank to supplement their SNAP funds are likely to find canned and packaged foods, many of which are high in sodium and carbohydrates and low in balanced nutritional value.

Also, I really missed coffee. I sort of forgot to budget for it, and although it is relatively inexpensive, it was something I thought I could easily forgo during the five days of this challenge. It’s a very hip, upper middle class cliche to talk about how much we love and depend on our caffeine, but it’s possible this was also a contributor to the headaches. Cocktails and desserts (except the ice cream, which, if I’m being honest, was gone by Tuesday night) also went out the window. There is no viable way that someone living on $4 a day can afford these small luxuries.

I talked to anyone who would listen about this challenge, including my 18-year-old coworker, who seemed properly horrified when I mentioned that I had purchased condensed soup. I’m not sure if this is a generational or income based response, because when I was a teenager, I was likely still eating Campbell’s chicken noodle (at about $0.50 a can) and loving it. Spoiler alert: it’s not as tasty as we all thought when we were kids. I think it’s basically flavored salt water and very, very soggy spaghetti.

This week has been eye opening. I have to say, I’m not sure if I personally know anyone who is eating on a budget like this, but I certainly hope not. With our current political climate, and the man in the White House threatening to cut benefits to large numbers of Americans who desperately need them to feed themselves and their families, this challenge is even more important. Poor nutrition, which is certainly what I experienced with the foods I ate this week, leads to a variety of potential health problems, which can lead to high or unpaid medical bills, which can force Americans deeper in the hole and keep them in poverty longer. It’s a cycle we need to break. I wish all of our local food assistance organizations, like Lift Up, had more regular access to fresh vegetables and healthy proteins.

I guess to conclude, I would say this challenge was not exactly “fun”. But it was certainly constructive and very interesting. If anyone else is interested, check out liftup.org for more details and to start your own $4 a day plan.