Author Archives: sara

About sara

i live in michigan with my teenage daughter, my partner, and our three cats. i am a paralegal, legal manager and corporate governance specialist, and when i'm not reading contracts or maintaining the dusty archives of our arcane corporate history like some weirdly specific librarian, i enjoy knitting, books, running slowly, making candles, and bird-watching. i started blogging way back when I was an expat living in australia and in recent years have tried to be more diligent about keeping this space up to date and as a creative outlet for the things in my life that inspire me and balance my 9-5.

The sky has been like a watercolor painting this week, big blue with fast-moving voluminous clouds, green and gold and thick soft air. Some days it is too hot to run outside and even when the cool front moved through, it was extremely humid and I had to walk a few paces at every half-mile of my lunchtime run. I reflected that a couple of years ago, taking any walking steps during my run was distressing to me – an indication of a failed training opportunity. I wondered if I should be pushing myself harder. Then I remembered that I’m still setting personal bests in the short runs I’ve done this summer, and I’m enjoying running more than ever. I am not competing with myself or with anyone, I’m just enjoying being outside and the feeling that comes from regular activity.

I’m staying motivated by signing up for smaller events every 2-3 weeks. I found a 4-mile run for our local Founder’s Festival, and in August we have the annual Farmington Run for the Hills, which I will do as a 10k. I love these smaller runs in my hometown because they are usually community-oriented, for good causes, and have a very upbeat, grass-roots feel. (Plus, I can roll out of bed a half-hour before and ride my bike to the start.) Then in September I will do the Kensington Challenge 15k, and start ramping up training for October in Empire. I love the Sleeping Bear Half Marathon and although I don’t really expect to bust out a PR this year – last year the stars were totally in alignment – it’s such a nice event and the weather is terribly, excitingly unpredictable and it’s my favorite time of year to run.

I finally spent my birthday money on a couple new pairs of running shorts, tank tops, and some new socks. I’m slowly replacing my ragged old Athleta sports bras – which are like strapping on Viking breastplates – with a fabulous VS sports bra that I found – The Standout. It’s so comfortable and the racerback straps are cute, it’s been a great find and as someone who is slightly more top-heavy than the average runner girl, a good underpinning is almost as important as good shoes.

I like running and I like blogging so why is it that there are so few women’s running blogs that I enjoy reading? Most that I check out are too over the top for me. Instead of being motivational and inspiring, I find them to be a litany of accomplishments and selfies of their muscles and race photos. Don’t get me wrong – if you have the stones to be doing halfs and fulls and tris and Ironman events, you have put an inordinate amount of work into it and you deserve to feel very proud of yourself. I just don’t necessarily want to read about it, I guess. There are a few good running blogs that I like – but I feel as though I like them not because they’re running blogs, but rather they’re blogs by women who happen to run, and do a lot of other things too. They seem more balanced.

I know that nothing about this seems very well-structured, but it’s okay to me. When I started running a few years ago, I essentially stopped blogging. All the hobbies I’d enjoyed suddenly seemed sort of trivial compared with my split times, my aching muscles and minor injuries, my goals and gradual accomplishments. I felt as though I had nothing to say, and it was time to stop talking. Now, I’ve found my voice again, without losing my stride, and even if the things I want to say are trivial and unstructured, I like being able to say them.

june end

I’m not sure where June went but here we are with sparklers in hand ready for the 4th of July. I feel like I should be baking an angel food cake with whipped cream topping and the stars & stripes laid out in blueberries and strawberries.*

In June of 2014, here is what I loved:

Getting back to a more normal routine of running and getting ready to break my 2014 record for monthly miles logged. It’s not much, mind you, but around 35 miles run for the month, breaking the previous record, January (oddly), at almost 33. Again, I’m no silly girl ultramarathoner, but you know what? If you want to be a runner, all you have to do is – run. And enjoy it. I did a great little 5k in Glen Arbor this month, broke my PR time and came in around 26.13, and am trying to get out a few times a week to do anything I can – two, three, four miles. Shin splints seem to be in the rearview and I’m just running because I enjoy it.
McD’s strawberry lemonade. Now, I don’t eat at McD’s regularly – a Happy Meal is a treat for Miss L once in a great while and mostly I would rather pack a sandwich in my purse for myself than eat fast food (although I really do love a good two-cheeseburger meal with a strawberry milkshake, I just hate how it makes me feel). But Miss L and I are absolutely hooked. Summer fave.
My peonies – shown in many tedious pictures in this very blog – until they were beaten to submission by a driving rain.
Earthing. Okay, I hate having dirty feet. I wash my feet before bedtime every night (you already knew I was a freak) because I literally cannot stand the thought of getting into my bed with dirty paws. But for some reason I really do seem to sleep better when I can get outside and walk around in bare feet. I could probably break this down into a logical analysis of what I am also doing to promote better sleep on days where I am most likely to be barefoot but oh hush. I love rolling out of bed on the weekends and going straight to the yard in my bare feet to water, weed, and putter, step on something spiky and hop around cursing. So I have to wash my feet more, and vacuum my floors more? Maybe this guy is on to something. (I feel like I should be inserting a punctuation wink here, which is the proper way nowadays to indicate that you may just be kidding about something when more than likely you are not.)
Hot dogs. Wow, it seems like this June I’ve thrown caution to the wind – dirty feet, fast food lemonade, and nitrate laden processed foods. I know. I try to be careful about what kind I buy. My mom will only buy Hebrew National and although I scoffed at this, I just bought a pack of them and I probably won’t be going back to Ballparks. Say what you will, there is really just something summertime awesome about a chargrilled hot dog on a wheat bun slathered with sharp mustard, cold coleslaw, and baked beans. Yum.
Alaska’s Last Frontier. I am nuts about this show and wish they would hurry up and load more episodes onto Netflix already. I had no idea that they were in any way related to that 90’s brokenhearted hippie warbler queen Jewel!! That’s not exactly a selling point, but I can overlook it. I love this show. After I’ve watched a few episodes I wander about my garden and yard pretending I’m a homesteader.
Yoga Journal. I am still a runner girl, but as I wander somewhat away from the more competitive, stern aspects of that sport, I find myself incorporating more yoga-style stretching into my workouts. This site has given me lots of good direction on poses to help me stretch into wakefulness, warm up or cool down after cardio, and an entry into meditation. I would love to find a great yoga class in the Ann Arbor / Northville area but Bikram is hugely popular right now and I shy away from hot yoga. I’m too much of a germaphobe for a sweaty nasty studio even if I bring my own mat.
Mike Rowe on Facebook. You may know him as Dirty Jobs guy, or Ford pitch man – but his Facebook page is hilarious, smart, subtle, and clever. He doesn’t shy away from controversial topics and his posts come across as highly intelligent, thought-out, and sincere. I kind of think this guy is the real deal and as I drive to and from work listening to audiobooks of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee, so far he is the only celebrity I can imagine as any kind of Travis McGee. (Shame on anyone who thought Leonardo DiCaprio could ever, in a million years, in the remotest possible place in the universe, be fit to step foot on board the Busted Flush. Let’s just cast Zach Galifiniawhatshisname as Meyer and totally sell our souls to the same devil who cast Jar Jar Binks.)

I hope you have had a blessed June and solstice and are enjoying your summer / winter according to whichever hemisphere you are in. We are enjoying warm, humid weather, storms passing, green bursting gardens, and the prospect of a short work week in advance of the US July 4 holiday.

*I might have to make this cake, I just sold myself…

product review: colorfix

On one hand, I hate to blog about superficial appearance issues, and on another hand I don’t really care, so just sit right back and I’ll tell the tale of the last two days of my hair color journey. As faithful reader(s) will remember from a previous post, I had an incident with my hair color and it turned a somewhat strange shade of red. After a week, it was still turning my pale towels pink with running red dye. I was rolling with this even as it stayed dark on top and faded out on the sides and became a strange melange running the gamut of dark vibrant burgundy on top to pale copper on the ends. Yes, all on one head.

Our paralegal, however, was appalled and when she crept into my office with a quiet whispered recommendation about a product called Color Oops, I knew it was time to address it. I had figured I would let the color fade for several weeks, then just recolor something darker over all of it, although I suspected uncomfortably that I would still have the issue of darker on the bottom, brighter on the top. After doing more research, however, I decided to take her recommendation and do a color removal.

Yes, I know it’s still mercury retrograde.

I didn’t use Color Oops, I went to my local Sally’s and got a product called Colorfix which seemed to rate better. On Friday night I spent time in my small bathroom gagging at the smell of rotten eggs from the product, stepped into the shower, and emerged with my dark red hair a thing of the past. Instead, I had a head of pale orangey hair, not a flattering shade, but still. I was astounded. GB advised me this morning that there is still a variation in the color between the top and the bottom, so I did it again, only using the milder color correction method. I think there’s still much darker strands in back and underneath, but I don’t think I can keep going and not have my hair destroyed; anyway I think everyone’s hair is darker underneath than on top so I think I can deal with that.

My hair, despite smelling like rotten eggs, is actually in pretty good shape, a little dried-out but nothing like what I expected. I don’t know if this pale copper shade is my real color (it’s much lighter than I would expect my real color to be) but it’s not terrible. I haven’t decided whether to lay another color down now that I’m back to a somewhat clean slate, or let it go for a little while and rock the natural look. While at Sally’s, I bought a protein filler, which is reportedly intended to stabilize hair and ensure a more even color result, so I’d use that first, but anyway. I’ll have to decide tomorrow before I go back to work on Monday.

So my review of Colorfix:

It definitely smells absolutely appalling – but in my case the smell went out of my hair once I’d washed it the next day.
It is inexpensive – $13 for a box, although it says you can get about 6 applications out of it, and I only got about 2.
It worked for me – took me from dark copper red / auburn to a much paler shade in 1 full application and 1 mild color-correction application.
Many reviews tell you not to bother with the third processing step – I did it and I was glad I did. Yes, it darkened my hair, but it darkened it to a more normal shade, from a brassy pale orange to a deeper honey shade (although honey makes it sound slightly better, I think, than it actually is) and seemed to leave it in better shape. The directions say that if you don’t use it, your color will continue to darken over several days and if you recolor promptly, you will not be able to ensure that you have fully eradicated the old color.
It left my hair drier than when I started, for sure, but was not damaging and I think if I leave it alone for a few days and treat it to some good conditioning, it will be fine.
Definitely worth the price and the convenience, in my opinion, so I give it a thumbs up. It gave me much better results than I had anticipated.

invaded

For a short week that started out with a vacation day (which was mostly spent driving downstate and cleaning the house), it has been distasteful in many ways. For starters, I should have listened to Susan Miller when she warned that if I chose to make any changes to my appearance – such as buying new clothes, etc – I should keep the receipts or wait til July. Unfortunately, I chose to color my hair, not much I can do about the strange coppery stripey shade (which I am grimly calling “Mercury Retrograde”) until I can set 20 minutes aside to recolor. Or should I wait til July to do that, too? I’m not sure it can get much worse.

I had to give a presentation yesterday and public speaking is definitely not my forte. When I was younger, I had massive phobias about it, and was terrorized at the thought. In this job, though, I have to put my big girl pants on and get it done, and to my surprise, when I put my mind to it, I can definitely do it, and do a passable job. I just don’t like it. It’s distasteful to me. Projecting an outward image, pushing my energy out to a big group of people, letting them feed off it, is draining and unpleasant for me. It makes me feel scrutinized and invaded and uncomfortable.

This morning, less than 24 hours after giving that big presentation, I had an appraiser come to the house and was reminded again of the uncomfortable feeling of being invaded. She was perfectly nice, even when Emmett jumped onto her shoulder, as he is wont to do with me. I was horrified – he is a wingnut. I locked him in the bathroom and he yowled and violently rattled the door the entire time she was here. He sounded like a tempest in a teapot and his brother Sarge stretched out on the hallway rug and stuffed his paws under the door to either soothe him or mock him, not sure which.

I am a crazy cat lady, I told her, trying for a laugh, and she merely politely agreed and went on with her clipboard. Again, a very nice person but who wants someone looking in your rooms and closets and putting a dollar value on your fortress of solitude? Talk about feeling like you’ve just had your pockets turned out.

I guess just another day and a half and I can call this week done and spend the weekend recovering and paying attention to all of the little details in my life that make me happy and recharge me. Go for a run, work in the yard, encourage Miss L’s marimo to divide so I can make one of these, drink some wine, and read some Travis McGee.

solstice

Downstate, the solstice is just another day; up north, however, the solstice is a day of importance.

Long live the light.

more birthday

Despite having a bit of a meditative birthday overall, I still managed to rake in some pretty nice birthday awesomeness. Love can, after all, take the form of cool shit to cackle over. GB got me a dream of an antique brass birdcage, on it’s own beautiful stand, it’s just gorgeous and just dying to host a long trailing vine or a starry flowering plant…if Emmett can be persuaded that he shouldn’t a) swing on it and b) try to fit into it. I got money from my folks and a gift card from my bestie, all of which, especially now that I am financially independent and on a budget, allows me to splurge happily on the new Coldplay album and some new cute running clothes.

And from my work colleagues, cake pops from Starbucks (salted caramel!) and a beautiful rose-mauve orchid; and a field trip.

The Matthaei Botanical Gardens of the University of Michigan are just a hop, skip, and a jump from our office, and, in addition to the usual spectacular gardens, plants and flowers (including bonsai, above) there is a once-in-a-lifetime botanical event occurring. The century plant, an Agave that has been in the collection since the 1930’s, began the process of flowering this spring. Over the course of the last couple of months, it has shot up a 25-foot stalk that forced the conservatory to remove a pane of glass from it’s ceiling to allow it to grow out the roof! At its most rapid pace, it was growing 6-7 inches a day before it began sending out side stems and buds, and slowed its upward rate. The century plant will bloom once, set seed, and die, and the fact that it is doing this at over 80 years old is pretty remarkable.

So, with a sack of Greek takeout – grape leaves, pita, salads, and fattoush – we set out for a lunchtime field trip, a picnic under warm and windy, cloud-gathering spring skies, and a peek at the century plant. Although my colleague promised me that it would burst into flower the moment I stepped my magical birthday ass into the conservatory, it’s not blooming yet, so hopefully I can get back again for another photograph when that occurs.

All in all, a pretty nice birthday, and a lucky girl.

star signs and scrolls, the moon and my birthday.

When I was on the brink of adolescence, which happened later in those pre-historic days than it seems to happen now, I spent a lot of pocket money at the Printed Word, our local bookstore. There were wire racks of paperbacks lining the walls, and a long center row of lighted magazine racks. It had its own dry, papery smell. There was an old-fashioned cash register behind a heavy glass-topped counter, and next to that cash register was usually a box of cigarette-sized colored paper horoscope scrolls, tightly encased in plastic sleeves.

For a time, I rushed to get a scroll weekly, and pored over it with great intensity. It was an amazing mystery, a magic significance akin to the secrets of tarot cards or prophetic dreams. For a couple of dollars, you could understand all kinds of hidden things about yourself and your destiny and the world and stars around you. Your lucky days, your lucky numbers. Who might have a crush on you. I mean, that’s a lot of awesome insight for a bargain price.

I haven’t thought much about horoscopes or star signs until a couple of months ago. I had a crazy weekend of strange tumultuous emotions and changes in my friendships and relationships and I happened to see a reference on Instagram to the lunar eclipse. I Googled it and it was almost alarming at how it seemed to be describing what I was going through.

I haven’t fallen back into checking my horoscope daily, but I did find a couple of great websites that I’ve curiously referred back to occasionally to review the movements of the skies. I love Mystic Mamma and Susan Miller. And since it’s my birthday month and today is actually my birthday, I’ve been checking in more regularly to see what’s afoot in my sign.

So again, I’m finding all sorts of interesting information. Mercury is in retrograde so that nagging feeling I’ve had of being a ship in the Horse Latitudes makes sense. I’m looking back a lot lately, getting ready to close out matters and process them and make the most of understanding them so I can, I hope, move on and take those lessons forward. I’ve had feelings about them that I thought I were over. I’ve had fears and anxieties lingering, old things that I thought I had resolved, but which apparently still need to be thought about and dealt with. The full moon is in Sagittarius so in conjunction with taking this period of retrograde emotional hibernation, I am going to ponder the new path forward and focus on how I can best make that happen. It’s apparently rare to have a full moon on your birthday (plus or minus a day) so I am considering that as a great sign for my day and taking the time to meditate on all of these things so I can move on to the next phase in early July.

At the ripe age of 41, I’ve realized that not everything goes how I’ve planned it, but the important, vital things in life revolve around the joy you take in yourself and your surroundings, and your own ability to see the silver linings. It’s about the beauty you see and the love and friendship you exchange with the people who share your journey, be they your close family or your friends and colleagues or the people you simply pass through space with. It’s about taking responsibility for your actions and your decisions and your own emotional well-being and knowing that everything has a significance and a resonance. Make it count. Happy Birthday to me.

For a day that started out so peacefully, with breakfast on the patio with Miss L, yesterday ended up kind of a big deal around here.

One of the downfalls of being a small framed person is a distinct lack of upper body strength, which translates into the embarrassing problem of not being able to pull the starter on a lawn mower with any degree of success. One of the side effects of the overall life transition that has been occurring around here lately is an increased responsibility for yard work and the mower issue was very frustrating for me. I pondered alternatives that all seemed to point to splashing out for a new mower (not something I wanted to spend the money on at this point) until I had a big AH-HAH moment. A little Internet research + quick trip to Home Depot + a strawberry lemonade to keep Miss L happy with this extremely boring-for-her errand + $100 = solution.

I had remembered my mom using one of these when I was a kid, only it wasn’t a nice shiny new one with sharp blades, it was an old rusty antique one that I think had been salvaged out of the shed behind our circa-1800’s farm house. Who knew they still make them?

It’s definitely a different solution than a gas mower. It’s quiet, I can use it whenever I want. It isn’t a perfect cut and there needs to be some weed-whacking afterwards, and raking. It jams up with twigs and sticks, which was extremely annoying around our old shedding tulip tree. But I really enjoyed it. It’s a great workout and maybe after using it all summer I will have the arm and shoulder muscles to pull the starter on the other mower. It’s a convenient, cheap, green alternative and my lawn got mowed yesterday. Problem solved.

Saving the best for last…

As I mowed and trimmed our crazy rosebush, Mommy duck was angrier than usual, hissing and fanning out her tail every time I came even remotely close to her. Usually she just keeps quiet unless I’m sticking my face right near her nest. However, mid-afternoon I learned the reason for her increased agitation.

WE HAVE DUCKLINGS!

The eggs hatched yesterday and by evening, there were at least five little fluff ducklings rolling around the nest and poking their little beaks out from under her sheltering wings. I tried to get closer to take more pictures, but it just made them so upset, it wasn’t worth it. She would hiss and like good little babies, they would freeze where they were. I haven’t been out this morning to check on them, but hopefully they had a good first night and will stick around for a little while before decamping to a water source. Well done Mommy duck!!

The perfect Saturday ended with Miss L. and I enjoying burgers on the grill, a fire in the backyard, and smores. Emmett was furious at being left out and climbed up into the kitchen window precariously to add to the conversation with the occasional indignant yowl (he must have a Siamese back in the family tree somewhere). Life, my friends, does not get much better than that.

live authentic part II

I felt bad after my very cynical ‘live authentic’ post and guilty that perhaps I’d oversimplified things. It’s easy to do that in a blog post. You’re sort of shooting for this mixture of insouciance and humor and poignancy and you frequently let one element outweigh the others and miss the mark.

I thought about it a lot today and came to the conclusion that for me, living authentic isn’t about trying to make my life look or seem easy or beautiful, it’s about trying to isolate and identify the beauty and happiness lurking inside my everyday life and feel gratitude. There’s a tail-wagging-the-dog difference and to me, that difference is the actual element of authenticity. When you’re able to look at your life holistically, the good and the bad, and yet value and appreciate the quicksilver moments of elegance and happiness and loveliness, you are living authentically. At the age of nearly-41, I feel like I’ve only recently discovered this and will likely spend the rest of my life working on it. But it’s good work to do.

I have all the moments that I described in my last post and no, they aren’t the moments that get photographed. I don’t shoot selfies of my overfed tummy or unshaven legs or circles under my eyes when I’ve gotten insufficient sleep. I shoot selfies when I feel beautiful. I don’t take pictures of the endless dead seedling trays I’ve baked or over or under-watered, I take pictures of my beautiful flowers and herbs when they are at their peak and I am proud of them. I don’t take pictures of endless streams of traffic instead of walks in the woods and I don’t brag about the runs that are failures of fatigue and laziness and bathroom issues or shin splints, I feel exuberant about the ones where I feel like I could run and run and run and never get tired. And the ‘living authentic’ part is realizing that all of those elements exist all the time and ebb and flow and they all make up your day or your week and you choose what to be happy and proud of, and what you want to project to the world. I think this is the silver linings playbook, to capture a thought from one of my favorite reads of 2013.

Today I went to work and I had too much to do and I felt that bitterness of not being able to putter around and do exactly what I wanted to do in the comfort and solitude of my own home. And yet I had the kind of day where the relationships I’ve forged with the people I work with made me change my mind. I helped people, I accomplished things and they gave back in return. I had a CAD engineer excitedly consult with me about setting up a possible webcam for Mommy duck. I had my small cadre of teammates set up an outing for next week so I can take them to my favorite botanical gardens to see an 80-year old agave cactus bloom, something I never thought anyone around me would be remotely interested in. I had people in my office all day for one reason or another, laughing and talking and asking questions and making plans and working on strategy and developing ideas together. I had a beautiful lunchtime run in the sunshine and came back with a sunburned nose. I had dinner with my daughter and we lay in the hammock while we ate our ice cream and my shorts were too tight, and we watched the pine branches overhead, very green against the blue sky. Mommy duck went away and came home and the fish swam in his tank while the cats stared, hypnotized. I took the trash out and saw a pale moon shadow in the sky, waiting for the gloaming. All of these things happened and then I felt sad for my harsh and negative commentary about what is in actuality a very nice and sweet pair of words. For the time being, I’ve found a nice place in the world and I am lucky to share even the most tedious bits of my existence with good people and the gratitude that I feel and project is now for me the most authentic way to live.

live authentic

I loved this post on A Side of Sweet about what I informally think of as “the new YOLO” – the hashtag “live authentic” which at first glance can seem very positive and motivating and inspirational but, as Kelly’s post points out, can really just be annoying as all hell and make those of us who are actually forced to work for a living doing distinctly unbeautiful things feel a bit, shall we say, inadequate.

I wish my life was all about PeonyWatch2014, naps with beautiful yogaesque cats, communing with ducks, walks in the woods and going for long runs wearing perfectly coordinated Nike outfits while I “live authentically”. And I DO get to do some of that, sometimes (okay, I don’t have any perfectly coordinated outfits of any kind, much less for running). But more often than not, my version of living authentically is sitting in traffic or in my office thinking, talking, or writing about widgets, packing lunches, wishing my house wasn’t so cluttered, wishing I had time for a nap or a run, missing my kid, checking my finances, wondering what to read next, wishing I had time to weed the garden, feeling tired, feeling hungry, feeling fat, wondering if it’s almost time to eat, wondering if it’s almost time to go home, wondering if we need more wine, negotiating who does bedtime reading or lunch packing, going to bed at 8PM with the intention of reading but instead exhaustedly watching a rerun of the Real Housewives of Somewhere while berating myself for not cleaning the litterbox and feeling annoyed with the cats for breaking something or dragging a shoe upstairs to chew on (really). And then getting up the next day to do it all over again.

Six Ten

of this be sure: you do not find a happy life, you make it.