Category Archives: michigan weather

which is somewhat about patience.

The last time I ran was in Florida and I came back feeling discouraged. My left shin felt sore and tender during the run, with periodic needle prickles in my calf; my pace was slow and as I ran, I tried to think back over this injury.
I started with shin splint issues last spring, attributed them to my worn-out Mizunos, and switched to a new pair. New pair didn’t help. I bought Brooks, and the pain in my right shin cleared up; the left, however, lingered. It caused me to say no to my favorite half-marathon in the fall and as I ran around the Florida resort, I realized, after adding up all of this time, I’ve been babying this injury for EIGHT MONTHS.

That is ridiculous.

When I got back to Michigan I called the doctor and decided no running until I can get in to see her in a couple of weeks.
I feel a little stupid that I’ve let this go on for so long. It’s tough for me to give up running, though, and I always felt like it was just a nagging, minor annoyance. I don’t usually think about going to a doctor when I have a minor ache or pain. Time sort of stacks up and then you get used to running with that kind of sensation and you almost don’t think about it, except when you look at the big picture of your progress, where you actually are compared to where you would like to be.

I’m trying not to be bummed about the waiting period. Sometimes taking a few weeks off and doing heavy cross-training helps, so that’s what I plan to do. Squats every day and trying some new things like Pilates might help refresh me.

This week has been marked by snow, cold, and snow days.

I thought Crazy Emmett, the master of the constant bid for escape, might learn his lesson if he were allowed to plunge out into the snow and realize how cold and miserable it is. Miss L told me this was a terrible idea and continued to shriek this opinion as I chased him through the porch snowdrifts. He was quite joyful and came in with wet paws, snowy whiskers, and a renewed determination to thwart me at every opportunity.

In the midst of this arctic week, I ordered my tomato plants, which I will be able to pick up in the spring when they are new little thriving babies. I mixed it up this year, and the only type that I reordered from last year were the trusty Paul Robesons. I added 7 other heirloom varieties and I can’t wait to get my paws in the dirt of my garden. It sleeps under snow now, but in a few months it will be green and growing and I will be a happy girl.

In the meantime, it is almost Valentine’s Day, and I hope you are as happy with your Valentine as I am with mine.

in which i battle winter storm linus whilst wearing the most uncomfortable bra known to humanity.

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Yeah, that really happened, but sorry, that’s a whole different story, and this just isn’t that kind of blog. 😉

Instead, here are a few pics of Winter Storm Linus…we got about 11.5 inches but my friends closer to the Ohio border are reporting up to 18 inches plus drifting.

Miss L and I are home on a snow day – my company sent out emails last night telling folks to work from home if need be. Thank God I found a snowplow service, they earned their money this morning, and so I’ll forgive them for waking me and Miss L up at 4.15 AM hollering at each other.

time lapse – left photo is from pre-storm, yesterday AM. Middle photo is mid-storm, about 3PM yesterday…and last photo is post-storm, this AM, morning sun.

in which i try to cope with january.

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not sure if i took this picture because of the pretty sunrise, or to prove that it is possible for me to get to work before 8AM.

This post was originally going to start out with the emphatic statement, January fucking sucks but then I remembered that one of the things I am most proud of over the last year has been my vastly improved capability to see silver linings. So I will back off that statement and simply say, January is a very challenging month for me personally. Better?

I think January is tough because I feel so relaxed and reset after a nice break, I have all of this clarity of insight about things I can do to feel better about myself, everything feels like a clean slate – then I go back to work and am plunged back into the same hectic routine and nothing is clean, nothing is new, everything is still the same old mess it was before Christmas, and on top of it, the weather usually turns, making everything more difficult. More difficult to travel anywhere, even work; more difficult to get any sort of natural light or vitamin D when it is always dark and the wind chills are perilous; more difficult to muster the energy to work out, to eat right, to drink enough water. January is a dark, cold, long month where everything takes more effort for me and I am usually going through the motions feeling numb with exhaustion, no matter how much sleep I get. This week has seemed like the Longest Week Ever. We had a green Christmas but winter has hit with a vengeance and we had a snow squall and a day off from school for Miss L due to the extremely cold temperatures which still persist around here.

(Sidebar. I have to ask. How do children get educated in Alaska? Or the upper Midwest which I heard on NPR now wants to secede from the Midwest and create its own region called the ‘North’? It’s much colder in those places than in Michigan. Those kids must NEVER go to school if education is contingent upon Mother Nature. And you know, look. I am a teacher fan, I support teachers and am full of gratitude for the very difficult job they do. I could never do it myself. But my teacher friends on FB are downright obnoxious about snow days. Yes, I understand that everyone gets happy about having a day off. But to the rest of us who have to go to work no matter what the temperature outside, and additionally have to find child care for a child that has a snow day, often by spending one of our limited vacation days to do so, it can be a little annoying when you open up FB in the midst of one of these hectic mornings and see a bunch of teachers high-fiving themselves in jammies about not having to work.)

On the silver lining side, GB & I pulled together as usual and tag-teamed, and Miss L & I sought refuge with a special snow day lunch, as is one of our traditions.

In other news, somewhat on the spur of the moment, I decided to try a Bikram yoga class. I love yoga and have wanted to work it back into my fitness routine for some time, but I’d always resisted this specific type of fitness based on the yuck factor of doing it in a hot studio full of other people’s fug, sweat, and germs. But one of the lawyers I work with said the studio in Northville is quite clean and so I gave it a try on Thursday night. It was the night of our snow squall, so there was something very Scandinavian about working out in a sweatbox, watching through humidity-streaked windows as the snow filtered down in drifts on the street outside. Then bursting outside into a dark, quiet street of blessed arctic cold. I resisted the urge to roll around in the fresh snow – that would likely be acceptable in Ann Arbor, but in Northville I believe it would likely be frowned upon, the zoning is much more strict there….Anyway, the class was really good, I made it through with only a few moments of seeing dark spots floating over my vision while thinking numbly ‘oh my Christ I’m going to vomit’. The instructor was a fair little waif with a head full of blonde dreadlocks who smiled angelically through the class and went on several gentle metaphysical tangents that I enjoyed through my pain. However, I was underhydrated going in and at 2AM, I woke up with a savage dehydration headache that didn’t abate until after lunchtime the following day. I told someone that I felt like I’d been pounding tequila all night and it took vast amounts of water & Gatorade to get me back to normal. My body felt great – very limber & stretched – but my head was a wreck. I will definitely go back, I just really have to address my hydration and try to figure that out.

January is a dry month for me so my normal soothing glass of red wine is out of the picture for awhile, which I haven’t missed at all, oddly. This made the Bikram hangover more bitter in some ways… as usual, Emmett, however, was sympathetic. He always encourages me to go back to bed whenever I need it. And that is a good friend to have in January.

“If clouds are blocking the sun, there will always be a silver lining that reminds me to keep on trying.” ― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

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**warning – this post is full of utter misery and feeling-sorry-for-myselfedness. you’ve been warned.**

For the past year and a half, I have tried to focus on the silver linings, and choose good cheer and optimism over being glum, but some days are just plain bad and there’s nothing you can do about it. For example, yesterday.

Yesterday, Miss L woke up sad before she was even out of bed, still all warm and cuddly and sleepy and – sad. Cheerios cheered her up, as did her new fur hat that makes her look like a teddy bear, but when it came time to drop her off at pre-care, she just didn’t want me to leave. And there were tears, and there was her visible struggle to be brave, which is a terrible thing for me to witness, watching her draw her six-year-old self up and face things when I wish I could just take her home and put her back into pajamas and save her from having to face anything. Then there was me crying in the car on the way to work and being late.

My boss told me that I have to give a presentation to the same committee that saw me fail horribly a couple of months ago, and although I didn’t even twitch, just stoically said, ‘No worries’, on the inside I was stamping my foot and screaming “WHAT?!!” I just wonder what the fucking point is. I know everybody has to do things that they hate and fail at and despise every day of their lives but DAMN. You would think blatant, visible failures would at least have the silver lining of not having to do it AGAIN but I guess the universe has a little more humiliation and degradation to expose me to, so I will turn the other cheek, dress up, and get my ass kicked by my own self YET AGAIN.

Yesterday, my stomach felt a little unsettled before lunch but I thought it was just the lingering aftereffects of an emotional morning, so I went and tried to work out anyway. I gave up running after a pathetic mile and got on the elliptical with a roiling stomach and my friend came in and got on the same treadmill and busted out many miles at a sprint pace with no visible strain and I wondered how I can possibly call myself a runner.

By 4.00 I was full on nauseous and had my space heater on full blast, but still found myself shivering. Outside my office window, the snow scoured the bare lot and the polar vortex came down inexorably, and there was a whiteout on the drive home. I got home, and after having only juice and an apple all day, I dumped some Cheerios and toast into my protesting stomach and climbed into the hottest bath I could stand.

My bathroom is sunny and is the home for most of my houseplants, partly because of its exposure and partly because it has a door I can close to keep Emmett and Sarge out. This weekend, one of them got into the bathroom and chewed up one of my plants and barfed it back up and made an enormous mess; I’d blamed Miss L for leaving the door ajar. (“WHAT!!” -Miss L. “You must have, the boys can’t open the door themselves!” – Me. “Sarge can open the door!!” – Miss L. “That’s ridiculous.” – Me.) Well, as I shivered in my bath Sarge meowed violently at me from the hallway, and then proceeded to open the bathroom door and saunter in. (“WHAT!!” – Me.) This is a bad thing, Sarge figuring out doorknobs.

I was in bed by 6.30, freezing and sweating, and by 8.00 the Cheerios and toast had come back up (sorry, graphic, but true.) Emmett had knocked another picture off the wall so I’d locked the cats out of the bedroom and Sarge opened the door at 10 and brought up a section of the rubber basement flooring to gnaw on contentedly. I had fever dreams of being in Paris and then getting ready to run a race somewhere wind-torn and barren, and not wanting to see someone that I knew would be there; I woke up soaked in sweat but finally warm.

I suppose the silver lining is that I am home today and after a mostly liquid diet, broth and ginger tea, I was able to brush my teeth, which is a huge improvement, and it looks as though I will finish Tana French’s “The Secret Place” today as well, which has been a really great book. (I love Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad.) And maybe tomorrow will be better. No, tomorrow will definitely be better.

chaos, havoc, and the first snow.

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I’ve had cats in my life ever since I can remember, starting with Blackie, who died, I think, and followed by Bunsy, Abigail, Collier, Maggie, Salem, and, now, Emmett and Sarge. Every single one of these cats was weird. I don’t know now whether all cats are weird in their own ways, or if we just tend to get the weird ones. But Abigail lived in two rooms for most of her life, and Collier ate the string from those old plastic drawstring shopping bags. Bunsy tried to steal an entire Thanksgiving turkey and only liked my father. Salem had a nervous stomach and couldn’t bring herself to poop in the litterbox. Maggie was just a good true cat, and when she passed, Emmett and Sarge (aka the Chaos and Havoc twins) came into our lives.

Emmett is a Very Bad Cat.

He is a thin, spotted, Bengalish kind of cat, with a freckled face and muddy colored eyes, and an enormous plaintive yowl that doesn’t match his slender frame. He is prone to bursting out any open door and making runs for it, into the garage to hide under my Camry or onto the front porch or garden. Luckily, he doesn’t entirely know what to do once he gets where he is going, and tends to stop and MRRROWWWWW his confused triumph, allowing me to snatch him back up. He jumps on people’s shoulders (including a hapless appraiser visiting the house) and climbs curtains and chews plants and finds his way onto narrow ledges and the tops of open doors. He is also charming and affectionate and a lap cat and just wants to be close to people, and I love him enormously which allows me to tolerate his most recent fascination with pictures hanging on the walls. If he stands on his hind legs, he can push framed pictures hanging on my stairway and make them swing and sway, rattling them against the walls at all times of the night. For a long time I laid awake in bed cursing silently because I was NOT going to chase him around the house (he finds this very merry) at three AM and I was NOT going to be reduced to taking MY PICTURES off the walls because of a SMALL EVIL CAT.

Yeah, so, I took the pictures off the walls.

Sarge is a big, fluffy, mellow dude with some unfortunate habits as well. He is a fetcher cat, so his passionate love is little fur mouties (mice) that he chases around the house when thrown, and brings back to be thrown again. He can do this all day long. I wish he WOULD do this all day long, because the alternative is him feeding his slightly addictive chewing behaviors. Once he shredded up all of the flip flops in the house, he started in on the rubber floor mats under the treadmill and weight bench in the basement. I’m afraid his stomach and intestines are full of noxious chewed rubber, although from the number of times I hear Miss L shriek from the basement “MOMMY I SEE BARF” he fortunately doesn’t seem to be able to digest it.

They look sweet in this little kitten picture, don’t they. This was the second day they came to live with us, almost a year ago. The thing I remember most about this picture is that Emmett is quite damp because he had just taken a leap into Miss L’s bath and then freaked out and zoomed around the house spraying water.

This week saw the first snow. Nothing stuck, but once again, the view from my office window was grey, scudding clouds and blowing snow. It feels like the majority of my life in that office is spent looking at that same weather, with just tiny fleeting intervals of other landscapes, summer blues and greens and autumn golds. So my outside work is done. Last weekend, Miss L and I gathered up the last of the leaves, repaired the compost bin and winterized it with layers of newspapers and mulched leaves. We trimmed back most of the garden beds and moved the woodpile from the old spot in the back corner of the yard to the new steel log rack on the back patio, two steps from the back door. She was a grand helper and helped me with birdfeeders and raking and gathering. I spent an anxious day calling snowplow companies and finding most of them booked up, and had just resigned myself to a winter of do-it-myself snowblowing when one company called me back. So let it snow.

shinin down like water

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The first few months of being a solo homeowner have been fraught with Interesting Situations. You know, things that people say build character but really just kind of suck. Two power outages in thirty days (leaving me deeply concerned about the capability of good ol’ Detroit Edison’s mouldering infrastructure to sustain their huddled masses during what the 2015 Farmer’s Almanac promises to be another spectacularly heinous winter) and an air conditioner that crapped the bed during the only three days of the year in which I really needed it. Last weekend I had to sneak into the Y during a power outage (the Y had power, but was closed for maintenance, mind you) and, as part of a phalanx of disheveled women who couldn’t bear to face their weekends with bedhead, defy bewildered workmen to blow dry and straighten my hair before a social engagement.

Ever since I crashed and burned during my big presentation opportunity a few weeks ago, I’ve been discouraged and demotivated at work. The last several days all I want to do at the office is plan my running schedule, check Instagram, chat with friends, and read snarky online gossip about a popular blogger that I am a wee bit fascinated with currently.

I have to remember, though, in the midst of these cycles of low energy, that I’m not only really lucky to have a job that allows me to BE a solo homeowner and a single mom, I’m lucky to have a boss who sends us home early on a bad weather day to spare us bad traffic and potential risk to our well-being. The same boss who lets me work from home on the first day of school and when the dudes need to come fix my air conditioner and prep my furnace and chimney for another polar vortex.

So, after a departmental offsite at a nearby seminary that has been converted to a conference center (and a Catholic golf course – true story – I wish I’d snapped a pic of the huge painting of Pope John Paul that presides over the concierge desk), I did a brief meditation at the on-site reflecting pool. I am not Catholic but I love the beauty and dignity of Catholic icons and rituals. I could have hung out in the chapel for a long time, soaking up the Romanesque architecture. However, the driveways were already awash, so I dodged raindrops to head home.

Investigating the flooding in my yard in ballet flats was likely not a great idea, but at least I had a slicker.

There’s something about the combination of the religious surroundings and the weather today that has reminded me to be grateful for my blessings. The social engagement that I broke into the Y to prepare for last weekend ended with my gutters being fortuitously and unexpectedly cleaned, and this afternoon, as I watched the brown rainwater burble merrily out of my clean downspouts, feet damp and cold in my wet flats, I am again reminded that in the weird intermeshing of little details and large weighty matters, things usually do work out.

transitions

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It was a beautiful Supermoon last weekend and it seemed like people took more notice of it than other Supermoons. Facebook was full of its golden visage and on Monday morning, I said hello to a conservative coworker in his office; he had the day’s business newspaper folded on his desk and there the Supermoon was again, beaming at me from the front page.

Unfortunately, metro Detroit was hit by a crazy rainstorm on Monday which resulted in massive flooding throughout several counties. I was blissfully ignorant of anything except feeling annoyed at backed-up traffic and wet feet. I got to the back side of my neighborhood and saw a Buick stranded in a rush of muddy water overflowing the drainage ditch. This seemed somewhat unusual and when I got home, I turned on the TV to see ‘TURN AROUND, DON’T DROWN” as the local news slogan. The pictures of the stranded drivers and rushing brown floodwaters on the highways were astonishing; I was gobsmacked to see the junction of I-75 and 696 under 14 feet of water.

My basement stayed fortunately dry, and I thanked my stars that I didn’t have to cope with backed-up sewage and a house full of brown water like many of my Michigan neighbors did.

After the big storm, the week turned cool and Octoberish. Even the sky over the Matthei Botanical Gardens looks Octoberish, a shade of blue, the light slanting in that particular way. On Instagram my friend noted that the birds seem to be gathering and I noticed it too, throngs of them on the feeders, the hummingbirds darting in flashes of needle beak and emerald green. I’ve heard that this winter is going to be just as vicious as last winter.

The summer is waning and several big shifts feel complete and closed out, leaving me with new avenues to wander down and explore. It has been a long and slow evolution to get to this point of independence. I’m excited for what comes next, happy to re-establish old friendships and relationships that went into dormancy while I dealt with the more overwhelming emotional issues at hand. And happy to start new relationships and friendships, although this has always been a challenge for me, tough to overcome shyness and anxiety. My little brave daughter is so much better at meeting new people and making new friends and going bravely into the world than I am, I need to learn from her optimism and self-confidence and her ability to be open to new things.

I finally had to admit that the Mizuno Wave Rider 17’s that I got to replace my old beloved 15’s were just not the shoe for me. Constant leg pain and shin splint issues. I tried to find a replacement pair of 15’s but they must be discontinued. So it was back to Running Fit for a consult. I was sold on the Brooks Ghost 7. These will be my first pair of Brooks; I started running in Nikes, switched to Mizunos, and can hopefully settle here with Brooks and find a model that won’t be changed and tweaked and replaced and discontinued every year. I tried them out on a 2.5 mile interval treadmill run yesterday at lunchtime and feel cautiously optimistic.

This weekend we begin a couple of weeks of Miss L’s birthday extravaganza – GB & I will take her out to dinner tonight at an appropriately loud and chaotic kid-friendly restaurant and do her mommy / daddy presents and cake afterwards. Next weekend my extended family will celebrate at my brother’s house, with a little Frozen-themed party. My sister-in-law loves entertaining, hosting, and parties, and is making her a very special Elsa-themed birthday cake which promises to be pretty awesome. Pictures, I am quite sure, to follow.

xoxo friends. 🙂

Six Ten

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

Category Archives: michigan weather

which is somewhat about patience.

in which i battle winter storm linus whilst wearing the most uncomfortable bra known to humanity.

in which i try to cope with january.

“If clouds are blocking the sun, there will always be a silver lining that reminds me to keep on trying.” ― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

chaos, havoc, and the first snow.

shinin down like water

transitions