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the last one of 2020

We spent the end of the year quite pleasurably up north with my parents. I got out for a trail run and the Michigan lakeshore was like an alien landscape, empty, with high waves and wind and a low, pale sun.

“There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that’s a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don’t fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all the year. And then when everything’s quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep—then they appear.”
Tove Jansson, Moominland Midwinter

I got dug into a dense book from my dad’s bookshelf and we played a lot of poker.

My parents are wonderful and we love spending time with them. They are gentle, intelligent, funny, and generous. I have so much gratitude for their continued strong presence in our lives, their good health and safety.

However, their cats hate us – they’re rescue cats and they are accustomed to having a very quiet existence with my folks. I’m making inroads, though.

We left for home on a snowy morning that quickly turned to rain, and now we are home, in front of the fire with many blankets and food and wine, to ring in the New Year.

I love some statistics so here’s my 2020 Year in Books.

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2020/15419153

And my Top Nine of 2020!

Thank you all for reading and following and sharing my ups and downs. There’s nothing else I can say about this year that hasn’t already been said, and said well. So I will end with deep gratitude for what I have and hope for the future. I truly value the connections I’ve made via this blog. Happy New Year to you all and we look forward to a blessed and better 2021.

hey it’s august

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I don’t really know what happened to the last few weeks but hey it’s August!

We had our summer trip up north and it was just what we needed. Our intent was to avoid tourist crowds, stay safe, and just visit my parents. So no shopping or eating out. Instead, we socially distanced on the beach, we hiked, hit up the A&W for cold & creamy root beer, and we spent time with my parents. We visited baby llamas and I bought yarn and thought wistfully about uninterrupted knitting time. And I worked. We came home, and I worked much more, and then Brandon had a death in his extended family, and we had his close family come to stay for a few days for the Arrangements. In the meantime I was working even more than much more and when I finally lifted up my head this morning here it is. August.

I’m really hoping for a few restful days in a row now. I haven’t been working my Weight Watchers plan as strenuously as I should, and I haven’t run or done any strength training in almost 3 weeks. If you’ve gotten the message that work has been very busy then you are correct! and I find lately that working from home is making it difficult for me to compartmentalize and keep things separated. The upside is that I don’t have a commute, and in the beginning of the work from home I felt that work / life balance was a lot easier with that extra time. Now, though, tasks and projects that I’d be able to turn off at 5 o’clock and not ruminate on until the next morning at the office now live just down the hall. It’s easy to stay online and keep working much longer than I would normally or fit in something else before bedtime or during the evening.

In other news, like many other school districts, ours is currently grappling with the “right way” to start up again in the fall. As a result everyone is coming to realize that there is no “right way”. One surrounding district after another is declaring fully remote start. We were initially told that our reopening would be aligned with the “phase” Michigan is in – “phases” being based on the number of Covid cases among other things – but although we are technically in a phase that would allow us a hybrid start (part virtual / part in-person with masks, reduced class sizes and staggered attendance days to allow for more distancing) it now seems almost certain that we’ll be fully remote again. I guess the good thing about this is that the decision has been made for me, which reduces the amount of internal debate and agonizing over a set of completely imperfect choices. From a health and safety perspective, this is the right choice, I think; but from a social, educational, and personal development perspective, I really feel for all the kids who are getting shortchanged by circumstances out of their control. Everyone’s doing the best they can and I don’t think there are right answers but it’s a bummer either way.

Reminder: Show Us Your Books next Tuesday!

2020 Betsie Bay Frozen 5k Race Recap

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The Betsie Bay Frozen 5k started as a friends-only race one Saturday in February and has grown to 200-250 participants with great raffle prizes and a charitable component. It’s one of my favorite running events because of the small-town feel and the totally unpredictable Northern Michigan weather! This is my third (non-consecutive) year running it; one year was a solid, somewhat calm 28 degrees, one year was almost 50 and sunny, and this year was 21 with a 9-degree wind chill and strong gusts off Lake Michigan. You have to dress appropriately!

Race headquarters is the VFW in downtown Frankfort, a block from the Lake Michigan shore. Once you’ve checked in and gotten your bib and t-shirt (this year day-Glo orange), you get on a schoolbus and they trek you down Main Street, across M22 over the Betsie River, through downtown Elberta and up the bluff to the Lake Michigan overlook. It’s always a fun time to chat up other participants and pet some dogs. Up on the exposed, wintry bluff, you wait for the air horn to signal you to run back to the VFW. The event organizers set a start date of 10AM but anyone who has run it before knows that this is just a vague guideline. It takes a lot of organizing to get 200 people on school buses and this year we shivered on top of that bluff for what felt like a loooong time before the air horn went off at around 10:20. Miss L and my folks were parked in Frankfort along Main Street and kept me updated on what they saw across the bay – “There’s a school bus just sitting there…there’s two buses coming your way….both buses are going up the hill…”

There was a lot of snow on the ground and many runners were wearing Yak Trax, which I don’t have, but despite the steep downhill for the first quarter mile, I didn’t have any real issues with footing. The first mile to M22 felt considerably warmer out of the wind, although it took a bit for my feet to feel like anything other than frozen blocks clomping down the road. M22 had a nice tailwind, but the turn down Main Street in Frankfort meant we picked up the headwind off Lake Michigan again, strong and icy. It took my breath away and my eyes were streaming.The footing was also considerably more treacherous, with deep snow and slush. I passed my folks & Miss L and there were waves all around and I really wanted to just climb in the car with them. But I kept going, took a walk break to catch my breath, and finished.

Watch Time: 33:11, 10:42/ave

Official Time: 33:07, 10:41/ave

Which makes it not only my slowest time in this race, but my slowest time for any 5k in recent memory. I note this, but honestly, it doesn’t bother me. I’ve essentially been off for January and February, due to a sudden vitriolic hatred of the treadmill at work, and I likely won’t start running again regularly until I can get back outside with safe footing and longer, brighter days. So finishing in the time I did and with only one walk break is totally acceptable.

It was a whirlwind weekend for me as I was back in the car Sunday for the long drive back downstate – Miss L gets a couple of additional days up north with my folks as she’s on winter break. We checked out the cold and windy beach, went sweatshirt-shopping at the Interlochen Student Store, and had burgers at Dinghy’s in Frankfort. I would have liked to have stayed longer, but I’m hoarding my vacation for longer visits in the summer and fall. And even a short time in my happy place is time well spent!

solstice celebrations

late summer

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Miss L and I were up north for several days last week visiting my awesome parents and had a lovely time on the beach. My folks are wonderful and we love spending time with them and the extra benefit is we can fish and enjoy Lake Michigan and the Sleeping Bear while we’re there, too. We spent lots of time outside in the sun getting brown and bug-bit, we ate ice cream and had dinner at Dinghy’s in Frankfort, we visited Fishtown (where I was supposed to run a fundraising 5k in July, but due to the timing of a scheduled trip to Cedar Point with my brother’s family, I had to scratch. I feel sad that I didn’t get that t-shirt. But next year).

The water levels are very high and we watched a small boy drop his fishing line in the channel and pull out fat fish as the tourist crowds milled past. And we had breakfast at the local eatery in the village where friends of my folks were providing live music – they’re a married duo with a guitar and a flute and they did music for beautiful and popular children’s book called “Paddle to the Sea”. I will confess to getting a little misty at some of their songs invoking Paddle’s journey via the Great Lakes and eventually to the Atlantic Ocean.

I read three books – my Charles Manson beach read, which ended up feeling a little scattered and not satisfying, “The Immortalists” by Chloe Benjamin which I read quickly but also did not enjoy, and a book by the daughter of the BTK serial killer which only stood out to me because of all the times she mentioned Arby’s and Taco Bell. I’d be a serial killer, too, if that’s all I ate. (I’m a grump with my summer reading, I guess, but just wait til I post my thoughts on the book I’m reading NOW – “My Lovely Wife” by Samantha Downing, which may be the most grump-inducing of all).

It all went too fast, as it always does. Still, I managed to do some productive things done besides reading – I had a work conference call AND I pounded out 8 miles on the Betsie Valley trail to fulfill my “long run” obligations. It felt better than the 8 miles Brandon and I did last weekend at Kensington, which was an excruciating miserable slog.

And yes, for anyone keeping track, I’m still running. I mean, I’m not running *well*, but I’m doggedly logging the miles. I’ve gained weight, I am very slow and lazy, and I don’t feel good about my times. I’m running for the finish line, not the finish time, which makes me embarrassed to tell people that I run, because if the person I tell is another runner, they inevitably ask about my paces, and I have to tell them that my average pace (which used to be between 9 / 9:30 per training mile and under 9 for race miles) is now a solid sub-12 minute mile (barely) for training runs and between 10 & 11 for race miles. And I know what other runners think, because I used to think the exact same thing, which is are you really running if you’re running 11 and 12’s? I hate to say that because it sounds so condescending and snotty now but runners care about their times and now because I’m a slow runner, there are no more gleeful post-run or pre-run selfies to smear all over social media because I know I can be modestly proud of my finish time.

As previously mentioned, Brandon and I are running the Crim 10-mile in Flint next week and are going up for a romantic (haha) evening in a hotel the night before so we don’t have to get up at 4 AM to drive there and pick up our packets. (I booked our room on Expedia and received an email confirmation “CONGRATULATIONS YOU’RE GOING TO FLINT” which, if you’ve ever been to Flint, is hard to view as anything other than cutting sarcasm on Expedia’s part.)

I’m a little concerned as my last run had to be cut short because of shin pain. I’m very leery of any kind of shin pain because of the terrible shin splints I had several years ago, which resulted in a stress fracture that cut short my fast running days, which will likely never return. Brandon and I are planning another long run this weekend so I’m going to lay off until then, wear my compression sleeve, and hopefully see improvement. I made it through a half marathon training cycle in February and March without shin issues so that’s something I’m clinging to.

Anyway, that’s the update from late summer here in suburban Elysia, where the days are fading in some ways and brightening in others, and the roads smell like sun-baked fields and a few tired, dusty leaves are beginning an early drift to earth. This time of year will always invoke a pleasant melancholy that is pure nostalgia for my childhood days when I knew summer was growing old and back-to-school clothes and pencils were right around the corner.

Six Ten

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