Some are old and recently downloaded from my bluetooth-enabled phone, others are more recent. Enjoy!

A pretty equal split of running and walking today, with some good distance for good measure. I hadn't planned to go as far as I did, but halfway through the BK fell asleep and I wanted to prolong his nap as much as possible. Every day makes me a little more frantic that this warm weather's going to leave soon and we'll be left with snow. I think I seriously need to consider some cross-country ski options. Wonder if I could make that work with the Super Jogger stroller?

A great run today. I'm walking on concrete but running on asphalt. Was out for 1.25 hours, and for the first time since this all began, today when I started getting tired, instead of slowing down, I sped up. Fantastic. I feel strong and alive! Also, I figured out how to get the farmshare produce home on the jogging stroller without displacing BK. Take that, physics!

Haven't posted a training log -- or, for that matter, anything -- lately; it's just that it's been so damn busy around here I hardly can manage to breathe. Or maybe that's just the autumnal leaf mildew. Either way, it's wicked hectic.

Most of the busy-ness has taken place outside the home, so I wrote big checks to babysitters four days in a row. Friday night's Oktoberfest in Springfield was ganz wunderbar; the oompah band was astounding and played my favorite song from when I was two: "It's a Small World After All." Had a bordering-on-naughty repartee (having to do with Schlag) with the hunky German managing the on-site chefs. The Student Prince food was amazing -- fried camembert, anyone? -- and the beer was Spaten Optimator, which is pretty much all I need to say about that. I had looked up the German word for "bitches" but was not given the opportunity to use it, though my talk with Herr Schlagmann had me blushing for an hour. Then, we went back to our friend Chris's house in Agawam and played Beatles Rock Band, which is going to be THE must-have game of the season. You can connect three microphones to it for harmonizing. Astounding. It has "Dear Prudence" and "All You Need is Love," but not "Penny Lane." Unfortunately, it does have "Yellow Submarine," which for me is the song version of llamas or gourd art.

Saturday was World Dungeons and Dragons Day, so most of our cohort met up at the local comix shop and participated in the festivities of the holiday. First we created an adventure, and then we played the adventure made up by another group. I ate too much junk food and had a marvelous time.

Sunday I went on a butt-kicking run with the BK, then Bible study (we've picked up where we left off: the book of Revelation), then MORE D&D with our crew for our regularly scheduled, Monstro-run adventure. I killed, rather, Isdra the Deva Bard, killed herself a mess o'minions. Quite satisfying.

And then yesterday, Monday, I did some brilliant work for one client and no work for another. Some days, that's how it goes. Nevertheless, it's time to get back on the horse/stick/moneytrain, so ttfn, Weibchen. :)

Jason: Another evening of enforced relaxation, thanks to my bum leg.
Motormouthdotcom: Better a bum leg than a hobo elbow.

Because it ain't great at the fair where the rides are, but it's not exactly hell, either. Though this was the sketchiest midway I'd attended, and yeah, I've seen a few. Not enough to qualify for carny status but even so. Lex was excited to ride the rides and was not happy when it was time to go. He didn't like the fried dough, so his indoctrination into the supreme yumminess of Fair Food must wait another year, or at least until The Big E, which starts, I think, this week.

Anyway, if you want to know about the socio-physiological aspects of the reminds-me-of-a-dirt-mall Franklin County Fair, Monstro'll be happy to elucidate. As for me, well, we got out of the house on a beautiful warm afternoon, Lex and BK had a blast, and we spent just under fifty bucks for the entire excursion, which isn't bad considering before we'd even entered the gates we'd confirmed the existence of our awesome God.

I'm just glad I didn't have to ride a Ferris wheel or see any llamas.

Please, caffeine, work your magic!

9/11/2001

New York City Shuts Down

The whole of lower Manhattan is coated in half an inch of dust.

The mayor closed lower Manhattan this morning.
Thousands of people left by walking across the Brooklyn Bridge.
Election called off, airports closed, Wall Street suspended, UN evacuated,
Children kept in school because their parents could not get to them.

The entire ER entrance was lined with stretchers covered with white sheets.
Nurses in scrubs. Doctors in uniforms,
waiting for the next wave
At St. Vincent's Hospital in the Greenwich Village.

Hundreds of people are burned from head to toe.
Remain calm and try to assist in the rescue effort and pray,
Have these streets open so we can move people out of there.
The line to give blood was over 100 people long.

Hanging up in frustration at the profusion of busy signals
According to a spokesman, who declined to give his name.
Bob Slovak said all subway lines stopped running,
and Rockefeller Center urged its tenants to go home.

-- Found in "New York City Shuts Down," Associated Press Report, The New York Times Online: 09/11/2001, 10:00 a.m. PDT. Poem copyright 2001-2009, Lynn B. Johnson. All rights reserved.

Running madness today with BK in the Super Jogger: walking, running distance, running hills, running speedwork (5x60, 1x100) and running home. Got home right as Monstro and Lex were unbundling themselves from the car. Great timing, great run!

I just came back home after buying a bunch of clothes that are two sizes smaller than the clothes I wore when I started running. Hellz yeah!

LifeLock has a new banner ad -- have you seen it? It's got a hyper-realistic-to-the-point-of-3D photo of a dead fly. Probably the only non-sexual banner ad offensive enough to make me close my browser window. Stupid assholes; now I have to re-login to my Rhythmball mail.

On May 18, 2009, according to my writings on the world's oldest blog, I became a runner again. I went to the track at another local college and ran a mile (and walked a mile). The next day, I ran a mile and walked a half-mile. It wasn’t until day three that I started my speedwork.

warm-up: 400m
work-out: 6x60m, 1x100m
cool-down: chasing children back down the hill; encouraging Lex not to push babykins's stroller into the high hurdles


It felt damn good to do speedwork again, and, now that I think about it, I need to do more of it. Maybe once a week.

Like my life, I tracked my runs on my blog. If you search “training log” on motormouth.blogharbor.com, you’ll get 27 search results. That doesn’t count the first one; that one’s not called a training log because I wasn’t ready to smack a title on it yet, but it does list two workouts, plus a third in the pool. And I probably forgot to track one more at some point this summer, so I figure I ran 30 times between 5/20/2009 and 9/9/2009, which becomes the fraction 30/120 and reduces to a quarter of those days.

I could beat someone in a race now, which is saying something, because I ran a "Four [miles] on the Fourth" on Independence Day and came in dead last.

(Also, my race report wasn't titled "training log" so there, it's more than a quarter.)

Let me live up to my title. Before we left for California, I’d lost 5 pounds. Doesn’t sound like much, five pounds between late-May and early August, but a lot of underlying fat turned to muscle, and anyone who’s EVER been on a diet knows that muscle weighs more. Besides, I prefer to go by how my clothes fit (because scales make me crazy). Today I I wore my used-to-be-too-tight bra on the tightest row of hooks and it felt just fine all day; I wasn't even aware of it.

Changing into my lounge clothes tonight, I stood before my standing floor-length mirror. My waist, while not perfectly defined, is at least definable. I think I can flaunt that part of me a bit, to keep the gazes from my sagging, jowly lower belly, left over from the birth of nearly 18 pounds of children.

I’m down to just one roll of back-fat, and, the middle of my lower back would now look just as good with a tramp stamp as anyone’s lower-middle-back would (yes, that's a different question for another time).

To sum up: my clothes that were too small on May 18th fit me now. My clothes that were too small on June 18th fit me now. And the afternoon of my 20th high-school reunion I had to go shopping at Nordstrom because the dress I'd brought didn't fit: like papa bear's chair, it was too big. In total, I lost two sizes but found a half-size of that back because California was superfun and coming home sucked. Even so, I’m looking better than before and almost pretty good. And not as much of that is due to the obtuse angle I’ve set my full-length mirror to; in fact, the mirror is closer to straight-up-and-down as it’s ever been.

And, I’m nearly almost out of the true fat sizes and within satellite range of shopping somewhere they don't sell capris, which are the fashion industry's nod toward our pudgy-girl kickiness but really just make us look dumpy.

-ier?

So yeah, I'm motivated. For lots of reasons. I don’t want to buy any more fat clothes. My hatchling cheekbones are beginning their extrusion process. (A make-up woman at Macy’s once told me, “you got some bones, girl.” That was when I lost 20 pounds about 18 years ago.)

I want to keep going with this, because I’m staring seven months of winter snow in the face and one thing I’ve never learned how to do is run on a treadmill. Done it twice, crashed spectacularly twice, and not certain what to do to get back up on that horse and fucking stay there already.

And also, in my 20s, I ran for the Sun Microsystems corporate track team, the memories of which are some of my fondest, in particular the meet that started with my first women’s cross-country race, which I won.

I didn’t run today, breaking a four-day streak. Instead, I took the boys to lunch at Friendly’s and my gastrointestinal distress started exactly 57 minutes after I signed the debit-card slip. Though I didn’t run, I had the runs, which in my estimation should count for at least something, being so close logos-istically and all.

Ultimately, I’m going to run through at least the autumn, because it feels good to have to buy a new pair of running shoes because you’ve blown out your old pair by running, and Massachusetts isn’t exactly totally miserable when the leaves change. And if that isn’t enough, I’ll remember back to my first speedwork on May 20th, one-hundred-twenty days ago, During my final repeat, the hundred-meter dash:

Lex screamed, "Mommy, you go so fast!" And then, when I was done, he gave me a big hug and said, "I proud of you, Mommy." Melt my effin' heart.

That, my children, is what you call fat-mom motivation. Especially when I’m reading a Runner’s World magazine and he points to a picture of woman running and says she looks like me.

How about: If you're on Medicare, you don't get to bitch about the Federal healthcare plan. OK?

Today after the "nanny" (her paycheck isn't lofty but her job title is) left, I bundled BK into the Super Jogger and thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be great if I could run the long way all the way to the Farmer's Market?" So we turned right instead of left and ran around the defunct car dealership to the bike path, all the way up the bike path to the hobo-stab-insurance underpass, then out into the bright light of day and through the streets to the place where the elite meet to buy stuff to eat. Ran every step. BK was most impressed.

I'd brought a green fabric bag from my local supermarket, so I could load up my farmshare items into the bag and then tie the bag to the crosshandle of the Super Jogger. Great idea for truly green shopping, right? Right, up until I saw the contents of the box and the market helper loaded my fruits and veggies into the bag.

The farmshare was particularly prolific this week. Once I tied the bag handles to the stroller handle, I realized that I had been fazed by physics: namely, how to keep a Super Jogger baby stroller upright with a 24-lb. infant on one side of the fulcrum and a 30-lb. bag of locavore organic vegetables on the other side of the fulcrum.

The answer: walk home, very careful to push the handle/fulcrum UP the whole way, thereby preventing BK from tipping ass-over-teakettle.

Happy ending: No babies or vegetables were harmed in the makings of this blog post.

Well, just because I went to an awesome barbeque (thanks Chris&Dave&Brandon) doesn't mean I didn't run. No, sir. I ran half a mile. Sure, it was to the convenience store and back, to pick up some cool-ranch Doritos and a bottle of seltzer and a half-gallon of ice cream and some Junior Mints to mix into said ice cream, but I ran, nonetheless.

Road-running today, pushing BK in our Super Jogger. Total distance: 3 miles, with massive hills. Huah!

Road-running today: 1.2 miles around my friend's neighborhood, with a .2 mile walk cooldown.

My preferred grocery store can't sell beer and wine, but the new gas station down the street can.

ran 1200
ran 400
walked 800
ran 400
walked 400

Felt surprisingly good, particularly as I was up with the screaming-bloody-murder BK in the middle of the night and up with both kids at 6:40 this morning.

My best friend from grad school and matron of honor Anne Jennings Paris has a book of poetry coming out later this year. Titled Killing George Washington: The American West in Five Voices, it is "a collection of narrative poems [that] imagines the voices of the forgotten historical figures of Lewis Wetzel, a notorious Indian killer; York, the slave who accompanied Lewis and Clark; Charity Lamb, Oregons first convicted murderess; Ing Hay, a Chinese immigrant who made a name for himself as a doctor; and Mary Colter, an architect who helped shaped the western landscape."

You can pre-order your copy from Powell's Books. You can also pre-order it online from Barnes & Noble, but wouldn't you rather support Powell's? Yeah, I thought so.

In any case, the book will be available for purchase on November 1st, just in time for all of your holiday gift-giving needs. Not to spoil the surprise, but I'll be buying copies for everyone I know.

So I posted one of those "how well do you know Motormouth" quizzes on Facebook, and every single person who has taken the quiz has answered that Motormouth thinks Infinite Jest is the one novel that everyone should read. I'm intrigued by that answer, because it's incorrect: I think everyone should read the Sebastien Japrisot novel A Very Long Engagement.

Why?

Well, don't get me wrong: Infinite Jest is a phenomenal work, a blow-your-balls-off novel, a combination of pathos and humor the likes of which we just don't see anymore. David Foster Wallace was a master of the English language (and, apparently, pharmacology), which adds up to a tremendous novel. It also paints portraits of addiction that are both tragic (Hal) and uplifting (Don). So yeah, I recommend it.

BUT...

Infinite Jest takes a major commitment on the part of the reader. The edition I read is 1,079 pages long. The last 96 pages are endnotes, so you're constantly flipping back and forth (finally, I secured two bookmarks: one to mark my place in the text, and the other to mark my place in the endnotes). Plus, it's really heavy and not very portable. These are important things to think about when you're also toting a couple of kids and a diaper bag and a bottle of water. You don't need to be reading a book that makes you feel even more like a sherpa.

Whereas...

A Very Long Engagement comes in around the 200-page mark, and so much is packed into those pages that every time I read it, I notice something new. It is the only book that ever made me cry before page 100. It is a phenomenal testament to the power of dogged investigation, and it's beautifully written, and we all should strive to be a little like Mathilde. Plus, you won't throw your back out if you carry it around.

Highly, highly recommended. xo, Motormouth