Family business

Apparently, the upcoming trip to my grandmother’s funeral wasn’t filled with enough angsty drama. Earlier this week, my dad went into the hospital. Initially, it was a urinary tract infection, but then turned into a blood infection. My brother sent me an email yesterday morning that he had sepsis which prompted a query on Facebook about what that meant. (Terrible idea. Very alarming.) But talking to my mom didn’t yield a lot more information, she said he was septic (I don’t if there’s a difference between those two terms.) But he was in the ICU and I didn’t think I could really add anything to the situation, so I kept to my plan of coming down on Friday morning.

The night before, I soaked up all of the relaxation I could, as I figured that would be in very short supply. And enjoyed a tasty adult beverage. Don’t judge me…

The boys enjoyed a nice chew on some of the firewood. They’re so special.

The next morning, we left early and dropped the dogs off at their boarding/vacation spot in the early afternoon. We arrived at my mom’s house to find that my dad was going to be released from the hospital later that afternoon. My mom was taking a little break from being at the hospital practically non-stop and my sister was still there with my dad. Since there wasn’t much for us to do, we excused ourself to run a couple of errands in town. We sold a bunch of books and then stopped for a little snack at a place in Southeast Portland called the Waffle Window. We split two waffles, one was a savory one with bacon, brie and some other deliciousness.

And the other was a sweet one with salted caramel ice cream and dark chocolate.

(Should you find yourself in that neck of the woods, I HIGHLY recommend it.) It was nice to have a brief respite before the family craziness started up. We headed back to the house, stopping at Trader Joes for some snacks and much needed wine.

When we got back, my dad had returned from the hospital and was sound asleep. My sister had taken my youngest brother to Costco to pick up cigarettes, so our awkward reunion was delayed a bit longer. We poured my mom some wine and played with the newest member of the family, little baby Bingley.

This is pretty much the only good picture I got of him. The rest looked more like this:

But his cuteness was an excellent distraction from all of the family dynamics as my sister finally entered the house. At that point, T and I were busy helping make turkey burgers for dinner, so we didn’t have to interact too much. At some point, my mom asked my sister if she wanted to make the salad and my sister shrugged “whatever” and wandered out of the room. But then a little while later, my mom came into the kitchen and said “I don’t want to start a big thing, but your sister really wants to make the salad.” Sigh. I’d like to say I was super mature and took the high road, but in reality I grabbed a bottle of wine and went out to the backyard to send snarky texts. And take artsy pictures of the trees.

T came out to keep me company (and nod at appropriate places during my tirade). I don’t need to get into the whole thing here, but suffice it to say it was aggravating. Eventually, I stopped sulking and returned to the house. We ate an uncomfortable dinner and then T ended up cleaning my mom’s fridge while looking for yeast to start a bread. (Long story.) You know things have reached a low point when this is your evenings entertainment:

Poor boy.

Whew!

We survived crazy April! It’s so lovely to sit here on a Saturday morning, with a cat on my lap and a big dog “sharing” the couch with me, watching TV with no big agenda. May is not without it’s hurdles, (next weekend I head down to Oregon for my grandmother’s memorial and have to interact with a sister I haven’t spoken to in a year and a half. Fun!) But I’m sure I’ll survive (alcohol to the rescue!) and there are fun plans on the horizon as well. In the meantime, we’re settling in to our little house and slowly but surely restoring order from the chaos of the move. As soon as we finish up the last touches, I’ll take some photos for ye ol’ blog. Because a blog post without photos just sucks. (D’oh!)

Surviving the Lost Dutchman

Race morning started very early with a 4:30 wake-up call. Luckily, there was a bus from our hotel to the race start at 5:30, so we only had to eat, get dressed and walk across the parking lot, which was so great. Plus our bus was pretty empty compared to some of the other shuttles we saw loading up. Per usual, my stomach was full of butterflies, which made eating my hotel waffle difficult.

The bus ride was around 20-30 minutes and was filled with the usual nervous athlete chit-chat. When we got off the bus, we joined the hundreds of athletes gathered around the little campfires they’d made. It was really cool:

Some girls at our fire took M & my picture:

Don’t we look so happy? It’s a good thing we didn’t have a crystal ball! The sunrise over the desert was beautiful.

After a final porta-potty stop, we headed over to the start line. It was a very orderly start, we basically walked to our pace corral and the gun went off. And just like that, it was time to run a marathon!

The first six miles were on a nicely packed dirt road:

The scenery was cool, especially in the early morning sunlight:

The best part was that there were cows grazing in that. (I wish I’d stopped to take a picture, especially of the cute baby cow.) It was funny to see cows grazing around the cactus and what-not. I felt great and worked hard to not go out too fast. The dirt road was easy on the legs, and it was gently rolling for the most part. Even when we transitioned to the pavement, I felt pretty good. The route ran right past our hotel, so J was able to sleep in a little bit and spectate easily. Then the race had a long false flat transitioning into the hilly section of the course. I was glad I knew the false flat was there, rather than thinking it was flat and my legs were dead.

My stomach wasn’t happy and I was having the same sorts of burping issues that I frequently have in triathlons, (I blame being bent over the bike for so long.) But I’ve never had the issue in a stand-alone run race or in any of my training runs, so it was a little worrisome. I had some Gas-X strips, but taking a couple of those prompted a minty flavored acid-reflux, so I stopped. As I continued, the stomach got more unhappy and I didn’t really know what to do, so there was a lot of internal debate (Should I eat something? Should I be drinking more? Or am I eating/drinking too much?) Eating more certainly didn’t seem to help and I drank a little water at each aid station, but they were 2 miles apart, so there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to drink too much more.

By the time I got to mile 13, which was the most rolling section of the course, my legs were already starting to hurt in ways that they didn’t usually start hurting until much later during our long training runs. This was concerning, because I knew how the pain thing generally built up over time. Then my brain lost focus and I took a tiny walk break to re-group. I pulled myself together and ran pretty steadily until around mile 15 or so. Then the mental demons were really starting to get to me. My stomach was really unhappy, my legs were hurting and the walk breaks began. It was here that I started to contemplate quitting. It was starting to feel exactly like Ironman Canada and I’d said from the beginning that if the race was anything like that one, I was quitting!

I tried to stick it out, in the hopes that it was just a wall and that it would pass. But it didn’t pass. The walk breaks got longer and when I walked the bulk of mile 16, I knew it was over. Every time I tried to run, my legs were killing me and I knew I didn’t have another ten miles in me. I knew I could walk it in, but I’ve seen that movie before, thank you very much. I texted J from mile 17.5 and told him I was done and that I’d walk to the mile 18 marker to wait for him to pick me up.

He offered me a ride back to the hotel, but I opted to go to the finish with him to see M finish her race, which I hoped was going well. She’d looked great when she passed me at mile 12, so I had no reason to doubt that she was doing great. I was very glad I did, because even though I knew I’d made the right choice about pulling out of the race, I was sad that I’d had to make that call. But watching people crossing the line and cheering them on and feeling the positive vibes made it impossible to feel too down. M was hoping for a 4:45/sub-five finish and as the clock ticked closer to her goal I prayed to see her come around the corner, but sadly five hours came and went. A few minutes later, we finally spotted her. She looked great:

But when she crossed the line, she burst into tears and I knew immediately she had the same tough race I’d had. We commiserated over post-race pretzels and orange slices as we walked back to the car.

A big adventure (almost)

Sorry this blog has been so quiet lately. The last few weeks have been… um… interesting. A few weeks ago, the boy told me that there was a design job at the Austin office of the company he works for. I told him he should apply for it, thinking that I wouldn’t even have to think about it again for another month, given the way job application processes usually go. Two days later, he was sending a resume and more materials at their request. The day after that he was doing a phone interview. Two days later, they asked him to come down to Austin for an interview. For a job that they were wanting to have start on JANUARY 2nd. (Mind you, this is all taking place a week ago.)

As you might expect, I went through a range of emotions from the “Are you f-ing kidding me? That’s ridiculous!” to “Well, it’s an adventure. Let’s see what happens next.” For those who might not know T’s and my history (or want a refresher), we started our marriage with about 15 days together before he boarded a plane to Alaska to stage manage dinner theatre for six months and I headed down to California to assistant direct for a Shakespeare festival. We’ve moved approximately eight times over the course of our 14 and a half years of marriage. So, the prospect of moving to a city I’ve never visited in a state that I’ve only seen the inside of one of it’s airports wasn’t as daunting as it might be to other folks. The timeline was a bit worrisome, but I figured we’d work it out.

I spent the pre-interview week trying to adopt a Zen attitude toward the whole thing while simultaneously making a list of details that would need to be handled. Pretty much every time a panicked thought entered my head (“What about that pile of Craigslist stuff in the closet?! We need to deal with that!”) I’d jot it into my Google spreadsheet. I would also find myself thinking of all of the things I was going to miss if we left Seattle. When I drove T to the airport on Sunday for his interview, I honestly didn’t know which result I was hoping for. I felt completely neutral, with good sides and bad sides of either option balancing each other out.

As I waited to hear news, I realized how rare these moments where your life is about to completely and totally change have become. When I was in my 20′s those moments were commonplace. I actively sought them out and thrived on the chaos and tumult that resulted. (In fact, back in 1995, I moved to Seattle for an internship, having never set foot in the city before my interview. I had a weekend to find a place to live on my $100/week salary.) But over the years, things have definitely settled down and I thought I was okay with that trend.

So, when T called yesterday to say he didn’t get the job, I was surprised at how disappointed I was. Without even being fully conscious of it, I’d been really looking forward to having another crazy adventure. To having to start from scratch someplace new. I know that some of this is because I’ve forgotten the downsides of all of those things, the loneliness before you meet anybody. The uncertainty of finding a new job/finding a way to do my current job remotely. The fact that T would be traveling a ton in that job and I would spend a bunch of time alone in a strange city where I don’t know anyone.

There’s a similar design job on the horizon here in Seattle. I’m hoping that all of the prep for this interview will give T an advantage in applying for that one. (Plus it’s on his home turf, which helps.) But I’m also trying to find ways to rejuvenate our lives here. In a few months, we’ll be looking to move to a new place in town, which will help. I’m brainstorming some ways to interject some adventure into our lives and figure out why everything feels so stagnant right now. (Maybe it’s that mid-life crisis I’ve been hearing about… ) In the meantime, I’m focusing on all of the things I would have missed if we had moved. Which is a pretty good mind-set to carry into the holidays.

Time machine

I don’t know if anyone else does this, but I often find myself ruminating on what it would be like if I could hop into a time machine and visit myself at various points in my past. Well, tonight was probably the closest I’ve come to doing that in real life. We went to a benefit performance of Mike Daisey’s “How Theatre Failed America” to help the employees of the recently closed Intiman Theatre (which was the site of my first professional theatre job and where I met T.) The occasion was obviously bittersweet on it’s own, but it was the first time I’d been to a theatre industry function since I hung up my directing hat seven years ago.

Because the show’s subject matter is geared more to the theatre communities, the audience was mostly theatre workers and you can tell right away that it’s a totally different crowd. First of all, theatre folks spend the time before the show starts looking around to see who else is there and who they know. The more flamboyant ones tend to stand in the center of the house making sure they’re seen. (To be fair, we do this all the time, it’s just more obvious (and hilarious) in a room full of people doing it.)

The show was really good and brought up a lot of memories for me, especially since I’d worked with Mike in Seattle during the time period he references at some points in the show. The show definitely brought up some emotions, but for the most part it was interesting how dispassionate I felt about the whole thing. At one time, I’d have been much more invested/upset at the state of theatre in this country. Lord knows, I’ve had hundreds of conversations about it in my lifetime. But now, I’ve sort of made my peace with the whole thing. I’d long been frustrated by how regional theatres operate and despite the hand-wringing about getting young people to care about theatre, how reluctant the old-guard that runs these institutions is to pass the torch to the younger generation and actually change what they are doing. So, it’s hard to feel bad that they are dying off.

It was an interesting evening and a fun trip down nostalgia lane, but I’m glad I quit doing theatre and joined the world of livable wages, health insurance and savings accounts.

3 years later

Today the weather actually cleared up enough to allow T and I to ride our bikes outside. Given that the weather has been completely horrible lately (think gale-force winds, hail, thunderstorms, pouring rain, the works… ) we jumped at the chance and hustled out of the house. We kept it simple and just rode the Burke Gilman out and back. As I was riding, I realized that three years ago, I blogged about this exact same ride and it was funny to think about how much has changed since that ride.

Back then, I was dreaming about moving to Seattle and getting out of Portland (check!) Everything about my training has changed since then – I’m much more focused in my training (not to mention riding a much fancier bike) and I push myself much harder than I did back then. I’m grateful to this blog for allowing me to have these little touchstone moments where I get to look back and appreciate where I am now. So, in addition to being a place to post pictures of food, cute pictures of my animals/friends/husband and hilarious things I see at Target, it’s also a place to get all philosophical and what-not. Lucky you guys!

At the start line

I won’t lie, I’m still not a fan of 2011. The eye continues to be the bane of my existence with too many doctors appointments and eye drops, though not as many of either as there used to be. I am keeping it dilated all the time and I’m still confined to glasses, all of which feels very oppressive. I suppose I should be grateful that I live in dreary Seattle and it’s January, but that feels just as oppressive right now. I would love to get away for some sun, but not only is that not in the cards financially, it would kill my dilated eye. So, I’m trying to put my awesome athlete mental toughness skills to work and am trying to focus on future goals and rise about the crap that’s going on right now.

To that end, I’ve spent the last few weeks putting together a training plan and targeting my “A” races for the upcoming year. The last two weeks have been spent in a “prep” phase where I’ve been doing some unstructured running, biking, swimming and weights and generally getting used to working out again. I’ve also been learning to use the new heart-rate monitor, as one of my goals is to be better about testing/measuring my fitness over the course of my training. Yesterday was my first test – a running time trial in the rain, with M & T as company. Though it was fifteen minutes instead of the 20 I was supposed to do, (I’m not a math whiz at the best of times, but even less so when I’m trying to calculate finish time while trying not to barf… ) I was relatively pleased with where I’m at pace-wise and it’s very cool to have so much data at my finger-tips.

Today is swim and bike testing (though not at the same time.) then next week training starts in earnest. I’m hoping the eye will get better soon and I can go back to wearing contacts and feeling like a normal person. I’m pretty excited at this more structured approach to my training and am hoping it pays off come summer. Worst case scenario, I’ve got to think all of this “mental toughness practice” I’ve been employing lately certainly will.

Sister act

Before I write about my sister’s wedding, I feel like I should fill in a little background info. (Naturally, this is all from my perspective – I know my siblings would all tell very different versions.) I’m the oldest of four children. My brother Erik (the tall one who makes occasional appearances on this blog) is three years younger than me, then there’s a four year gap between him and my sister. My youngest brother is about a year and a half younger than my sister. So, there was sort of a pairing off of older kids and younger kids and I’ve always been closer to Erik than to my younger two siblings. Over the years, my sister and I have always had a complex relationship.

There are times when we are close and we’ve even lived near each other (in Brooklyn, she lived three blocks away.) Usually, we wouldn’t really talk on the phone too often, but when we got together we’d jabber at each other and have a great time hanging out. I spent three weeks staying with her in San Diego while doing a theatre job and it was so much fun.

But in that way of sisters there have always been dynamics that run through our relationship that date back to when she was a baby. I always feel like there are hidden grievances and buried hurt feelings that are going to rear their head at any moment. (This is because there have been a number of conversations where she airs said grievances that usually happened years prior… ) I also feel like I always have to put forth the effort in the relationship and reach out. This got hard on my when we lived in Brooklyn, as I saw my sister almost every day, usually several times a day. It always seemed like I was listening to her problems and issues, but she never listened to mine.

I left the city as my sister was starting the process of divorcing her husband and dating her former martial arts instructor. I knew my sister was having a rough time and tried to support her as best I could, but I was having a hard time myself. T had gotten laid off and I was devastated to be leaving New York, but knew T was not happy there. (He’s moved all over the country for me, so leaving for him was a no-brainer.) So, it was an emotionally tumultuous time to be sure and I decided that if we were going to have any kind of relationship, there was going to have to be some give and take.

After we left, I know my sister’s life has been tough. Without airing her business on the internet, she’s been through a lot of upheaval. But at the same time, I was dealing with some rough patches of my own. I was miserable in Portland and really missed New York. I was lonely and depressed. It seems like things fell into an emotional detente – I didn’t have anything to offer her, I was too busy dealing with my own stuff. We went out to visit in 2007, just as she was breaking up with the martial arts guy (Awkward!) but we had a good time hanging out in the city together.

We’ve talked sporadically on the phone, just like our usual pattern, but then that sort of stopped. I noticed that her e-mails to me have gotten increasingly impersonal and distant. (The e-mail I got telling me about her engagement sounded like it was coming from Bank of America.) My mom and brother have filled me in on various happenings in her life, but we haven’t talked on the phone in I can’t remember how long. So, I really had no idea what to expect for this weekend, but I honestly thought that the fact that I flew across the country at great expense would be a statement of my support and would make some kind of difference. Apparently, I was wrong.

The new normal

I figured I’d post a little update after last week’s big news. I spent most of last week as a weepy, angry mess. All training attempts ended in tears and I was just generally not in a good place. So, I decided that I would let myself have the week to wallow and then starting Monday it was time to move on. Oddly enough, this actually worked. I woke up Monday ready to hit the ground running on overhauling my online portfolio site and finding a new job. I worked on it all day Monday and actually enjoyed myself. It was fun to be designing something for myself and wrangling code. The downside is that I literally spent all day in front of the computer and didn’t leave the house at all.

So today, I made a plan to bring my bike and go to school with T. He had class from 9:30 to 12:30, which would give me time for a nice bike ride and get me out of the house for a little while. Let me just say, being able to ride your bike on Tuesday at 10:00 is awesome. (I had a surreal realization at one point when I realized that a week ago I was sitting in a conference room being told I didn’t have a job anymore and now I was riding my bike on an empty road with a view of trees and a pretty lake. Weird.)

There was very little traffic and none of the cars are in a hurry at that hour. When I came upon a construction zone where they were having to alternate cars though one lane, I even had a construction lady let me go ahead of all of the cars. (Which actually was a little stressful, I felt like I had to hurry through to keep all of the cars from getting pissed off, so it was like a 1/4 mile sprint up a hill, but it was still very nice of her.)

On my way home, I saw a bike path that purported to go right to T’s school. Since I hadn’t really been looking forward to reversing the route I’d taken out, I decided to take a chance on it. Worst case scenario, I’d have to retrace my steps. The path started out as a strange looking “hallway” between two chain-link fences but then opened into this cute little forest path:

God, I love this area! The little path had a number of switchbacks that made me happy there weren’t any other cyclists on the path. It was pretty hilly and had terrible pavement, but it did take me right back to T’s school with a minimum of traffic. I got back in time to change clothes and meet T. It was great to get back out on the bike and definitely brought a bright side to this whole layoff thing.

Blindsided

I try not to write about work stuff here, but I’m afraid today is going to be an exception. I was laid off from my job today. This was made particularly difficult by the fact that I had no idea it was coming. Our company was going through the process of being acquired by another company, which we knew about but we all thought it was going to be a few weeks before the layoffs started. But no, apparently the second the merger was official they decided to lay off approximately half of my company, including three of the four people in our tiny marketing department. This put my boss (the lone survivor) in the horrible position of telling us we were all out of a job.

It was a horrible day all the way around. Prior to this, I’d have said that this was a stand-up company that treated it’s employee’s with respect. When they closed a branch of the company at the end of June, I was so impressed by the fact that they gave the employee’s notice that it was coming and offered their assistance in helping them find new jobs. I’m sure some of this had to do with the acquiring company and it’s values, but our CEO still had to sign the papers.

This is the first time I’ve ever been laid off or left of a job not of my own volition. I’m sure that has a lot to do with how I’m feeling right now. I know that I’ll get through this and find another job and all of that good stuff, but this week I’m choosing to spend processing all of the hurt, anger and betrayal I feel. Next week will begin the “living well is the best revenge” part of the plan where I’ll finish the revamp of my portfolio site and my job search will begin in earnest.

Thanks for listening. I promise to return to our regularly scheduled programming of stories of riding my bike and cute animal pictures soon.