AdventureEverAfter

Putting a ring on it gives adventure new facets.

[adventureeverafter]

Knock Me Over With A Feather

I went in yesterday due to continued bleeding. The doc agreed that Rhogam might be a good idea, since I'm RH-factor negative. While there they did a sonagram. "I see a gestational sac...and a yolk sac...and a fetal pole...and a heartbeat!" the nurse-midwife said. She swung the screen around so C and I could see.

Bleeding's abated, queasiness is back, and we have a heartbeat! Now I'm starting to be optimistic.

[adventureeverafter]

[adventureeverafter]

Pregnancy hormones are in full swing, I might be miscarrying, I'm at a Friday night food truck festival, and Anthony Bourdain is dead by suicide. Tears might be shed sometime in the next three hours.

[adventureeverafter]

Here We Go Again

The thing is, you can't know until you know.

I'm pregnant again. And at 6 weeks 2 days, exactly like last time, I started spotting. I called my doctor. We decided to keep my appointment for Friday, a week from now, unless things change drastically. Today the spotting is heavier.

I feel like I should actually say I'm a *little bit* pregnant again, at this point. This in-between, this limbo between healthy pregnancy and not pregnant at all, is the pits. It's the worst place to be. It's where my gremlins gather in the peanut gallery and lob down insults. "You're too old!" "You're not as deserving as C's ex!" "You're defective!" They can go to hell.

[adventureeverafter]

It's complicated, this year being Year One with kids who have a mom who's not me, and Year One after experiencing being A Little Bit Pregnant, and feeling weird feels today about being a second wife and a stepmom and 36 years old trying to reproduce. So I'm giving myself permission to say here: FUCK MOTHERS DAY. FUCK IT RIGHT UP ITS AMPLE, HAAGEN-DAAZ-AND-WINE-AND-CHOCOLATE-FED ASS.

You can say it too. 'Cause if you haven't got anything nice to say, come sit here by me.

[adventureeverafter]

Things I Did Today

--made breakfast

--did dishes

--cleaned the stovetop

--took a pregnancy test (negative)

--added "clean bathroom" and "weed garden" to today's to-do list

--bottled fire cider

--wrote a grocery list

--rounded up stuff for donation

--tried to sell stuff on various apps

--rounded up laundry and schlepped to laundromat

--did laundry

Which brings us to the present. One more thing for the list:

--DECIDED BEING A 1950s HOUSEWIFE IS ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY not for me

[adventureeverafter]

Want to run lots of trail races but don't have lots of $$$? Volunteering is an option! I'm running several races in my leadup to the 50K and that sh*t is expensive so I've been volunteering for various race companies to earn entries. Today C joined me at Coastal Trail Runs' Grizzly Peak ultra. I'll use my entry for a (long, slow) marathon with them next month, and Middle Daughter wants to do the 5M that day so C wanted to earn an entry for her. Plus, my husband likes to hang out with me. 🙂 

 What does a volunteer do? By now I've done a bit of everything. Aid stations are my favorite. I've also helped with parking (kind of the worst) and finish line (there are still a few outfits not using timing chips!). Today we assisted with check-in, which was fun. C, ever the prankster, took advantage of the one time I took my focus off the person we were helping. When I started getting the name from the next person in line, trying to be efficient, he handed out the wrong bib number! "I wanted to see if you were paying attention," he said. "And I wanted to see how good quality control was at the T-shirt pickup." It must have been good because the woman came back for the right number. 

 After the races started--they ran a 50K, a marathon, a 30K, a half marathon, and a 10K, with two different starts--the assistant race director asked if either of us was good with a camera. I’m not bad, but C’s really good. She handed him the camera and asked him to take photos as people approached the finish. It took us a while to find the right spot. First we were near the finish line on a paved path, but that didn’t seem too trail race-y. When someone mentioned mud nearby, we went to investigate. The mud wasn’t that interesting--people slowed to a walk to pick their way through--but it was at the bottom of a downhill runners flew on, making for some nice snapshots. C took the snapshots. I cheered the runners on: “Yay! You’re almost there! THROUGH the mud, AROUND the lake, and ON TO THE FINISH!”

Some people took “through the mud” literally, and one guy came back with a long branch after he finished. He explained he’d lost his shoe in the mud but felt he was making good time and didn’t want to stop. Sure enough, he snagged his shoe right out from the worst of it!

We had a great time, we gave back, and we earned future races--important for a frugal family with travel plans, growing kids, and as it turns out a sizable tax liability this year. (Get married, they said. You’ll benefit tax-wise, they said. HA. In future years, now that some stuff is straightened out, yes. This year, nope nope nope.) Best of all, I got to spend a Sunday morning with my best pal. I highly recommend it!

[adventureeverafter]

Nearly halfway through 16 miles. The trail was beautiful with a babbling brook, lush greenery, wildflowers...and I had no idea that within a mile I'd experience a complete compromise of the GI system that found me making a travesty of almost every Leave No Trace principle. Every long distance runner has a GI horror story and now I consider myself inducted into the Pantheon. And it turns out I didn't get poison oak on my bum in the process after all, so...win!

[adventureeverafter]

Day of Reckoning

I take a physical fitness test for work twice a year, and if I do well enough, I get a day’s worth of paid leave. That’s a pretty sweet bonus, adding a potential two days of vacation a year, and somehow I thought I’d always make it fairly easily. Well. Today I almost didn’t.

I’ve been gaining weight--about five pounds eating my emotions after my miscarriage, and then steadily as the treats we allowed ourselves during that time became more normal. Ice cream, cakes for the kids’ birthdays, wine and beer, chocolate--I’ve had more exposure in the last few months to those things than I have in a long time. It’s how I’d have eaten in college given an unlimited grocery budget. (Fortunately, I did not have an unlimited grocery budget in college.) Now I’m 13 pounds up from when I met C, and on the cusp of “overweight.” For weeks C’s been saying he doesn’t see it. He thinks I look incredibly sexy and healthy. I’ve noticed the waistbands on my pants tightening, though. I’ve worried about how it might affect my running, and I’ve worried about losing control.

My PT test has five elements: Body composition, bench press, flexibility (sit and reach), agility run, and endurance (1.5 mile) run. I’m terribly inflexible and my bench isn’t the greatest, but I always crush the runs, so it’s never been a problem. However, gaining weight is a problem because it affects both my body composition and my bench press, which is scored as a strength-to-weight ratio. If I get heavier or lighter, my score will fluctuate even if the amount I push stays exactly the same. In other words, gaining 10 pounds can be hugely detrimental in two of five areas. I went from scoring in the 90th percentile in body composition to the 76th--a drop of 14 points. Even though I lifted more than last time, my bench press store dropped dramatically as well.

It all came down to the long run. I knew I needed to be in the 100th or 99th percentile to get my time off award. As I settled into my pace, I felt slow and heavy. Weight affects running as well. I got to the halfway mark (according to the test administrator) in 5:45--fifteen seconds from the slowest possible pace for my goal. I was worried I’d slow in the second half. Fortunately, I think the administrator’s halfway point was further than the actual halfway point of the run. I finished with almost a minute to spare, running 1.5 miles in about 11 minutes. I earned my award with a one point cushion.

Still, that’s too close. It’s time for change. Today I downloaded MyFitnessPal (again!), updated my stats, and started tracking. The goal is half a pound a week, which will give me 10 pounds shed by my next test, even if I don’t lose quite a pound a week. Time to get tough. 

[nathan-oldfield-deactivated2019]

“Well,“ said Pooh, “what I like best…” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called. A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh.

[adventureeverafter]

Sunset inversion over the Marin Headlands.

[adventureeverafter]

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

The first time I dated someone who had a child--and the only time, aside from my husband--I was reluctant to meet his daughter. It was a somewhat close-ended relationship anyway, since we met at a residential training and lived in totally different parts of the country and were completely wrong for each other, but I got my foot caught in the door. And then he came to visit me at school one weekend, driving some insane distance (I just looked it up--1170 miles--because the relationship was crazy) with his barely-seven-year-old daughter in tow. I thought this was a terrible idea, and yet my heart just melted and I fell in love with her pretty much instantly. (Which added another couple levels of fuckery on the nearly inevitable breakup, but that was a story for a different Tumblr.)

No surprises there, the instant love. Loving kids is easier than falling off a log. Which is why it stymies me that I don’t love my stepkids.

I like each of them very much. They are smart and funny, lively and polite, generally kind and generally good-willed, interesting and opinionated. I enjoy spending time with them. I respect them. I try my hardest to have compassion and empathy for them (though I’m learning I have work to do--always gotta raise the bar). But I don’t love them. It’s super weird.

Sometimes I see flashes of love in my relationships with the kids. I hope I’ll get there eventually. I suspect I will, and I expect it’ll sneak up on me. Until then, I think it’s enough to like them and respect them and care for them and have compassion and empathy for them. That’s what’s required of me, and of any stepmom. Love is a bonus.

[adventureeverafter]

Cutest thing I ever did see on a run.

[adventureeverafter]

Thinking back to our honeymoon. The things you see in Kenya when you decide to take your time over breakfast and wait for the next matatu.

[adventureeverafter]

Just another Sunday adventure with my main squeeze.

[adventureeverafter]

Olive Branch

A friend of mine’s parents divorced when she was a baby, so she’s always known her stepmom. She also had a few stepdads. She said that her mom and stepmom established a good working relationship early, and that made life smoother for her and her sisters. “You should have coffee with C’s ex and get off on the right foot,” she urged. “What happened between them was between them. Her kids are spending two weekends a month with you; she’s going to want to know it. It will be better for all of you if you give her a chance to get to know you, and start a good working relationship.”

I pondered this. I don’t really want to know C’s ex. I would prefer she not exist at all ever. (Maybe the kids could have just descended from heaven?) Barring that, I would prefer she exist somewhere far away, like Pakistan or darkest Peru, traveling through a wormhole that opens biweekly to make pick-ups and drop-offs possible. “I would love to meet you halfway between San Francisco and darkest Peru for a latte, but that darn wormhole schedule just won’t accommodate it. That thing’s got the most inconvenient hours.”

I asked my old roommate, who I lived with from the time I moved here to the time C and I got our place. She has a now-seven-year-old son, and while we were roommates I watched her establish her own working relationship with her son’s father’s girlfriend. It was not an easy process for her. “Yes. Do it. Absolutely,” she said. “It’s totally worth it.”

I was going to send C’s ex an e-mail, but I ended up going with them yesterday. She was late and I had to pee, so I went into the nearby Target and hoped I wouldn’t miss her. And hoped I would. As I walked back to the car, she and the kids approached the Target entrance. We greeted, and I said, “Hey, do you want to exchange phone numbers? You know, in case you ever need it?” She seemed surprised, but immediately agreed. We fiddled with our phones, typing in names and numbers. She asked what my last name is. “Once the paperwork’s done, it will be (C’s last name),” I said.

“Hey, if you ever want to get coffee, like maybe on a day when you’re going to pick the kids up, I can drive out early and meet you somewhere,” I said. “If you want to get to know me better. I’d like that.”

“I’d like that, too,” she said.

One small step. Maybe one giant leap?

[adventureeverafter]

Chinese New Year with the cutest boy in the world. With him it's always an adventure.