ultrarunningmom

Even just a drifting log would be fine right now, anything for me to keep my head above water, gurgle gurgle. ..

This week I realized just how many balls I have in the air currently and nearly toppled off my balance board. Instead of gracefully flowing in a horizontal circle rising and falling in a memorizing rhythm in front of me, my balls became a vertical tornado around my head creating a sense of vertigo.

Every so often, this realization hits me, and my brain becomes tapioca pudding. I can’t keep anything straight, and I can barely breathe.  It’s not as if I took on any new projects, it just hit me this week as I scrambled to find time to work on everything I have going on.

I consider myself to be of average intelligence. I’m a capable and strong person. Ambitious, maybe to a fault. I continue to hold on to my childhood dream to change the world for the better rather than just go through life and let things crumble and tumble as they will.

I like structure. It helps me maintain the space needed between the flying balls, but this week my structure has blurred and wobbly lines.  Let me give you a sense of this past week. ..

First off, I was the on call attorney for my office, which means for seven days 24 hours a day I take all the emergency calls. This is in addition to all my regular responsibilities on my eighty or so ongoing cases.  No big deal, this happens every eight weeks, each of us takes a turn. The result is I’m super busy while at the office (8 am to 5 pm). I don’t sleep well, and my phone becomes an extra appendage.

Second, it’s the last week of school for the boys. Both of them are very excited to be done with the school year. Jasper (16) has a lot of things he wants to accomplish over the summer and we spent some time talking about prioritizing, where to look for a job, getting a running schedule in place for cross country summer training, networking for future goals, keeping up on his Ultimate Frisbee skills, and hanging out with his friends. He is very anxious about only having ONE MORE YEAR until he is an adult and being ready for that transition and increased responsibility.

Skyler (13) is experiencing high levels of anxiety because it’s spring, and he does this every single year. He is having a very difficult time regulating his emotions. He is saying hurtful things to try to reduce his own anxiety.

“I hope you die and go to hell!” he yelled at me Wednesday morning.

“Okay, but you still have to go to school,” I said.

“Not if I’m dead,” he said. His words dripping with acid.

“That’s true,” I said and continue to pack my lunch.

The best response to Skyler in these situations is no emotional response at all. He got in the car and went to school, telling me the whole way how dreadfully sick he was. I have no doubt that he felt the way he was describing, but the mind is an amazing thing when it comes to making your body feel a particular way depending upon your thought patterns.

At 930 a.m. the school called me, between court hearings, and told me he was being suspended for threatening a teacher.  Well isn’t that nice I wanted to say, but I didn’t. I called my amazing mom to go pick up my son and take him home.

“Sorry mom.” He said in a text at 10:30 a.m.

“I know.”

We also had the last week of Youth court commitments for Skyler including peer counseling and peer tutoring.  He still has community service hours, but we can do that over the summer. Each night I spend some one on one time with Skyler reading, gardening, or anything else I can convince him to come and do with his very boring mom.

Next swirling ball, my relay team. We have a race in just four weeks, and I am trying to get the last things in place to make that successful along with finding and gathering fees for the Epic Relay in August that we decided to run.  I try not to worry too much about how much or how little my team is training for the run. I just focus on my training and being able to take on extra miles in the event someone cannot finish his or her portion.

My own training is going well.  I’m up to about 30 miles a week now and will continue to increase on my way to the Pony Express 100 in October. I’m running four days a week and doing strength training three days a week. I’m beginning to think about races I want to do next year and how that will fit in with my team running. I’d like to run Zion’s 100, Bryce 100, and maybe Bear 100 in 2015.

I started writing a new book called, Reaching for Sky, and am about 20,000 words into my first draft. I’m exploring the idea of independently publishing my books. There is so much information out there about self-publishing, trying to sort through all of it is an immense project.  I found some helpful podcasts and listen to those while I drive to and from work.

I try to read a book, at least, every two weeks. It keeps my writing ideas fresh. I love to read and support the writing industry.

My garden is growing nicely. In other words, nothing has died yet. There are a million weeds, and that has been a pain to keep under control. This is my first year gardening. I try to get out there for a few minutes each day with Skyler to minimize the weekend weed pulling.

Finally, there is the general cooking, grocery shopping, and house and yard work that must be done on an ongoing basis.

That is my life in a nutshell. It would be nice to be able to clone myself or have a robot to clean house, grocery shop, do the yard work and laundry, and all the things that I don’t particularly enjoy doing.

And Jasper is concerned about what I will do when he moves out of the house? How quiet and boring the house will be when he is not there all the time. Oh, my sweet boy don’t worry about me, I always tell him.

“I have a few hobbies that will keep me busy.”

He looks at me with true sincerity. ” You have hobbies?”

“Yes dear. And friends too.” I smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Plus I’ll just call you all the time.”  At that, he grins.