Three Little Things

Give Me Crazy or Give Me Death. If I can keep my To Do list in my head, I’m not busy enough. It occurred to me today that this aphorism encapsulates the crux of my happiness. I have a love-hate relationship with busy-ness, constantly craving free time to curl up with a book, but thriving like a young dandelion in crabgrass on the breakneck pace. Boredom, I have discovered, is my kryptonite. I don’t know why, but when I don’t have enough to fill my time I get cranky, restless and dissatisfied. Maybe it’s because when I have time to brood myopically over small irritations, they bloom into phantom crises without substance enough to give them any real significance. Or maybe I just need to feel like my day’s accomplishments include something more meaningful than discovering a new iPod accessory on Amazon.com.

I don’t mind the void so much in the evenings, after a stressful day of ducking high-school drama in the hallways, stretching minor projects to fill major slots of time, and pretending my bosses aren’t the worst excuse for management I’ve ever seen. Those hours are bliss, quiet and empty. More often than not, I’m asleep by 8 PM, which would seem alarmingly lazy were it not for the fact that my day begins at 4:30 AM.

At work and on the weekends, though, I miss chasing down tasks on my list of chores, rushing to keep up as the day slips away, finding to my surprise that it is suddenly five o’clock and another satisfying day of getting things done is over.

My bosses say they’re trying to give me more challenging projects, but they’ve said a lot of things in the past year. I’m not holding my breath.

Friendlets – Yeesh! I did eventually call Cherie back and end that friendship. The phone call began the usual way – we barely glossed over my life before she commenced an in-depth gush-fest about how spiritual she is, how much she’s growing in the Lord, and how, although she can’t see the reason, she trusts that divorcing her husband was in God’s plan, blah blah blah. I really, really wanted to hear her say something real, something normal. I wanted, just once, to hear her bitch about how much she misses good sex, or how tax season is a pain in the ass when you’re getting divorced, or even whine about getting back into the dating game, but no. It was all sugary-sweet beams of sunshine and it felt about eleventy-thousand percent phony. So I ended it. I told her I had hoped we’d just drift apart after I stopped answering her phone calls, which she answered with a lengthy guilt trip about how I owe her at least the courtesy of a callback once in a while. I countered by being honest about how I feel like she is constantly judging me, and she shot back another phony rendition of “I’m too good a Christian to do something like that.” Bah.

It was tedious, it was ugly, and at the end I almost bought the blame game she tried to sell me, but I got what I wanted. Bring on the karmic bitch slap if I was in the wrong here, but my life is Cherie-free from here on out, and it was worth it.

Run For Your Life. Back at the end of January, I started training for a marathon. Two, actually. Well, one and a half. The half will be run in Dallas on April 1 (part of my body still believes this is a joke), and when I get back from Italy in May, I’ll start training to run the whole 26.2 miles in Ohio in September.

I can hardly believe it myself. I haven’t completed the registration form for the April 1 race yet because I can’t really wrap my brain around the fact that I’m going to run 13.1 miles in a real race with real runners. I’m not a runner. I’m just a girl trying to shed a few pounds the cheapest and easiest way I know how. Running is doesn’t require much talent or equipment; I have sneakers, there’s the road, have at it, right? So how did I get here, holding this piece of paper with race-day instructions, a receipt for the $50 entry fee and a time-chip number?

My long runs are up to 9 miles, and this week I will complete 21 miles in 5 days. It’s hard to believe that just two months ago – no, less – a month and a half ago I was struggling to complete 2 miles without getting completely bogged down by a mixture of unwilling muscles and an unmotivated brain. Maybe it’s the personal challenge that makes the difference. Every mile I add, every hill I conquer makes me feel like I could do anything. My body can do things today that it couldn’t hope to do ten years ago. Or maybe I’m being motivated by bragging rights. There is a certain fiendish joy in knowing my nasty co-workers, my witless boss, and those mean girls I knew in high school would bust a lung just thinking about doing what I’m doing.

Whatever the reason, I know this; every mile is half pain, half victory and that’s twice as much victory as I get the rest of the day.

Because I post here, I don’t really have anything to post here. I might try someday anyway. . I don’t accept notes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t comment.