Procrastination

How do freelancers keep their focus?  I’m working on a research project and I find myself wanting to do anything but research for said project.  I’m picking up episodes of Lawa & Order: SVU during their scare-a-thon, or finidng a book of crossword puzzles that I’ve just got to finish so that I can get rid of the damn book.  I’m finding ways to keep myself from the research and I think it goes back to this.  If I wait until the last minute to find everything then I’ll feel relatively good about all the progress that I made; but if I work on it over the course of two weeks and come up with nothing, then I’ll feel like an idiot.  And I hate to feel like that.

But, of course, I’m trying now.  Right?  I’m trying to see what I’m capable of.  So I bargained with myself: one more episode of House Hunters International and then on to work.  As long as the puppy stays occupied with her bone and my battery lasts.  It’s a small start, but it’s a start.

************

In other news, tomorrow starts NaBloPoMo and even though I tried, I haven’t been able to get that badge up here.  I’ve tried it before (posting, not the badge) and I’ve failed each time.  This month, though, I’m determined to finish.  I need to cross something off my Life List.  I’ve also started a little picture project with my dad, who is really into (and good at) photography.  Every time we see each other I prod him with questions about my camera and f/stop and light and ISO, and then I promptly forget.  So he came up with the idea to focus on one thing for one month and take photos of that.  We’re going to post them to Picasa and discuss them and hopefully I’ll keep learning things and taking better pictures.  If nothing else, though, it gets me out taking pictures; I can’t let my dad down, right?

And that’s it.  Back to research.  And thinking about topics for the next month.

Ko Olina Triathlon Recap

Swim (.93 miles): 20.42.

My goal time was 18-20 minutes, so not terribly far off.  I thought it was going to be much slower than it actually turned out to be.  I’ve been practicing in the coves of Ko Olina to prepare for this race and I felt fairly confident in my swimming abilities (they’re not swim team good, but I’m not dog paddling out their, either).  Boy was I in for a surprise.  I’m still not used to swimming in the middle of a mass of bodies.  I’m not used to all of the water splish-splashing around me, salt water in my throat and nose, goggles fogged up, hitting swimmers as they pass by me.  I’m not yet adept at swimming in a straight line without the use of painted lines on the bottom of the pool.  I’m not used to hitting someone’s foot/leg/arm and just moving on.  I was constantly assessing and reassessing my position.  I bobbed a lot and looked up and around.  Honestly, the best part of the swim was running between the coves; that’s where I caught up with my competitors.  I had a cheering section of friends and hearing them yell my name and words of encouragement made me push harder.

T1: 2:25.

I dropped my goggles getting out of the last cove and on my run to my bike I saw a co-worker of Wes’, Ben, who just did the lagoon challenge.  He started five minutes before me and finished about 5 minutes ahead of me.  He was drinking water and relaxing and I wanted to punch him in the face for being done with his race while I still had about an hour to go. That said, my transition was fine.  I rinsed my feet off, put on socks, shoes, glasses, watch, gloves and was out of there.  The tri suit was a big improvement over all of the outfit changes I did at the Na Wahine super sprint – no struggling with putting on sports bra (there is nothing worse than putting on a sports bra while you’re wet) or getting into biking shorts only to get out of them again and put on running shorts.

Bike (13.12 miles): 53.32

My goal was 40 minutes.  I wasn’t sure if that was even possible, but that’s what I was shooting for.  It was a stab in the dark, as I didn’t take a look at any past rides to see what my average speed was or how far I went in what time.  I passed plenty of people on the hills, and that made me feel awesome.  Every time I felt myself slowing down or slacking off or just plain not caring about how much I gave, I silently chided myself and dug in and gave more.  Coming back into the transition area I saw a man running back to the corral with his bike.  I’m not sure what happened, but it was certainly inspiring to see how much he wanted to compete in this race, and as I passed him I made sure to push a little harder.

T2: 1:24

My legs were like jello when I dismounted my bike and I was feeling pretty wobbly.  I grabbed my race belt and took off as quickly as I could.

Run (3.1 miles): 31:02

My goal here was 30 minutes, which is a pretty slow pace when I’m just running, but it seemed pretty reasonable for the third leg of the race.  Every time I saw my pace drop I would pick it up a little.  And every time I wanted to walk I would pick up the pace; there was no way I was going back to my cheering squad to tell them that I walked part of the run.  I passed a woman I remembered from the start line, but who I hadn’t seen since, and it felt pretty great to watch her walk while I ran past – sure she bested me on two-thirds of the race, but I was going to beat her on this.  Coming up on the last mile I saw another of Wes’ coworkers, who had run the 10k that morning, he told me to keep breathing and that I was almost there.  In truth, the breathing wasn’t the hard part.  My legs were feeling weak; the rest felt pretty good.  Around the last curve everyone in my cheering section yelled out for me and I ran as fast as I could past them to the finish line.

Total time: 1:49:01

Overall, I felt pretty good.  It definitely helped that I had people yelling for me at each transition and throughout the race.  After the race, a woman came up to me and congratulated me on a good race.  She said she’d been following me for most of it and was trying to catch up with me but just couldn’t.  After she said it I was so excited that I could have run another mile.  The entire time I was going through the race I felt good for me but I certainly didn’t think that someone would be using me as a benchmark.  It completely erased all those times throughout the race when I swore I would never race again. (Erased it so much that I finally signed up for the Half Marathon on November 7th.)

Having a cheering crew throughout the race didn’t hurt either.  They always seemed to be there just when I needed it.  When I wanted to fall on the grass after each swim through a lagoon, they were there to give me the boost of energy to get through the next leg.  And every time I wanted to slack off I remembered that I had people waiting for me at the end and I owed them – and me – a good race.  And instead of just settling for mediocre I pushed myself.

It felt amazing.

Strategy

I’ve never wanted to admit it before, but my strategy has always been: Don’t have a strategy.  It’s always been like this.  In high school I quit soccer because band was easier for me; I didn’t go for any AP credit; I didn’t join the school newspaper or debate.  When it came time for applying to colleges, I sent in my one application and then, after getting in, decided instead to go to a city college in Santa Barbara.  After college I started work as a receptionist while scheming up grand plans to go back to school, though for what was anyone’s guess.  First it was a master’s in English, and then to law school.   Then teaching credentials.  And, for a very brief time (so brief and secret I never told anyone), to get an engineering degree so I could work with Wes’ company and forever bypass this job search that happens each time we move.  I’ve signed up for races with every intention of training; for tests with every intention of studying, but in the end I slack off because I’m so completely afraid of failing.  And I’d rather fail by having put no effort into it than fail after putting a lot of effort into it.

How awful is it that I think so little of myself that I don’t try for anything.  It’s always been easier to be average without trying then to shoot for something more and possibly finish below where I wanted.  In 2008 I signed up for a half marathon and my training consisted of sporadic 3-mile runs whenever I felt like it, which wasn’t very often.  I finished in 2 hours 30(ish) minutes and was proud of that, but only because I hadn’t trained.  I say I didn’t train very much because the temperature in Orange County was too hot for me, but what it really comes down to is that I just didn’t want to put in too much effort in case I did badly.  Not training for 13.1 miles and finishing in 2:30 is great; training and finishing in 2:30 is not so great.

When I did the super sprint tri last month, I hadn’t trained at all, and though I’m not sure much would have changed had the wedding and honeymoon not taken up the three weeks prior to race, I like to blame the lack of training on those events.  And, still,  I finished first in my age group.  Just another reason to continue with my strategy of just showing up and hoping for the best.

Or is it?

A couple of weeks ago we had a birthday party for our neighbor, complete with games and cheap prizes.  At one point in the evening I said to the birthday girl, “I don’t really want to win the prize, but it’s not in my nature to give up.”  And though that’s true for board or card games, it’s not so much true in every aspect.  During the first triathlon, Wes ran beside me for a few feet, pushing me to go faster, to dig in a give a little more.  And I refused.  I told myself that I knew what my body was capable of and going faster, at that point, wasn’t on the list.  Yes, I finished first in my age group, but I still got my ass kicked by four women; four women who are older than me.  Four women who pushed their bodies past what I felt mine was capable of.   Not to mention the group of women who finished double my distance nearly fifteen minutes faster than I did.

And, yes, I’m ashamed of that.  Ashamed that, when you get right down to the heart of the matter, I don’t think I’m good enough to push through.  I don’t think that I’m capable of being the best.  I’m happy to live in the middle.  I hate that feeling – that I’m okay being less than what I could be.

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled on this post, courtesy of Twitter.  And I’ve been trying to remember it every day.  Every time I don’t want to run faster or father or swim or bike or cook or read or write or take the dog to the park.  Every time I think I can just squeak by, I remember this: “The ‘no’ we hear should never come from our own lips.“  For most of my life I’ve been telling myself just that, “No, you can’t do that.” And I’m tired of believing that.

In the next two months I have three races: Sprint Triathlon, Half Marathon, Full Marathon, and I’ve been getting out and swimming and biking and running.  Every time I want to stop or sleep in or skip a day, I have to remind myself that I’m capable of so much more.  My body and my mind are capable of so much more.

And while I’m out there, doing whatever it is I know I could just finish poorly and still be fine, I remember something that I was written on the sidewalk near my aunt and uncle’s house in Santa Barbara: Don’t be a Didn’t.  Whatever it is, from here on out, I’m going to do it to the best of my ability.  I’m going to practice and study and carve out time to do something well.  I can’t wait to see what I’m really capable of.

Five Things

So the Life List (please don’t call it a Bucket List, it just sounds silly).  I’m marking things off and it’s growing as I think of new things that I want to do (or things that I don’t want to do, like “swim with the dolphins”, which was crossed off after we watched The Cove).  And even though it feels like the middle of the summer here, I do realize that 2010 is on its way out, and I’ve decided to commit to crossing – or starting to cross off – five things on my list: 1) Throw a New Year’s Eve Party; 2) Run a Marathon; 3) Read 100 classic books; 4) Frame photographs I took; 5) Complete NaBloPoMo in November.

Number 5 is something that I’ve tried (and failed at) before.  It’s a lot harder than it seems, but I’m determined to do it last year.  Last year I came close, though not in November, but one post didn’t publish and even though I know I wrote it on the correct day, not posting is still failure in NaBloPoMo.  And this year I’m determined to make it through 30 days of posting.  It may not always be pretty, but at least I’ll get words on a page.  And, really, isn’t that half the battle?

Last Night

Last night we met some friends to see Jackass 3D.  The 8:15 show that we wanted to see was already sold out so instead of waiting around for the next show or picking a different movie, we decided to try out the local dive bar.  Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my ID because we were just going to see a movie. But, being a dive bar, we decided to see if they would actually card us.  It’s pretty close to our house so even if they did card, we could get home and back in 15 minutes and all would be well.  The bar is in the corner of a strip mall with all the windows blacked out.  We were carded as soon as we walked in and when we said that we would have to come back, the bouncer looked at the four of us and said, “The three of you have your IDs?”  He looked at their cards and waved us in.   And all I could think was, Where was this place when I was under 21? Then I remembered that I lived in Santa Barbara and worked in a restaurant: getting into bars without an ID was never an issue.

Here We Go

A couple of months ago when Wes’ family was visiting his sister (my sister(-in-law)!) said that she really wanted to go para sailing.  So, of course, we stuck Sierra with Grandma and found a place with a decent price and signed up for it.  Wendy suffers from motion sickness and was a little wary of going up there, but she recently started her own Life List and this was a chance to cross something off.

It was pretty windy the day that we went out and, I admit, a bit choppy.  Wendy looked a little green on the way out and I felt a bit queasy at a couple of points on the trip.  Our guides for the trip told us a story of a group of girls they took out.  They were all fancied up for the event – painted nails and makeup and teeny tiny bikinis.  Four were in a row on one side and opposite them sat the friend who neglected to tell everyone that she gets motion sickness.  And, of course, that one friend threw up on all the rest of them.  It made for a quiet ride back.

Luckily, nothing like that happened to us.

 

Getting Ready to Go Up

 

Because it was so windy, we didn’t have to go too far out before they put us in the air.  We each got in our harnesses on and took our seat in the on-deck seats.  And then we moved on to the back deck where they strapped us in and took the above picture.

 

And then, lift off.

We were up for about 30 minutes.  The views from up there were amazing but when we got on the boat we were told that we might be getting wet so, unfortunately, we didn’t have a camera.

Flying

I will admit to feeling a little nauseous while were in the air, as there was a lot of twisting from side to side.  Happily, no one puked the entire time.  They dipped us on the way back in – twice, in fact, because we were local.

Wet

***********************

Wes and I have always celebrated our birthdays in a big way.  The first year I took him to Six Flags for the weekend (he was like a kid in a candy shop) and then he took me to Yosemite for camping, hiking and horseback (mules) riding.  We’ve had surprise parties and scavenger hunts and SCUBA diving.  This year for his birthday, though, we stayed super low key.  Tsunami was still too young to go outside and it was difficult to leave her at home for any length of time because she still didn’t understand that she shouldn’t pee in her kennel.  We were both fine with it, but a couple of days later Wes said that we should get back to making our birthdays special, and he knew just what to do.

Now, usually when Wes knows of the perfect gift or surprise, he’ll dangle it in front of my face for days.  He’ll play 20 questions and laugh when I inevitably can’t figure it out.  He loves to hold it over my head.  And I hate it.  But this year he didn’t do any of that.  I figured it was because his family was in town and there wasn’t much time for teasing me about a birthday when there was a wedding just four days after.

The Saturday before my birthday we woke up early to get started on this Big thing Wes had planned. He asked me if I had any idea what we were we doing and when I told him that of course I didn’t know, he hadn’t said anything, he told me that he hadn’t said anything because it would be easy to figure out.  By the time we got to our destination, I still had no clue.  It wasn’t until we passed our turn that I finally looked at the signs and realized that we were about to go sky diving.

Sky diving is something that we’ve talked about for a long time.  It’s something that I’ve wanted to do and it’s something that I added to my Life List.  But, truthfully, it’s not something that I ever thought I would do.  A couple of years ago I had a hard time jumping off a rock into the water, so the thought of pushing myself out of a plane seemed pretty improbably.  Luckily, I had a great diver to help with that.  We arrived early, but still had to wait over an hour for our dive to take place, which means I got to see a lot of people go up and float down without a problem. It actually made me more calm and I needed that after reading the waiver which basically was 8 pages of “You will probably die or be seriously injured and we are not at fault for that, even if our crew packs the parachute incorrectly and that’s why you die or are seriously injured.  Still not our fault.”

My diver’s name was Jim and one of the first things he said to me was, “My name’s Jim.  If you have to scream, just yell, ‘Oh dear God, Jim!’” and I liked him instantly.  We all piled in to this tiny plane and I was sitting on Jim’s lap as we made our ascent.  The plane takes you up slowly and does a couple of loops so that you can see the island, and it was a clear day so we got to see a lot of the island – Pearly Harbor, Diamond Head, North Shore and Waimea Bay.

When the doors opened I wanted to scream a little bit, but I held it in.  Now clipped into Jim, he moved us to the door and said that when we got there we would look around and then tell me to bring my arms in and head back and we would jump.  I thought I would have a minute or so to gather myself at the door, but almost as soon as we go there he were out, with the simple phrase, “Here we go!”  Here we go indeed.  And yes, I screamed.  The first part is complete free fall and I’m pretty sure I screamed the entire time.  I wish I could say that I did scream, “Oh, dear God, Jim!” but I wasn’t even thinking about trying to be funny.  I was too busy staring at the ocean below us and wondering how the hell we were going to make our way to land.  Once the chute opened up, though, I was able to relax a little bit and enjoy the ride.  We did a couple of loops and it felt like being on a roller coaster.  Jim pointed out Wes and I got to see him land.  I took the reins for a little while, but I didn’t help steer anything.  I could feel Jim take the rope above the hand loops and help me maneuver us to our destination.

And then, quite suddenly, we landed.  The jump couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes and for the rest of the day we kept saying to each other, “It doesn’t feel like we went skydiving this morning.”  It was probably the most scared I’ve been in a long time.  But I loved every minute of it and am so glad that Wes planned it without me.  Given the chance to hem and haw over it I probably would have kept coming up with reasons why skydiving wouldn’t work this weekend (although, skydiving the week before your wedding doesn’t sound like the greatest idea, either.  I kept picturing one of us breaking a leg on the landing.) until pretty soon the topic of discussion just faded.  It was kind of an awesome note to leave behind my life of singledom.

 

No Sock Is Safe

We are harboring a thief in our house.  A four-legged thief whose weakness is socks.  German Shorthairs are supposed to be bird dogs, but we have a sock dog.  She sniffs them out in the most unlikely spots.  When I’m alone with her upstairs she wanders from room to room, searching out the familiar sent of a sock.  She sniffs at the laundry and in shoes, testing out the taste of a wash cloth or shirt before deciding that’s just not her thing.   Socks, her eyes seem to say as she drops the decidedly non-sock item, socks are where it’s at.

Right now there are three mate-less socks on my dresser.  I’m not sure where they disappear to – we do our laundry in the house and clean regularly.  I imagine that when we move out, in some corner of the house there will be a stockpile of socks.  Though, I thought that when I lost my glasses when I was 10 years old I would find them when we moved from Utah to Idaho and we never did, so I suppose I could be sitting with three mate-less socks on my dresser for a long time.

Well, not that long.  This morning I came out of our bathroom just in time to see Tsunami with her front paws on the dresser (the highest surface in our house, outside of closet shelves), stealing a sock.

The night before last, while we were upstairs getting ready for bed, she wandered into the guest bedroom.  Thinking that I had put everything out of her reach, I wasn’t too concerned.  But moments later she appeared with a sock.  Upstairs it’s much easier to catch her (downstairs there’s putting up the baby gate and forcing her into a corner, at which point, knowing she’s been caught, she drops it; upstairs there’s no circle for her to loop around – she’s always in a corner), and we got it out of her mouth and sent her to her kennel.  When I returned from putting the sock away, I looked into her kennel and found her with – of course – a sock.  She’s like a magician, hiding multiple socks in her mouth for use at a later date.

When I take her running or we take her on a weekend hike, she finds all sorts of debris, but her nose seems to search our socks.  It doesn’t matter that they’re dirty or that she doesn’t know the owner, she’ll find them.  This past weekend we took a hike to some falls and had to watch her like a hawk, lest she steal some poor hiker’s sock.

Of course, on the hike back to the car, she found one that had been abandoned.  She popped it in her mouth and pranced off, the happiest dog in the world.

Let’s Talk About My Puppy

She’s really fucking cute.

Adorable, no?

Even when she’s being awful and digging up the back yard and stealing socks and pens and paper towels/kleenex/toilet paper/basically any paper products, she’s still such a great looking dog.  I’ve gotten into daily running with her, and sometimes she’s fine – so excited to be out and get some much-needed release of energy, but sometimes she’s all, Dude, this fucking sucks.  Let’s just go home and I’ll run circles around the kitchen and living room and then go outside and dig up some rocks while destroying the back yard you’re trying to make pretty for me and after an hour of that I’ll be ready to pass out for the night. (Also, she just farted a smelly fart while I was writing that – a sort of fuck you for putting her private life on the internet?).  But I push on, pulling her, telling her to “come on” and “leave it” in my very sweetest voice because she likes the higher pitched voices.  Sometimes it feels like a lot of work and that it would be easier to just go home, but at home she tends to get a crazy amount of energy at 5:30 and I’d rather deal with her on a leash and force her to run it out than to sit idly by while she finds ways to get into trouble at home.

Last weekend while two of my best friends – Laura and Whitney – were visiting, we took her on a hike.  After the hike the previous week, in which she knocked me down on a very muddy trail, I wasn’t exactly stoked on getting out there again, but I figured there couldn’t be much harm since it wasn’t raining.  And there wasn’t.  The biggest problem were all the mosquitoes that were out for blood (ha ha ha).    The beginning of the trail had a new rope bridge that was supposed to be easier to cross than whatever was there before.  Easier for humans, yes, but less easy for four-legged creatures who don’t like the water.  It took some prodding, but I finally got Tsunami to cross the small dam so we could actually do the hike.  Her first forays into water were all ocean water and she did not like them one bit.  But fresh water seems to be her thing and at the half -way point of her hike we let her frolic in the water with a big stick (girl loves her a good stick).

Realizing water is fun

Tuesday night she met a husky at the dog park and, in her excitement to play, she checked the other dog into the fence.  Which caused her to limp, which in turn prevented our evening runs.  Our vet told us to keep her off of it and we picked up another prescription anti-inflammatory in hopes that would help.  It helped take the pain away, but not all of the limp.  So there wasn’t any strenuous exercise, but there was plenty of craziness around the five o’clock hour – and me without a cocktail.  Yesterday I came home from running errands for about two hours and she had dug up an area of the grass that we had blocked off with rabbit fence to prevent trampling while we grew new grass.  Once she sniffed out a piece of concrete (seriously, our backyard is like a graveyard for concrete), it wasn’t long before she figured out how to jump the fence.  The digging got worse from there and I decided that if she was well enough to cause such havoc she was well enough to go on a run.

It's hard to stay mad at that face

She’s almost nine months old and is getting better behaved and smarter every day.  Even in her thieving there is an element of brains.  And even though there are days when we would probably kill to sleep past 7am, or enjoy dinner or a glass of wine without worrying about her intrusive nose, she has moments that make it all worth it.

Like this one